It seems that the Calgary Herald is the only media organization some corporate executives will talk to when it comes to the news stories they'd rather not talk about.

This convoluted fact goes a long way to explaining why, even though the last link between that newspaper and downtown Calgary is about to fall, it makes little difference because the ties that mattered were severed ages ago. And not just in Calgary.

The narrative of Canada's role in the Afghan civil war as told by the country's mainstream media is designed to lead readers and viewers to two inescapable conclusions:

First, that after 10 years, Canada's involvement in the conflict has come to a definitive end.

Second, that thanks to the efforts and sacrifices of Canada's troops, at least 157 of whom have died with scores more maimed physically and mentally, the West has triumphed unconditionally in Afghanistan.

Alas, the balance of probability is high that both these yarns are baloney.

It is equally likely that the people spinning these Afghan fairy tales know very well they are not true, and that they are designed principally to serve the political needs of the country's Conservative government.

Long before the full radioactive magnitude of the Japanese seismic crisis was known, the news agency with the appropriately doom-laden appellation Postmedia News swiftly published a story assuring readers that atomic energy is really, really safe, especially the way it's likely to be generated in Canada.

The inexorable decline of the Canadian newspaper business continues, well, inexorably, as the new owners of the delightfully named Postmedia News set about trimming the deadwood from their regional newspapers by offering buyouts to aging and expensive employees.

If this effort at "rightsizing" is like those in the past -- and of course it will be -- the "deadwood" trimmed will be the most solid planks in the vessel, the ones keeping Postmedia's foundering ship barely afloat.