No media bias here at all: anti-Ford protesters booed at Ford Fest, so CTV characterizes it as homophobia

Here's a shock. Ford Fest is the annual gathering where legions of Rob Ford's supporters come out to party with Toronto's most popular municipal politician. But it's no news that Ford has plenty of detractors too, and a handful of these bitter characters with nothing better going on in their lives decided to crash Ford Fest to heckle the Mayor. Today, some of those Ford-haters presented themselves as being from the LGBT community, and they came carrying insulting placards and shouting abuse at Ford.

It would seem pretty natural and predictable that party-poopers who turn up to crap on other people's fun would get booed and insulted. But Toronto's mainstream media has a hate-on for Rob Ford, so with glaring, unprofessional bias, CTV characterized the exchange between Ford's fans and foes as if it were an unprovoked outburst of homophobia from 'Ford Nation.'

"'Go home': LGBTQ members greeted by angry shouts at Ford Fest," screamed out the CTV headline.

Mitch Wolfe & friends at Ford Fest

Ford has been viciously depicted as a bigot in the media, but as local writer Mitch Wolfe observed, Ford's supporters at this year's Ford Fest, as has been the case in years past, were overwhelmingly comprised of people from Toronto's multi-racial, multi-ethnic communities.

That monkey wrench in the media narrative has Toronto's latte-sucking pseudo-intellectuals in a tizzy. There's a panic going on among the elites in our city now that despite his travails,  Ford is back on the scene, beating his rivals in debates and polling evenly with the other two top contenders.

Get ready for plenty of media histrionics about Ford in the weeks and months to come before the October municipal election.

CBC hearts terrorists

5 Reasons Why New York Times Editorial Today Is An Embarrassment To Journalism

1.

The New York Times writes that “after days of near silence,” Prime Minister Netanyahu condemned the murder of a Palestinian teenager on Sunday. But Netanyahu called the murder “reprehensible” on Wednesday, the day it occurred, and the next day, in his first public appearance since the murder, again forcefully condemned the killing on prime-time national television. Early July 4th weekend for the entire New York Times editorial board?

read the rest HERE

Oppressive Canadian Prime Minister victimizes Palestinians by attacking one of their journalists

Solidifying their reputation as the world's most professional victims, a Palestinian reporter is claiming he was "attacked" by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's security detail.

Harper, a Christian, entered the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, one of his religion's most sacred sites, with only one of his own staff members allowed to film him.

Canadian media were the first to accompany Mr. Harper and when a Palestinian reporter protested not being able to film the Prime Minister in the Church, one of the Palestinian reporters alleges, "..we protested against that, but the guard punched Al-Mahid TV cameraman Amer Hijazi by a metal piece on his fist to Hijazi’s chest."

The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedom, which is reporting the incident, does not clarify whether the "metal piece" on the fist of the Prime Minister's guard was a wedding band or a set of the brass knuckles which Canadians are notorious for carrying when traveling abroad.

The Palestinians are condemning the "attack that is a violation of freedom of expression," demanding an apology, an investigation, and call on all journalists not to cover the Canadian Prime Minister's visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories.

In other news, Mr. Harper, who is frequently accused by enemies of Israel of being anti-Palestinian, oppressed them further when he committed an extra $66 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority.

Lauryn Oates: The War in Afghanistan Made the Country Better

I read the Doug Saunders column to which Lauryn Oates refers, and it was one of the worst pieces of journalism I've ever seen appear in a major newspaper. Either Saunders has a cognitive disability or he was intentionally manipulating and lying about data. He referred to one report that indicated that the current NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan was creating a situation in which Islamists were feeling more at liberty to mistreat women. Among other egregious distortions, Saunders implied it was because of the NATO forces presence in Afghanistan that conditions for women were worsening in that country.

Afghan women police training graduates (Nov 2011)

From The Huffington Post:

Media coverage of Afghanistan over the past decade is notoriously prone to selective coverage of the negative -- the latest bomb blast or kidnapping -- while doing a dismal job of telling the story of the transformative progress that has occurred, and what exactly is at stake should security deteriorate this year upon the withdrawal of foreign troops.

