Frances Russell, the Marci McDonald of the Winnipeg Free Press
Russell was writing about SUN TV, the proposed all-news channel by Quebecor. She starts:
The plot for Fox News North, the tag applied to Quebecor's new Sun Media news channel, was hatched at a lunch Prime Minister Stephen Harper had with Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes in New York on March 30, 2009, according to The Canadian Press.
Australian media billionaire Murdoch owns Fox News; Ailes, a brass-knuckle Republican strategist, is its president.
Huh? I read that Canadian Press article. (I can't find it in online; so here's a .pdf of it). It does report that Harper met with Murdoch and Ailes. But it does not say that the idea for SUN TV came from that meeting. In fact, the Canadian Press story specifically states that the subject was not raised.
So it's not true. And it's still not true, even though Russell says it's true "according to The Canadian Press".
Russell gets her facts wrong in the very next paragraph, too. She attributes an apocryphal story about Roger Ailes to Time magazine. Um, nope. It was the New York Times. Time magazine, New York Times -- it's so easy to get confused. Good thing Russell isn't presenting herself as an expert on the media, or on accurate and balanced reporting.
The rest of Russell's rant is weird too -- for example, she later writes the opposite of her lede sentence. That's just bizarre. Isn't that the kind of debate in her mind that should happen before she files her story? Did her editor at the Winnipeg Free Press even read the column through to the end before slapping it on the page?
As I wrote before, SUN TV is a great Rorschach Test for the mainstream media. Since it hasn't broadcast a minute of programming yet, anyone who condemns it exposes their prejudice -- literally, to pre-judge something. The smarter liberals in the media are holding their fire. But the dumber ones just can't resist taking pot-shots.
Reading Russell's rant reminded me of the unpleasant 90 minutes I spent reading Marci McDonald's book. The factual errors were irritating, but they were secondary to the larger flaw: the bigotry of the author's thesis.
In McDonald's case, her hatred for Christians was far more important than her countless factual errors. Same thing with Russell. Put aside her poor reportorial skills, and the non-existent fact-checking by her editors. Far more interesting is Russell's left-wing conspiracy theories and her intolerance and hostility towards anyone who doesn't agree with her views.
P.S. Just for disclosure, I do not have a contract with SUN TV (or any other TV channel).
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