The Tories sponsored a car on the NASCAR circuit. No big deal; that's probably a good way to reach their demographic.

Now, who is the car being driven by?

CP reports that it's none other than Pierre Bourque of Bourque Newswatch fame. An excerpt from the CP story on CTV.ca:

Research on the business model for Bourque Newswatch suggests the federal Conservative party has just guaranteed itself favourable coverage for the foreseeable future by sponsoring Bourque's hobby.

Past and current Bourque clients have confirmed to The Canadian Press that advertisers on the site can expect flattering headlines or links, or headlines and links denigrating their opponents.

The Conservative party refuses to confirm or deny that it employs Bourque's headline service directly. But months of negative headlines and links to scathing blogs about Liberal Leader Stephane Dion on Bourque Newswatch indicate someone with an axe to grind is paying the news aggregator, which openly advertises its headline service for sale.

When the Conservatives announced the NASCAR sponsorship Sunday, they also neglected to mention the sponsored vehicle is driven by Bourque.

Instead, the party's news release referred to Whitlock Motor Sports.

From the BBC:

The alleged kidnappers of BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston have denied that they have reached a deal announced by Hamas for his imminent release.

In a video shown on al-Jazeera TV, a masked man said to be from the Army of Islam said there were "developments" in meetings with Hamas.

But he maintained that the reporter could still be killed if their demands were not met.

The BBC said it was aware of the video and was watching developments closely.

From the NYT:

The likening of the British media to a “feral beast” last week by Tony Blair, Britain’s departing prime minister, evoked some angry reactions from the accused. But it may have failed to provoke the larger debate he may have hoped for.

Most British commentators said that Mr. Blair’s attack, which came during one of his last speeches before leaving office later this month, was nothing short of hypocrisy.

For a man whose “administration will always be synonymous with spin, to question the system he has so often exploited seems a bit rich,” wrote The Economist. The Daily Telegraph listed 10 examples of media spin by Mr. Blair’s Labor Party, and The Independent, which was singled out by Mr. Blair as mixing “opinion and fact,” had Simon Kelner, its editor, ask on the front page, “Would you be saying this, Mr. Blair, if we supported your war in Iraq?”

A 370-member Facebook group called Feral Beasts of the Media has also sprung up in response to Blair.

An old computer scientist (well, 30) is trying to take social news to the next level, trying to ensure that important information has the political impact that it should. So Ian Clarke has invented Thoof to compete with Digg, Reddit and others of that ilk.

From the AP story on the NYT:

''Manufacturing Dissent,'' a film that accuses Moore of dishonesty in the making of his politically charged documentaries, alleges that he interviewed then-General Motors Corp. Chairman Roger Smith, the elusive subject of Moore's 1989 debut ''Roger & Me,'' but left the footage on the cutting room floor.

''Anybody who says that is a (expletive) liar,'' Moore told The Associated Press in an interview Saturday after a showing of ''Sicko,'' his take on U.S. medicine, in the northern Michigan village of Bellaire.

From the BBC:

An artist who was duped into appearing in the Borat film has got her revenge on the hoaxer by giving him a starring role in her new set of sculptures.

New York artist Linda Stein was among a group of feminists who were taken in by comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's character.

Her part in the film inspired her to create a new series of artworks, including one featuring Borat.

In it, she has drawn a small penis on his thong. Ms Stein said: "I felt there should be some exposure on his part."

Ms Stein is known for her statues "knights", which represent female protection.

She has paired three sculptures with figures from the entertainment world - Borat, Marilyn Monroe and Wonder Woman - for a new exhibition.

An OPP officer is suing two Ottawa Citizen reporters for defamation for a story that was mostly true. A third reporter was found to be shielded by qualified privilege.

The lawyer for the employer of the two reporters is trying to convince the Ontario Court of Appeal to consider a new definition for qualified privilege that would get his clients off the hook and move the goalposts in a direction that would be favourable to journalism.

Since midnight, I have been hit up for directions on four separate occasions. I think that's a lot, considering I have been either sleeping or otherwise in my apartment for just under 12 of those 14 hours.

I was able to help the guy walking away from his destination of Bathurst Street, the couple looking for the Taste of Little Italy festival and the two teenage girls looking for the vintage shops in Kensington Market.

