Who Can I Trust?

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am an enthusiastic supporter of The Toronto Star. The paper's investigative reports, like no others, have had real impact, influencing decisions at the highest levels of power locally, provincially and federally; its dogged pursuit of the truth has always impressed me deeply. The Star has consistetly demonstrated and embodied the role good journalism plays in a healthy democracy.

And yet now there are disturbing allegations by journalist Paul Watson, allegations so serious that the veteran reporter has resigned from the paper. While many of the details are far from clear, The Star, which denies all of his assertions, certainly appears to have acted very oddly.

An extensive interview conducted by Jesse Brown at Canadaland reveals that Watson, who had been on the lead exploration ship, CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier, last September and wrote a series of articles on the expedition that found the Franklin flagship the HMS Erebus, was stymied by his editors when he was investigating the exaggerated role accorded to the Royal Canadian Geographic Society and its CEO, John Geiger:

So there was a [media] blackout [after the discovery] of roughly two days, could’ve been three. Remember, I was on the lead vessel in this successful search last September, the Coast Guard icebreaker. I was living with and working beside the experts who were searching for these ships. And because of that blackout, a person who’s the CEO of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS) - a former Globe and Mail Editorial Board Chief - a journalist - was able to step into that power vacuum and answer journalists' questions in a way that I immediately saw people [involved with the effort] react to in a way that made them deeply angry because they believed that he was distorting facts, stating untruths and ruining the historical record that they were working so hard to create. And that was just a moment way back in September.

A variety of distortion and untruths emerged, so much so that Jim Basillie attempted to intervene, as reported in The Globe:

In late April, philanthropist Jim Balsillie, whose Arctic Research Foundation was instrumental in the search, sent a letter to Leona Aglukkaq, the Minister of the Environment, saying he was “troubled that Canadian history is not being presented accurately” in a documentary that aired on CBC’s The Nature of Things that month. He was upset that the program “creates new and exaggerated narratives for the exclusive benefit of the Royal Canadian Geographic Society.”

Mr. Balsillie said he was dispirited that the Prime Minister and public agencies seemed to take a back seat. “Government partners, in particular the Government of Nunavut, Canadian Hydrographic Service and the Canadian Coast Guard are shown as supporting players to RCGS and [the Russian vessel] Akademik Sergey Vavilov when the opposite is true.”

Apparently, for reasons that are not yet clear, the Harper government ignored the letter and made no effort to correct the historical record.

The trouble for Watson started when he attempted to question Geiger, who was awarded a Polar Medal for what Governor-General David Johnston’s office called his “essential role in the success of the 2014 Victoria Strait Expedition” and who, according to Watson,

has access to the Prime Minister’s office .... [has] been photographed in close situations around campfires in the Arctic with Stephen Harper ... [and] has political connections.

Within three hours of sending an email to Geiger, Watson was contacted late at night by a Star editor who wanted to know hat he was working on. Fearing Geiger might be tipped off as to the kinds of questions he wanted to ask him, Watson revealed little to the editor, a decision that ultimately led to a 'six-week reporting ban.'

There is much more to the story that is discussed in the Canadaland interview. But for me, what makes it so significant are its implications, implications so severe that Watson resigned his position. Here are his own words to explain what is at stake:

The people who’ve been looking for these ships, they’re really hardworking federal civil servants, archeologists and others who know the truth of how those ships were found and had every right to tell that truth themselves. But because of the country we live in, and because of the government we live under, that message could only come from Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself.

There is an open fear in our federal civil service and I’m sure it applies to other capitals across the country as this phenomenon grows and our democracy weakens. There is a fear among these civil servants that if they stand up and tell the truth, that they will lose their jobs because the politically connected have more power than the truth.

This is a symptom of a broader disease that is eating away at the core of our democracy. Experts on climate, on medicine, on things that are central to our society are being silenced by a government that does favours for the politically connected. And that is just very dangerous for our future.

That, more than anything else, should make this a story worth following.

Note To Peter Mansbridge

H/t Occupy Canada

Accountability, Whither Goest Thou?

If there is one good thing to be said about the Leslie Roberts scandal, it is that privately owned Global Television has acted with dispatch both in its investigation of the newsman/PR firm co-owner's terrible breach of ethics, and its subsequent actions. While the official 'story' is that Roberts has resigned, there is little doubt in my mind that he was given that option by management lest he be unceremoniously turfed.

This decisive behaviour stands in sharp contrast to the inaction of other media outlets. Perhaps the most notorious example of patently unethical choices is Margaret Wente's much-reported serial plagiarism which the Globe and Mail treated as some form of pecadillo that merited exactly what? All we know is that the editor at the time, John Stackhouse, said she had been disciplined; the terms of that discipline were private.

More recently, of course, we have had the sad spectacle of the CBC's Amanda Lang who, it is alleged, tried to stop a story exposing the RBC's use of the Temporary Foreign Workers Program to train and replace permanent employees; Lang's was a clear conflict-of-interest violation given the nature of her relationship with an RBC board member and the fact that she has accepted paying gigs from the bank.

