Good News! Globe & Mail Editorialist Margaret Wente Shares With Us All That Global Warming Is ON HOLD

Some of you must have noticed my several spurning comments on The Gob & Pail.
First read Palango's quote at http://www.greenparty.ca/en/blogs/7/2008-12-22/i-k... . Now from the last reference at that link, "pp. 402-409", specifically on that presumptuous national rag at which author Palango was prominently employed & subsequently ousted, (and I don't know how young Mark is, but the particular shift Palango relates occurred much longer ago than a year, and also do consider that the "balance" you mention should from a Green perspective have little to do with merely apparent evenhanded approach between Libs. & Cons., mostly two sides of the same coin that real dissent wants to exchange for better coinage):

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But to fully understand how difficult it was for Canadians to learn the truth [...] one must first appreciate that not only the RCMP, but also important voices in the media, had been brought under effective political control.

By the mid-nineties, the Canadian media had fallen under the same neo-conservative spell and had come to suffer from the same malaise --- an all-encompassing focus on the bottom line, at least on the surface. Inside newsrooms something more nefarious was going on. There was all but universal support for right-wing politics and politicians.

[...] in 1984, the leading newspaper in Canada [...] self-described national newspaper
[... its] guiding principle [...] suggested [their] journalists brought a sense of independence to their work and that their ultimate focus was the defence of the public interest. It was not a pretty newspaper, but it was powerful, a must read for the social, business, and political elite as well as those who cared about the important issues of the day. [It] saw itself as a newspaper of record and to that end covered the institutions of power in depth. It constantly tried to probe beneath the superficiality of every day politics and business in search of important stories. The paper strived to be a vehicle for informed and thoughtful commentary. To that end, it was the engine that set the agenda for news coverage across Canada.

Many thought that the paper was too conservative because of its readership base, while those in power thought it was too liberal. [...]

In 1978, [... its] owner [...] signalled the pending transformation of newspapers in the country when he hired [...] as publisher [... a] registered industrial accountant [...] no previous experience in journalism. [...] It was a calling he really did not seem to understand. [...]He did not appreciate the need for the layers of brain power required to achieve excellence.

[...] It was his view that the news department was a cost centre to be tolerated, not encouraged.

[...] squeezed the budget for news gathering in favour of business coverage and fluffy, glossy magazines.

The newspaper's editor-in-chief was Norman Webster and its managing editor, Geoffrey Stevens. Together they mounted a subtle, guerilla warfare campaign against the publisher and his wishes. During their tenure, from late 1982 to 1989, [it] continued to excel at and even expand its capacity to uncover hidden stories which inevitably blossomed into major controversies. [...lists seven groundbreaking journalists & some of their important work...]

[...] good at making waves and getting to the real stories about how Canada really worked.[...]

The journalistic successes did not count for much with [the publisher...] reporters and editors were regularly smeared by right-wing commentators and members of the Canadian establishment for being "too left-wing". The allegations were both unfair and untrue.

In late 1988 and early 1989 [...] got rid of Webster, then Stevens. [...]chose an ultra right-wing intellectual [...] to become [...] editor-in-chief. [...] never worked as a reporter.

[...] challenged one of the traditional tenets of an independent newspaper: "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

"Why would we want to afflict anyone?" [...]"Many of my own friends are comfortable."

[...] advent of the "good-news story,[...] offset "all the negativism" in the newspapers. By its very nature, news is about change and change usually involves conflict. Good-news stories are more often than not the antithesis of news, manufactured to take up space that might be better used for stories in the public interest. As longtime [...] reporter, editor, and columnist Murray Campbell once put it, ever so dryly, the news was about to become "less facts intensive."

[...ed.-in-chief] such a right-wing polemicist that [...] Trent Frayne [...] said "he dragged sand."[...] one of only a handful of Canadian journalists invited to attend the Bilderberg Conference. He proudly admitted to being a confidant of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney --- "I talk to him just about every day."

[Author Paul Palango attends an off-the-record meeting with senior news editors and the editorial board, something usually avoided for preference to be "on the record":] We all sat in a circle that day. Mulroney was directly across from me. For an hour Mulroney charmed everyone with his gravelly voice and humourous anecdotes as he defended his decision to implement freer trade with the United States. Near the end of the session [the ed.-in-chief] noticed that I had --- uncharacteristically --- not said anything. He asked me if I had any thoughts. I did.

"I have studied your government and the statements by you and your colleagues, and I only have one question: Who in your government speaks for Canada?" I asked.

Mulroney glowered at me and then broke into a smile, as if to say, "Who is this guy?" By his facial expressions, I sensed he was making a mental note about me. He laughed and joked but never answered the question.

The next day, his friend and confidant Sam Wakim called me out of the blue. "So I see you met Brian yesterday...." It was clear by the brief conversation with Wakim that I had entered dangerous territory --- once again.

