The Rewrite

Peter Menzies

A couple of journos wade through their industry’s moral and professional fatigue. Plus! BBC under fire, sources burn politicos and the Dinger delivers a zinger

“In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State. Anyone who wishes to preserve a career, a degree, or merely their daily bread must live by the lie.”

So wrote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn about life in the Soviet Union in the 1960s.

Three decades after his words were smuggled out of Russia and published in the West, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel wrote their seminal work, The Elements of Journalism. In that, they made it clear that the craft’s first obligation is to the truth that eluded Solzhenitsyn’s life and its first loyalty is to citizens. Everything else flows from there.

As I have noted ad nauseum, too many titles continue to mask government sources feeding them strategic information and excuse the practice by claiming the sources are “not authorized.” This suspension of disbelief not only undermines trust in the craft, it stirs further memories of Solzhenitsyn, a Nobel Prize winner and perhaps the most famous of Soviet dissidents, who was exiled to the West in 1974. As he once famously said:

Which is why, if journalism is to fulfill its loyalty to citizens, it needs to diligently apply itself to its first obligation and expose political lies – which Solzhenitsyn denounced as a tool of state control – and misrepresentation in all its forms at every opportunity.

Recently, we saw some encouraging examples of journalists doing just that.

Brian Passifiume of the Toronto Sun noticed there was something off about Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Sept. 14 Build Canada Homes announcement in Ottawa

To him, it had the scent of a movie set. He wasn’t the only one to wonder but many of his cohorts either ignored that angle or, exposing a corrosive sense of moral and professional ennui, shrugged and accepted the performance as routine political misrepresentation, as if that makes it OK. Canadian Press even went so far as to publish a “fact check” that defended Carney and stated “Claims government built fake homes for photo op misleading.”

Late in November, following inquiries by a Tory MP, Passifiume was able to report that “The Privy Council Office has finally admitted what I originally reported back in September — the Nepean construction site used by the PM for his Sept. 14 Build Canada Homes announcement was all for show, and cost $32K.”

I get that some will argue this ruse is a justifiable use of taxpayers’ money. Others won’t. Which is probably the way it should be. On the upside, the government now knows there are reporters still willing to fulfill their obligation to the truth and their loyalty to citizens.

The downside is that, at the time of writing, Canadian Press’s fact check remained unchanged and still insisted no added costs were involved.

Felice Chin of The Hub (I am a contributor) also fired a shot across the bows of politicians and their too frequent dysfunctional relationships with the truth.

In her “Fact check: Elizabeth May’s tanker claims don’t add up” piece she not only corrected the Green Party leader on west coast marine geography and tanker traffic, she outed Conservative Andrew Scheer for his, ahem, embellishments on the same file.

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While on the topic of unnamed sources, at least one reporter recently got badly burned by someone he protected while another was pushed into explanation mode.

Going with a single, unnamed government source, Global News’s Mackenzie Gray informed Canadians that “Steven Guilbeault won’t resign from Mark Carney’s cabinet over the upcoming pipeline agreement” with Alberta.

Hours later, Guilbeault did just that.

The Toronto Sun’s Brian Lilley went with multiple unnamed sources to announce “Canada’s embassy and official residence in Paris is lovely. It’s no wonder Melanie Joly wants to be appointed Ambassador to France and leave Carney’s cabinet.”

Joly unequivocally rejected that idea, forcing Lilley to play some defence while sticking to his guns. We’ll wait and see how this one turns out.

Meanwhile, CBC pretty much took the bar below ground last week when reporter Darren Major explained that:

“CBC News has agreed to not name the source because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the proposed amendment.”

We are left to assume that this gibberish means they were authorized to speak, but only privately. More on this in the weeks ahead.

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Dave Rich is a contributor to The Guardian, an author, and an expert on left wing antisemitism which, based on my life experience, is far more widespread and embedded in our institutions than the right wing version of the same cancerous prejudice ever got close to. His Nov. 10 Substack post via Everyday Hate points out that the Prescott Report embroiling the BBC contains “a litany of jaw-dropping editorial and journalistic failings.”

Rich writes as a fan of the BBC but points out, sadly, that the details of the report suggest “that these errors are not random, but a product of an internal culture of bias and a particular political mindset.”

Of noteworthy concern is BBC Arabic.

“The Telegraph has since reported that BBC Arabic had to make 215 corrections in two years to its coverage of Israel and Gaza – that’s two per week,” Rich writes. “It’s staggering.”

Sound like anyone you know? Don’t expect Canadian news organizations to be hiring Michael Prescott to study their entrails any time soon.

Rick Bell of the Calgary Herald/Sun/whatever was the first to report that Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith had reached an agreement and would be signing a Memorandum of Understanding on pipeline development in Calgary on Nov. 27. A couple of days after Bell, aka The Dinger, let the cat out of the bag, others started breathlessly quoting “sources” as if they were breaking the story. This prompted Bell, who prematurely entered curmudgeonhood decades ago, to say.

“News isn’t really news, even if it is about Alberta, until the self-styled smart set in Toronto and Ottawa say it’s news.”

Amen, brother.

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(Peter Menzies is a commentator and consultant on media, Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow, a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, a former vice chair of the CRTC and a National Newspaper Award winner.)

The Rewrite is a reader-supported publication.

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