As of this writing, the CBC continues to insist that Lang did nothing wrong, essentially the same approach that it took with conflict allegations against Peter Mansbridge and Rex Murphy.

These are hardly decisions that inspire confidence in the public broadcaster.

In his column today, Rick Salutin explores who is to blame for the sad state of affairs at the CBC (it is the managers, who cower in the shadows behind their “stars”) and remembers a time when when public institutions adhered to public values for the benefit of all:

Canada’s other main public cultural institution, the National Film Board, was built by John Grierson in the 1940s. He was a titan of global film. He acted imperiously. He recruited young Canadians and dazzled them with his ego and vision. One said, “A day never passed at the Board that Grierson didn’t remind us we were there to serve the people of Canada.”

Among his recruits was Sidney Newman. Newman went to the UK and worked in private TV, creating The Avengers. Then the (public) BBC hired him as head of drama. He revelled. He created Doctor Who, now in its 51st brilliant year. For the 50th anniversary, BBC did a film about Newman! He was its superhero.

Today, we regularly read reports of the death of traditional media, reports that, if I may borrow from Mark Twain, seem greatly exaggerated. However, those media do themselves no favours by trying to rationalize and justify failures when they occur. We, the news-consuming public, deserve much better.

A Classy Apology

Regular readers of this blog may be aware of my almost boundless enthusiasm for The Toronto Star. I deeply admire its progressive mission, and I find its roster of excellent columnists informative and thought-provoking. I have come to regard it as a trusted source of news and opinion.

It was therefore a bit of a shock to realize how badly below acceptable journalistic standards it recently fell when it published a story about Ontario Liberal MPP Magaret Best who, after being dropped from her cabinet position in the new Wynne government, took a medical leave, which she is still on. The story was accompanied by a photo of Best and her daughter vacationing in Mexico. As I supposed most readers did, I drew what seemed to be some obvious conclusions about Best's behaviour.

There was only one problem, however, with the story; the photo in question was taken, not recently, but in 2008, from a picture posted on Best's Facebook page.

Upon realizing the error, the Star printed a full correction, directing readers on Page 1 to go to A2 for the complete apology. In this morning's edition, there is a full column by The Star's Public Editor, Kathy English, explaining and apologizing for what she calls the paper's egregious error; without any equivocation or self-justification, English makes it very clear how far below standards the paper fell.

I have to respect the fact that the paper is holding itself fully accountable for this terrible mistake, and has even gone so far as to remove the offending article from its website. In my mind, this contrasts sharply with the temporizing and vague explanations issued by The Globe and Mail's Sylva Stead and editor-in-chief John Stackhouse when Margaret Wente's plagiarism became known.

If anyone wants to see an apology that really isn't an apology, read the Globe links above, or better yet, look at Wente's own 'explanation' for her failure which, it turned out, was only one of several instances of plagiarism, all of which the Globe has excused.

Despite the decline of the print medium, in my view it still plays a vital role in protecting our increasingly precarious democracy. Showing disdain for that public trust, as I believe the Globe did, does nothing to advance that mission. Because of its unequivocal, classy and very public mea culpa, the Toronto Star retains both my trust and my subscription.

Are Workers Paying For The Globe and Mail's Sins?

UPDATE/CORRECTION: While I strive to be as accurate as possible in this blog, the second paragraph of this post contained an inaccuracy, which I have since rectified.

I have to say that my heart rejoiced yesterday when I saw the news that Torstar, the parent company of The Toronto Star, has increased its quarterly earnings over the year by about 100%, an unequivocal confirmation that quality, in-depth journalism for the social good can still very much be a profitable enterprise in the 21st century.

I also have to admit to an almost equal delight in the news I received from my son that the Globe and Mail, by contrast, is not faring so well. The Earnings Per Share (EPS) profit that the Globe and Mail contributes to Bell Canada, its parent company, is off by 0.23.

I interpret this profit reduction as an indictment of the direction in which John Stackhouse has taken the paper since assuming the mantle of editor-in-chief. It is a direction that has seen such betrayals as unequivocal editorial endorsements of the Harper regime, an inhouse apologist for all things Harper named John Ibbitson, and the continued employment of unoriginal thinkers like Neil Reynolds and Margaret Wente who, one suspects, would have great difficulty recognizing an original thought, should one occur to them, an admittedly unlikely event.

The one group for whom I feel sympathy at the Globe is the rank and file, who are now being asked to take unpaid leaves this summer in an attempt to temporarily reduce costs.

Oh, and I almost forgot. In either a very desperate grasping at straws for financial salvation or a very public display of delusions of grandeur, The Globe announced today that it is instituting a paywall. If you read the article, I strongly encourage you to also peruse some of the readers' comments that follow, comments of such withering contempt that one might infer that this 'Hail Mary pass' from the Globe is too desperate by anyone's standards.