Who knew Sun TV News was such a welfare queen?

Fox News North shows off its assets

Dan Gardner calls this an “indecently enjoyable read”. I wholeheartedly agree. Too bad there is not more reporting like this about Peladeau and Fox News North (it really is).

The summation (emphasis mine):

Oh, and remember the news about Conservative Transportation Minister Denis Lebel being a Bloc Québécois member? I asked the folks at the media monitoring service Infomart to find the number of times SNN hosts talked about it. The answer: once, on August 9. How about Turmel’s similar dalliance with the avowed separatist party? 936 times between August 2 and August 11. Straight news, indeed.

Finally, a digression. Last June, Sun News journalist (and proud SUNshine Girl) Krista Erickson grilled dancer and choreographer Margie Gillis, asking her, among other things, “the sum total of grants and public money [Gillis] has received throughout [her] career.” It was a cutesy bit of TV: pit the airy, Atwood-inflected arts type against Erickson’s blond indignation and watch the sparks fly. SNN would be guilty only of ripping off what Fox news does every day, were it not for one not-so-small detail: Quebecor, Sun News’s parent corporation, regularly avails itself of taxpayer dough—and complains, loudly, when it doesn’t get it.

Exhibit A: last year, the company took in $3.7 million in Federal government subsidies, through Heritage Canada’s Canadian Periodical fund.

Exhibit B: in 2010, Quebecor President Pierre-Karl Péladeau threatened to sue the Canadian Media Fundwhen it refused to pony up money for TVA’s Star Académie, our very own version of American Idol that is, in Péladeau’s words, “the biggest success in the history of Canadian broadcasting.”

Now why would the biggest success in Canadian broadcasting history need even one cent of taxpayer money? Sounds like the kind of hard biting question for Sun News, doesn’t it?

Read the whole thing. Good job, Martin Patriquin.

UPDATE: It looks like Fox News North is living up to its conservative cred, courtesy of sister conservative media empire Postmedia - it is standing behind Krista Erickson’s attack on Margie Gillis.

Cross posted at Let Freedom Rain.