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rfmcdonaldOne major event in the Canadian media environment is the plan to add to the SUN TV television complex, owned by the right-wingish Quebecor and operated by subsidiaries, a Sun TV News Channel scheduled to be launched by New Year's Day 2011. The television channel, called by its detractors FOX News North, is expected to be significantly more right-wing than either of the dominant national television networks, CBC and CTV. The whole idea has already triggered a lawsuit.
Almost at the same time, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's former director of communications Kory Teneycke, arguably the most prominent personality behind the new channel--and certainly a very visible link with the current federal government--has resigned.
As the above author notes, Teneycke may have resigned because of potential legal troubles: allegedly he and his added fake names to an anti-Sun TV petition organized by (among others) Margaret Atwood and a George Soros-founded group in order to discredit it, this fact apparently revealed by one of his tweets.
Stay tuned. I'm sure that things will get more exciting yet.
[B]illionaire financier George Soros is threatening to sue the Sun Media Chain, a part owner of the upstart Sun TV News channel.
Michael Vachon, a spokesman for Vachon, told the Globe and Mail newspaper Friday that Soros was upset by a recent Sun Media newspaper column that connected his opposition to Sun TV News to his experience as an Hungarian Jew during the Second World War.
"It made false, defamatory and offensive statements and as a result Mr. Soros has notified the relevant parties of his intent to sue," Vachon said.
"What is of concern in the article are the false assertions that Mr. (Ezra) Levant makes regarding George Soros's conduct as a 13-year-old child in Nazi-occupied Hungary," he added.
Almost at the same time, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's former director of communications Kory Teneycke, arguably the most prominent personality behind the new channel--and certainly a very visible link with the current federal government--has resigned.
Teneycke is a gifted communicator who aggressively and effectively pushed the prime minister’s message when he worked in government. Last March, he and the prime minister had lunch in New York with Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, the men behind Fox News. The theory is that over lunch, they dreamed up Fox News North.
Teneycke left the Prime Minister’s Office in July and found a backer for Sun TV: Quebec billionaire Pierre Karl Péladeau, who owns the Sun tabloids and a bunch of other things, and who would like Harper to give him a cable licence and also a new hockey rink in Quebec City while he’s at it.
To pump up Sun TV, Teneycke sought to grab attention by personally attacking people like Atwood in the bombastic style of a Fox News host, which was jarring in traditionally deferential Canada. Like Icarus in the Greek myth, he flew too close to the sun, got burned and fell to the ground.M
As the above author notes, Teneycke may have resigned because of potential legal troubles: allegedly he and his added fake names to an anti-Sun TV petition organized by (among others) Margaret Atwood and a George Soros-founded group in order to discredit it, this fact apparently revealed by one of his tweets.
Stay tuned. I'm sure that things will get more exciting yet.
