From a CTV.ca blog posting by CTV News parliamentary reporter Roger Smith:

Even as he accused reporters of taking the low road, Stephen Harper seemed eager to follow.

Amid the flurry of apologies and resignations by candidates for past indiscretions, Harper blamed the media.

"I do think some of these stories are 'gotcha' journalism that have nothing to do with what's important in the campaign."

Yet his own Tory war room, like all the others, fuel the mud-slinging by flooding reporters with e-mails full of accusations about rival candidates.

Addendum

Sean O'Malley, who runs the CTV News election desk, blogged about gotcha games in a Sept. 29 posting.

From the BBC (Sept. 25):

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has ordered the release from prison of a local journalist whose jailing in June sparked an international outcry.

Abdulkarim Khiwani was given a six-year term after being accused of supporting Shia rebels fighting the government in the north since 2004.

But his lawyers maintained material about rebels found in his possession was essential for his journalism.

The United States had condemned the sentence, as had Amnesty International.

The court decided "to release him from jail after he pledged to respect the constitution and the country's laws", said Justice Minister Ghazi al-Aghbari.

There is no word on the fate of a dozen other people sentenced at the same time - one of whom was condemned to death.

In late August, Curtis Brainard -- editor of the Observatory, the Columbia Journalism Review's online critique of science and environmental reporting -- examined how the U.S. media is covering the climate issue.

Here's part one.

And here's part two.

From the Global Carbon Project's Carbon Budget 2007:

Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are growing x4 faster since 2000 than during the previous decade, and above the worst case emission scenario of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Less Developed Countries are now emitting more carbon than Developed Countries.

The carbon intensity of the world’s economy is improving slower than previous decades.

The efficiency of natural sinks has decreased by 5% over the last 50 years (and will continue to do so in the future), implying that the longer it takes to begin reducing emissions significantly, the larger the cuts needed to stabilize atmospheric CO2.

All these changes have led to an acceleration of atmospheric CO2 growth 33% faster since 2000 than in the previous two decades, implying a stronger climate forcing and sooner than expected.