A Global Public Media Organization

Editor’s Note:

When the recent PM Trudeau “brownface story” came to be, many people denounced the act citing a variety of sound reasons, and as well, many people believe that people can learn, grow and change their minds and opinions on the topic of racism and realize the cultural misfortunes that are associated with this blatant disregard of the humanity of others.

Others unfortunately, don’t.

On the other side of this disastrous equation, is the big question of the 5 ‘W’s’ – namely - Who, What, Where, When & Why?

Simply put – who is the source?  In the business of the media, the “source” is paramount to any news story, especially one such as this. 

The following is an investigation by Amy MacPherson of Free the Press Canada.*

Dirty Tricks Behind Trudeau Brownface/Blackface Scandal? <article link


Excerpt from the article…

<Given that Time is an American enterprise, it raised suspicion that no Canadian media was approached with the original brownface scandal, to have any knowledge about the prime minister’s former transgression. No parliamentary bureau chiefs, with decades of sources and contacts, were prepared for this extremely damaging exposé. Even journalists hired by the Liberal government, and the Conservative opposition, are scrambling to make sense of how they got scooped by a foreign competitor.

Also given that foreign interference is a major issue in Western elections, it became prudent to examine the Time story with a skeptical lens. Free The Press Canada is an advocate of journalism ethics and periodically lectures on the Canadian university circuit (original / archive), so it undertook this analysis with a view to examining the power and means of foreign influence. With great surprise, the initial investigation of Time magazine led to curious discoveries within the article itself, as well as a web of deceit that surrounds the scandal.

The first issue with the infamous Time article is that reporters didn’t interview the purported source of the Arabian Nights photo, who they named as Michael Adamson. Instead they only paraphrase a disparate explanation regarding how Adamson came to possess this politically explosive evidence.

First they report he was involved with the West Point Grey Academy community, leaving readers to insinuate that Adamson may have participated with the school at the time of Trudeau’s employment. But the magazine follows up with a counter-statement that indicates Adamson only became aware of the offensive yearbook in July 2019, barely prior to the writ dropping for the current federal election. Time further describes Adamson as a “Vancouver businessman”, concealing his profession or any other information that would allow him to be identified and verified, according to Canadian journalism standards.

Oddly, Time addressed its source of the yearbook by name but it spoke on Adamson’s behalf, referring to him in the third-person. At no point does the magazine include a quote from the star of its story, who was apparently concerned enough to bring this matter to the attention of American media. When a source doesn’t wish to speak on the record due to fear of reprisal, it’s standard for a journalist to offer anonymous attribution. But that’s not what Time did. Instead it named Michael Adamson as a token lightning rod, in an effort to validate the magazine’s legitimacy and motive for unleashing the greatest scandal to rock another country’s election – its main economic trading partner, no less.>
…

We encourage everyone to take the time (literally) and read this article that will leave you somewhat mind-blown, and knowing a lot more about what goes on in the business of the media than you may, or may not have wanted to know – but should.

We wish to remind everyone that the GFP and our associates do not condone this type of racist behaviour and realize that all of us - can change for the better.

Our thanks to Amy MacPherson (<Twitter Page) for an outstanding expose regarding this matter.

*Amy MacPherson, Free the Press Canada.

Image: Courtesy of Free the Press Canada (Source: TIME)

BACKGROUND TO THIS DOCUMENTARY PHOTO REPORT: In September, 2012, FRANCIS  UMENDU ODUPUTE, an artist cum journalist with The NIGERIAN OBSERVER, a government-owned newspaper in Benin City, Edo State of Nigeria, began an investigation into an over-populated, poorly maintained and yearly-flooded primary school in a fast developing community he resides with his wife, three children and a ward. He had enrolled his ward in the densely populated public primary school - that was how he got to know more about the school’s problems and became bothered that for the 12th year running, children in this primary school had been suffering from flooding and poor sanitation, water-related diseases, over-crowding and psychological traumas, as the school and indeed their community, Evbuotubu/Iguedaiye, in Egor LGA of Edo State, was alleged to have been neglected and marginalized by successive governments of the State. 
 
