Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Ezra, The School Board, And The Muslims: Day Three

Well, as my CBSC (and also CRTC) complaints await processing in Ottawa, it's time for a few updates.  Most importantly, Ezra has offered his side of the story, and also an email exchange between himself and  Greater Essex County District School Board representative Scott Scantlebury.

Probably the most important bit from his "Factual background" is this:

-Someone who received an e-mailed memo from the school board forwarded it to me as a potential news item.

[...]

-That memo we received did not include the links to aboriginal, Asian, and African soldiers in the Canadian military. Scantlebury did not advise us of this fact. The quotes we cited from the memo are accurate.

-I have attached my producer’s email exchanges yesterday with Scantlebury. I have only redacted the producer’s name and contact info.

This leaves open the distinct possibility that Ezra's source deliberately removed the extra links so as to, well, sucker Ezra and his production team into the misconstruction that they did indeed put upon the memo.  In fact, this would not be the first time Ezra has been lied to by one of his tipsters.  In an earlier case as well, the result was a CBSC complaint.

Not that such a scenario would make Ezra's subsequent behavior any less reprehensible.  After all, he surely knows that anyone watching his show and slipping him tips must be to some degree sick in the head, and should be fact-checked quite a bit more thoroughly than the effort Ezra gave it.

On the other hand, after his recent anti-Justin tirade, several family members emailed Ezra to say that the whole episode had been entirely innocent.  These emails conveniently disappeared into Ezra's spam folder (can't find the link for that, so I am going by recollection), so discount the man's words appropriately.

Also,  Greater Essex County District School Board Superintendent Sharon Pyke appeared on the Jerry Agar show to discuss the incident.  Sun News has spun this into an apology by the board, but read the entire transcript of the interview and see if you can detect the contrition in it.  I can't.

And, meanwhile and finally, Ezra is still using the false story as a means of hawking merch at one of his websites.  Hopefully, the CBSC/CRTC will take this into account when trying to form an idea of Ezra's intent in spreading this story.

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