The Trudeau government’s unequivocal support for Israel’s right to “self-defence” is exposing the hypocrisy behind Canada’s magnanimous brand. There is simply no nuance to Ottawa’s statements: it fully stands behind the forces that are destroying hospitals, uprooting hundreds of thousands, and espousing genocidal rhetoric.
I mean, I think Canadian Dimension themselves would admit that they are on the far left of the political spectrum. But that’s not a bad thing per se. I want to see a spectrum of perspectives in the media, so long as those perspectives are factual and in good faith (which many on the far right are not).
I do find their reporting to be lower quality and less factual than other left leaning sources, like Fair.org or Current Affairs. So this seems like a fair assessment to me.
The key part to recognize is that every position has an inherent bias to it, and just because a particular position happens to be mainstream doesn’t make it less biased. Canadian Dimension is on the far left of Canadian politics, however it can be argued that the reason for that is that Canadian political mainstream is biased towards the right.
In general, these labels aren’t terribly useful and they’re just used to dismiss information without actually engaging with the content. It’s much better to point out the cases when reporting is not factual, and to address them specifically regardless of where a source leans politically.
So, if people want to raise disagreements with the content of the article in the submission that’s great. However smearing it is just engaging in anti intellectual behavior.
I do agree with you that MapleEngineer is being silly. You can’t just dismiss Canadian Dimension because it’s “on the left”. Frankly, the best Canadian journalism is on the left, including The Tyee, The Narwhal, Canadaland, Literary Review of Canada, etc.
That said, I think these labels can be useful. I doubt you would object so strongly if someone pointed out that Rebel News is far right. If I didn’t know what Rebel News was, I would consider that useful information. I would sooner say that reality has a left leaning bias than deny that a news source is left leaning.
Right, there’s no problem with saying something is on the left or on the right. The two observations I’m making is that what we consider to be the centre is relative to our culture, and that sites like media bias are themselves inherently biased.
For example, around 90% of young people in China identify with Marxism. So, what would be considered political centre in China would be considered far left in Canada. And this highlights how silly it is to rely on such labels when deciding whether a particular position is reasonable or extreme.