Mr. Odupute courageously published a serialized, pro-poor investigative story on the demographic, environmental and WASH situation in Evbuotubu Primary School and the community roads in The Nigerian Observer Newspapers, between 2014 and 2015. The journalist also embarked on few strategic media interfaces and dialogue with Evbuotubu community leaders and youths on the need to increase their cry to the State government.

The climate negotiations entered their final day, and we geared up for our most audacious action. Several buses brought four hundred activists to different locations near the conference hall. Adrenaline running, we walked fast toward the gates and the guards. After a week of discussing sea level rise, eating vegan food, blocking car traffic, and marching in the streets dressed as polar bears and turtles, we were out to make a real difference.

Chaining our bodies to the gates and each other, we tried to prevent the negotiators from leaving the hall until they had come up with a proper agreement, all the while chanting: “No more bla bla bla – action now!”

That was twenty years ago, at the very first United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP), in Berlin. The negotiators, needless to say, snuck out the backdoors. Since then, a tidal wave of bureaucratic logorrhea has rolled over the planet every December, as the COPs have degenerated into annual exhibits in the latest innovations in officialese.

No tangible measures other than the construction of various vacuous carbon markets have materialized; CO2 emissions from fossil fuels have not declined, not leveled off, not increased a little more slowly, but soared by 50 per cent under the cover of two decades of ever more bla bla bla.

...While Simultaneously Boasting Advocacy of Free Speech.

So anyway, the thing that I come to — I used this phrase on TV the other day— the rise of the “but brigade.” I got so sick of the goddamn but brigade.  And now the moment somebody says ‘Yes I believe in free speech, but,” I stop listening.  “I believe in free speech, but people should behave themselves.” “I believe in free speech, but we shouldn’t upset anybody.” “I believe in free speech, but let’s not go too far.” — Salman Rushdie, regarding the Charlie Hebdo massacre

Free speech does not mean inoffensive speech.  It means all speech, left-wing and right-wing and in-the-fuck-between… with, of course, the exception of speech that calls for violence and that violence is LIKELY to occur due to it.  Heavy constant indoctrination, however, is creating a populace that tends to disagree with legality.

Rare it was for me to engage in a free-speech fight with a free-speech advocate.  Usually, the response was either very brief, as with PEN America Executive Director Susan Nossel and National Coalition Against Censorship Executive Director Joan Bertin, or simply non existent, as with PEN New England Executive Director Karen Wulf and New England First Amendent Center Executive Director Rosanna Cavanagh.  When such free-speech organizations are challenged, oddly they usually prefer not to respond.  After all, how can one challenge organizations devoted to free speech?  Well, quite simply, one can and should when those organizations behave hypocritically and have become politicized and/or prove incapable of accepting outside criticism (i.e., free speech). 

In politics there is a golden rule: beware agreements that cut across all political currents! The tragedy of Charlie Hebdo has been turned into a farce by the mammoth march in Paris, along with similar ones in cities across France, large and small. It is an insult on human intelligence to tie, in whatever combination, the names of Wolinski, Charb, Cabu and company with people of the ilk of the Camerons, Merkels, Rajoys, Renzis and Junckers of the world!

Here is a march that is dedicated to the freedom of expression. And on the first row of the heads of state and government is, lo and behold, Ahmet Davutoglu, successor in the office of prime minister of Turkey to Tayyip Erdogan, newly elected president of the republic, who, in his twelve years as head of government, has ridden roughshod over the freedom of expression in his country!

Davutoglu also has another distinction, that of having acted, as foreign minister before becoming prime minister, as aide-de-camp to Tayyip Erdogan in the latter's quest of bringing down Beshar Assad of Syria through the good offices of all manner of Islamic fundamentalists. And lately, the Turkish government not only stood aside gleefully watching the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) try to bulldoze Kobanê, one of the newly autonomous cantons of the Kurds of Syria, rubbing its hands in anticipation of the collapse of this newly-won autonomy, but has also been supporting this organization in underhanded fashion, as much evidence shows.