Sun TV supporters discredit petition: Rabble

Rabble.ca reports that Sun TV, a new Fox-style news channel, and supporters like Ezra Levant are trying
to discredit a petition that urges the CRTC to reject Quebecor’s
application for Category 1 licensing, prime cable real estate that requires cable providers to carry the channel.

Rabble quotes an Ottawa Sun article by Qubecor’s Brian Lilley titled “Anti-Sun TV News campaign in U.S.“, which alleges the petition is the work of “a group of left-wing Americans supporting interests in Canada that don’t want to see competition in news broadcasting … backed by MoveOn.org a lobby group that has taken millions of dollars from currency speculator George Soros.”

CBC’s Kady O’Malley wrote on Sept 3rd:

“Yesterday evening, various  — Maclean’s columnists Andrew Coyne and Paul Wells, the Globe and Mail‘s Stephen Wicary, and the your humble blogatrix, among others — were somewhat nonplussed to receive autoreplies from Avaaz.org, thanking us for signed their recently-launched petition  calling on the CRTC to “Stop Fox News North,” despite the fact that none of us had actually done so. . . . The punch line — or so it seemed at the time — came a few hours later, when Kory Teneycke — the PM’s former communications director, brought on board by Quebecor with great fanfare earlier this year for the express purpose of getting the very network targeted by Avaaz on the air — revealed that he, too, had “apparently … signed the Soros-Atwood petition against Sun TV News as well.”

Rabble writes:

“What followed is known as the “saga of the Great Sun TV Petition,” in which Teneycke, fellow Sun Media (QMI) personality Ezra Levant, and Conservative blogger/activist and founder of the BloggingTories.ca Stephen Taylor, took to twitter to express their ‘outrage,’ as ‘someone’ spammed the petition with the names of journalists, actors, and fictional characters, and simultaneously penned an editorial about “why Canada needs Sun TV News.

“In their co-ordinated effort, Teneycke, Levant and Taylor not only attacked Avaaz.org — a global online advocacy community whose co-founder and Executive Director, Ricken Patel, happens to be Canadian — as a foreign operation, but specifically, and repeatedly, refer to George Soros — a progressive philanthropist who is despised by Right Wing America.”