BROADCASTS.com

b'Suppressing 9/11 Truth in the Mainstream Media, Demonizing the Messenger\\n\\u201cIt\\u2019s easy to take an issue like the 9/11 truth movement and demonize it\\u2026that happened in the election of 2008. Even though at the time it was a rising tide and growing numbers of people\\u2026 had actually rejected the official explanation and were actively looking at the evidence hoping to find out what really happened, even though that was happening, the Conservatives in that election chose to demonize those folks, and I guess I appeared to be one of them because I was willing to talk about it with respect.\\u201d\\n-Lesley Hughes\\nDuring the Canadian federal election of 2008, Lesley Hughes, overnight, went from the Liberal Party\\u2019s star candidate to a political liability.\\n\\nAn article Hughes wrote in 2002 entitled \\u201cGet the Truth\\u201d offered readers a contrarian viewpoint on the war in Afghanistan as retaliation for 9/11.\\n\\nThe anonymous blogger Black Rod, unearthed the article, conflated it into an anti-Semitic 9/11 conspiracy theory, and circulated it throughout the on-line community and the mainstream press.\\n\\nLiberal leader Stephan Dion, under pressure from B\\u2019Nai Brith, the Canadian Jewish Congress, and his political opponents, not to mention uncomfortable media scrutiny, removed the candidacy of Ms. Hughes without ever confronting her about it directly.\\n\\nHughes, humiliated, dropped off the media radar screen and spent the subsequent few months licking her wounds. She finally found herself a lawyer and launched a defamation suit against the above-named groups, as well as Conservative candidate Peter Kent, the entities she saw as most responsible for this disastrous blow to her reputation.\\n\\nIn December of last year, at the end of a four year ordeal, Hughes was finally cleared of all charges of anti-Semitism.\\n\\nWho is Lesley Hughes?\\n\\nHughes is much more than the \\u201cearnest middle-aged mother and community activist\\u201d described by National Post columnist and author Jonathan Kay in his 9/11 Truth hit-piece \\u201cAmong the Truthers.\\u201d\\n\\nLesley Hughes is a Winnipeg-based broadcast and print journalist.\\n\\nIn the province of Manitoba, she became a house-hold name as co-host of the popular morning program Information Radio, a CBC show she helmed for more than ten years.\\n\\nHer prowess as an interviewer earned her the distinction of sitting in briefly for CBC icon Peter Gzowski on the nationally broadcast Morningside, earning her praise from executive producer Patsey Pehleman for being \\u201cfresh and different.\\u201d\\n\\nOver the course of a career that has spanned more than three decades, Lesley has interviewed a multitude of global movers and shakers, including former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, humanitarian Mother Theresa, South African President Nelson Mandela, dissident intellectual Noam Chomsky, French President Francois Mitterand, and playwright Tennessee Williams to name just a few.\\n\\nShe has since contributed articles to major newspapers. She covered the 1992 Earth Summit from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil for the Globe and Mail. She reported from the World Poverty Summit in Copenhagen, and the Information Summit in Geneva. She has authored book reviews for the Winnipeg Free Press. She continues to write the back column for the distinguished Canadian organ of progressive political thought known as Canadian Dimension Magazine.\\n\\nHughes has had her work carried by Radio Denmark, Radio Antilles and the Grenadian Voice.\\n\\nHughes has been a media trainer, instructing students at the University of Winnipeg. She was designated as the University of Manitoba\\u2019s Outstanding Alumnus for Distinguished Achievement, named one of Canada\\u2019s top three columnists for a weekly community newspaper by the Canadian Community Newspaper Association, and honoured Manitoba\\u2019s Woman of the Year in Communications and Best Interviewer (Radio) by Winnipeg ACTRA among other accolades.\\n\\nThe recent court ruling has affirmed what informed people, supporters and detractors alike, know a'