So I’m writing an article that wasn’t on my list, but I felt the need to write this one due to some recent developments.

Yesterday, Quebecor, the company that owns the trashy tabloid-like Sun newspapers, announced their intention to launch a 24 hour news network that will be told from a distinctly conservative standpoint. Sun TV News, as it will be called, aims to “banish the established “boring, smug and condescending” news networks to the sidelines with a snappy, right-wing take on current events modelled on America’s wildly successful and controversial Fox News.”

And that’s when I felt frightened.

Fox News is quite possibility one of the most destructive forces in the United States today. They constantly spout lies, half-truths, and twisted interpretations in order to strengthen the far-right radical conservative movement. This is all part of the so-called “culture war”, the growing rift between American liberals and conservatives. This increasingly vicious fight quite honestly has the potential to destabilize the United States.

And some of Canada’s far-right conservatives want to do the same thing here. Unlike the U.S, we do not have a culture war. Sure, there are liberals and conservatives, but there is no where near the vitriol that we see in the States. I fear that with the potential launch of Sun TV News, that could change.

What especially struck me about the proposed channel was that it is being led by Kory Teneycke, who until last year was Prime Minister Harper’s Communications Director. Somehow I don’t think this channel will have any trouble getting approval from the Canadian Radio and Television Commission.

There are a number of things that bother me about this channel. Firstly, it claims that is against the boring, smug attitude that they apparently see on CBC and CTV. Essentially, in-depth and intellectual reporting is something you won’t see on Sun TV News. To uneducated simpletons, the CBC is boring and condescending because its smart people discussing smart people things. Sure, these channels could perhaps find a way to appeal to those how are not particularly educated or interested in global events and politics, but that in-depth and intellectually based journalism seen on CBC and to a lesser extent CTV is absolutely crucial to our democracy. Sun TV News claims that it will go from the populist approach - which is basically a code word for anti-intellectual. I believe that this network will provide few facts with very little depth to them, and instead rely on emotion to convey their message. That is what populism is, and that is why it is dangerous, because it breeds a populace of uninformed, emotionally charged people, as seen with the Tea Party movement in the United States.

The network also claims that it will run its news segments during the day (when nobody is watching) and the opinion segments in the evening. I personally believe that a news network should not have opinion segments. They are there to report the news, with facts and unbiased analysis. It is not the responsibility of a news network to push certain opinions. People should be given the facts and left to decide for themselves. A talking head should not be on a news channel to spout his or her opinion as if it were fact. The other problem is, despite the leaders of this new channel saying that viewers will be able to tell the difference between news and opinion, it is far more complicated than that. Sure, Glenn Beck has an opinion program on Fox News. However, he represents his opinions, outright lies, and paranoid delusions as facts, and his audience is led to believe that he is telling the truth. Opinion programs are able to push ‘facts’ at people, but whenever they are criticized, they can simply hide behind the guise of being an opinion. And that’s why there should be no opinion programming on dedicated news networks.That said, there should still be reasonable debate on news networks, like the CBC’s Power and Politics, which features people from all sides of the political spectrum in cordially discussions on today’s issues. Opinion programs are emotionally charged, fact-lacking shows that lake that cordial debate.

The channel also says that it is against political correctness and has already taped Ezra Levant, the infamous hater of multiculturalism, bilingualism, and any form of modern liberalism. He’s the one who recently brought Ann Coulter to Canada. He’s also from Calgary. My concern is that, like Fox News, this network’s distain for “political correctness” is merely a code word for being a pulpit for racism and discrimination, backing the views of traditional white, Christian families against the evil “minorities” and “immigrants”.

Here’s hoping that reason prevails at the CRTC, and that our hate speech laws shut this thing down before it can get off the ground.