Harper and the Media

Aficionados of my political views know that whenever a problem rears its ugly head, I look to the media.

Want to know why global warming is not on the agenda? Ask the media. Want to know why we have gay marriage? Ask the media. Want to know why Canadians believe health care has been in urgent crisis only in the 3 months before each election? Ask the media.

The media sets the agenda, tells us what’s cool. It tells us who is the voice of reason and who is a “special interest group”. The media is extremely important.

In order to have an effective Canadian society we need to have a diverse media, one that questions all the issues, raises all the points of view, and that has reasonable diversity in editorial control and opinion. If you don’t have this, then the media becomes big brother and skews the agenda. In the extreme you have the american media where liberal has ceased to be a position and has become an epithet. If the media does not question everything (either because it can’t or won’t) then we lose the basis of our democracy.

The media in this country has already been eviscerated by years of mergers and acquisitions. There are fewer editorial boards than ever, and many are under the thumb of right wing editors. Despite the fact that the news media are hugely right wing, Conservative supporters continue to whine that the Toronto Star and the CBC are unfair to them, and in fact that the media in general has it out for them¹.

All of this is secondary to what Harper’s new view of the media is. Harper believes the media should basically reprint what he says verbatim, and should not ask tough questions. He now has descended to the point where he believes questions should be asked only by his crony reporters who will not embarass him. He apparently does not realize that politics is about communicating your message and ideas to the people. Where is the sense of openness and accountability he promised us in the last election?

Yesterday, two dozen or so parliamentary reporters walked out of his press conference. They did so after refusing to sign a list from which “authorized reporters” would be selected by Harper handlers for question-asking rights. Harper announced that since no-one was on the list, no-one would ask questions. The best coverage of this event is here².

The Toronto Star, long a Harper-bashing paper³, did not walk out. Here are the comments from their bureau chief (reprinted on a Toronto Star blog). It explains the role and benefits (to journalists and politicians) of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. The comments are interesting too.

This is all going to be very damaging to Harper. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. His attempts to muzzle the media are highly offensive to me (see also the exclusion of reporters from covering military coffins, an aping of the U.S common practise… beacon of light that it is in this regard.) Really, though, it is a problem that will take care of itself. Much is being made right now that Harper could cruise to a majority. Of course he can, who would be running against him? It will be much more interesting to see what happens in the fall.

ETA: There is good material, with lots of interesting links, in this blog entry.

¹If you believe this, you should check the facts (look at the cumulative report) that shows Martin vs. Harper).

²Note that this Calgary-based source was Harper-biased during the election as per note 1.

³According to note 1, the Star really was egregious for this.

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› normative     2006-05-25 15:42   ...1