Do you remember that Sun Media released a TV news channel lately? No? Don't worry about it. Apparently only 4000 people actually watched it the week after it launched. What a disappointment.
Sun TV might make hay on the latest story they released about Jack Layton. According to an anonymous former cop, Layton was found naked inside a massage parlour by the police in 1996, yet he wasn't convicted of anything or investigated. This little story has gone nation-wide pretty quickly. The NDP are calling it a smear campaign, and are threatening to sue Sun media.
Muckraking is a great technique for a flagging news channel. You pillory a politician, and you rake in the viewers. There are some problems with this of course, namely the anonymous source. While it's a well respected tradition in journalism to expose politicians and institutions through the use of the anonymous source, it's not always reliable. Also, you can't protect anonymous sources in this country. If a story causes a libel suit, the journalist usually has to reveal their anonymous sources, unless they can prove to the court good reasons for protecting them.
I won't argue that they have made up the whole story -- no one in the NDP camp is calling it a fabrication -- but it does seem like a timely smear campaign. Suspiciously timely. Considering that the links between Sun TV and the Prime Minister seem to go back a fair way -- the station is run by Harper's former top aide -- and with the NDP's recent surge in the polls which puts them a not-so-distant second behind the Tories, it looks like Tory sabotage. Or maybe it's the Liberals, who have been relegated to third place. Either way it looks nasty.
With three days to the election, the question is whether this scandal is going to make a difference; Is anyone going to care about an alleged indiscretion from the 90s? These scandals come with an expiry date on them, and I think it shows desperation that they couldn't come up with something a little more recent.
But good for Sun TV! You're well on your way to being "Fox News North." Keep muckraking your way to relevance!
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