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.

The Surveillance State Under Stephen Harper

Yesterday, Margaret Wente wrote a piece pointing out that in terms of policy, there is no discernible difference between Justin Trudeau and Stephen Harper, and yet people are craving change. In typically lazy manner, she simply cited friends who say “He’s gotta go!”

So what’s the problem with Mr. Harper? Is it the Duffy affair? The militant foreign policy? The highly dubious tough-on-crime agenda?

No, not really. It’s just … him. He’s too controlling, too snarly, too mean. He picked a fight with Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin. He sounded callous about murdered native women. It’s not the policies or even the scandals – it’s the tone. They just don’t like the guy.

Such an analysis is surely superficial. There are, indeed, plenty of solid reasons to want this national blight and his minions gone from our lives that have been well-articulated over these past many years by both journalists and bloggers. I will concentrate on just one of them today.

Although I have written on this topic before, now seems a good time to remind ourselves that the Harper government is a vindictive and paranoid regime that sees every criticism, every question about policy, every disagreement and gathering of like minds as potential threats, treating those who hold contrary views as enemies.

The latest verification of this diseased mentality comes in a report that reveals about 800 public demonstrations and events were observed and reported on by government departments and law enforcement agencies since 2006.

Conducted under the auspices of the Government Operations Centre, those surveilled included:

A panel discussion at Concordia University last September, discussing historical colonialism and race relations in Quebec. The RCMP prepared the report.

A rally in Ottawa by the Public Service Alliance of Canada and the Canadian Union of Public Employees in May 2012.
Protests against a Canadian mining company in Brazil last September.

A Montreal march and vigil for missing and murdered aboriginal women in September 2013.
A public discussion in Toronto on the oilsands in August 2013.

A workshop in non-violent protest methods in Montreal in October 2013.

Public Safety reported a protest of “lobster fishers” in New Brunswick in May 2013, while a shrimp allocations protest in Newfoundland was reported by Fisheries and Oceans a year later.

Larger events that made national news — the Idle No More movement, Occupy groups, various student protests in Montreal — were also included in the list.

The full list, which runs to 34 pages, can be accessed here.

Most tellingly, the majority of the reports on public events appear to focus on First Nations and environmental movements, including the Idle No More movement and anti-oilsands activism.

While the government insists that this is all in the interests of public safety, not all are convinced.

Take, for example, Halifax professor Darryl Leroux, who found himself in an RCMP report for having organized a panel discussion on alternative concepts of colonialism throughout Quebec’s history.

Perhaps the good professor fell afoul of the Harper demand for conformist thinking because the discussion also touched upon topics like feminism and black activism in Montreal in the 1960s? The lessons of history can be subversive, I suppose.

So yes, despite Margaret Wente's facile claim that people just don't like Harper because of his manner, there are innumerable reasons for millions of Canadians of goodwill to want the political landscape cleansed in 2015.

The Perspective That Age Bestows

Unlike some, I do not bemoan the passage of time. True, I am of that generation known as 'the baby boomers,' but while I am at times mildly bemused about certain things ('How can it be 50 years since the Beatles first played in Toronto?'), I was never beguiled by the notion that we would be young forever. Yes, I try to keep fit and hope to be active throughout the rest of my years, but ceding my place to others in both the workplace and the larger world bothers me not in the least. As Margaret Wente recently noted in a surprisingly (for her) good column, the real surprise is that there is no adventure remotely like aging.

Probably one of the biggest benefits (and potentially one of the biggest curses, depending upon one's frustration threshold) of growing older is the perspective that age bestows. The experiences of a lifetime offer a tremendous filter by which to assess the things that we see and hear, the people we meet, the 'truths' that are offered to us, etc. It was with this filter that I read Tim Harper's column the other day in the Toronto Star.

Examining the Harper regime's decision to send troops to Iraq as 'advisers' to help in the fight against ISIS, Tim Harper seems to lament the complacence about terrorism felt at home:

When Abacus Data asked Canadians voters to rank the importance of 13 different issues in a poll done last month, security and terrorism ranked 13th, cited by a mere six of 100 respondents as one of their top three concerns.

He seems to suggest we should be alarmed for reasons of domestic security:

We know there have been at least 130 Canadians who have travelled to join radical fighting forces, including the Islamic State. At least 130. That number was released early in the year and other estimates put the number much higher.

We know that at least 80 of them have returned to this country, with the training and the motivation to cause much harm here.

And he reminds us of this:

Even as daily dispatches of Islamic State barbarism, mass executions, beheadings of two Americans with a Briton now much in danger, and genocide come into their homes, Canadians apparently believe it is something which merits a baleful shake of the head.

