Sun News loses host days before network launch

Soon-to-be-launched Sun News TV network is one host down days before its kick-off date. Quebecor Media recently confirmed that Mercedes Stephenson will no longer co-host The Daily Brief with David Akin, who is also Sun Media’s bureau chief in Ottawa.

So far, mum’s the word on why, exactly, Stephenson is out. Spokesman Serge Sasseville is quoted in Tuesday’s edition of The Globe and Mail: “It was a mutual decision. The Daily Brief was not a good fit for her.”

Odd, considering it was only three weeks ago that Quebecor announced Stephenson, who is a military analyst and columnist at the Sun, as a co-host. Akin will now host the show solo.

Other hosts include Brian Lilley, Ezra Levant, and Charles Adler.

In a recent interview with ProjectJ (J-Source’s French-language sister site), Sun News head Luc Lavoie expanded on the network’s vision:

“Information is a service. We’re not there to judge what people should care or think about. I don’t have a social mission. My mission is to connect with my public. It’s not because The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, CBC and others like them decided that we shouldn’t really cover an issue because it could make waves that we’re going to stop doing it. I’m not an organizer of social change.”

The new network has repeatedly said it promises viewers “Hard News and Straight Talk”. Critics, however, have taken to calling it “Fox News North”.