Then there are the armchair pundits, who further help colour public opinion in the NATO countries towards unjustified pessimism. Last Saturday The Globe & Mail ran an opinion article by Doug Saunders called "Was our Afghan saga useless -- or worse?" in which he suggests that Afghanistan may be worse off now than it was before international intervention (while simultaneously contradicting himself by noting that there are gains, though they may not last).

I've worked in aid and development in Afghanistan for more than a decade, and I am flummoxed by Saunders' article, and more so, by his clumsy misreading of the sources he cites...

Thornhill MP Peter Kent stands up to al Starzeera's attempt at bullying

Background HERE

UPDATE: al Starzeera's "Join out vendetta against Ford, or else" article is finally published.

In my opinion, The Toronto Star is run by bullying pieces of shit

In his column in The National Post last month, Conrad Black described the attempt by The Toronto Star to intimidate him into speaking out against Rob Ford.

Thornhill MP Peter Kent received the same crude effort by The Star to intimidate him into denouncing Toronto mayor Rob Ford.

His response is an example of integrity and courage that other politicians would do well to emulate and is well beyond the moral grasp of the fatuous, self-absorbed, sanctimonious garbage running the show at One Yonge Street:



DEAR MR OVED,


WHENEVER A REPORTER FOR THE TORONTO STAR MIGHT WISH TO ASK FOR MY THOUGHTS ON AN ISSUE OF THE DAY, I STAND READY TO RESPOND.

HOWEVER, AND DESPITE YOUR "EXTENDED DEADLINE"' I WILL NOT ANSWER THE DEMANDS IN YOUR LETTER OF DECEMBER 16TH, 2013, WHICH I CONSIDER TO BE A CRUDELY CRAFTED, VEILED THREAT THAT I (AND OTHERS) ENDORSE AN EDITORIAL COLUMN WRITTEN BY TORSTAR CHAIR JOHN HONDERICH...OR FACE CONSEQUENCES IN YOUR EVENTUAL STORY.

YOUR LETTER IS A PRIME EXAMPLE OF WHAT MIGHT BEST BE DESCRIBED AS CRUSADE JOURNALISM; A NEWSPAPER'S ATTEMPT TO IMPOSE ITS EDITORIAL WILL FAR BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES OF ACCEPTABLE JOURNALISTIC PRACTICE.

MR HONDERICH IS CERTAINLY ENTITLED TO HIS OPINION.

I WILL NOT BE BULLIED INTO COMMENTING ON THAT OPINION.

YOUR MANNER OF NEWS-GATHERING IS, I BELIEVE, AN UNFORTUNATE EXAMPLE OF THE DECLINE OF A CRAFT I ONCE PROUDLY PRACTICED.

SINCERELY,

HON PETER KENT PC MP


h/t Dodo Can Spell

The New York Times raises serious issues about poverty and draws idiotic conclusions

A second-generation drug addict and welfare mom, with six kids from three different fathers and a long history of criminal activity, is bringing up her children in poverty.

So rather than attribute it to the obvious abrogation of personal responsibility by the parents, The New York Times blames "income inequity."   via City Journal:

Dasani Coates, the 11-year-old homeless child profiled in Andrea Elliott’s highly praised five-part New York Times feature, arrived on stage at Wednesday’s inauguration ceremonies to serve as a poignant symbol of—in Mayor de Blasio’s words—“the economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love.” But far from providing a window into inequality, the Times series, “Invisible Child,” is better understood as a beautifully reported but muddled revival of decades-long evasions about underclass poverty.

Dasani’s story is moving but hardly new. Anyone who lived in New York—or D.C., Detroit, or Chicago, for that matter—in the 1980s and early 1990s or who has dipped into books like Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family knows the general outline. Chanel, Dasani’s mother and herself the daughter of a welfare-dependent drug addict in Brooklyn, has six children by three different men, a long history of debilitating drug use, an explosive temper, and numerous arrests. Her husband, Supreme, has brought his own drug addiction and two more children by a deceased wife into the mix; Elliott makes vague reference to previous children as well. At some point, Supreme worked as a barber, but as far as we can tell, Chanel has never held a job. In truth, she isn’t much of a mother, either. She is often “listless from methadone”; the family’s room is filled with “piles of unwashed clothes.” 

h/t Loonette the Clown

Rob Ford apologizes to The Toronto Star's Daniel Dale

Interestingly, the apology confirms just about everything that was anticipated in this blog post...



