A while back, you’ll recall that Ezra Levant scored a fairly significant propaganda victory when the head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, Jennifer Lynch, refused to debate him. How significant was this victory? Very, according to the resulting PollDaddy instapoll:

Look, even if you allow for audience bias, the participant numbers are significant enough for a small-audience blog that we all know: Ms. Lynch ain’t gonna be “Ms. Popularity” among her critics. And her latest attempt to defend her work hasn’t exactly worked out, resulting in more than a few inquiries as to how the CHRC is supposed to do its business.

Frankly, if I were to give advice to Ms. Lynch and the CHRC, I’d tell her that, right now, she’s going to have to do something that she’s hitherto avoided: she has to debate Ezra Levant. One on one, any show they can agree on (Steve Paikin as moderator strikes me as a good idea).

And what’s more, she’s going to have to do it on Mr. Levant’s terms. No more face time with interviewers she thinks might be sympathetic; the CTV gaffe should have taught her that sometimes they’re not. And no more attempts to manipulate the media into playing “the game” her way; in today’s Internet world, that’s a surefire way to lose audience sympathy.

No, she’s going to have to answer Mr. Levant’s questions about the CHRC and its activities, and answer them directly rather than try to stall with a few press statements. When it comes to the public discourse, the field advantage was never hers, it was Mr. Levant’s, and it was an obvious blunder to refuse to acknowledge this. From the National Post interview in question:

“We welcome this debate. We want it to be an informed debate in the right forum, a place where people can have an informed dialogue. [That place is] Parliament, and parliamentary committees. This why we did a special report to Parliament [last week]. That’s the appropriate forum,” she said in an interview.

Big mistake there, Ms. Lynch. Parliament — and parliamentary committees — aren’t the appropriate venue, because nobody except a few snack-hungry inkstains from the few parliamentary bureaus bothers to pay real attention (in order to generate a few inches of political ephemera). Furthermore, Parliament is not where the majority of your critics air their views.

No, it’s places like Facebook forums, and blogs (both commercial and private), and specialty media where the real battle for public sympathy has to take place, and it’s high time that Ms. Lynch engaged the people in charge of those new media.

And if she can’t defend her position? Well, that adds just that much more credence to Mr. Levant’s mantra of “Fire — them — all,” doesn’t it?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 20:25 and is filed under Blogging, Federal Government, Media Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.