Do as I say not as I do. Why is Peter Worthington defending Lord Black, perhaps loyalty amongst the right wing ruling class that dominate Canada's media.
Defending the dark Lord would at first appear a contradiction since Peter Worthington likes to advocate for the common people and common sense. (read right wing populism)
As for the media, the one thing the media should have is common sense. They are the great conduit of knowledge to the people. They have to reduce the complex to the simple, and dispense it.
Despite his 'common volk' screed his credentials make him a member of the ruling class.I suspect Mr. Worthington comes by his forthrightness quite naturally. It may not be generally known that his father was Major General F. F. Worthington, popularly known as "Fighting Frank" and the acknowledged father of the Canadian Armoured Corps.
Peter Worthington himself served in World War II as an air gunner with the Fleet Air Arm, and as an officer of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry in Korea where he was, incidentally, his battalion's intelligence officer and as such an expert on secret information. But he is first and foremost a journalist and indeed his writing talents were most evident in his military career. General Lewis Mackenzie.
Full of contradictions Worthington complained about office politics at the Sun while conveniently overlooking his own family connections.We have a fairly active and energetic board of directors at The Sun, who think they know more about journalism than they do, and they all seem to have relatives, nieces and nephews who are unemployed, and this suits them ideally, in their minds, to work on newspapers as reporters. It's insulting, in a way, when one is in the business. They don't last that long, but just the fact that they arrive is rather upsetting. Peter Worthington
Worthington is the step-father of conservative writer Danielle Crittenden, and is thereby David Frum's father-in-law.
Worthington of course has no use for academics which is why he was an FBI spy in the sixties and seventies.
In our country in the sixties the universities were the arenas of revolutionary idealism. The people who should have been defending academic freedom, the academics, were often cowed or convinced not only to tolerate the nonsense on the campuses, but to actually participate in it and in cases to lead it. The university should not be an arena for revolution, although all the revolutionaries have come from the academic world--Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Castro, Allende. I think you could state a law that common sense tends to deteriorate in direct proportion to the amount of exposure a person has to the academic environment.
Worthington was criticized when it was revealed that he had informed to the American Federal Bureau of Investigation about the suspected political sympathies of a number of his friends including June Callwood.
The value of Peters advocacy journalism well lets leave him with the last word.
But the members of the media in this country have no training whatsoever. Journalism has become trendy, it has become fashionable. All it takes to become a journalist is the nerve and the opportunity. That's how I got into it! But we have no particular skills. Most of us type with two fingers; we can't take shorthand. The greenest stenographer entering the job market has more mechanical skills than the most exalted journalist at the end of his career.
ind blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Conrad Black, Lord Black, Barbara Amiel, Peter Worthington, Toronto Sun, Canada, Chicago, Hollinger
racketeering, Radler, newspapers.
" As a child, I remember three main villains in Canada: one was Hitler, who was going to start a war - it was as inevitable as the sunrise; the second villain (not necessarily in this order) was the Treasury Board, which was depriving Canada of enough resources to get equipment for the military, to fight the threat of Hitler; and the third great villain was Mackenzie King, who was prime minister, and was not only a draft dodger in World War I, but had no sympathy and no understanding of, and no interest in, the military and as a consequence damaged Canada's future."
