It's no secret that the Globe and Mail has been one of the governing Conservatives' harshest critics. according to Canada's "National Newspaper", the Tories can do no right. and Stephen Harper's relationship with the Parliamentary Press Gallery and the rest of the media certainly hasn't helped the bashing that he receives in the mainstream media.
Last week, Prime Minister Harper announced that his government would get tougher on street racing. The government plans to make street racing a separate offence under the Criminal Code while increasing the penalties for those who are convicted of turning the streets into speedways.
On Friday, the Globe and Mail reported the Prime Minister's announcement under the headline, "Skepticism greets Harper's street-racing crackdown" which was followed by a sub headline, "advocates of tough penalties seek details".
and exactly who were these advocates who were skeptical? It turns out there was only one. The Globe and Mail quoted Nina Rivet who lost her sister to a street racing which doesn't seem to be as much as a problem for her as the fact that Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party are now in power. Rivet was upset about the fact that more details of Harper's plans were not released and the Globe jumped on that to turn the rather benign announcement of a crackdown on street racing into an anti-Harper diatribe.
The notion that Harper's announcement didn't release enough details is absurd. The PM announced that street racing will be put under the Criminal Code, have a minimum penalty and contain driving prohibitions and possible jail times. What more information do people want when a proposal is first announced? It seems that only Ms. Rivet and the Harper-bashing Globe and Mail think that all of the details of proposed legislation should be released at the moment when plans to bring forward a new law is announced.
The article by Eva Salinas is a textbook case of media bias; how a newspaper will stretch to turn a relatively benign announcement into an attack on their political enemies. To Salinas and the Globe, street racing and the death and destruction that results from it are really not that important; street racing is nothing more than something that can be used to take another swing at Stephen Harper.
The rest of the mainstream media that could no way be described as Harper-friendly, were content to simply report the announcement and discuss the dangers of street racing.
Stephen Harper does enough to give his critic fodder to attack him for without having to base an article on a government announcement on the "skepticism" of a lone person who no one has never heard of before.
No doubt the Globe and Mail is proud of its story.
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