Confirm Your Own Beliefs

“If you want to know what’s going on in your country look outside it. If nothing else, it will Confirm your own beliefs and knowledge”.

Boy, those are some very powerful words that contain a lot of meaning.

These words were left as a comment by one of our devout readers recently. I beg the author’s forgiveness, but I just had to repeat them. I would also like to thank him for inspiring this article.

As the saying goes, truer words were never spoken.

The context of this statement was in reference to local media and the often biased way in which the political happenings of our country are portrayed on a daily basis. It’s a fact that any event can be spun to make the public think or feel a certain way about it. We see it all the time in the advertising world when a negative is spun into a positive.

“Orange juice NOT from concentrate, 40 cents a glass, orange juice FROM concentrate, 18 cents a glass. Now that’s hardly a fair comparison is it?” Here’s a news flash folks, FROM concentrate is not as good as the 40 cent juice.

Dodge, Chrysler. “If you can find a better car, buy it.” Well, there are lots of better cars out there. It’s not really that difficult to find one. Just about any Honda, Toyota or Nissan will do.

The point is, the corporate world recognized the value of spinning a tale a long time ago. Many of our politicians come from the corporate world. You make the connection.

Like every good ad man, every politician knows full well that perception is reality.

You can stop Canadian citizens from hopping a plane in St. John’s or Montreal if you tell the world they are a potential risk. You don’t have to tell anyone that this person may only be a risk to the political career of a particular MP because he is speaking out for constituents in that member’s riding. (Just an example of course, but I don’t doubt it will happen eventually and probably to someone just like me.)

Paul Martin can be the Finance Minister, in essence the Chief Financial Officer of Canada, for years while millions and millions of tax dollars are siphoned off to private interests in Quebec and into Liberal party coffers. None of that matters as long as he pleads his innocence in a nation wide address and lets an inquiry go ahead.

The CFO of Enron went to court. Paul Martin went to 24 Sussex Drive.

Who do we depend on for our information and “spin” when it comes to political reporting? For the most part we depend on CBC coverage. The CBC is known for covering everything from Parliament to foreign affairs, domestic issues and political conventions. Yes sir, the most comprehensive political coverage in the country. Never mind the fact that it’s funded by the federal government and by extension, the leading party of the day.

Where else do people turn? Well, there are always newspapers like the Globe and Mail or the National Post. Of course these almost always turn every story into a commentary on the way the two largest provinces in the country are affected rather than the impact on the entire country.

How about local stations? There might be some value in these, but most carry little or no national news items.

Add to this the fact that most newspaper and television media outlets are run by major corporations who tend to support one political party or another and you can see why the statement I led this article with rings so true: “If you want to know what’s going on in your country look outside it. If nothing else, it will confirm your own beliefs and knowledge”.

The comment which contained this gem suggested using the wonderful technology at our command today. Satellite, internet, short wave radio or any other means to see what people in other countries were saying about us. After all, what could the BBC, the London Times or for that matter even the Elbonian Tattler, have to gain from slanting Canadian news?

It’s something to think about.

It might also be a good exercise to step outside ourselves even within our individual provinces. From time to time news stories about local matters do hit the national or international services. Usually it’s in the form of a commentary rather than a straight story, but never the less it is often very interesting to see how we are viewed by the rest of the country and around the world.

We may not always like what we see when we look in the mirror. We may not always agree with what is said about us, but isn’t it better to hear what is perceived by many to be the truth than to simply accept what is being spoon fed to us by the mainstream media?

In the words of a Motown classic: “Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.”

Inspired by Expatriat