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Sunday, February 08, 2009

Is The Mainstream Media Bias or Simply Negligent?

It’s a question I’ve been pondering more and more in recent years.

Examples of structural problems in today’s media are as easy to find these days as snowflakes on a January morning in Winnipeg.

Before Christmas television news outlets were all too willing to spoon feed the public snippets of Conservative MPs referring to a potential Liberal-NDP coalition as a “Coup” or calling the actions of the opposition “illegal” or “immoral”. They were far less willing to clarify those partisan words by informing the public that the position espoused was untrue, non-factual and an out and out lie.

The Canadian Parliamentary system is designed to permit exactly the sort of coalition that was being contemplated but unless the viewer had already informed him or herself of this fact the media was not about to take on that job.

Another example now being splashed across the front pages across Canada is the ongoing battle between Ottawa and Newfoundland & Labrador over the Atlantic Accord.

On the surface it might seem that a great deal of attention is being paid to this particular dust up but in realty very few of the facts have ever seen the light of day.

The act of ignoring the underlying facts of any news story in Canada today has become more than simply an annoying weakness of the media. It’s seemingly become a pre-requisite for every news agency and one that threatens the ability of the electorate to make informed decisions about the direction their Country takes on any issue.

With the introduction of the Harper “fiscal stimulus” package the gloves have once again come off between the Province and Ottawa. The attack dogs have been loosed on the Province’s population by Parliament Hill and predictably the Canadian media, in its never ending quest for an attention grabbing quote, even at the expense of the facts, has missed the point of the story entirely.

Every day another headline screams, “Danny Chavez is at it again”, referring of course to Newfoundland and Labrador Premier, Danny Williams. It’s a term that the media has happily adopted to compare the Premier to Venezuelan dictator, Hugo Chavez.

The fact that Mr. Williams is not a dictator at all but is in fact a duly elected leader in Canada who enjoys an 80% approval rating doesn’t seem to matter. The fact that his continued approval by the electorate means he is doing what his constituents expect him to do matter not. Instead of being depicted as a responsive leader, regardless of his approach to specific issues, he is tarred as a dictator.

The easy surface comparison sells papers. The truth doesn’t.

The television networks incessantly play clips of Mike Duffy, formerly one of their own who was recently awarded a Senate seat for his less than unbiased coverage during the last federal election, attacking two Premiers, NL’s Williams and PEI’s Ghiz for saying that the federal budget will have a damaging impact on the Province.

No attempt is made to find out if the claim is true or not. The attacks sell advertising time. The truth does not.

Pundits and editorialists are all too happy to perpetuate the biases and talking points of federal politicians as they rally to defend “all Canadians” from the greedy and demanding people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

One can only assume from their position that Canada’s 30 million souls are in extreme danger from the 500 thousand people in Newfoundland and Labrador, a place that it seems must not be a part of the Country if Canadians need to be defended from its actions.

The news media finds easy to preface every sentence related to the $1.6 Billion dollars involved in the dispute with the tag line, “according to Mr. Williams the federal budget will…”. It would be far harder and require much more effort to actually investigate whether the Province is truly being targeted by the Conservative government or not.

This approach to informing, or more accurately, misinforming the public tells us far more about the mainstream media itself than it does about any story they might be covering on a given day.

It tells us, or ought to tell us, that most reporters, editors and news managers are not in the business of reporting the facts but of producing a steady diet of ready to eat, easy to digest, fluff for the sole purpose of attracting a larger audience and, as a direct result, securing more of those lucrative advertising dollars that pay their salaries.

I challenge anyone who has followed the ongoing battle between Ottawa and the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador over the past 3 governments (one Liberal and two Conservative) to think of a single mainstream news outlet, be it the Globe and Mail, National Post, CBC or CTV that has actually taken on the task of investigating the situation thoroughly and reporting the facts behind the headlines.

It isn’t easy is it?

Personally I can’t think of a single one that has been willing to move past the political rhetoric on both sides of the argument, go directly to the bean counting bureaucrats who manage the day to day operations of both the federal and provincial finance departments and actually investigate the story as most Canadians assume reporters are supposed to do.

Not one.

Instead these so called “news” agencies now serve as little more than a venue for the regurgitation of whatever they are told by politicians with a vested interest in the situation and, in the case of national media outlets, more often than not that means providing the public with a daily diet of spin provided by partisan staffers and Federal MPs.

Recently Newfoundland and Labrador MP, Judy Foote, who was the first “uncooperative” MP to be dubbed “the Newfoundland Six” by the media for their refusal to support the budget vote, sent me an email in which she summed up the struggle taking place inside the Liberal caucus and on Parliament hill generally over the Accord issue.

