The headline seems to be the most accurate way to describe the habits of the federal Liberals from the start of Justin Trudeau’s first government to Mark Carney’s most recent national media appearance. Peter Menzies describes the bought-and-paid-for national media’s coverage of the big non-event:
It has never been easier, thanks to the internet, for journalists to check if they are being played for fools. But due either to sloth, neglect, habit or servility — pick one — way too many lack the motivation to use a search engine.
Instead, they frequently accept the role of featherheads manipulated by politicians staging one of the oldest scams in the Machiavellian playbook, the recycled “news” announcement. I say “featherheads” (patsies was another option) because, for instance, Prime Minister Mark Carney can book news network time for a full half hour speech that is nothing more than a rehash of everything he’s been saying for the past 10 months and still lead newscasts and make the front pages.
Here, I must pause to credit the Toronto Star. It, like other news organizations, received an embargoed copy of Wednesday’s speech in advance. It read it, saw that it contained no news and did not put a report on its front page. Others such as National Post and the Globe and Mail tried desperately to find a fresh angle within the speech but put it on their front pages anyway. CBC threw everything it had into it and CTV also led with it and tried its best to make it sound like news had happened.
Now, I am a reasonable and fair-minded person, so I would not be reacting were it just this incident that captured my attention. The PM is speaking, everyone gets excited, you review and lock in your story lineup and, ya, I get it. Been there, done that. But this was part of a troubling pattern that has emerged.
For instance, the government’s “plan” to hire 1,000 more Canadian Border Services guards was first announced in the Liberal election platform last spring. It was then, according to Blacklock’s Reporter, re-announced “April 10, April 28, June 3 and August 12”.
That Blacklock’s report was published Oct. 14 and focused on Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree’s insistence he was “not responsible” for the promised hiring that hadn’t happened yet. Two days later, Carney announced that the previously announced and re-announced plan would be announced again in the Nov. 4 budget. And the day after that — Oct. 17 — Anandasangaree announced his ministry would be doing what he said a few days previously wasn’t his responsibility and hiring 1,000 new border guards — over the next five years. A similar pattern of announcement and reannouncements took place regarding the government’s plan to hire 1,000 more RCMP officers, also not immediately but eventually. Then, last week, Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne announced a financial crimes agency would be up and running by next June. This, too, was reported as a new initiative even though the government first committed to that agency in 2021.
While not all news organizations rise to the bait, this widely carried Canadian Press story is an example of how easily the public can be misinformed by reporting that lacks proper context. Re-announcements are presented as “news” despite there being no news other than “politicians repeat what they said before to keep their names in the news”. Media that go along with this pattern of manipulation allow themselves to be accused of defining news as anything the government wishes to present as news, something about which — now that media are subsidized by politicians — they should be more cautious.
The nation needs journalists to tell the whole story or, as Robert Maynard, founder of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, put it:
The first thing about journalism is about accuracy and fairness, but that’s not enough. It has to be about context, it has to be about depth.