I failed the 20-somethings looking for the Duke of York pub in the Annex (for future ref, it's on Prince Arthur Ave. just east of the St. George subway).

The oddest directions experience lately came late one night when I was walking down Queens Park to College St. A car drives right beside me for several seconds on this otherwise deserted thoroughfare, mildly freaking me out (drive-by!! :) ). Then it stops just ahead of me.

Two South Asian women -- one middle-aged, one older -- are inside. They want to know how to get to York Mills (Hint: It was far to the north of where they were talking to me).

I tell them to take the Wellesley exit off Queen's Park just about 15 metres in front of them to the left, left back onto QP, go north to Bloor Street and ...

"That's too complicated," they told me.

Oh dear. :)

The Globe and Mail's Matthew Ingram rounds up some of the main lawsuits against Canadian bloggers. However, the risk isn't just in what the blogger says, but in what is said in comments on the blog itself.

The "father knows best" adage often breaks down completely when put to the test. Fathers are shown to not know very much, perhaps less than their kids, in the narrow instance of providing answers during visits to museums.

From the Washington Post:

Private security companies, funded by billions of dollars in U.S. military and State Department contracts, are fighting insurgents on a widening scale in Iraq, enduring daily attacks, returning fire and taking hundreds of casualties that have been underreported and sometimes concealed, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials and company representatives.

While the military has built up troops in an ongoing campaign to secure Baghdad, the security companies, out of public view, have been engaged in a parallel surge, boosting manpower, adding expensive armor and stepping up evasive action as attacks increase, the officials and company representatives said. One in seven supply convoys protected by private forces has come under attack this year, according to previously unreleased statistics; one security company reported nearly 300 "hostile actions" in the first four months.

The majority of the more than 100 security companies operate outside of Iraqi law, in part because of bureaucratic delays and corruption in the Iraqi government licensing process, according to U.S. officials. Blackwater USA, a prominent North Carolina firm that protects U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, and several other companies have not applied, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. Blackwater said that it obtained a one-year license in 2005 but that shifting Iraqi government policy has impeded its attempts to renew.

The security industry's enormous growth has been facilitated by the U.S. military, which uses the 20,000 to 30,000 contractors to offset chronic troop shortages. Armed contractors protect all convoys transporting reconstruction materiel, including vehicles, weapons and ammunition for the Iraqi army and police. They guard key U.S. military installations and provide personal security for at least three commanding generals, including Air Force Maj. Gen. Darryl A. Scott, who oversees U.S. military contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

From the BBC, published June 14:

Zakia Zaki was one of Afghanistan's most active campaigners

The husband of the murdered Afghan journalist Zakia Zaki has said his wife received death threats in the week before her shooting, but she did not tell him about them in order not to alarm him.

Zakia Zaki was shot in her bed in the early hours of 6 June at her house near the capital, Kabul. Two of her sons, a seven-year-old and a baby, were in the room at the time but survived. ...

Zakia Zaki's husband Abdul Ahad Ranjbar told the BBC's Outlook programme that, while his wife "had not told me anything about being threatened this week, but she had said something about being threatened to her sister, Nazifa Zaki, a military general."

"Nazifa said there was a threat, but they did not tell me before because they didn't want me to be worried about it," he added.

"I am still not fully certain about the nature of the threat, and Nazifa told me that they are going to explain and talk about it more when the funeral services are finished."

Shocking

Zakia Zaki owned a private radio station in Parvan province, and was one of the few female journalists in the country to speak out during the Taleban's rule.  ...

(Ranjbar) added that he had been worried about her safety simply because of the nature of her work, as she was a political, cultural and social figure in the country, an MP and human rights campaigner.

"She always faced challenges, and problems from different groups," he said.

"For example, they were trying to close down the radio four months ago. The same people are still free, and no-one touches them."

But he said his wife had never felt she should cave in to the attitude of her opposition, and was "never afraid" of threats.

"Because I was more conservative than her, she sometimes did not talk about the threats with me," he added.

Shortly before Afghan journalist Zakia Zaki was shot to death, the lower house of Afghanistan's parliament passed a new media law. Here were the closing words of the BBC story, published June 5:

This achievement of Afghan journalists has come at a crucial time.

