Rachel Marsden
Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2005

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  As I said recently on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor," this fear of Fox in Canada doesn't have much to do with "Canadian values" and an American network tugging at the fabric of Canadian society. Let's get real.

In this age of globalization, we all have access to the Internet, shop on eBay, listen to both Madonna and Shania Twain, play basketball and hockey, and eat Big Macs and maple syrup. It has everything to do with across-the-board crappy Canadian programming having to compete with compelling programming that just happens to be American. It's more a question of economics than values.

The CBC is freaking out with the arrival of Fox. So much so that they're frantically working on a documentary about the Fox News Canadian invasion, in which they will tell Canadians what to think. Given that Fox News is now in direct competition with the CBC for whatever remnants of an audience the CBC has left, this has about as much credibility as Ford doing a documentary about General Motors, telling you that GM cars suck.

The CBC will undoubtedly question Fox News' claim of "fairness and balance." It will be like Saddam Hussein complaining about naked pyramids at Abu Ghraib prison violating Iraqi human rights.

The CBC's idea of balance and fairness in journalism is airing a rabidly anti-Bush documentary entitled "The World Accoding to Bush" three times in the run-up to the last U.S. presidential election. The write-up on the CBC Web site looks as if it was crafted by Michael Moore:

"A two-hour documentary about the inner-workings of the Bush administration will alarm even the most hardened Washington-watchers. Fans and critics of the acclaimed Fahrenheit 9/11 will want to see this thoughtful and damning investigation of the U.S. administration. Who are the Bushes? Apparently, they're the "quiet dynasty" of modern America –but in reality, their "dynasty" is one of inconceivable family secrets, painstakingly concealed."

Another program that was thrice broadcast by the CBC right before the election was "The Unauthorized Biography of Dick Cheney." It was part of a CBC series on conspiracy theories, which are generally cooked up by people who think tin foil makes for good hats and for whom purple Kool-Aid is the drink of choice – in other words, the CBC's prime constituency.

The CBC Web site states: "Cheney's remarkable life story involves the relentless accumulation of power in every form. ... [The CBC] will show how he accomplished this, what it involved in terms of costs for others and what history's judgement [sic] could be."

Not that the CBC would ever want to be seen as telling you what "judgment" to make!

Finally, the CBC recently commissioned and aired a documentary titled "Stupidity," in which the message is that George W. Bush is officially a moron, because according to the press release issued by the slag-piece's producer, "a group of Canadian stupidity experts" says so.

Hey, kids! Hear that? Study hard and grow up to become a "stupidity expert" on the CBC!

When Saddam Hussein was captured, the CBC showed a group of angry, pro-Saddam loyalists – and then cut to a scene in Afghanistan to remind us that Osama bin Laden was still at large. As far as the CBC was concerned, there was no upshot to the fact that the biggest Weapon of Mass Destruction in Iraq – Saddam himself – was no longer a threat.

Fox News may lean conservative in terms of its editorial content, but its news programming is more balanced, interesting and unique than anything else in the media. The hosts of the various current affairs programs are honest about where they stand ideologically, yet they don't let their politics get in the way of letting guests have their say. The audience is left to form its own opinion as a result of hearing both sides of an argument in a live, uncensored, unedited format. The same, unfortunately, can't be said of the CBC, or of many other media outlets.

Interviewees for the CBC piece on Fox include myself; right-wing pundit Ann Coulter; author and media bias whistleblower Bernie Goldberg; Bill O'Reilly's favorite yappy little liberal ankle-biter, Al Franken; and representatives with both the conservative Media Research Center and the left-leaning Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

Fox News representatives have refused to be interviewed, knowing that the story is certain to constitute an attack on them. But I think it's important to always participate in these exercises, for the very same reason that I'm really hoping Michael Moore takes home another Academy Award this year: The more rope you toss the Left, the closer these people come to hanging themselves.

In witnessing the outrageously biased antics of the likes of Michael Moore, Hollywood, CBC and, most recently, CBS News, the public is more likely to see them for who they really are: agenda-driven ideologues who lie in pretending not to be.

No doubt all of the people on the Left will be portrayed in the piece as candidates for sainthood – much the way the CBC has portrayed Palestinian terrorists as freedom fighters – and all of us on the Right will be made into nutty fruitcakes, courtesy of much editing and scripting.

Any personal skeletons will almost certainly be paraded around the CBC's public square, because if you're a conservative, you're not afforded any room to make even the smallest mistakes in life without having them blown up to gargantuan proportions. For liberals, tolerance, compassion and free speech are only afforded to people who think the way they do.

In fact, I was even asked during the CBC interview why I – along with Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly – ought to be entitled to have opinions when we've been through personal ordeals. Of course, they're really only "ordeals" because the liberal media and anonymous Internet smear-meisters with Web sites like www.goodlordihaterachelmarsden.com and www.billoreillytakesuptoomuchoxygen.com have propagated lies, exaggerations and distortions.

Not that I'm complaining; these people save me a lot of money on PR. Love or hate, just as long as you pay attention and keep those ratings up!

The crack journalistic staff at the CBC is apparently fond of conducting its esteemed "research" on Internet chat boards. Just this week, I was forwarded an e-mail sent behind my back, by the CBC, to United Press International – for whom I write – asking them about some "research" that the CBC correspondent happened to come across on the prestigious Internet.

After refuting the claim and having a good laugh about it, I tried my hand at "researching" the way a CBC reporter would: Just for kicks, I randomly typed the CBC journalist's name, John Kerry's name, and the word "naked" into a Google search and came up with some rather interesting hits on chat boards. Maybe I should e-mail his employer to enquire about my "research," too?

If lefties had spent as much time stalking former presidential candidate John Kerry and obsessing over his Senate record during the primaries, then maybe they would have actually had a real contender in the last election.

If they would spend even half the energy looking into the hypocrisy of Michael Moore as they do analyzing every single one of my sentences three ways from Sunday, then perhaps the Democrats wouldn't have made the fatal public relations mistake of cuddling up to "Porky Pinko" at the Democratic Convention.

If Al Franken had put some effort into critiquing CBS's slanted reporting instead of airbrushing splotches onto Bill O'Reilly's face for the cover of his book, then perhaps the entire liberal media wouldn't have been exposed, mid-campaign, for the agenda-pushers they were in the CBS "Memogate" scandal.

The smallest details of right-leaning pundits' private lives are fair game for the Left, but apparently it's a "witch-hunt" to similarly criticize any of their fellow comrades.

Fox News ought to take the CBC's knee-jerk reaction as a major compliment. If the CBC really hates you, then you must be doing something right. Stalin feared and hated the free press, too. The CBC's publicity will help Fox News reach Canadians who aren't yet aware that the channel is available.

Fox provides compelling, passionate, balanced, personality-driven, addictive current affairs programming. In other words, it's everything that the CBC – or any other Canadian current affairs programming, for that matter – is not. If Fox News is able to incorporate some Canadian content, then it will quickly become as powerful a ratings force as it has in the U.S., while setting a new standard in the Canadian market.

In the interim, want to drive someone in the Canadian media to suicide watch? Toss this one out there: Fox News Canadian Bureau.

Rachel Marsden (rachelmarsden.com) is a public affairs and communications strategist, columnist and talk show host who has worked in politics and media in the United States and Canada.

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