UPDATE: The reporter for the Toronto Star, which has conducted a pathological, political vendetta against Ford, says he will continue with his lawsuit despite Ford's apology and clarification.

It would be in Mr. Dale's best interests that the Star has committed, in writing, to cover all expenses and awards in the law suit, because a plaintiff can be hit with costs in what is determined to be a nuisance suit.

The Toronto Star and Daniel Dale's lawsuit against Rob Ford is too implausible to make good fiction

When I used to work in Hollywood for a production company that's films garnered a slew of major Oscar nominations, one of my jobs as a Creative Executive was to decide whether or not to recommend screenplays for production and to write notes on them.

With the news that The Toronto Star's City Hall reporter Daniel Dale is planning, with the enthusiastic support of his employer, to sue Toronto Mayor Rob Ford for libel in a lawsuit of dubious merit, an analogous thought occurred to me, particularly after reading this in The Torontoist:

Dale will continue covering municipal politics, he also explains. “With the full support of the Star, I will stay on the City Hall beat while pursuing this action… I can easily imagine the mayor and his brother attempting to turn the tables on the Star and calling for me to take a leave of absence…I will not let this affect my job. I will not be bullied off of my beat.

I thought of my reaction if I had received a screenplay in which part of the plot involved a City Hall reporter, for a newspaper with the largest circulation in a major city, suing a mayor for libel and continuing to cover the City Hall beat while pursuing the suit.

The ensuing conversation in that imaginary scenario would have gone something like this:

ME: The gags need to be punched up a bit, but on the whole it's a pretty good premise for a comedy. 

WRITER: Comedy? This is a serious political drama. 

ME: I love your sense of humor! It's great, we've got the John Goodman-type regular guy slob, and all the stuck-up elitists are out to get him, like King Ralph, but at City Hall. But seriously, we need some more gags with the reporter and the mayor encountering each other. Oh, and that flaky female reporter that made a name for herself by stalking the mayor, I think her motivation should be that she has this sexual fixation on him, like she's a chubby chaser or something. Here's a scene you might want to consider: maybe she could corner him in private and flash her beaver and demand he eat her out. She could say something like, "You look like you know how to eat a lot of pussy!" And he's squirming to get away and says,"I've got plenty to eat at home!" 

WRITER: You don't understand! I mean it, this is a serious political drama about an oppressed reporter seeking justice from an evil politician! 

ME: Seriously???

WRITER: Yes! My sympathies are completely with the newspaper and its reporters.* 

ME: Okay. You realize that changes everything. Here's why that's not going to work. First off, you've got who are the villains and who is the hero mixed up. You have this guy who was elected, and he's this silly doofus who tells ridiculous lies about his personal life, but when it comes to serving the public, is scrupulously honest. The guy even coaches underprivileged kids and takes them into his own home. And that's your villain. 

On the other side, you have a newspaper run by hypocritical snobs who support a corrupt government that misappropriated billions of dollars in public funds. And they lie about this mayor character, they hate him mainly because he's not part of their "in" crowd, they obsessively stalk and harass him, and support every undemocratic effort they can think of to get him out of office.  And those are supposed to be your heroes?? 

WRITER: But this terrible mayor has made the city a laughingstock!


ME: That's pretty harmless, and again, it's what makes this all more of a comedy.

WRITER: But the real drama comes when this detestable mayor slanders one of the hero reporters by implying he's a pedophile, potentially destroying his life!! 

ME: Yeah. Well, here's your problem with that. The way you describe it, in the first place, the Mayor never said he was a pedophile, he was talking more about his own state of mind when he heard that some guy was peeping in his back yard. In fact, this mayor character explicitly says he doesn't know if the reporter was taking pictures of his kids. He was talking about how a father feels when he hears someone might be invading his privacy and talking pictures of his young kids. That doesn't sound like slander to me and there's no threat to the reporter's reputation because quite reasonably, nobody takes seriously the possibility that the reporter could actually be a pedophile.


WRITER: No! Wait, you're wrong about something! I never had the reporter peeping in the back yard!


ME: Alright, then here's where you've got some more problems with your storyline. After a neighbor calls him, the mayor comes charging out to confront the reporter, who freaks out and runs away.


WRITER: That's right, the Mayor is a bully!