One of the most successful stories of post-conflict reconstruction, Afghanistan's media are now facing one of their most challenging periods.

Increasing curbs on information have been accompanied by greater violence and increasing intolerance from all sides, even as a sharp cut in donor funding has forced many media organisations to close down, downsize or worry about their survival.

Afghan journalists hope that the new media law, once passed, will give them more rights, rather than making their jobs more difficult.

Antonia Zerbisias, (former?) media critic for the Toronto Star, will be holding forth on the topic of "Take Back The Media" this Sunday at Bloor United Church (300 Bloor St. West). I believe the start time is 10:30 a.m.

The International Centre for Media and the Public Agenda has released a study looking at the English-language world's 25 biggest news websites and rated them on their journalistic transparency:

The top five? The Guardian, NYT, BBC, CBS and Christian Science Monitor.

The bottom five? CNN, Al Jazeera English, ITN, Time, Sky News.

(h/t to CJR's The Kicker)

From the AP story on CTV.ca:

Try to control the media? Not me, says Angelina Jolie.

The star of the new film "A Mighty Heart," about the widow of slain reporter Daniel Pearl and freedom of the press, says her representatives were trying to protect her when they sought to make media outlets sign an agreement not to ask personal questions during interviews.

"I didn't put it out there," Jolie said Thursday on "The Daily Show." "It was from my representatives trying to be protective of me, but it was excessive and I wouldn't have put it out there. But it's all right and nobody was forced to do it." ...

Jolie's lawyer, Robert Offer, told The New York Times that he blamed himself -- a "boneheaded, overzealous lawyer" for the contract and that Jolie was unaware of the action. The document "was drafted overly broadly," he said. "It was well intended, but I understand how it was received."

Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales sticks up for Dan Rather, who got into it with his ex-employer CBS News earlier this week.

Outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair has given a speech in which he excoriated the current state of the British press. Media critic Jack Shafer wants Blair, a media manipulator supreme, to give him a break.

From the mind of Fox News's Bill O'Reilly: (h/t to Romenesko)

 See this post for context.

... As a commentator, I am rooting for the Americans and British to win, because a victory is better for the USA and the world.

Now we've done hundreds of Iraq reports on this program, as you know. But we don't do the carnage du jour. We don't highlight every terrorist attack because we learn nothing from that. And that's exactly what the terrorists want us to do. I mean, come on, does another bombing in Tikrit mean anything other than war is hell? No, it does not.

From the keyboard of the San Francisco Chronicle's Jon Carroll: (h/t to Romenesko)

Prologue: The paper you are holding in your hands is a miracle. It has been put out by men and women dealing with sadness and loss. The personnel cuts have begun at the newspaper, and they ain't stopping any time soon. Everyone will be losing friends; some have already lost them.

By today's standards of job "mobility" (oh look, my job is moving! And so am I! Only not in the same direction!), the people at this newspaper, the combined staffs of The Chronicle and the Examiner, have been together a very long time. They have worked diligently while enduring various kinds of stress, layoffs and threatened strikes and the much-discussed decline of print journalism, and they have had to go home after too-long days and hear some smug academic talk about what a lousy newspaper The Chronicle is.

And after all that, a 25 percent staff reduction. And yet, here is today's paper, professional and informative and useful and entertaining, put out by people under siege. It's as though Travis at the Alamo had found time to write an opera. ...

Journalism is a noble profession. It can be used ignobly, but so can anything. It's one of the best things a person can do. It's wonderful to be able to feed your family while doing it. And now there is a withering away, and I hate every single part of the process.

From the NYT:

The Wall Street Journal, already roiled by a proposed takeover by Rupert Murdoch, will announce today a major newsroom shake-up, including the reassignment and replacement of several top editors, officials there say.

The reorganization represents a bid by the managing editor, Marcus E. Brauchli, who took the top job in the newsroom just a month ago, to put his stamp on the upper echelons of one of the nation’s most respected and widely read newspapers. A spokesman for Dow Jones & Company, The Journal’s parent company, declined to comment on any planned changes.

