Star now admits Harper/Putin hockey story was phony

In a bizarre ‘apology’, the Toronto Star’s public editor Kathy English says that the story they ran on Russian President Vladimir Putin and PM Stephen Harper was “offside” but still tries to lay partial blame on the Prime Minister’s Office:

“On this, I learned something about the rather Byzantine manner of the PMO’s communications style. It seems to me that [reporter] Westhead didn’t grasp a code that the Star’s Ottawa bureau reporters have come to understand.” (see here)

Notice that there is no explanation from English as to why Star spokesman Bob Hepburn said that they were standing by the reporter’s story which the PMO had also denied (see here).

Swept under the carpet and of course no one loses their job.

Conservatives to fix flawed Liberal same-sex marriage bill

Yesterday, we had ex-Liberal PM Paul Martin chirping from the sidelines about the phony same-sex marriage story but not a single Ottawa Press journo asked him or his then justice minister, Irwin Cotler why they introduced such a flawed law. No surprise of course as that would have ruined the biased angle they were running.

But two huge positives emerged from this latest media driven faux-scandal.

1) Pointed out by blog reader James, this gave the Conservatives an opportunity:

“Personally I think this will be a huge win for the conservatives trust me. Right now they’re drafting legislation to change the divorce act to allow divorces for non-residents. They become the saviours of ssm, the liberals become the people who screwed it up.”

Which today Justice Minister Rob Nichols took (see here).

2) More anti-Conservative reporters have been exposed such as the Globe’s Tu Thanh Ha who jumped in with his garbage pieces (see here and here)

Both helped turn this into a win-win for Harper and the Conservatives.