My bias keeps showing... (Part 1)

So, my beloved right-wing think tank the Fraser Institute put out a research paper accusing the CBC of being 'anti-American.' I'm a big fan of their work so I decided to see how they came up with this conclusion.

The first sentence of the executive summary reads:

There are many sources of anti-Americanism in Canada, from specific and conflicting interests over trade to symbolic issues such as health care. The former we call “rational” criticism; the latter, “emotional.”

Already, both types are considered anti-American? Is there any criticism that isn't then? But that's not the issue, right? Ok, let's read on. They discuss Northrop Frye and his 'garrison mentality' concept as a way to explain the Canadian myth as identity and how part of it's about being anti-American blah blah blah and how that's a hegemonic identity from the Laurentian region (i.e. Ontario and Quebec) and not representative of the rest of the country blah blah blah...anti-American Lite...blah blah blah...Oh, and we get to this wonderful sentence:

it is also why Easterners speak of “Western alienation,” although few westerners consider themselves alien or alienated. The use of the term, thus, is by intention deprecatory.

Is it just me, or isn't talk of 'western alienation' only coming from people like Stephen Harper and the CA/Reform/CPC or anyone who feels that Ottawa's not 'listening to them'? If they don't feel alienated, then where did the whole 'Alberta should build a firewall, separating them from the rest of the country' premise come from? But I digress, because there's no place for regionalism here, right? Moving onto the thesis statement:

We would like to determine whether, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, views critical of the United States reflect chiefly a rational criticism of America based on reasonable differences in interests with respect to policy questions or whether they are more a reflection of the emotional anxieties of the garrison mentality.

But according to them, both are anti-American anyways, so why categorize them differently? Ignore the contradiction, you say? Ok.

To gauge the anti-American sentiment in Canadian media, we examine one year’s coverage of the CBC’s flagship news program, The National.

Already, it's assumed that the Canadian media is anti-American by default and we're only analysing the level. Otherwise, shouldn't the question be, "Is there anti-American sentiment in Canadian media?" Anyways, two independent researchers looked through a year's (2002) worth and performed a qualitative analysis on the view of America in every news story.

They found that over 225 stories and 2283 statements, 49.1% were neutral, 34% were negative, 15.4% were positive and 1.6% were ambiguous. We'll ignore the fact that their percentages add up to 100.1%. I'm not that petty...

BUT the best part is that their results don't even relate to their thesis statement. At no point in their discussion of percentages did they differentiate between 'rational' and 'emotional' criticism. Both were viewed as 'negative' and hence anti-American. So they try to misdirect the reader and pretend to distinguish and categorize between genuine criticism and inflammatory ones when they had no intention in the first place. If you just read the newspiece, you'd think that they would put the 'rational' criticisms in the neutral categories...but no, they don't. But then, I guess I could've summed this whole piece in one word:

BULLSHIT.

Anyways, if you want to read some point-by-point critiques, read below...