Producers need to be aware of the serious erosion of democracy that occurs when their media is censored and can be bought and controlled by the highest bidder.
Such a situation is occurring in Western Canada today. The Alberta Beef magazine allowed two outrageous columns by their columnist Roy Rutledge to run in the April and May editions. The purpose of these was to attack the NFU and their groundbreaking Livestock crisis document.
Despite pretending to be a broken down rancher Rutledge is in fact a paid employee of Nilsson Bros Inc. This alters significantly the opinions he has and the NFU wanted to inform producers of this critical missing information. AB Beef magazine agreed to print a reply of equal length from the NFU but when they got a copy of the article they turned around and refused to print it. The excuse was that there was no space. Has anyone seen this months edition? guess what .... they still had room for yet another article by Rutledge full of lies and hatred running down the NFU.
What kind of publication allows only one side of the story to be told? I would suggest that is symptomatic of the type of thing that happens in state controlled regimes usually either extreme right or left wing. Why do we accept it in Canada? To add insult to injury it appears most other farm media are unprepared to publish letters in their publications highlighting this serious assault on democracy and giving readers the opportunity to go to the NFU website and read the banned reply.
I find this truly incredible in Canada in 2009. The fact that companies like Nilsson Bros not only have unfair control over the cattle industry they also appear to have control over the media. This is clearly unacceptable in a democracy and further weakens the position of all beef producers. Will producers wake up and take this threat seriously?
To help motivate you please go to http://www.nfu.ca/Rutledge-web.pdf
and read the NFU reply that Western farm media refuse to print.
Such a situation is occurring in Western Canada today. The Alberta Beef magazine allowed two outrageous columns by their columnist Roy Rutledge to run in the April and May editions. The purpose of these was to attack the NFU and their groundbreaking Livestock crisis document.
Despite pretending to be a broken down rancher Rutledge is in fact a paid employee of Nilsson Bros Inc. This alters significantly the opinions he has and the NFU wanted to inform producers of this critical missing information. AB Beef magazine agreed to print a reply of equal length from the NFU but when they got a copy of the article they turned around and refused to print it. The excuse was that there was no space. Has anyone seen this months edition? guess what .... they still had room for yet another article by Rutledge full of lies and hatred running down the NFU.
What kind of publication allows only one side of the story to be told? I would suggest that is symptomatic of the type of thing that happens in state controlled regimes usually either extreme right or left wing. Why do we accept it in Canada? To add insult to injury it appears most other farm media are unprepared to publish letters in their publications highlighting this serious assault on democracy and giving readers the opportunity to go to the NFU website and read the banned reply.
I find this truly incredible in Canada in 2009. The fact that companies like Nilsson Bros not only have unfair control over the cattle industry they also appear to have control over the media. This is clearly unacceptable in a democracy and further weakens the position of all beef producers. Will producers wake up and take this threat seriously?
To help motivate you please go to http://www.nfu.ca/Rutledge-web.pdf
and read the NFU reply that Western farm media refuse to print.
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