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Posted on 04/14/2003 9:32:42 AM PDT by knighthawk
At the Rally for America last Friday outside city hall, some 8,000 souls braved bone-chilling temperatures and freezing sleet to send a message of friendship to the American people. It hit its target bang on, and probably did more to repair Canada's image in the U.S. than all the apologies and explanations from politicians.
That's because it reached a huge swath of Americans. It was picked up by CNN, Fox News, the NBC affiliate in Buffalo, and the Chicago Tribune, among others. It was sent out on the UPI and AP wire services. Media hits were recorded in Kansas City, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles and half a dozen towns in North and South Carolina.
Organizers of the Rally for America -- and my husband, Ray Heard, was one -- spoke for the silent majority of Canadians who may not be pro-war or pro-Bush, but who stand up for Americans who have suffered insults from Liberal politicians and abuse from loutish Quebec hockey fans.
Looking back, the rally may mark the point where the tide began to turn from hostile anti-American opinions to ones more favourable to our oldest friends and neighbours.
Indeed, a poll this week found that a majority of Canadians (72%) believe Canada should have supported the U.S. from the beginning of the war, either with words or with troops. Now, with the fall of Baghdad, all indicators suggest a dramatic rise in backing for America.
Because the battle for public opinion is being fought in the media, it makes for an interesting lesson to examine how the rally was covered in Canada. The Winnipeg Sun called it "inspiring." Christie Blatchford, my colleague here at the Post, wrote about all the middle-class people, the kind you rarely see at rallies, who felt compelled to venture out in the storm. The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Sun, and all the Toronto-area radio and television stations carried balanced stories.
But if you read the Toronto Star or watched CBC News, you would never have guessed the sands of public opinion were shifting. Could it be that these media giants -- in whose news divisions I have served -- are pervaded by the knee-jerk anti-Americanism of the Loony Left?
The Toronto Star kissed off the rally the day after with photographs of those frequent targets of Star editorial board wrath, Ernie Eves, the Premier of Ontario, and his predecessor, Mike Harris, accompanied by a cutline. No estimate of the size of the crowd, even though the cops of 52 Division put it at about 8,000. No reference to the fact that both Liberals and Tories were there. No mention of the inspiring apolitical speeches by the likes of giant-hearted Pinball Clemons.
No mention of Erica Basnicki, the Ryerson student, who lost her father, Ken, in the Twin Towers on 9/11 and who said, "My dad is not here in body, but he's here in spirit. And knowing my dad, if he could send a message to the people of the United States today, he would say, 'Thank you for looking after my family for me.' "
But the next day, the Sunday Star splashed a four-column photograph on page A10 of marchers with the headline: 4,000 march in frigid slush to condemn 'immoral' war. The Star reporter did not note that the flag of the former Soviet Union, the emblem of the butcher, Stalin, was displayed.
The same day, columnist Haroon Siddiqui accused conservatives who support the U.S. of being "traitors" and "arse-lickers," singling out Eves, Harris, Ralph Klein, Stephen Harper and Don Cherry. Is Siddiqui suggesting these men of principle should follow a policy they believe to be wrong? Both sides are entitled to their ideological biases, of course, but Siddiqui disgraces himself by inflaming the debate and descending to near profanity.
Now let's look at the CBC. On The National, Peter Mansbridge, in a voice-over brief, reported that some "hundreds" of people had been at Nathan Phillips Square for the show of affection for the American people. If your tax-subsidized team of researchers, producers and reporters had even read the Canadian Press newswire, the CBC would have known the crowd numbered several thousand. But, hey, why let the facts get in the way of a good (anti-American) story?
This mindful neglect by the CBC brought back memories of the night the war began when, on holiday in the U.S., I watched The National on C-span. One of the top items that busy news night was a stream-of-conscious anti-American rave by the Iraqi Minister of Propaganda. The CBC didn't analyze or critique his remarks, just let them stand, unchallenged.
However, when Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. Secretary of Defence, takes to the mike to make important pronouncements, we can always expect David Halton or the irreplaceable Rex Murphy to dissect and analyze them.
Meanwhile, before the rally, as one of its organizers was going to great lengths to tell CBC Newsworld that the rally was not pro-war but pro-American, he was identified on the screen as being "pro-war." After several angry exchanges with a stream of CBC functionaries, this error was finally corrected.
The CBC yet again showed its anti-American colours when last week it yanked Don Cherry's pro-American, pro-war comments on Coach's Corner from its Web site, thus opening itself up to charges of censorship. Cherry's entitled to his clearly expressed opinions, even some of the wackier ones -- and even the likes of Mike Harris have said they support his views over those of Jean Chrétien.
In another giddy display of anti-Americanism, Antonia Zerbisias, host of CBC's Inside Media, coyly flashed a peace sign with her fingers toward the camera at the end of a recent show on media coverage of the Iraq war. While Zerbisias is paid to have opinions, surely this kind of over-the-top gesture -- which she doubtless thought was a cute wink at the anti-American CBC watchers -- is against CBC's code of ethics? She should be called on the carpet and disciplined.
Her co-host, Matthew Fraser, the National Post's media columnist, is simmering with anger two weeks later. "Can you imagine if I had pulled a small American flag from my jacket pocket and waved it at the end of the show?" says Fraser. "It would have been edited out, and I would have been reprimanded, strapped into a giggle jacket and frog-marched out of the building."
When CBC Newsworld launched Inside Media last fall, the show was supposed to look like the Corp's answer to CNN's Crossfire, with Fraser on the right and Zerbisias on the left. But predictably, Inside Media has been tilting toward the Loony Left -- a terrain staked out by Zerbisias in her hysterically anti-American rants in the Toronto Star. Inside Media has featured a stream of anti-American topics and guests from the radical class of Volvo socialists. All the usual suspects -- Todd Gitlin, Robert Fisk, Amy Goodman -- have been trotted out to launch tirades against the U.S., the Pentagon, the Bush Administration and the lapdog U.S.
Yet Fraser (who is a colleague and friend) still appears to have a sense of humour about the Corp's ideological biases. "I keep lobbying to do a panel discussion called 'Whither Public Broadcasting?' with guests Andrew Coyne, Terry Corcoran, David Frum and Izzy Asper. Just them, nobody else. I'll keep trying."
Of course, this idea has zero chance of ever reaching the air, given that self-described "committed activist" and card-carrying unionist Arnold Amber is the executive producer.
gcosgrove@rogers.com
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Enjoying their proximity, Canada is first in line to make nice-nice with those rascally Americans.
(remember when Canadians were Americans too?)
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