|
Over at Free Canuckistan, the Binksmeister recounts a day at a big confab on "the legal and ethical limits of free speech", which billing tells you a lot about the cut of the organizers' jib. Still, Margaret Wente was there, as was Ezra Levant. And so was John Miller, the Ryerson journalism prof and beloved comic figure who a couple of months back attempted to intervene in the British Columbia show trial on the pro-censorship side. Binky captures the great man in action:
During the event, Professor John Miller of Ryerson (live-blogged here.. his stuff starts around 1:06.. he’s Head Of The “Ezra For Prime Minister Committee” ) slagged Mark Steyn [see 1:33] as a mere ‘polemicist’ and not a responsible journalist. As an example, he used Mark’s quoting of Ayatollah Khomeini from (he said) the now infamous Macleans article. Looks like he’s been trusting the citations of the SockPuppets, because as Steyn himself notes, it’s actually from the Maclean’s article ‘Celebrate tolerance, or you’re dead‘.
Miller asserted that after a thorough Internet search, he found the Khomeini quote only in one comment on one [echh, ptui] blog. Meanwhile, Ezra was surfing online, and interrupted a minute later to point out he’d just then Googled 100+ references to the quote in question, including one from the eminently liberal Harper’s Magazine, 1985. Public pantsing accomplished.
So much for Professor Fact-Check. Still, John Miller is quite right. I'm not a "journalist" and have never described myself as one. And, when I give speeches or appear on TV or radio and the organizers or producers send us the biographical intro in advance, my trusty assistants always insist on the removal of the word "journalist". This used to be purely for truth-in-advertising reasons - I wouldn't want audiences to get the false impression that I'd passed rigorous tests and acquired a diploma signed by Professor Miller. But lately it's been for a more basic reason. I had lunch with Ken Whyte, my publisher at Maclean's, the other day, and mentioned en passant that one consequence of a year's worth of thought-police investigations was that it was no longer possible to avoid the painful truth that, for a profession that congratulates itself incessantly on its courage, bravery, fearlessness, etc (far more than, say, firefighters do) and hands out awards all year long for "speaking truth to power", most journalists are total pussies happy to suck up to state power as long as it's in PC clothing. Professor Miller, a J-school ethics bore boldly campaigning for the right of government bureaucrats to censor writers, would seem to be an almost parodic example of the phenomenon.
|