While not an outright endorsement of the government's decision to dispatch troops to Iraq, it seems to me that the columnist is providing the context within which that decision makes sense.

It is an analysis with which I profoundly disagree.

And that's where the perspective offered by both age and history becomes most relevant. Having lived through times when the rhetoric of threat has been used to frighten people into compliant thinking, surely some critical reflection is warranted here. I remember oh so well how, during the years the U.S. was fighting a losing war in Vietnam that cost so many lives and exacted so many grievous injuries, the justification was 'The Domino Theory', the idea that if South Vietnam fell to the communists, a cascading effect would ensue throughout southeast Asia, and would end who knew where.

But the fact of the matter is that the Vietcong were employing a form of warfare that was not amenable to traditional methods of containment, thereby rendering the war futile, and the lives lost and injuries sustained meaningless.

The same is true about Afghanistan. Ignoring the lessons of history provided by Alexander the Great, the British and the Russians, the Americans and their allies plunged headlong into battle, again with the same results. As to the egregious failure of Iraq, the same lessons apply.

Yet here we are, back at the beginning, once more embracing the hubristic belief that hydra-headed terrorism can be contained. While it may be humbling and frightening to admit, there are some things over which we have no control.

Thus endeth a hard lesson.

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.

Social Media and Margaret Wente

About two years ago, I wrote a blog post explaining why we cancelled our subscription to The Globe and Mail. At the same time, I sent an email with a link to the post to Globe editor-in-chief John Stackhouse, suggesting that if he wanted to know why he had lost a long-term subscriber, he should read my post.

Later that evening, I received a response from Stackhouse which I have never discussed in this blog, simply because I regarded it as private communication. While I am not prepared to reveal the content of the letter, I will tell you his closing observation, which was something along the lines of, "You seem to prefer the smaller world of the blogosphere. Sad."

Well, it would seem that the world of bloggers is not so small after all, given it was Medi Culpa's analysis of Margaret Wente's plagiarism that has created something of a firestorm within the world of journalism, shaking to its foundations the once proud Globe. In his column today, The Star's Tim Harper addresses the role it plays in journalists' lives, and how it forces everyone to be very careful in how they write.

Of additional interest is a brief profile of Professor Carol Wainio, the blogger behind Media Culpa.

Oh, and Torontoist has some thoughts worth perusal as well.

'I Am Not A Crook'

In words eerily echoing Richard Nixon's famous "I'm not a crook" declaration, Globe and Mail plagiarist Margaret Wente truculently writes the following in her still extant column:

I’m far from perfect. I make mistakes. But I’m not a serial plagiarist. What I often am is a target for people who don’t like what I write.

With Wente's dishonesty being aided and abetted by an editor-in-chief who has lost his way and regards the situation as "a private matter between employer and employee," the entire debacle amply demonstrates how far Canada's 'newspaper of record' has declined since John Stackhouse assumed the top position.

Margaret Wente Scores Another Win For Superficial Thinking

I suspect that with the exception of her employer, few believe The Globe's Margaret Wente is a subtle thinker who deserves a forum in the self-proclaimed 'newspaper of record.' Her capacity for cartoonish characterization is especially apparent in her latest column where, borrowing liberally from a secondary source, as is her wont, she professes to explain the difference between the conservative and the liberal mind.

Replete with stereotypes, absolutist examples and fallacious thinking, the article will have a certain entertainment value for those who take the time to see through her usual banal superficiality.

The Globe and Mail Continues to Debase Itself

What little is left of the Globe's reputation as a newspaper to be taken seriously has been unraveling rapidly in its non-coverage of the voter suppression crimes of the last federal election. Its editorial stance has essentially been one of convincing its readers that there really is nothing to see here, just move on and attend to your daily diversions.

The latest nail in the coffin of its journalistic integrity comes from that lazy pundit, Margaret Wente, who seems quite content to mock the concern being expressed country-wide over these crimes, essentially arguing that there is no evidence people were prevented from voting, so what's the big deal?

You can read the entire shameful parody of journalism here.

The Smart Saver Program

While I no longer subscribe to the Globe, I periodically check its online content, and this morning I read about a program intended to help poor families with the costs of post-secondary education. As described in Margaret Wente's column, the "federal government will contribute $500 for a Canada Learning Bond for any child born since Jan. 1, 2004, who lives in a low-income family. It adds another $100 every year, to a maximum of $2,000, and matches any extra family contributions by as much as 40 per cent.

Despite my antipathy toward the Harper Government, I have to give them credit for thus far not eliminating this anti-poverty measure in the name of fiscal restraint.