[...ed.-in-chief one day] paid me a not-unexpected visit in my office and closed the door behind him. He began to upbraid me for [certain devastating] coverage, which I had supervised. It had run daily for almost a month.

"You took twenty-two straight days to do that story, when it could have taken three," [...] "You deliberately tortured the [Ontario Peterson] government."

The "torture" phrase was an interesting one because it had come from one of our inside sources to Premier Peterson during a conversation in the midst of the series. I could only imagine where [ed.-in-chief] had gotten it.

"We just followed the story where it took us. I'm sorry it was so effective," was all I had to say.

My career at [Gob in Pail] was soon over, as were the careers of many others. As was the case in most industries of the day, an entire cohort of wise, knowledgeable, and experienced reporters and editors were soon shown the door through buyouts and not-so-subtle coercion.

[...tells of demise of two other notable journalists there...]

By the nineties, fear of litigation trumped investigative journalism in the new world of corporate journalism. The media became averse to ground-breaking, sometimes controversial, storytellling, even though there was much to report.

One reason for this was that despite decades of protests, and the findings and recommendations of public inquiries, both the Mulroney and Chrétien governments refused to intervene as media concentration in the country became more intense. The neo-conservative agenda was that the stock market should decide which enterprises live and die. Advocates of the primacy of the stock market like to argue that the system puts control in the hands of the many rather than the few, but the opposite is true. With interlinked boards of directors, a very few can effectively control just about everything in an economy, most important the supposedly free media. Before long, every major enterprise in the country, with the exception of the publicly-owned CBC, had become part of a publicly-traded conglomerate.

Who was being allowed to buy up the media and control it? [my emphasis here:]It was the very same individuals whom Mulroney had appointed in 1992 as privy councillors to honour Canada's 125th year. [...mentions names & connexions...]

All these business tycoons running the Canadian news business were part of a cozy, powerful club, [mine again:] privy to official secrets and sworn to keep them.

[...] Successive governments had reduced the CBC's budgets, making it more and more difficult [...] to undertake the kind of in-depth work for which it had become renowned.

There was even an attempt to shut down the fifth estate and create a show that was flashier and more upbeat, but that show failed. Like everything else being privatized during the time, the ultra-conservatives were advocating that the CBC should be sold off to "level the playing field" for the massive commercial stations, who had shown little interest or proclivity for disinterested public interest journalism.

A final step in the devolution of quality disinterested journalism was the tight controls placed on newsrooms, not only in their budgets, but also in the pursuit, organization, and presentation of the news. The stated intention of redesigning newspapers was to attract a new generation of readers and more women. The net effect was smaller newspapers with less news content in rigid formats. There was a place for everything and everything in its place, if approved.

There were two particularly insidious developments during this period. The first was overt management of news by corporations and government: controlling the message. By its very definition, controlling the message is about limiting debate or criticism by bypassing the filter of quality journalism. Reporters were expected to be stenographers --- which many of them became --- particularly in the cloistered confines of parliamentary bureaus. It became routine for those who dared breach the protocol to be cut off from information or even ostracized.

The second way was the way columnists began to be treated. For example, in the past, in newspapers, a columnist could drive an issue for days on end to the point where the public would have time to consider and reflect upon what was being said. Under the above-described Thorsell rule, three days was more than enough for any story, no matter how large, and even that was rarely done. Newspapers were more than eager to change the subject for government to the point where the cynical political manipulators could expect that no story would be more than a predictable flap that soon would be overtaken by other news --- sometimes manufactured --- and then all but forgotten.

In its place a system developed in which the media became filled with the opinions of commentators in the artificial pursuit of balance. Whereas a columnist like Michael Valpy all but brought down the David Peterson government with a stinging series [referred to above], by the mid-nineties few columnists in the country were allowed to write on consecutive days or about the same subject for any period of time. Enforced variety and the appearance of balance blunted the reach and effect of public interest journalists. It became all but impossible to hear what the few dedicated, disinterested writers had to say, lost in the cacophony of shouting voices --- some of them propagandists with hidden political agendas --- from all sides of the political spectrum.

The media, therefore, had become organized in an entirely ironic fashion. The publicly financed Canadian Broadcast Corporation was often attacked for being in the pocket of government when it had a proven track record of non-partisanship. Meanwhile, the significantly larger private media --- supposedly free of government influence --- was, with a few exceptions, transformed into a stenographers' pool for the use of government and politicians. [...]

In the private media, investigative reporting had become a dying art.
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Quite the contrast with, for example, something I noted in passing, "One item was a local community newspaper's two-page (!) spread on Paul Hellyer's local recruitment for his new Action Canada party decades ago."

To see how bad it has gotten at the paper in question, see articles linked from my "Wente gone bananas; Simpson loses his bearings", at http://www.greenparty.ca/en/node/3409#comment-8132 .

But old journalism is under stress from many quarters. See Simpson's Lament.

Of course so much more to say, but better stop, for how many readers have even made it this far...(the journalistic problem being of a piece with a broader generational one)?