{"id":28390,"date":"2015-10-26T01:00:25","date_gmt":"2015-10-26T05:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=28390"},"modified":"2015-10-16T20:54:45","modified_gmt":"2015-10-17T00:54:45","slug":"qotd-canadian-political-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/10\/26\/qotd-canadian-political-journalism\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Canadian political journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>It is important to understand that, except a few, the journalists are not ideologues. They are, once again, typical products of our drive-in universities, and journalism schools which have, if possible, even lower intellectual standards. They know no history, nor anything much about the topics on which they write, and can be easily mesmerized by a narrative they have themselves written, by rote. Such is the nature of promotion within what has become a niche of the entertainment industry, that those of independent mind and moral fibre are quickly weeded out.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m inclined to use the term \u201cprogressive\u201d rather than dwell on Left and Right wings, for there is some contrast between, say, MSNBC and Fox in the USA, between CBC and Sun News up here. There is a growing Right \u2014 an opposition within the media to itself \u2014 but it is not a significant improvement on the monotony that preceded it. The idea that, as a form of entertainment, news coverage should aspire to \u201ctabloid\u201d conditions, and avoid subjects which require knowledge, governed the rightwing impresarios from the start. The Right is fresher and feistier than the Left, and by its Pavlovian habit of reacting to Left agendas, sometimes traps itself in a principled position; but this is a random, not intended effect. Both sides continue to share the post-Christian worship of abstract \u201cliberty,\u201d \u201cequality,\u201d and material \u201cprogress.\u201d They clash on who can deliver these empty buckets quicker. But the battle is fought from both sides with the same weaponry \u2014 platitudes and clich\u00e9s \u2014 in a kind of unending spiritual Verdun. \u201cProgress\u201d invariably emerges as the victor.<\/p>\n<p>David Warren, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidwarrenonline.com\/2014\/10\/23\/ottawa-in-the-news\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Ottawa in the news&#8221;, <em>Essays in Idleness<\/em><\/a>, 2014-10-23.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is important to understand that, except a few, the journalists are not ideologues. They are, once again, typical products of our drive-in universities, and journalism schools which have, if possible, even lower intellectual standards. They know no history, nor anything much about the topics on which they write, and can be easily mesmerized by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,79,28,53,41],"tags":[213,101],"class_list":["post-28390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-education","category-media","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-newspapers","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7nU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28391,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28390\/revisions\/28391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}