Well, fellow friends of freedom of the press, what now?

Agreements between Postmedia – the country’s largest newspaper chain – and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), plus an equally disgraceful deal between the company’s Vancouver Province and the LNG industry have permanently stained the organization’s journalistic credibility.

Postmedia is broke and then some. That, however, has never been an excuse for losing your moral compass. I can’t imagine Postmedia forgiving an embezzler because he was broke, yet they’re happy to abdicate journalistic standards and morality because they’re unable to pay dividends.

We all know about the obsequious and idiotic editorials the Postmedia press did while falling all over Stephen Harper and the Conservatives in the recent election. Added to this list is the Toronto Globe and Mail which, while not directly linked to the fossil fuel industry so far as I know, is obviously wed forever to the right wing and it’s acolytes.

Newspapers have long taken an editorial position in favour of one party or another, loftily insisting that it was the “view of the newspaper” as if it had been revealed by the Delphic Oracle, not dictated directly from the publisher. This, however, is the first time in my memory that newspapers and newspaper chains have formally locked themselves into agreements with one side of a highly contentious issue. Their loved one, the fossil fuel industry, is condemned by every reputable scientist as harmful to the environment and a serious contributor to climate change. We know we can wean ourselves off fossil fuels but that effort must be supported by government and all reasonable people, including responsible news outlets.

When you read your newspaper, apart from the obituaries, you can’t believe a damned thing. It’s worse – you don’t know what’s not printed and should have been.

Once a newspaper is committed to a controversial view, it’s like a clock that strikes 13 – it can never be trusted again. Even the mildest “puff” pieces may well contain propaganda. Unquestionably, Postmedia coverage of controversial issues relating to fossil fuels and the industry can never be accepted in light of their commitment to CAPP.

What about those things not covered?

For example, where in the mainstream media have you read any serious questioning – let alone criticism – of “fracking”? Or the impact of extraction of the natural gas on water, air and the climate?

Where you seen any criticism of LNG tankers in the far too narrow Howe Sound and Fraser River?

Where have you seen any criticism of, or questions about Sukanto Tanoto, the crooked tax-avoiding, forest-destroying, owner of  Woodfibre LNG?

Where have you seen any careful evaluation of the government’s secretive deal with Petronas? And where the government’s “due diligence” was?

Where have you seen the even mildest criticism of premier Clark, her inarticulate toady, Rich Coleman, and their gross exaggerations and bungling negotiations on LNG?

When was the last time you read a columnist in any of these papers be even mildly critical of either government on energy issues?

We’ve all seen the recent resignation of Andrew Coyne, as editor of the National Post after they spiked his election column for the venal sin of criticizing Harper and the Tories. For some reason, Coyne decided to be half an honourable man and kept his column.

Television can hardly be relied upon.

Global TV is owned by Shaw Media. Due to their connection, they and Corus Entertainment are considered to be “related” by the CRTC. Corus, also controlled by the Shaw family, owns radio station CKNW which, under them, abandoned its longstanding reputation for holding the “establishment’s” feet to the fire in favour of good manners unto servility.

CTV is a division of Bell Media (BCE), Canada’s premier multimedia company, with leading assets in television, radio, and digital, and owns 15% of the Toronto Globe and Mail – which has already shown its loving attachment to the Conservative Party. Now, to add to the media incest in Canada, Bell Media (BCE) is in partnership with, guess who – well done, you got it – Corus Entertainment in HBO and other deals.

Not only is there no media outlet in Canada independent of the “establishment” – there is not even an opposition newspaper worth noting. In Great Britain, at least there have long been papers that supported a favourite political party and independents. In the United States, there are Democratic and Republican papers and some independents. This carries on into TV.

My first conclusion is that every Canadian must understand this situation. The news is going to come strained through the establishment sieve and we must all know that and take the credibility of all the mainstream media as one would a declaration of innocence by a child with sticky fingers and jam all over his face.

Secondly, we must watch with care how the media treats the new government. Don’t get me wrong – they must have their feet held to the fire every bit as much as any other government and we at The Common Sense Canadian will do that.

What concerns me is will the mainstream press look at Trudeau through the Conservative party prism?

On the other hand, Liberal coffers are full of oil money – will this mean that the media will see them as safer than the NDP and go easy on them?

Thirdly, it’s going to take more work by Canadians to get a fair assessment of public affairs. Reliable blogs must be found and relayed to others. There are plenty of them with all manner of points of view from far-right to far-left and everything in between.

There remain a number of features for which newspapers will have some value, like the weather, the comics, special features and advertising of things we’re interested in. Whether or not that’s worth the price they ask is highly questionable.

What we do know is that their reliability for fair, independent news coverage is worth two times the square root of sweet Fanny Adams.

I am pleased to see that Brent Stafford, shill for the Postmedia Group and Resource Works and their unqualified support for Woodfibre LNG, has chosen to respond in the social media to articles of mine written in this publication.

