Wolves who cry wolf shouldn't be believed

Here's some more coverage of the Canadian Human Rights Commission in the National Post today by Marni Soupcoff and Jonathan Kay.

Good points, but their columns rest on a common weakness: they're taking at face value the CHRC's claims about anonymous Internet websites and e-mails.

Normally, that's the sort of thing you have to do in journalism, as in life -- if someone says they received a bigoted e-mail, you generally believe them, because for someone to lie about such a thing is unusual -- and the sign of some sort of psychological malady. I, too, would have believed that the CHRC's Ian Fine received the bigoted e-mails he describes, and I even would have believed that Richard Warman was threatened by a man in the U.S. named Bill White.

But after last month's day-long hearing, where we learned that the CHRC regularly confects such bigoted comments themselves and goes to great (and sometimes illegal) lengths to hide their tracks, I just can't take any claims from the CHRC or Warman seriously that rely on Internet comments, the provenance of which cannot be independently verified.

Fine's list of e-mails can be dismissed out of hand -- he doesn't even give us their date or nominal sender, let alone an e-mail "header" that would permit the beginning of an independent verification. And the "Bill White" Internet site -- well, let's just say that Mr. White, who has never been seen in body, only online, has come in handy on quite a few occasions for the CHRC and Warman, such as when Warman and the Canadian Jewish Congress tried to get the Canadian government to permit them to block foreign websites from Canadian Internet users.

It may well be that the e-mails to Fine were sent by someone other than his own staff. And it may well be that there is somebody named Bill White who is not just another sock puppet for Warman, Dean Steacy and others. It could be. And, with any other group of people, that would be the normal thing to assume. But we're long past the point where the CHRC can be regarded as normal, and where their statements -- even under oath -- can be believed without independent verification.