'The Steyn Affair' According to the Ceej

The Ceej updates us on the status of its Steyn snit:

We are writing to you today to update you on the status of Mark Steyn’s false claims concerning Canadian Jewish Congress.

On April 23, we emailed you to inform you that, in his April 12 Maclean’s column, Mr. Steyn falsely claimed that Canadian Jewish Congress had taken a variety of positions directly against the interests of Canada’s Jewish community. In fact, Mr. Steyn had attributed a lengthy quotation from an editorial published in the Mississauga News to Canadian Jewish Congress. That editorial is posted in the “Articles of Interest” section of our website, along with hundreds of other articles from dozens of publications.

Canadian Jewish Congress contacted the editors of Maclean’s, which subsequently printed a statement of regret and clarification for this careless misattribution. Maclean’s also printed Congress’s own letter to the editor. You can read both the apology and our letter to the editor here.

In a subsequent column in last week’s issue of Maclean’s, Mr. Steyn defends his initial column by stating that he “assumed” that the Mississauga News editorial “possibly” belonged to a “Mississauga branch office” of Canadian Jewish Congress. Canadian Jewish Congress has no Mississauga branch office.

Canadian Jewish Congress has been posting “Articles of Interest” on our website for approximately fifteen years. Mr. Steyn is the first “journalist” ever to attribute those articles to the CJC. Preposterously, he is also the first to insist that such misattributions are accurate.

It is unfortunate that Mr. Steyn bases his writing on assumptions rather than research – or even a simple Google search. Fact checking is a basic journalistic practice to which Mr. Steyn apparently does not subscribe. The National Post’s Chris Selley has been the only independent journalist to write about this story, calling Steyn’s explanation “astoundingly disingenuous.” You can read Mr. Selley’s short piece on the Steyn Affair here.

Unlike Mr. Steyn, Canadian Jewish Congress does not have the benefit of a weekly column in a major magazine to advance our views. We therefore urge our community members to treat Mr. Steyn’s writings with a great deal of skepticism. Mr. Steyn’s own lack of professionalism during this episode suggests that he will continue to mislead his readers with respect to this and other matters.

Yeah, the Ceej is just sooooo "professional." Its, er, clarification suggests it will continue to mislead Jewry with respect to this and other matters, including the distressing fact that we Jews can no longer depend on state censorship, the "human rights" racket or even the police to protect us from the bad guys (other than former Wehrmacht geezers equipped with black Sharpies), since the bad guys have been granted "victim" status, too.

Put that in your snit and smoke it, Bernie.