Stafford defends the notion that you can interview with one interviewer then have that interview voiced over by different interviewer and published as if the result was fair, ethical and accurate. He could not have made my point better than by producing the interview by a male and then showing it re-done by the very attractive Meena Mann, whom the subject, Dr. Michael Hightower – a globally-recognized expert on LNG tanker safety – had never heard of.

It must be noted that the viewer is not told about this switch and has every reason to believe that the interview was done in person throughout by Ms. Mann.

This isn’t doctoring an interview?

Stafford believes that this is good journalism – I am in no position to argue the moral precepts of modern journalism but say that it is a highly deceptive practice and done deliberately. I invite you to listen to both interviews and consider the inflection in the voice from Ms.Mann and her body language, including nodding, smiles and so on.

This is not what Dr. Hightower heard when he was being interviewed and lest you think that is minor, consider how much the inflection in the voice and the body language matters in normal social intercourse. Anyone who has pled cases in the courts knows how many ways you can ask a question and how many ways you can look, gesticulate, and visually work with words as you do, and the difference that can make even though the words are precisely the same.

If this were not so, why wouldn’t Resource Works and Mr. Stafford use the male interviewer, his face, and his gesticulations? Without seeing the guy, I think we can assume that he is not as nice looking as Ms. Mann nor as charming and pleasant to watch. Surely that’s done in order to make the interview itself more convincing and watchable.

It was this practice I condemned by article here and do so again now. It is a shabby deceptive practice intended to deceive and, rather than alleviate that conclusion, Stafford emphasizes and enforces it.

What is interesting are the recommended distances that LNG tankers must maintain from shore according to Dr. Hightower and his Sandia Laboratories. The on-the-water research of Commander Roger Sweeny, RCN, Ret. and the academic work of Dr. Eoin Finn is anathema to Woodfibre LNG and its shady owners.

There’s a reason that Stafford and his clients and partners, Resource Works and Postmedia, avoid this question like it was Ebola. The Sandia recommendations, as you might imagine, are most unhelpful to Woodfibre LNG. In fact, they have spent the time since this was exposed in The Common Sense Canadian, to remain studiously silent on the subject.

Speaking of Dr. Finn – a Howe Sound resident, retired KPMG partner and chemistry PhD – Stafford did a number on him that made me feel ill. It looked like an interview but was anything but. Stafford displayed Dr. Finn making a number of statements elsewhere at different times as if he knew he was in a debate with Captain Stephen Brown, spokesman for the LNG tanker industry. Captain Brown then gave his lengthy industry-biased replies. Needless to say, it would have spoiled everything if Stafford had given Dr. Finn a chance to respond.

In response to a series of tweets Stafford has levelled at me, I have raised this pseudo-interview but in spite my urging that he come clean, he won’t deal with this.

I have repeatedly asked him to explain how a newspaper chain Postmedia (which publishes his video blog) can take an official partnership position on one side of a very public issue when basic journalism ethics require that they remain neutral? How can they pretend to present fair coverage of the LNG and the Woodfibre application issue to the public when they are financially involved supporting them? Stafford refuses to answer.

I’ve asked him about his playacting as a journalist in his gig with the Province and he replies that since he explains what he’s doing its quite OK to fake evenhanded journalism.

I allege no lawbreaking – only misleading make-believe journalism. I can only imagine what Jack Webster, the toughest but always fair journalist, would say if he were alive.

Let me end this part of my response to Stafford by saying that any legitimate enterprise, which is telling the truth about what it intends to do and the consequences, doesn’t need to resort to deceptive practices and glib pseudo journalism to make their case. Furthermore, legitimate enterprises are prepared to meet the questions and criticisms raised and to do so honestly and forthrightly.

My recommendation is that if you want to hear the results of Woodfibre LNG’s propaganda machine, totally unaffected by the truth, that the place to go is Resource Works, the Postmedia Press and Mr. Stafford.

All others – stay tuned.

Yesterday in my email inbox, the chickens began to come home to roost for Postmedia – the Canadian newspaper chain.

My first letter came from a constant correspondent who gave the Official statistics for BC Hydro losses going back to the old NDP years. Since the Campbell/Clark government, the losses have been staggering and BC Hydro is clearly in huge trouble. Those who have read this publication and followed such economic luminaries as Erik Andersen know that most of this goes straight to the catastrophic Campbell energy policy of 2002 which gave the production of new power to the private sector and forced BC Hydro to pay a huge premium for this power. Amongst other things, it was a policy that took hundreds of millions of dollars per year out of the BC treasury, in addition to setting BC Hydro on a path to bankruptcy.

On the eve of Christy Clark’s election in 2011, I had this to say on my website:

[quote]What does this [Energy Policy] mean in real terms?