The newsroom announcement will come on the day that the Bancroft family, which owns a controlling interest in Dow Jones, is expected to make a new proposal to Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation on safeguarding The Journal’s editorial independence in the event of a sale. The Bancrofts’ goal is to keep the appointment of The Journal’s top editors out of Mr. Murdoch’s hands.

From the BBC:

Yahoo shareholders have rejected plans for the company to adopt a policy that opposes censorship on the internet.

Proposals to set up a human rights committee which would review its policies around the world, specifically China, were also heavily defeated.

Yahoo has been criticized by human rights groups since 2005 for its role in turning over some political dissidents' e-mails.

The materials were used to prosecute and imprison them.

From the AP story on CTV.ca:

CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves shot back at former CBS news anchor Dan Rather on Tuesday, saying remarks Rather made about his successor, Katie Couric, were "sexist."

Rather, speaking on MSNBC by phone on Monday, said CBS had made the mistake of taking the evening news broadcast and "dumbing it down, tarting it up," and playing up topics such as celebrities over war coverage. The comments appeared in blogs and in a story published Tuesday in the New York Daily News.

While referring to Couric as a "nice person," Rather said "the mistake was to try to bring the 'Today' show ethos to the 'Evening News,' and to dumb it down, tart it up in hopes of attracting a younger audience."

Moonves, asked about the remarks at an appearance in New York sponsored by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, called the remarks "sexist" and said he was surprised at the amount of negative coverage Couric was receiving. Couric, the first solo female news anchor, has been struggling in the ratings.

"She's been on the air for nine months," Moonves said. "Let's give her a break."

From the keyboard of the Washington Post's Marc Fisher:

Before trial began yesterday in the case of the D.C. judge who sued his neighborhood dry cleaners after they lost his pants, the most extraordinary fact was Roy Pearson's demand for $65 million in damages.

That was before Pearson, an administrative law judge, broke down while testifying about the emotional pain of having the cleaners give him the wrong pants. It was before an 89-year-old woman in a wheelchair told of being chased out of the cleaners by an angry owner. And it was before she compared the owners of Custom Cleaners in open court to Nazis.

"I knew it: It's all my fault," said the reporter from German television who was sitting next to me.

The global import of Pearson v. Custom Cleaners was evident from the start. The courtroom was packed with members of the Korean Dry Cleaners Association and reporters from print and broadcast outlets in at least five countries. The guy from the tort reform lobby handed out bright green buttons protesting the $65 million "pantsuit." The gent from Fox TV sported neon-color paisley pants.

And Pearson, who by his account has spent more than 1,400 hours preparing his case, arrived in a black pinstripe suit. I hope he won't sue me if I mention that the pants could have used a pressing.

Here was the bizarre Nazi reference:

Grace Hewell, a retired congressional staffer, said Jin Chung, Soo's husband, "chased me out of the store" when she complained that her suit pants "looked like they had been washed" and no longer fit properly. "At 89, I'm not ready to be chased," she said. "But I was in World War II as a WAC, so I think I can take care of myself. Having lived in Germany and knowing the people who were victims of the Nazis, I thought he was going to beat me up. I thought of what Hitler had done to thousands of Jews."

From journalism.org:

It was shortly after one p.m. eastern time on Friday June 8 when cable viewers witnessed a scene that was part paparazzi, part “Cops,” and part “Entertainment Tonight.”

A handcuffed Paris Hilton was deposited into sheriff’s car #865 for a trip back to court where Judge Michael Sauer would send her back to jail after her sudden and early release the day before. The spectacle of cameras trained on the car winding its way slowly through the Los Angeles streets was, in a way, strangely reminiscent of O.J. Simpson’s slow-speed car chase 13 years earlier.

Hilton managed to evade the waiting press hordes on her return to the courthouse, but that did not chill their ardor. “The media frenzy is wild,” declared CNN’s entertainment correspondent Sibila Vargas.

Paris Hilton’s problems represented only the second celebrity tabloid tale this year—the first being Anna Nicole Smith’s death—to make the roster of top five stories, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index from June 3-8. The saga of socialite/party girl Hilton’s release and return to prison after serving a few days of what had been a 23-day sentence for violating drunk driving probation was the fifth biggest story of the week, filling 4% of the newshole.

