Under our
Charter of Rights; Freedoms and the Canadian Constitution the rights of all
citizens must be protected, be they non-public figures or elected
representatives of the public and all are to be presumed innocent until
legally and beyond any reasonable doubt in a court of law found otherwise.
Recently media corporations, such as the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and Gawker blog, with their editorials, reporting and story journalism being based on gossip, hearsay and anonymous dubious sources that cannot be independently legally verifiable and would not be judicially acceptable in our courts of law, in my opinion, have adequately shown the media must be reigned in and clamped down on by legislation for such muckraking at the direct expense of any individuals citizen’s character and that of the family, spouse and children.
Recently media corporations, such as the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and Gawker blog, with their editorials, reporting and story journalism being based on gossip, hearsay and anonymous dubious sources that cannot be independently legally verifiable and would not be judicially acceptable in our courts of law, in my opinion, have adequately shown the media must be reigned in and clamped down on by legislation for such muckraking at the direct expense of any individuals citizen’s character and that of the family, spouse and children.
Mob rule
public opinion guilt spread through muckraking bulling editorials and
journalistic news-making stories or gossip blogs are neither reliable, relevant
or permitted evidence on issues before the courts. Such unproven allegations
should NOT be allowed “to go to press” in public or private newsprint media. Such legislation must be enacted to protect the personal reputations of all Canadian individuals, their spouse, family and children from media corporations rush to judgment and opinions based on allegations from scurrilous anonymous sources of gossip; hearsay and theory as offered up as editorial opinions and journalistic stories.
The personal reputation of every Canadian from whatever province they reside or make their living must be shielded from story generated journalism and reporters acting like legally constituted police investigator or officers of our judicial system which they are not.
To quote Justice
J.E. Scanlan, “guilt or innocence is NOT based on rumour, speculation or
reputation. An accused is not tried” (in the media, courts or public opinion)”
based on what he/she may have done before” rather “ the evidence related to the
matter in issue.”
In my opinion,
unprofessional editorials and journalistic stories lately have forgone any
sense of professionalism or basic human decency.
Perhaps it is
because of their own or their employers’ distinct motives as based on their
particular political ideologies and philosophies,
I am not sure but it
seems that way.
Sources
LMAO, Peter, with regard to this entire fiasco about Ford and crack cocaine. Here's a little story for you. Everybody likes stories.
ReplyDeleteIt's a lesson in media manipulation that Ford's been giving us on absolutely every occasion he had a chance to do it. And there have been plenty of them, all provided by a hungry opposition media.
The lesson is "let the media roll on...all publicity is good publicity. SAY NOTHING and the press --especially the opponent press-- will publish your name over and over and over again so many times that for a gain of one vote from the otherwise badly informed electorate per mention, you'll earn enough votes to win any election!"
"Ford...hmmm, I know that name.” “X."
If only, say 15% of the electorate votes that way ...and they do... any election will receive a huge body of support from all the publicity generated on your behalf by the opposition media …your foil.
Now, for the reason I'm laughing so hard, the exciting part of the story:
Suppose, just suppose the Ford family (and Im not saying they're smart enough to figure this out on their own) were to create a video of a roomful of characters leading up to and including a performance by Rob Ford pretending to be stoned on crack and then laughing about it in the video. The next stage would be to invite the 'enemy' media to view the video, but just the portion with Rob Ford pretending to do crack --the remainder of the disk reserved for evidence to prove it was a hoax video just in case it was necessary after all to prove that was really its purpose. The cast of ingenuous but genuine paid nefarious characters appearing in the original are then given the naughty bit with instructions on who to play it for and a script to follow about wanting to sell it. But the sellers couldn’t follow up because they really had nothing to sell after the disk returned to the Fords, and anyhow they knew what was on the original disk.
The ensuing Foofarah would be worth millions of dollars of free publicity. And every day, the Fords would practically pee themselves laughing about the pile of opposition publicity that was being generated by a media whose hubris is that they consider punditry to be news reportage because it sells to a gossip-loving audience, while Rob Ford remained silent on the subject (except to deny it in mild terms, of course) and carried on the business of being the taxpayer’s champion in council. This would be a freebee bit publicity as the opposition media spun itself around and around in its own mind about how such a bad character could still be a reasonable Mayor.
This is all fantasy until perhaps time proves otherwise; but it's a sad fact that the TorStar folks gave tons of ink to candidate Ford's inadequacies as a potential Mayor, and then couldn't figure out (they actually SAID SO in PRINT) how with so much bad publicity, he got elected!!
All the best, Peter. Keep smiling as the public enjoys living happily ever after no matter what the actual facts might turn out to be! (The evidence of our huge enjoyment being myself and the authoring of this very story!)
Mark State
Markstate.ca