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Email: "Only Morally Conservative Radio Host in Toronto Fired With no Plans to Replace Conservative Voice"

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Talk Radio Personality Michael Coren Fired by CFRB 1010 BY LifeSiteNews.com By John-Henry Westen and Hilary WhiteTORONTO, November 25, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The only morally conservative mainstream-radio talk show host in Canada’s largest city has been fired. Michael Coren whose delightfully politically incorrect and pro-life, pro-family, views have aired for years on CFRB 1010 was ousted Wednesday.ÂLifeSiteNews.com spoke with CFRB General Manager Pat Holiday about the matter. Holiday claimed that Coren’s dismissal had nothing to do with his views.“It had nothing to do with free speech or religion,” he said. Holiday admitted that Coren’s was a popular show and stressed that the dismissal was not planned.Holiday said Coren was let go after a Monday program where Coren “picked on a group of people” (fat people) and “said things you just don’t say on the radio”. On radio, added Holiday, “You can do a lot of things. What you just can’t do is take personal attacks.”ÂÂOn the program however, Coren was not picking on real people but had created a fictitious character so as to illustrate a point about the current debate on obesity. Asked later in the interview if Coren’s comments were actionable, Holiday responded, “This particular instance couldn’t be actionable because he made the person up so he was faking it on top of it. But if it was a real person, our license would be hanging out to dry right now.”Holiday said that Coren resigned rather than face the music over Monday’s broadcast. Holiday explained that the station received a deluge of complaints about Coren’s Monday show.“As soon as we asked, hey what went on Monday night? he just resigned,” Holiday related.Michael Coren refused to speak about the incident however when pressed, Coren told LifeSiteNews.com that although he finds what has happened to be quite liberating he would be “only too happy to be working at CFRB” in his former position.Asked if CFRB would fill the void at CFRB with anther socially conservative host, Holiday said, “The short answer is ‘no’ because it came out of the blue and was not planned.” Holiday continued, “we have to figure out what we’re going to do and who comes forward who would be a possible candidate for the show.”LifeSiteNews.com spoke with one of the few other morally conservative voices represented in the mainstream media in Canada about the incident. Celebrated Ottawa Citizen columnist David Warren told LifeSitenews.com that apart from the province of Alberta where conservative are represented on talk radio, the rest of Canada is virtually bereft of conservative voices. “In the rest of Canada however, for all practical purposes, the Liberals own the media and they are in trouble,” said Warren. The proudly politically incorrect columnist recalled the ousting from mainstream media in Canada fellow columnists Mark Steyn and David Frum and also the eviction of U.S. conservative radio show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger from Canadian airwaves.“So we must worry about the fate of the very few remaining dissident journalists in the country the rest have been driven out,” he said.Asked how many conservative personalities remain in Canada outside Alberta, Warren replied, “Less than a dozen. Even that is hard to calculate; because some are not sacked outright, but pushed to the margins. You get guys like Rory Lieshman who was a weekly columist and has been turned in [sic] into a monthly or less. If you want to reduce the presence of political dissidents in media, you sack them outright. You get them scaled back to 1/20th of the space with the assumption they will quit or go to the States.”To POLITELY express concerns to Pat Holiday:holiday@cfrb.com http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/only-morally-conservative-radio-host-in-toronto-fired-with-no-plans-to-repl/

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