Author Topic: Canadian Islamaphobia or Free Speech?  (Read 683 times)

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Offline Blueblood

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Re: Canadian Islamaphobia or Free Speech?
« on: February 26, 2017, 11:15:38 pm »
I understand that credible news organizations feel a duty to tread lightly on hot-button issues, but there is also danger in steering too far the opposite direction. 

One example: the New Years Eve debacle in Cologne. The police initially issued a glowing report about what a peaceful and well-behaved evening it had been. The mainstream media said nothing. But the story spread like wildfire on social media. Everybody in Cologne knew something had happened, and the only people talking about it were the "alt right" media.  After several days of criticism for sitting on the story, the mainstream media started covering the story and issued apologies for not covering it sooner.   Well, guess what... that makes the mainstream media and the police look untrustworthy.

There was a similar story out of Sweden, where the police were caught covering up sexual assaultsof teenage girls at a Stockholm music festival in 2014 and 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Are_Sthlm_sexual_assaults  As at Cologne and other places, the victims were surrounded by groups of "recent immigrants" and molested. The police spokesman said that they decided to not make the incidents public because "it would just be fuel for the Social Democrats".  The Social Democrats are Sweden's right-wing party and have campaigned that Sweden is taking in too many immigrants.   Given the circumstances, maybe it would be fair to consider that the Social Democrats have a point?  Regardless, once again this incident makes the police look untrustworthy. Given the circumstances, people had a right to know that girls were being molested at the music festival.

Another example, I recently saw a story involving a sexual assault by a Syrian refugee at a New Brunswick school. The story was covered by "The Rebel Media". They did their homework, obtained documents from school staff through FOI access requests, verified that there was a real incident, a real irate parent, and that the Syrian was punished with a one week suspension.  http://www.therebel.media/exclusive_syrian_refugee_school_sex_attack

Now, personally I think Ezra Levant is a ****-head, and the Rebel Media is a scummy and slimy operation. But the thing is, nobody else is reporting on this sort of thing. Ezra claims his shitty website is the only news outfit in Canada with the balls to report on trouble involving the Syrian refugees, and unfortunately he's right.  That kind of thing contributes to the growing mistrust of the mainstream media.

If I look at other media outlets, I can see happy human interest stories about the Syrian refugees. Syrian refugees attend their very first hockey game! Syrian refugees attend Rememberance Day ceremonies. Syrian refugees help family find lost dog!  No story about Syrian refugees having problems integrating with highschool students. If you're only reporting positive news about something and ignoring the negative, isn't that called propaganda?


 -k

If I could add, unfortunately it adds credibility to the alt-right and trump for their war with "fake news".  If it keeps being that one sided, then there's fuel to the fire with trumps war with the media.