ME: Okay, so let's assume your reporter never peeps in the mayor's back yard. How does the mayor know he's there? Why would a neighbor call the mayor to tell him someone is walking around on public land? The only way your story makes sense is if, even if he wasn't taking pictures of it,  he was at least peeping in the mayor's back yard. I still think you should give some thought to the comedy angle. Maybe have the reporter be a bit like Jim Carrey's character in The Cable Guy...


WRITER: No! It's not a comedy and no, the reporter was never standing on cinder blocks and peeking in the mayor's back yard!!


ME: Well, it's your story.


WRITER: That's right! I think every decent, social justice-seeking person in the audience is going to identify with the crusading newspaper and its heroic journalists!


ME: Interesting. The way I read it, in your story, the only people you've got siding with your newspaper are pompous douchebags and sanctimonious nitwits. But aside from that, we get to the most blatant problem with your story...


WRITER: Which is?


ME: Well, while this reporter is suing the mayor, he still is doing City Hall coverage for the newspaper.


WRITER: Yes, so?


ME: So? So that's completely implausible. There's no way a real newspaper could ever allow that to happen. It would undermine any shred of credibility even as biased a newspaper that you've written about could even pretend to have. I mean, how could there even be a pretense of objectivity and fair journalism when you allow a guy who is suing the mayor to be writing City Hall coverage!? It's like committing seppuku as far as all credibility goes. There's no way an audience would believe that even a third-rate rag of a newspaper would do that.


WRITER: That's the way I've written the story and that's the way I'm keeping it. So when will I hear about whether we go into production?


ME: Don't call us, we'll call you. 

* Actually, this is the point where I would have thought I was dealing with a lunatic and would have edged the meeting to a quick conclusion.

Toronto Star: Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka aren't murderers, they're freedom fighters

The Toronto Star puts these two on the same moral plain:
One fought to defend Osama bin Laden and to keep women from the right to education
and the other fought for racial equality

What's that?  The Star hasn't quite bestowed the term `freedom fighter` on Bernardo and Homokla yet?

It's probably just a matter of time. I always thought The Star's columnist Thomas Walkom was an idiot and now the element of doubt has evaporated. 

Because Nelson Mandela used violence, apparently in Walkom`s tiny bubble of comprehension, any bloodthirsty murdering maniac or moral imbecile who supports killing, as long as that killing is for a cause, is potentially a freedom fighter.

And because Mandela supported totalitarian dictators like Ghaddafi and Castro and terrorists like the PLO, they're probably pretty good too, because after all, Mandela was an infallible god, wasn't he?

Removed from Walkom's thought process, such as it is, is any moral compass or standard of values, to say nothing of tactics, that differentiate terrorists from people legitimately fighting for liberty. Also removed from that equation is the heresy that while Mandela was a man of courage, dignity, and determination, and exhibited great wisdom in many instances, in many others he was emotionally and philosophically married to some reprehensible ideologies and individuals.

So, just so it's easy, here's a simple rule-of-thumb that even someone so thoroughly stupid and morally bankrupt as a Toronto Star editorial columnist should be able to understand:

If you kill and commit violence against innocent people for political purposes, you're a terrorist. Similarly, if you're fighting to support or aiding people who do that, you're a supporter of terrorism. 

It's pretty easy. The old, vapid, banal saying 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter' is something idiots say to try to justify their moral bankruptcy and intellectual limitations.

George Washington was not a terrorist, because he never ordered or condoned the killing or systematic mistreatment of civilians. The government of Iran are terrorists because they have ordered and executed the killings of innocent people with no connection to any military or political role, far from any combat area, for political ends. And if, like Castro, you throw someone in jail or have them executed for publicly disagreeing with you, then you're on that same sunken moral plain.

See? It's simple.

I don't really expect anyone at The Star to actually follow a rule as straightforward as this though. Because with it, there's just no way Rob Ford can fall into that terrorist category.

Canada's mainstream media has given up its role as journalists to work as Liberal Party press agents

The Toronto Star tries to spin poll that says half of Toronto thinks they're liars

A CTV/Ipsos Reid poll indicates that Torontonians are evenly divided as to whether the Rob Ford "crack video" exists.

