Tag: msm

John McCain will do a media avail this Friday

Some reporter friends of mine have been speculating as to whether presumptive Republican nominee for President John McCain will take questions after his speech on Friday at the Chateau Laurier. I just received this from the McCain campaign:

MEDIA ADVISORY
John McCain Travels to Canada

For Immediate Release

Contact: Press Office

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

703-XXX-XXXX

ARLINGTON, VA — U.S. Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign today announced that John McCain will visit Ottawa, Canada on Friday, June 20th.

Friday, June 20, 2008

OTTAWA, CANADA

WHO: John McCain

WHAT: Speech hosted by the Economic Club of Toronto

WHEN: Friday, June 20, 2008 at 1:00 p.m. EDT

*Please Note This event is not open to the general public.

WHERE: The Chateau Laurier
Grand Ballroom
1 Rideau Street
Ottawa, Canada K1N 8S7

WHO: John McCain

WHAT: Media Availability

WHEN: Friday, June 20, 2008 at 1:40 p.m. EDT

WHERE: The Chateau Laurier
Laurier Room
1 Rideau Street
Ottawa, Canada K1N 8S7

###

Double standard at the Globe and Mail?

In March of 2007, the Conservative Party of Canada held a training conference for its staff and campaign volunteers in Toronto. The conference was packed with seminars and panels designed to effectively educate Conservative Party activists on the best techniques known to win elections.

Six months later, Daniel Leblanc from the Globe and Mail got wind of a specific seminar at the conference that included information to optimize campaigning to reach out to multicultural groups for their votes.

Here is the above-the-fold front page story describing the Conservative strategy:

Click here to download the PDF of the front page
The opening paragraph of the story:

“Select ethnic and religious groups across Canada are being targeted by a previously unknown Conservative team that is bluntly gunning for votes in a bid to supplant the Liberals in multicultural ridings in the next election.”

Bluntly gunning for targeted minorities? Yeah… really.

Now, let’s move on to 2008. The blog Progress for Progressives describes a recent Liberal Party training course that the author had attended where… “targeting by ethnicity” is part of a seminar on voter contact.

Read this document on Scribd: Campaign Manager Training

Will we see alarmist headlines in the Globe and Mail? Who’s on it?

Leblanc? Laghi? Galloway? Anyone… anyone? Bueller?

Former CBC News head Tony Burman to Al Jazeera

TORONTO – Tony Burman, the one-time head of CBC news, has been appointed managing director of Al Jazeera’s English operations.

Burman, 60, takes over from Nigel Parsons, who has held the position since the network’s launch two years ago. Parsons is now managing director of business acquisition and development.

“In the months ahead, I will … put an emphasis on the expansion of Al Jazeera’s vast audience reach into important new areas of the world, most notably North America,” Burman said in a news release.

He called Al Jazeera’s newsrooms the most diverse in the world with a presence in more than 50 countries.

“I look forward to capitalizing on this strength through increased investment in investigative journalism, more provocative and insightful current affairs and expansion of the network’s large worldwide network of more than 60 news bureaus.”

Burman, an award-winning news and documentary producer, left the CBC last year after 35 years at the public broadcaster, including seven as editor in chief.

In 2006, Burman oversaw CBC News’s introduction of a new look and attitude on all its platforms in response to demands that the public broadcaster try to be hipper and cooler. A survey of Canadians found that parts of the CBC News operation didn’t appeal to young people.

Al Jazeera’s English channel was launched in November 2006 and is now available to more than 100 million households worldwide.

Somehow, this makes sense for the former CBC News editor-in-chief.