Margaret Atwood's tweets spark debate

Seventy-year-old Margaret Atwood, one of Canada’s most cherished literary icons, recently signed a petition and generated some controversy... and the heated tweets that followed on Twitter between the author and David Akin, Sun Media's Ottawa bureau chief have made headlines everywhere.

Here’s the back story: Atwood recently added her name to a U.S.-based petition to stop a new Sun Media all-news network from hitting Canadian airwaves. She joins more than 45,000 people who have signed the petition on Avaaz.org, who claim that the new network will be run by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's former top aide and will be funded with money coming from cable television fees. They have also stated that “Harper is trying to push American-style hate media onto our air waves, and make us all pay for it. His plan is to create a ‘Fox News North’ to mimic the kind of hate-filled propaganda with which Fox News has poisoned U.S. politics.”

Last Wednesday Atwood, who is primarily against the idea of Harper interfering with news reporting on the network as well as cable TV picking up the tab, tweeted: “we shouldn’t B Forced to Pay for it, & CRTC chair should be arms’ length, not Harper tool. Fox free 2 set itself up.”

“Of course Fox & Co. can set up a channel or whatever they want to do, if it's legal etc.,” she told The Globe and Mail in an email. “But it shouldn't happen this way. It's like the head-of-census affair – gov't direct meddling in affairs that are supposed to be arm's length – so do what they say or they fire you.

“It's part of the ‘I make the rules around here,’ Harper-is-a-king thing.”

CRTC hearings on Sun TV News are to begin November 19th.