The Toronto Star, whose vendetta against Rob Ford began the day he declared his candidacy for mayor, has managed to put a spin on it that further undermines their crumbling credibility.

The Toronto Star's spin

Their headline for the story proclaims: "Rob Ford crack scandal: More than half of Toronto residents believe Ford video exists, poll finds "

What they leave out is that with the poll finding 51% who believe it versus the 49% who do not, accounting for margins of error, there's effectively a split down the middle. The CTV story notes that, saying "Torontonians evenly split in their belief of Rob Ford crack allegations" while The Star tries to fudge their facts.

Worse for The Toronto Star, it means that the fact that half of Toronto does not believe the video exists, by extension, means that half the city believes Toronto Star journalists are liars.

The obsessive hysteria with which The Toronto Star has incessantly harangued Rob Ford is claiming victims. But those victims include The Star itself. Its own credibility annihilated, their efforts are backfiring.

based on this CTV item

The outcry they are trying to stir up is showing itself to be a manufactured fizzle. The major damage The Toronto Star has managed to inflict is to the state of journalism in Toronto rather than to the city's resilient mayor.

Even the hack journalists at the Toronto Star are beginning to concede they may have to deal with Rob Ford for a long time.

A Toronto Star article today by one of the viewers of the alleged "crack video":

“His support is rock solid. He’s absolutely rock solid,” said Bruce Davis. “He’ll be very strong going into the election… The people who hated him before still hate him. The people who love him still love him. I haven’t met a single person who has changed their mind (because of the latest controversy).”

Davis says back in 2010, the Smitherman campaign did focus group testing where they asked voters about previous Ford controversies and political gaffes.

“One woman said – and I’m not suggesting he does this, but this is what she said — ‘If I have to choose between someone who wastes our money and someone who (breaks the law), I’ll choose the person who (breaks the law.)’”

Now, poll results released Saturday would only appear to back Davis’s view to a point.

The Ipsos Reid survey found that 34 per cent of Torontonians said they’d vote to re-elect Ford if an election were held tomorrow.

The Toronto Star, being The Toronto Star, had to include a few smears of Rob Ford in the process.

But notice how, in true al Starzeera fashion, the people they quote supporting Ford are named and on-the-record, while the ones they use to smear him are their usual anonymous, unnamed sources.

I wonder if  those unnamed sources are actually Star Editors?

h/t BCF

Media piling-on is building sympathy for Rob Ford

"I don't like Ford, but he was elected and this is a ridiculous distraction. They need to let him do his job."

That was something a very liberal ex-girlfriend said to me on the phone last night about the media histrionics over Rob and Doug Ford's alleged, unsubstantiated misdeeds. And it's something that in one form or another, I'm hearing more and more from people in Toronto.

"They're digging stuff up from 30 years ago about one of them that has nothing to do with how he's performing as a Councillor. That's just vindictive,"  she added.

Comments like that are good news for the Fords and bad news for the media with an ax to grind against him.    The anti-Ford Toronto media have accomplished something that would have seemed highly improbable to many two years ago.They are actually evoking sympathy for the Fords from people who used to find them thoroughly unappealing.

There are people who hated the Fords before they were winners in the 2010 municipal elections. So the current round of scandal-mongering by The Star and Globe and Mail serves as bias confirmation. But I've heard from neighbors, readers, and sometimes random strangers who say in essence what my ex-girlfriend said.

One neighbor confided to me earlier in the week:

"I didn't vote for Ford but I think he's doing a pretty good job for the city and it's disgusting the way the media is going after him over these personal things that have nothing to do with how he's running the city. I'm going to vote for him next time."

There's actually a lot of that going on.

What should be of even greater frustration to the anti-Ford rabble is what was then disclosed to me by this neighbor, whom, like The Star and Globe do with their Ford stories, I will use as an anonymous source.

 "Don't tell anyone I told you that."

It was not the first time someone has said to me about their new affinity for Rob Ford.

It also suggests a potential factor that is very interesting. It means that polls The Toronto Star has taken presuming Olivia Chow could beat Ford in an election, which on the surface seem like they were only culled from a three bloc radius of the Annex neighborhood in downtown Toronto, could be totally misleading.

Part of the problem for The Toronto Star and Globe is that people aren't as stupid and gullible as they would like them to be.