According to Ms. Foote, “One of the problems in Ottawa is getting people to understand the seriousness of the situation. I can talk until I am blue in the face…”

Her words belie her frustration.

When she sent that email, which was before Michael Ignatieff gave his Newfoundland and Labrador caucus a so called “free pass”, Ms. Foote was frustrated at a situation where she had been unable to make her fellow MPs understand that the legislation they were about to pass would have dire consequences for her Province and her people and set a bad precedent across the Country.

Ms Foote’s words also convey a general lack of knowledge within federal political circles, not only over the impact of the budget in the region, but of the Newfoundland and Labrador’s place in Canada.

With the media blindly relaying the uninformed position of federal political figures, is it any wonder Danny Williams could only find one Canadian Premier, from PEI, who was willing to stand up and support his Province’s position, a move that led to the political hatchet job delivered by Senator Duffy in is maiden address to the Red Chamber.

Perhaps American comedian and SNL Alumnus, Al Franken, said it the best when he said, “The biases the media has are much bigger than conservative or liberal. They're about getting ratings, about making money, about doing stories that are easy to cover.”

Those words do not just convey a problem within the media itself but foreshadow a situation that has the potential to affect the direction of the entire Nation.

Is it surprising that the general public across Canada has so easily adopted the misguided belief that the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador is acting as a dictator, that the people are simply greedy and that the Province wants to have their cake and eat it too?

It isn’t.

That’s a story far easier to deliver and for the public to digest than one that identifies the inequities, political games, partisanship, lies, propaganda and systemic unfairness that is an everyday reality of the Canadian federation today.

The stories making the headlines may be easy to accept and they may sell papers but do they really serve the best interests of the public who must ultimately make the decision on the direction their Country should take?

6 comments:

Chrystal Ocean said...

"Most reporters, editors and news managers are not in the business of reporting the facts but of producing a steady diet of ready to eat, easy to digest, fluff for the sole purpose of attracting a larger audience."

Am with you on the level of frustration with our media but disagree on two points.

First, that reporters are in any way responsible for this mess. Most reporters, including (investigative) journalists, do what they were trained to do: report on the facts while diligent to keep out of their reports their personal bias. Owners, publishers and editors are the ones to blame for the end result, the junk we get at our doors, in "news" stands, on TV and radio, etc. What reporters submit to their editors is seldom what we end up with. (It must be very, very hard to be a reporter/journalist in these times.)

Second, you ask in the title of your post "Is The Mainstream Media Bias[ed] or Simply Negligent?".

You appear to have answered "negligent." My answer is "biased."

For example, CanWest Global Communications Inc. (the media conglomerate owned by the Aspers) does little to hide the fact that the Aspers favour the Harper Conservatives. CanWest has been likened to Fox "News" - just as the latter is the mouthpiece for the US Republicans, so the CanWest media group is the propaganda organ of the Conservative Party of Canada. The bias and deliberate failure to report the facts rather than rumour and innuendo has been so blatant at times that it's been impossible to ignore.

NL-ExPatriate said...

If you have ever read teh British tabloids there is a striking similarity. At the very least a trend developing.

AS for Duffy and CTV well it is simply a matter of which party will benefit your business the most, and since harper wants to get rid of the CBC which would eliminate one of CTV's competitors well the writing is and was on the wall for that one for a long time.

As of late I have been spamming what is basically the same truth in and around all of the forums and commentaries I possibly could.

The thing that I noticed is that our story gets a better reception from foreign readers than it does in our supposed own country.

It is like I've always said with reference to the Supreme court of canada, we will never get our views, concerns, issues, disputes expressed or addressed by the SCC because like everything in canada is is stacked with Upper/Lower canada majority.

If we are ever to get any fairness with our grievances it will be necessary to take it to a international audience and international court.

Didn't anyone besides me take exception to Mike Duffy making disparaging remarks about Joey Smallwood and the Uppper Churchill contract?

When anyone who is informed on the subject knos it was a conflict of interest on the part of Hydro Quebec.

Just like any MP you elect to a National PROXY party of Upper/Lower canada majority is and will always be in a conflict of interest in defending the national PROXY parties line as opposed to the 1.5% who elected him or her to that same national PROXY party.

You have no one to blame but your selves for doing the same thing ove rand over and expecting a different result.

NL-ExPatriate said...

