Friday, September 02, 2011

Mr. Baldrey.....You Had An Option, Sir.

JohnWho
NotTurnerVille


When Stephen Smart was throwing his Twitter-enabled hissy fit yesterday about (not)Premier Christy Clark's decision to make her (non) election announcement 'exclusively' via a single carefully selected english-language TeeVee media organ and issues were raised about the lack of a response from the leader of the Opposition to that announcement, the head mouthpiece for said select organ, Mr. Keith Baldrey, defended himself thusly:



But here's the thing......

Not to go all Mulroney on him or anything, but I can't help but wonder what would have happened if, when approached by the (not)Premier's office, Mr. Baldrey had just said...

"Thank-you for kind offer. However, this is not an investigative story, or even a backgrounder. Instead, it is an official announcement of import for all British Columbians. Thus, I would be happy to ask you questions at your press conference, instead."


And what if Mr. Smart had said the same thing if the (not)Premier's office had then called him next....

And then Mr. Beatty after him...

Seriously.

What would have happened then?

****

I must confess, I am not entirely sure what the outcome would have been if the Lotuslandian TeeVee elites had stood together for the collective public good, on principle.

Perhaps Ms Clark's office would have gone after Uncle Dave, in the end.

Which would have been great, because I reckon that Mr. Berner would have eviscerated her given that he would not be happy about having his wall-to-wall tennis watching interrupted for, essentially, no good reason at all.


OK?


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2 comments:

North Van's Grumps said...

ahh, why I remember....... 30 years ago, a Royal Commission sought to have an unshackled press as a legacy for our children.

Page 11

"FREEDOM of the press is not a property right of owners . It is a right of the people. It is part of their right to free expression, inseparable from their right to inform themselves . The Commission believes that the key problem posed by its terms of reference is the limitation of those rights by undue concentration of ownership and control of the Canadian daily newspaper industry. As Justice Hugo Black wrote in a 1945 judgment of the United States Supreme Court, "Freedom of the press from governmental interference . . . does not sanction repression of that freedom by private interests ."

Page 9 Royal Commission on Newspapers (Canada) 1981
Chapters 1 - 4

"...we summarize our findings about the newspaper industry in Canada and discuss ideas that have been put forward to us as to what should be done; some are adopted with enthusiasm . We discuss what we believe the Parliament of Canada can do to create the climate in which newspapers can truly fulfill the public trust that our society has vested in them . In our last chapter we set out those recommendations in some detail .
We took for our motto in this inquiry the famous words of one early Canadian newspaperman, Joseph Howe . "I conjure you," he said to the jury asked to convict him of contempt for publishing information he thought the public should have, "to leave an unshackled press as a legacy to your children."

The shackles that bind the press in Canada today are a different sort from those that Howe exhorted against . They are shackles nonetheless . We present in this Report our recommendations for freeing the press in Canada."



Source: http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/200/301/pco-bcp/commissions-ef/kent1981-eng/kent1981-eng.htm

RossK said...

Thanks NVG!

Whole Lotta zingers in there for future reference.

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