It's a good thing we have The Star and Globe to tell us the city is falling apart because of the Fords and that they must resign immediately. Otherwise, to the average citizen casually observing, it would seem like everything is just fine on the streets of Toronto. And should anyone actually bother to go to City Hall, where they would  see civic government is functioning as efficiently as it ever has, the only thing they would see falling apart is The Toronto Star's credibility.

In essence, The Star and Globe want to pull an undemocratic coup in Toronto. They want a democratically elected mayor removed by an administrative process initiated by the Premier. A Premier, it needs to be said, who has been afraid to call an election since she was appointed by a political party to helm the province.

The Star and Globe are doing their best to whip up a fake storm of hysteria to make that happen. They raise a fury about some unproven, unattributed allegations, then say the "crisis"  they are the only ones obsessed with is rendering the city in chaos.

To that, there's a simple way of proving them wrong. What exactly is not being done that should be by Toronto's municipal government in the midst of this fraudulent chaos they allege?  Where exactly is this "chaos" and how is affecting any citizen of the city who isn't dealing directly with reporters?

Funny how that question never gets answered or even asked by The Toronto Star or Globe and Mail.

Our province's less-than-reputable Premier, Kathleen Wynne, has her own scandal controversy. She was part of the gas plant cancellation scam that effectively stole over half a billion dollars from Ontario taxpayers.

It`s no wonder she was happy to get in on the circus act the media pitched around Rob Ford.

She alluded to the possibility that her government might have to step in to deal with the media-manufactured crisis that is not actually a crisis for anyone outside the media.

Wynne's motives were pathetically transparent. She was thrilled to be exploiting a diversion from the corruption of her own government. There was an added benefit in that her political advisers are telling her that the fiscally conservative Ford's woes are hurting the brand of her rivals, Tim Hudak's Progressive Conservatives.

The motives for The Star and Globe are also transparent.  They saw this as a chance to get rid of a politician they despise. And even if they fail, nothing sells newspapers better than controversy, even one that sinks to new lows in journalistic standards.

But there are plenty of people not obsessed with municipal politics, and just because the local media smells blood in the water and has gone into a feeding frenzy doesn`t mean the rest of the city is joining them.

I was standing on a subway last weekend speaking with a very attractive brunette woman with whom I am acquainted. Normally, I try to avoid political conversations in crowded, confined public spaces, but the woman I was with, who lives outside Toronto, asked some questions about the Ford controversy.

The subject of unions came up, since some of the most vociferous opposition to Ford comes from the bosses of public sector unions, whom Ford has stood up to, in stark contrast to his predecessor as mayor, David Miller. Speaking from the experience of having worked as a unionized civil servant for over a decade, I said, "if you ever want to find the worst employee on the floor, just look for the union streward, and that'll be the one."

A small chuckle came from the seat by where we stood, and there sat a middle aged workman, a salt-of-the earth type, who had been listening in on our conversation. I was expecting to get a lecture on the importance of unions. Instead, he turned to my companion, smiled and said, "he`s right."

"I've been in the union nineteen years," he continued "the union chiefs only care about themselves and use their positions so they don't have to work as hard as the rest of us."

The subject soon shifted back to Ford and the media vendetta. Our fellow subway rider volunteered what has become a familiar strain from a lot of Torontonians lately, "I never liked Ford when I first heard about him, but he's been doing an okay job as mayor. They're going after him about personal stuff that's irrelevant to how he's doing his job. It smells bad and I'm probably going to vote for him next time."

Not for the first time, The Toronto Star may have made a serious miscalculation when it comes to Rob Ford. There are plenty of people in Toronto who hate Ford and would never vote for him under any circumstance. Those people are happy to have their prejudices fed by The Star`s reports.

But there are a big pool of people in the middle on the subject of Ford. And for every voter The Star is turning away from him, their hysterical bullying of Toronto`s mayor may be driving even more to support Rob Ford.


UPDATE: New poll indicates public confidence in Toronto's media has taken a major hit because of the smear campaign against Ford

The Toronto Star's battle against democracy discredits journalism

First they lied about him repeatedly. Then they tried, and failed, in every effort to prevent Rob Ford from winning Toronto's mayoral race in 2010. Since then, The Toronto Star has been relentless in its campaign to discredit Ford. What The Star's editors don't realize is that rather than discrediting Ford, they have managed to discredit themselves and have irreparably harmed the Toronto public's confidence in journalism in general.

