John Honderich, former publisher of the Toronto Star, wrote a piece on the future of journalism which discusses five options for funding, to borrow his phrase, "serious print journalism". This matter is very important, fulminates Honderich. Why, nothing less than the future of democracy rests on it:
In order for all of us to live meaningfully and participate in our community, we must be appropriately informed.
In this regard, the quality of public debate, if not the very quality of life in any community, is a direct function of the quality of media that serve it. Indeed, the functioning of a healthy democracy is predicated on a well-informed populace.
He's right, of course. The dissemination of accurate information is one of the principal functions of the news media, and the functioning of a healthy democracy is indeed predicated on a well-informed populace. Which is why I found it so very interesting to read this, also, by chance, published in the Toronto Star on the very same day as Honderich's op-ed column. "This" is a column written by Gillian Steward, a "Calgary writer and journalist" whose column appears every other week in the Star. It contained the following statements:
Some of them are political science and economics professors at the University of Calgary, an incubator of sorts for the Reform-style conservatism. And then, of course, there's Preston Manning, the original Reform leader who took the message on the road and came very close to becoming leader of the official opposition. So close that in the 1990s he and his Reformers managed to swing the governing Liberals so far right that they happily slashed social programs to balance the federal books.
... It seems the Harper Conservatives have come full circle since the days Reform angrily took on the Mulroney Conservatives accusing them of being more like Liberals than real conservatives. Not only are they running huge deficits à la Mulroney, they have recognized Quebec as a nation, appointed senators, and scrapped a fixed election date.
Notice anything? No? Let's run those paragraphs again:
Some of them are political science and economics professors at the University of Calgary, an incubator of sorts for the Reform-style conservatism. And then, of course, there's Preston Manning, the original Reform leader who took the message on the road and came very close to becoming leader of the official opposition. So close that in the 1990s he and his Reformers managed to swing the governing Liberals so far right that they happily slashed social programs to balance the federal books.
... It seems the Harper Conservatives have come full circle since the days Reform angrily took on the Mulroney Conservatives accusing them of being more like Liberals than real conservatives. Not only are they running huge deficits à la Mulroney, they have recognized Quebec as a nation, appointed senators, and scrapped a fixed election date.
How about now?
Here's some hints:
- Preston Manning didn't just come "very close" to being leader of the official opposition. He in fact came so very very very close that he was Leader of the Official Opposition from 1997 to 2000. Among easily-accessible sources which could have been found on the internet to demonstrate this fact one can count this, this or even this.
- Neither the Harper Conservatives nor any other party in the history of Canada have passed a parliamentary motion which "recognized Quebec as a nation". Steward has, wittingly or un-, confused "Quebec" and "Quebecois". This is hardly a trivial semantic distinction. In November 2006 the Parliament of Canada passed a motion which stated "That this House recognize that the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada." The motion itself specifically used the term "Quebecois" - an ethnocultural term - and not the term "Quebec" - a description of a political administrative unit within the state of Canada. Stephane Dion, at the time leader of the Official Opposition (see how this all nicely ties together?) specifically stated in the House of Commons that the reason he, a long-time champion of Canadian federalism, would be voting for the motion in good conscience was because it used the term "Quebecois" instead of "Quebec".
These elementary points of recent Canadian history passed by both the writer of the column and her editor.
I read precisely two pieces from the Sunday, February 1, 2009 edition of the Toronto Star. The first extolled not just the virtue but the necessity of the media providing its audience with accurate information. The second contained two glaring errors of fact. What the dozens of other pieces published in that edition contained will remain forever the subject of sheerest speculation.
The former publisher of the Toronto Star seems, rhetorically at least, to understand the importance of publishing accurate information - why doesn't the current one?
[I should note that I sent an email to the public editor of the Star noting the two errors identified in this post and providing references for the correct information. More than twelve hours later I have not received a response and the online version of the column has not been corrected - presumably they have more important things to do than respond to cranky bloggers. I will update this post in the event I receive a response or it comes to my attention that the paper published a correction.]