Liberal, or Conservative whatever it doesn't matter what national party you elect MP's to they are all the same when you belong to a minority prov in this phoney federation. All of the national parties have to work within the same tyranny of the majority system where in order to win power you need to be on the good side of the majority and the majority in this confederation live in Ontario and Quebec. 66% to be exact and further to that some 50%of the canadian population live in the urban cities none of which count from our province. You must be delusional if you think any national party will go to bat for 1.5% of the population and that includes the MP's you elect to those same national parties. Sure we don't even comprise the margin of error in the polls which is usually 3%. It isn't the national parties we need to change as we have seen it is the political system of Democratic Discrimination against the minority provinces by all of the national parties in favor of vote buying in the majority provinces. You could be playing this game till the cows come home of electing one or the other national proxy parties for ON/QU and expecting a different result it is time to stop the insanity. These are all symptoms the real root cause of our place in confederation is our lack of equality. If you really want to send a message to the confederation and have your elected MP's stand up for you tell them to cross the floor and stand up as Newfoundland and Labrador First MP's. As for defeating the budget it can only be done with the Liberals or in the Senate that is assuming Iggy doesn't tell the Liberal senators to pass it Like Dion did. So much for sober second thought. The senate is nothing but an extension of the systemically flawed HOC Per Capita Colonialism.

EQUALITY OR EXIT!

Starrigan said...

We all know it's a numbers game when it comes to our system of government and that's never going to change. What really angers me is the willingness of the Canadian public to accept the vomit that is fed to them by the media. Even if they were presented with the truth I don't think the average Canadian would even bother to consider it.

Ussr said...

The news media finds easy to preface every sentence related to the $1.6 Billion dollars involved in the dispute with the tag line, “according to Mr. Williams the federal budget will…”. It would be far harder and require much more effort to actually investigate whether the Province is truly being targeted by the Conservative government or not.

This approach to informing, or more accurately, misinforming the public tells us far more about the mainstream media itself than it does about any story they might be covering on a given day.

It tells us, or ought to tell us, that most reporters, editors and news managers are not in the business of reporting the facts but of producing a steady diet of ready to eat, easy to digest, fluff for the sole purpose of attracting a larger audience and, as a direct result, securing more of those lucrative advertising dollars that pay their salaries.

I challenge anyone who has followed the ongoing battle between Ottawa and the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador over the past 3 governments (one Liberal and two Conservative) to think of a single mainstream news outlet, be it the Globe and Mail, National Post, CBC or CTV that has actually taken on the task of investigating the situation thoroughly and reporting the facts behind the headlines.

It isn’t easy is it?

Personally I can’t think of a single one that has been willing to move past the political rhetoric on both sides of the argument, go directly to the bean counting bureaucrats who manage the day to day operations of both the federal and provincial finance departments and actually investigate the story as most Canadians assume reporters are supposed to do.

Not one.

" No Truer Words where spoken Patriot "

" Republic Of "

Ussr said...

There is no better way to rally people into frenzy, then to create a common enemy. This terminology goes along with, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

I would like to say Patriot that the mood shown here on your comment page seems to be equal to that displayed on VOCM.
What I cannot understand for the life of me is how everyday ordinary Canadians are being whipped into frenzy here on the mainland on how Newfoundland and Labrador is trying to rip the good people of Canada off. The Province of Newfoundland and Labrador “ WANTS MORE THEN IT GIVES CANADA, THIS HAS GONE ON TOO LONG AND THIS HAS TO STOP “ I believe it was an Ottawa morning show I heard this on.

Now Patriot, you and I, along with a few other folks here at web talk know the truth. That Newfoundland and Labrador wants nothing that isn’t theirs, but this goes beyond making a simple remark or posting a comment. This goes to the heart of the matter and will continue to do so.

This plays into the systematic genocide and rape of our province and what we have given this country. What a lot of Newfoundlanders and Labradoreans seem to forget is that the ordinary Canadian doesn’t want to hear the truth. They want to hear that without them and THEIR money this country would stop. That without them, the country would cease to exist. This is what sickenes me. The everyday, canadain does not care about truth or fact. They do not care that the politican is lying or not. As long as it doesn’t make life any more difficult for them then, everything is OK. Having to call an election is a fine example. All they care about is what affects them and them alone. And, screw the rest of the country.

Do you even think that anyone in Canada will even break a sweat if Newfoundland and Labrador trys to break away. They don’t care patriot as long as it doesn’t affect their wallet. Little do they know how drastic it will affect the way they live?

We can rant all we want and write, think, and debate. But, we have to remember that as we sit and waste even more time. The Oil goes, the hydro goes, and the fishery, well that’s just gone. The more we procrastinate the more Canada wins and the more we have to lose.

We are not going to get anywhere trying to figure out a way around the system. The system was set for our defeat. We are nothing but 2.2% of the government.
When are we finally going to see that we just don’t belong, and that we made a mistake?

“ Republic Of “

PS , seeing that the Goverment of canada is listening its a great time to say,I hope you bastards choke on your stolen money, thiefs !!!See you all tonight when Ryan comes on.Sorry for the Spam Patriot !!!