If you were to believe what you read in The Star, the city is in chaos and goings-on at City Hall are in total disarray, all because of their allegations about Rob Ford having allegedly smoked crack cocaine.

The Star is lying to you.

I was at City Hall myself on Tuesday. Other than the press acting like a gang of paparazzi, it's business as usual there. Permits are being issued as always, civic matters are being attended to as they have been before the recent media drummed-up outrage. At a meeting of the City's Executive Committee chaired by Ford which I attended, the mayor acted like a consummate professional. He was polite and effective, and not once was he jonesing for a hit of crack, despite any impression The Star might like you to have.

There was nothing resembling chaos.

Permits are being sold, municipal employees are doing their jobs, the sewers are running, street lights are working, the water is being purified, Council is dealing with public matters.

But were The Toronto Star to be believed, the world is falling apart, democracy should be suspended and a national emergency declared.

Yesterday an article published in The Star, they were adulating a Liberal politician they adore, who clearly appears to have been engaged in corruption in public affairs, in order to malign one whom they allege, without substantiation, has a personal problem.

Because The Star is more interested in undermining Rob Ford, whose values they detest, than they are in serving the public interest or telling the truth.

In the article, titled: Rob Ford video scandal: Premier Kathleen Wynne, city councillors grapple with fallout, the Star put forward this incredible statement:

Premier Kathleen Wynne said Wednesday she would like to see Ford deal with his “personal” issues sooner rather than later, but shied away from saying the province was prepared to step in.

Evidently The Star reporters asked the Premier if the Province was prepared to step in to remove Ford as mayor.

"The Province was prepared to step in"?!??

On the basis of what? Toronto Mayor Ford has not even been charged with a crime, let alone been convicted of one. But The Toronto Star expects Kathleen Wynne to undo a democratic election based on unproven allegations from a media outlet with demonstratively malicious motives against Ford.

Clearly The Star's editors think their will supersedes trivial things like due process of law, democracy, and free elections.

Another Star article made the charge that Ford had illegally ordered emails of City staff to be destroyed. An article they had to quickly revise when it became public from other news outlets that Ford had not made any such request or attempt.

City spokesperson Jackie DeSouza says "I can confirm Mayor's Office did not ask the City to destroy records from any staff in their office"
— CP24 (@CP24) May 29, 2013

But The Star's rush to publish lies based on rumor, innuendo and unverified reports was irresistible when those lies were about Rob Ford.

When it comes to the illegal destruction of government correspondence, it was Kathleen Wynne and her predecessor as Premier, Dalton McGuinty whom,  it has just emerged, are guilty of this serious transgression and betrayal of public trust.

Yet is there any front page headline about this major scandal in today's Toronto Star?

Of course not! Just more about Rob Ford.

Because the Toronto Star has an agenda. But when it comes to Rob Ford,  journalist integrity and truth aren't part of it.

Don Cherry supports a higher Canadian murder rate!

No, he doesn't.

That was just some blog satire. But The Canadian Press and Globe and Mail printed it as if it were true without even bothering to check with Cherry.

Just another reminder not to believe everything you read in the newspapers.

Mr. Naomi Klein does hack journalism job on Canada/Israel relationship

Avi Lewis, who is responsible for the worst peice of journalism a lot of people have ever seen, is so biased, he isn't even on the CBC any more.

Never the sharpest tool in the shed,  one has to feel a certain measure of sympathy for Avi. It must be hard to be the least intelligent member of a family known for being bright, articulate advocates for a cause. It must be hard being the least intelligent member of his own household.

But despite his many, many deficiencies, he still keeps trying. Here he is trying to paint a sinister picture of the Canada/Israel relationship for his employer, Al Jazeera.

With his typical lack of insight, Lewis suggests that the Conservative government's support for Israel is partially motivated by an effort to court the Jewish vote away from the Liberals. A simple look at the census would have told Lewis that Muslims outnumber Jews by a two to one ratio in Canada, so if it were a vote-gaining ploy, it's a terrible strategy. (He also keeps talking about BDS!) But it's Avi! I know better than to have high any expectations of him.

At least with the Al Jazeera gig,  Avi's found his natural home.