Media Ignore That Gagging Sound from Canada

townhall.com ^ | June 11, 2008 | Media Ignore That Gagging Sound from Canada

[Jim Robinson]

Usually, when a journalist is censored in a Western nation, American news organizations respond with collective outrage.

But as a major attack on press freedom unfolds in Canada, America’s mainstream media are silent. Neither the TV networks nor the major newspapers have reported on hearings last week at what amounts to a Stalinesque show trial in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Mark Steyn, a Canadian journalist who now lives in New Hampshire and whose column appears in National Review magazine as well as several U.S. and Canadian newspapers, is facing charges before British Columbia’s Human Rights Tribunal.

His crime? Spreading “hatred.”

The evidence? A 5,000-word excerpt of Steyn’s book America Alone that was carried as an article, “The Future Belongs to Islam,” in October 2006 by the Canadian magazine Maclean’s, which is also a defendant. The hearings, which were held June 2-6, amount to a star chamber with the rules of evidence constantly changing according to the whims of the three commissioners. A verdict is expected in September.

Steyn and the magazine are also expected to be charged with a hate crime by the national kangaroo court, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and another such tribunal in Ontario. Not a single defendant has ever prevailed before the national board in its 31 years of existence. To be accused is to be guilty, Soviet style.

The Canadian press has been all over this story, but it has not registered a blip in the United States, except for an AP brief, an article in The Washington Times and on conservative Internet sites and talk radio.

[villagerjoel]

“In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” - George Orwell

[A_perfect_lady]

Clearly, the thing to do is find anti-homosexual remarks in a Muslim text and start the battle between the two favored groups.