The bankruptcy of BC Hydro, which will remain only as a conduit by which the private producers (IPPs) funnel their ill-gotten gains to their shareholders abroad.

It means that more and more of our precious rivers will be dammed (IPPs prefer the word “weir” in keeping with the Orwellian “newspeak” that abounds with these guys), with clear cuts for roads and transmission lines.

It means that new pipelines and enlarged old ones will carry the sludge from the Tar Sands to our coast with the mathematical certainty of environmental disasters – without our government making a nickel out of it.

It means that supertankers will proliferate on our coast again with the mathematical certainty of catastrophic spills.

It means continuation of the phoney environmental hearings where the public is denied its right to challenge the need for the project in the first place.

It means that the already truncated BC Utilities Commission, which oversees (or is supposed to) all energy proposals, will be abolished or maintained as a lame duck puppet of the Liberal Government

It means that the private sector will, unhindered, do as it pleases to our environment.

People like me will be jeered as being “against progress, against profit and anti-business”.[/quote]

The Common Sense Canadian, over the years since its inception in 2010, has quoted scientist after scientist, economist after economist, in column after column, to back up our claims. I, along with the estimable Joe Foy of the Wilderness Committee, campaigned against this policy all over the Province in the 2011 Election.

Today we learn that BC Hydro’s debt under the Liberal governments of Campbell/Clark has increased $9.4 Billion!

Yet this monumental story of incompetence, stupidity, political favouritism, ruination of our rivers and fish, fattening the wallets of international business at the expense of the BC taxpayer has been virtually ignored from the start, in all its aspects, by the Vancouver Sun, the Vancouver Province and the National Post – the Postmedia papers. Columnists once famous for holding governments’ feet to the fire have been silent. I wonder why? Perhaps we will see the answer in a moment.      

Postmedia teams up with oil and gas lobbies

The second email I received this morning set forth the deepening and ever-increasing reaction from the public to the revelations that Postmedia are official partners in promoting LNG in Squamish.

Damien and I have been reporting on the public relations shenanigans surrounding the proposed Woodfibre LNG project, chapter and verse, cheat by cheat, lie by lie – including doctored interviews – for many months. These tactics have been directed by Resource Works, the unofficial lobby for Woodfibre. Their efforts have been helped greatly by an official Partnership with the Province – evident in all the op-ed space they receive in Postmedia’s pages. 

One can’t blame people for taking a while to react because this is such an extraordinary event that it completely takes the breath away. Here we have Canada’s largest newspaper company financially involved with a highly controversial industry and pretending at the same time to report on it impartially.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find in either of the two Vancouver papers or indeed the National Post, any critical analysis on LNG whether it be its extraction as natural gas, its impact on the atmosphere, the “fracking” process, its conversion to LNG, its transport abroad, or any other aspect.

It goes further than this because Postmedia has developed a multimillion-dollar partnership with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP). This is evident in the National Post, Postmedia’s flagship, which has virtually endorsed, root and branch, the positions of the industry on all matters of oil production and distribution.

All of this has been reported here in The Common Sense Canadian in clear, unadorned English on several occasions without response.

Media and democracy

Now let’s talk in real terms.

You, the reader, a free citizen, are quite entitled to whatever opinions you may wish on the whole aspect of fossil fuels. You may be dedicated to the proposition “the more the merrier” and that’s what a free country is all about. I think you’re a damned fool but that, too, is what a free country is all about.

At the same time, you, I and everybody else, are entitled to all possible information about this and other issues so that we can make up our minds based upon knowledge not simple prejudice.

This you have been denied and it is going to get worse.

Let’s look at a practical example from the last couple of weeks in the Vancouver Sun and Province. They’ve been full of “feel good” stories about LNG communities popping up around the province with all kinds of good things for all.

These stories are not accidents. They are plain and simple plants by the industry through their journalistic partner in order to affect, positively, your view of the LNG industry.

We have, most of us at any rate, grown up with the suspicion that you can’t believe everything you read in the newspapers. Nevertheless, most of us feel we’ve learned to read between the lines and to sort out the pepper from the fly shit. This, I hate to say, is no longer possible because they’re now the same thing.

No longer can you read a single solitary item about fossil fuels in general or, in our bailiwick, LNG specifically, in the Postmedia press and believe a single word. Everything published by the Vancouver Province, the Vancouver Sun, or the National Post concerning LNG is done as a paid partner in the project. That can never ever be forgotten by any who wish to be informed, objective observers of the LNG scene.

It truly sickens me to have to make these observations. I have known, respected, liked, gone to UBC with, spilled beer with – you name it – print journalists going back some 65 years. I grew up on newspapers and, even given the crap provided today, still subscribe. It’s very difficult for me to think of Postmedia going under with all of the jobs that entails.

The fact remains that Postmedia doesn’t deserve to exist in any world of journalism where there is a soupçon of journalistic ethics remaining.