Claire Hoy — Proof of mainstream media’s bias

July 31, 2013 · 0 Comments

For those of you who wonder why conservative-minded people such as myself often complain about the mainstream media’s pro-liberal bias, let us examine two ongoing political situations:
First, there’s the continuing and extensive coverage of the great Senate “scandal,” where we’re told on a regular basis that Tory Prime Minister Stephen Harper is culpable for the $90,000 personal cheque his former chief of staff wrote to cover the housing shenanigans of Tory Senator Mike Duffy.
Second, there’s the universal media yawn – with a few exceptions – being displayed over the notion that Ontario Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne had little, if anything, to do with Dalton McGuinty’s brazen partisan decision to save some Liberal ridings by cancelling gas plants, a decision which could end up costing taxpayers up to $1 billion.
Let’s compare, shall we.
Any fair-minded person – and you can exclude me if you wish – would have to agree that the media has given overwhelming coverage to the Harper-Duffy thing, despite the fact that even the RCMP, in investigating various aspects of the scandal, found that Harper had no personal knowledge that his former top aide wrote the cheque in question.
What’s more, unlike the gas plant losses in Ontario, the cheque isn’t even taxpayer’s money, but comes from a personal account. And to top things off, we’re talking $90,000 for the Duffy thing – with all its blanket coverage – compared to what could amount to a billion dollar boondoggle, a purely partisan thing which has received precious little media coverage by comparison.
Harper has said from the outset when news of the Duffy cheque broke that he did not know about it.
Naturally, the opposition parties – without a shred of evidence to contradict him – have all blustered that they don’t believe him. And the media, for the most part, have joined in the parade of pooh-poohing Harper’s claims.
This is not to say, for a second, that Harper, like every politician who has ever walked the earth, hasn’t been disingenuous sometimes. It’s just that in this particular case, there is no reason to disbelieve him, yet the opposition and their fellow travelers in the mainstream media have opted to portray him as a liar.
Now the Wynne case.
You will recall that not only was she a senior minister in the cabinet of her predecessor Dalton McGuinty’s government – and therefore obviously had to be aware when major decisions were being made – but during the 2011 election, when the decision was made to sacrifice hundreds of millions of taxpayer’s dollars to save some Liberal seats, she was – wait for it – co-chairman of the Liberal campaign.
So we are asked to believe that a major political campaign decision was made in the midst of a campaign and Wynne, a senior minister and co-chairman of the campaign, knew nothing about it.
“Those were decisions that were made by other people in other conversations and I wasn’t part of those conversations,” she says. “I wasn’t in those rooms.”
With that, the media pretty well moved on, absolving her of any responsibility in one of the biggest partisan boondoggles in Ontario history, pretty well buying the story that she was an innocent bystander.
They won’t do that for Harper – despite compelling evidence showing he was not involved in the relatively minor Duffy cheque – but for Wynne, the Liberal, well, everybody knows that her heart’s in the right place so she must be telling the truth.
Things pretty well stayed that way until late last week when another series of e-mails involving the gas plant scandal were suddenly discovered – this after repeated Liberal claims that they’d made everything public – which clearly demonstrates that Wynne is not telling the truth.
And yet – yet – with the notable exception of Toronto Sun Queen’s Park columnist Sue-Ann Levy, the media has offered another general yawn.
Levy points out that some 3,226 backup tapes have suddenly surfaced for 13 Liberal politicians and staffers relating to the cancellation of the two gas plants in Oakville and Mississauga and – guess what, folks? – 1,233 of those tapes contain Wynne’s e-mails, rather odd for somebody who wasn’t in the room or had “no part of those conversations….”
Think for a moment how the media would handle it if suddenly real evidence emerged proving Harper is lying about the Duffy cheque. They’d be putting out special editions demanding his resignation.
Yet Wynne, who clearly isn’t being honest, is pretty well given a free pass.
Which is why, as we said at the beginning, conservatives know they won’t get fair treatment in the media.