The Hilton tale was covered most heavily in cable (third biggest story at 9%) and on radio (fourth story at 7%). And the bulk of the attention came late in the week. For the two days of June 7 and 8, Hilton generated 10% of the overall coverage, filling 18% of the radio and 21% of the cable airtime.

Cable’s attraction to the story was clearly illustrated by MSNBC on June 8. Declaring “here’s Paris Hilton now,” anchor Contessa Brewer abruptly cut away from a discussion of the retirement of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace to the scene at Hilton’s home as she prepared for her ride back to court.

Jon Stewart addressed this Monday night on The Daily Show.

Last Thursday, he had this bit:

"You know, a lotta people may be wondering, 'What are they gonna do about that Paris Hilton thing? They gonna cover that Paris Hilton thing?' No, we're not gonna cover that Paris Hilton thing. Although we did discuss if we had covered it, what might be the possible, shall we say, over-the-shoulder pun in which we would perhaps poke subtle fun at the heiress.

"So just to let you know while we will not be covering this issue, if you at home happen to have your own news program that you run out of your house, you might want to go with Shawskank Redemption."

It might be time to remind ourselves of the Great AP Experiment.

From the AP story on MSNBC:

A sports reporter was ejected from an NCAA baseball tournament game for submitting live Internet reports during play.

Brian Bennett, a writer for The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal, was approached Sunday by an NCAA representative in the bottom of the fifth inning and told that blogging from an NCAA championship event is against NCAA policies, the newspaper said.

Bennett had done live blogging during Louisville's super-regional baseball games against Oklahoma State in the previous two games of the three-game series. The representative revoked Bennett's credential Sunday and asked him to leave the game.

The newspaper's executive editor, Bennie Ivory, called the dispute a First Amendment issue.

"This is part of the evolution of how we present the news to our readers," Ivory said. "It's what we did during the Orange Bowl. It's what we did during the NCAA basketball tournament. It's what we do." ...

The newspaper said the university circulated a memo on the issue from Jeramy Michiaels, the NCAA's manager of broadcasting, before the first super-regional game on Friday. It said blogs are considered a "live representation of the game" and blogs containing action photos or game reports are prohibited until the game is over.

David Akin posts on his blog that Toronto Star media critic Antonia Zerbisias will be moving on from her media critic's gig to some other as-yet-unnamed gig within the Star.

Apparently she broke the news via Facebook.

No word at this point if the Star will fill the media critic's gig.

In Akin's post, Zerby mentioned she's been lobbying for her new gig since 2003. Her blog essentially died in late August. I don't know exactly how long she's been doing the media gig for, but I suspect for a while (Wikipedia says she started as a media reporter at the Star in 1993 and became a columnist in 2003).

I don't agree with everything she's written, but in the few times we've spoken over the years, we've both ended up giggling, which isn't a bad thing. :)

From the AP story on Yahoo! News:

On a winter day when bomb blasts at an Iraqi university killed dozens and the United Nations estimated that 34,000 civilians in Iraq had died in 2006, MSNBC spent nearly nine minutes on the stories during the 1 p.m. hour. A CNN correspondent in Iraq did a three-minute report about the bombings.

Neither story merited a mention on Fox News Channel that hour.

That wasn't unusual. Fox spent half as much time covering the Iraq war than MSNBC during the first three months of the year, and considerably less than CNN, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The difference was more stark during daytime news hours than in prime-time opinion shows. The Iraq war occupied 20 percent of CNN's daytime news hole and 18 percent of MSNBC's. On Fox, the war was talked about only 6 percent of the time.

The independent think tank's report freshens a debate over whether ideology drives news agendas, and it comes at a delicate time for Fox. Top Democratic presidential candidates have refused to appear at debates sponsored by Fox. Liberals find attacking Fox is a way to fire up their base. ...

So with less on-air attention being paid to Iraq during the first few months of the year, what filled the void for Fox? PEJ's report said the network gave the death of Anna Nicole Smith significantly more air time than its rivals.

Here's the PEJ report on cable news.

And here's the home page of the PEJ News Coverage Index.

Frank D'Angelo, the guy who brought us the "Do you Cheetah?" commercial with horse racer Ben Johnson, has sued an Ottawa blogger.