Bell Media drops O'Leary -- finally!

Bell Media has announced that potential Conservative leadership candidate Kevin O’Leary will no longer appear on the company’s financial television network BNN or CTV News, the NatPost reports.
The media conglomerate hired the businessman and reality TV star away from the CBC two years ago, and he has since served as a commentator on economic and political matters across its platforms. In recent months, O’Leary has been flirting with the prospect of running for the Conservative party’s top job, creating a potential conflict of interest for Bell Media news properties covering the leadership race.
Bell Media’s announcement came after O’Leary unveiled an “exploratory committee” and website Friday morning. The team backing O’Leary includes, among others, former Stephen Harper cabinet minister Marjory LeBreton and former premier of Ontario Mike Harris.
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Hébert: Time changes coverage of Hill

Chantal Hebert writes:
"Once a staple of the holiday news season, the televised prime ministerial fireside chats are well on the way to joining the ghosts of Christmas past.
The CBC and Radio-Canada – among others – have opted out of the format, rightly concluding that the days when there was something special or, for that matter, newsworthy about deferentially serving up a prime minister to a festive nation had gone.
"So have the days when a government leader had to rely on a handful of major networks to reach a national audience. Interviews with the prime minister are a dime a dozen this December. On top of various year-end Parliament Hill interviews and a news conference, Trudeau has spent the past week on a year-end tour. At the end of last week, he was in Montreal taking questions from Radio-Canada viewers. This week he spent time in Vancouver and Calgary.
'There was a time when a contingent of Parliament Hill reporters would have tagged along. But trips outside the parliamentary precinct are so few now, as it is possible to catch Trudeau live in action from one’s computer at no cost to media organizations."
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NatPost columnist asks why Bell Media not cutting ties with Kevin O'Leary

Sean Craig writes in the National Post:
"Kevin O’Leary insists it’s only a matter of time before he makes his entry in the Conservative leadership race official, Bell Media says it will only end its on-air relationship with him if and when he formally enters the contest.
"The media company lured the businessman and reality television star away from the CBC in 2014, and he now appears frequently on its financial news network, BNN, as well as serving as a personal finance expert on CTV’s "The Marilyn Denis Show and contributing to Bell Media radio properties including 580 CFRA in Ottawa, CJAD 800 in Montreal and Newstalk 1010 in Toronto.
"O’Leary has frequently used those media appearances to make political pronouncements and to attack his potential political rivals, even while the company’s news properties are covering him and the Conservative leadership race."
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Expect the unexpected in media says Susan Delacourt

Susan Delacourt writes in iPolitics (Excerpt):
". . . the looming prospect of Trump’s presidency is also generating some surprising side benefits for U.S. media — a record number of New York Times reporters at the White House, for instance, and a boost in new subscriptions for the Washington Post and Vanity Fair.
In Canada, there’s no such Trump effect — not yet, at any rate, and probably not on the near horizon. As Beatrice Britneff has been telling us in her iPolitics analysis of parliamentary press gallery membership data, Ottawa’s political reporting pool is shrinking, down to levels we haven’t seen since the 1990s.
Every few weeks, it seems, we in the gallery are invited to another going-away party.
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Stephen Kinzer says U.S. misleading media about Syria

Stephen Kinzer writes in the Washington Post:
"Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press. Reporting about carnage in the ancient city of Aleppo is the latest reason why.

"For three years, violent militants have run Aleppo. Their rule began with a wave of repression. They posted notices warning residents: 'Don’t send your children to school. If you do, we will get the backpack and you will get the coffin.' Then they destroyed factories, hoping that unemployed workers would have no recourse other than to become fighters. They trucked looted machinery to Turkey and sold it. . . .
"This does not fit with Washington’s narrative. As a result, much of the American press is reporting the opposite of what is actually happening. Many news reports suggest that Aleppo has been a 'liberated zone' for three years but is now being pulled back into misery. . .

"We have almost no real information about the combatants, their goals, or their tactics. Much blame for this lies with our media.
"Under intense financial pressure, most American newspapers, magazines, and broadcast networks have drastically reduced their corps of foreign correspondents. Much important news about the world now comes from reporters based in Washington."
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