TorStar's Linda McQuaig on PM Harper, Fox, SunTV and a Sinister Plot

Left wing Toronto Star journalist, Linda McQuaig tries to connect PM Harper luncheoning in New York with Rupert Murdoch whose company owns Foxnews and Roger Ailes, president of that news channel with the new SunTV News channel due to come on air in 2011 and a plot to poison the Canadian public with right wing extremism. Oh the horror!

So it should be considered no big deal that, among those the PM has lunched with, is U.S. media billionaire Rupert Murdoch, who has probably done more than any single individual in recent years to push American politics sharply to the right.
It’s interesting to imagine, however, why our Prime Minister would want to meet with Murdoch, whose Fox News TV channel has poisoned U.S. political debate and nurtured America’s extremist right-wing Tea Party movement.
If you subscribe to the notion that Harper has no particular political agenda, his lunch with Murdoch in March 2009 might seem harmless, perhaps a purely social affair.
But the evidence suggests they were discussing plans to transform the Canadian political landscape by creating a right-wing, Fox-style TV station in Canada. Present at the lunch was Fox News president Roger Ailes, known for bringing cutthroat Republican campaign tactics to the screen.

She says there is evidence to suggest they were discussing creating a Fox TV here. What evidence? Having lunch together? How does she know what they were talking about?  Was she there?  I doubt it. Ooh,something sinister must have been going on.

She then goes on to suggest that just because Kory Tenecyke was in attendance that he must have been in on that  dark plot. Kory was PM Harper 's communications directer at the time and is now spearheading SunTV News. He had every right to be there.

Also present at the lunch was Harper aide Kory Teneycke, who has since become the front man in the bid by Quebec media mogul Pierre Karl Peladeau to get a specialty TV licence for a Fox News-style network in Canada.

Then the plot thickens:

Harper also met twice in early 2009 with Peladeau, according to Cheadle.

Whoa!  Big deal. PM Harper meets with Peladeau.  Were any of the media privy to what they were discussing?  Thought so.  Just more speculation.
Then there's the speculation that the PM is interfering with CRTC so that SunTV will obtain their license by trying to force big wig, Konrad von Finckenstein to resign.

Of course, Harper doesn’t hand out TV licences. That’s the job of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
But Morrison says he’s heard that Harper has been trying to encourage CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein to resign, by offering him plum jobs. Von Finckenstein appears likely to stymie Peladeau’s bid for a first-tier licence that would deliver his station to all cable subscribers in the country.

 Does she have proof?  Didn't think so.  Morrison heard. Heard where and from who? More speculation.
Then there's that nasty right wing extremism.

 There’s been a tendency in the Canadian media to dismiss the threat of a Fox News transplant, on the grounds Canadians wouldn’t fall for that sort of nasty, right-wing extremism.
But that comforting notion may be naive. Most citizens don’t have time to follow political stories in detail. If they hear constant sound-bites suggesting global warming is a hoax or public health care just doesn’t work, after a while the message starts to seem believable.

She's afraid that the public might see that global warming is hoax?  Yup, because it actually is!   Public health care doesn't work?  You bet!

Oh and the media is already moving to the right.  Yeah right!

Indeed, the Canadian political debate has already moved considerably to the right, particularly since Conrad Black created the National Post in 1998.
While the Post has struggled to capture audience share, it’s had a big impact on the media landscape. Its sneering attitude toward progressive ideas — now echoed by the Harper government — has pushed other media rightward, including the CBC, which is ever frightened of offending those in power. The CBC even hired Teneycke, an Ann Coulter-style pit bull, as a commentator.
The media already blast Canadians with a steady chorus of right-wing ideas. A Fox-style network here — if Harper gets his way — would turn that into a deafening cacophony.

Oh, the horror that Canadians get another point of view and have a choice in TV news instead of the left wing, anything anti-Christian, anti-conservative, anti-Harper pablum everyday. I think Linda is another one of the left wing, liberal, lame stream media who are very afraid that the public will get some truth and facts for a change instead of Liberal fiction. 

This story is another perfect example of that fiction. Just making things up. No proof, no evidence, just speculation.  I think Canadians are tired of that.  I am, aren't you?