One of the hardest lessons that political candidates eventually learn—the hard way—is that the news media have a job to do. The media are not there to be helpful. They are not there to report fairly. They are definitely not there to be your friend. They are there to earn their pay from their publisher or station owner or news service. And you, you poor political postulant, are just another miserable gob of asphalt to be flattened on their road to earning their paycheque.
And every politician we have ever met has made the same mistake. The only possible exception to that was Pierre Trudeau. He despised news media people. Maybe that was based on his experience in founding Cité Libre, the intellectual, left-wing publication created to attack the repressive regime of Maurice Duplessis in Quebec. Trudeau never met a news reporter whom he considered his intellectual equal.
This was unlike Brian Mulroney who desperately tried to be one of ‘the boys’ with the media. His uncouth language and risqué jokes made them uncomfortable, while making their jobs more difficult. Those of us from the time of Diefenbaker and Pearson were used to a far more gentlemanly and respectful relationship.
The most strained relationship for the media is probably the one with Stephen Harper. There is no relationship as he holds the media reporters in distain and at arms length. He trots out his wife and children and plays the piano to try to appear human but the media people trying to cover this imperious prime minister know better. It is the bias of those signing the worker-bees’ paycheques that keeps them in check.
The only problem is that there are fewer and fewer people doing the signing. It is the greatest risk to Canada’s democracy today, this concentration of the media into fewer and fewer corporate hands. Bell Canada for example, a body that cannot run a telephone company, now controls the dominant radio and television media in English-speaking Canada. There is nobody reporting fairly on this worsening situation.
The only hope left to grasp for under these circumstances are the social media. While you really need hip-high waders to slog through much of the blogs, tweets, posts and commentary of the Internet, there are truths emerging. There are also scurrilous lies. There are silly rumours and the compounding of errors. As much as the social media are out of control, their anarchy is their strength. Truth is no longer the only defence for slander—belief can become truth. As many churches will tell you; if enough people believe, then it is true.
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