re: #137 engineer dog

(Robert F. Kennedy Jr. via Huffington Post via eschaton):

“Canada regulators announced last week they would reject efforts by Canada’s right wing Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to repeal a law that forbids lying on broadcast news.

Canada’s Radio Act requires that “a licenser may not broadcast…any false or misleading news.” The provision has kept Fox News and right wing talk radio out of Canada and helped make Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom. As a result of that law, Canadians enjoy high quality news coverage including the kind of foreign affairs and investigative journalism that flourished in this country before Ronald Reagan abolished the “Fairness Doctrine” in 1987. Political dialogue in Canada is marked by civility, modesty, honesty, collegiality, and idealism that have pretty much disappeared on the U.S. airwaves. When Stephen Harper moved to abolish anti-lying provision of the Radio Act, Canadians rose up to oppose him fearing that their tradition of honest non partisan news would be replaced by the toxic, overtly partisan, biased and dishonest news coverage familiar to American citizens who listen to Fox News and talk radio. Harper’s proposal was timed to facilitate the launch of a new right wing network, “Sun TV News” which Canadians call “Fox News North.”

which reminds me once again of fox nudes’ successful defense against a lawsuit claiming that it was lying - which was that it is not against the law in this country to lie on teevee

Actually, as I understand it, Fox is in Canada these days, or at lest parts of it. And RFK Jr’s pining for the Fairness Doctrine makes me ill. Things were not very honest back in the day down here. Its just that people didn’t really see the liberal bias of the news outlets.