Stories that tell a broader tale

Posted by cwaddell under All, Media Commentary

Christopher Waddell

There are a couple of very good and important stories out there at the moment that haven’t received the amount of public and media attention they deserve which in the process highlights two disturbing trends in the media.

One story is the National Post’s pursuit of police doing secret and illegal records checks for Crown attorneys of potential jurors in criminal cases to try to stack juries to ensure convictions. The Post exposed this in Barrie, Ont. initially and now has broadened the story to reveal the same practice occurring in at least Windsor and Thunder Bay.

The other one is the CBC’s work on the untendered contracts awarded by eHealth Ontario and the compensation given senior management. Related to that are serious questions about why Ontario is lagging so far behind other provinces in the move to electronic health records.

In both cases the news organizations did several stories before other news organizations picked up and pursued the issue. Even now the others are playing the issue lower down than the CBC or the Post. Over the last few years the media collectively has abandoned the practice of trying to advance a story that a competitor breaks first. Now they are more likely than not to ignore it. The more reporters and news organizations are competing to advance a story the better informed the public will be. Without that chasing, governments are getting a free pass on the sort of accountability that should be the cornerstone of the media.

Related to that, these two stories show the degree to which the media in general has abandoned covering public policy at the provincial level. The Globe and Mail’s decision several months ago to eliminate its Queen’s Park column was the latest sign that increasingly there is no scrutiny by news organizations of what provincial governments are doing. The public loses here too.

Christopher Waddell is associate director of the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University. He is a former reporter, Ottawa bureau chief, national editor and associate editor of the Globe and Mail and a former CBC-TV parliamentary bureau chief and executive producer-news specials for CBC TV News.

Does any of this make sense?

Posted by ealboim under All, Media Commentary, Political Strategy

Elly Alboim

 I’m afraid not.

First, there’s the scavenger hunt. Lisa Raitt’s aide loses her tape recorder in February and allegedly never asks for it back, despite the reporter’s claim that he offered to return it. Then months later, presumably more alert now, she leaves a briefing book behind and doesn’t claim it either. Is this normal behaviour for an aide in the most secretive government we’ve had in memory? 

In both cases, the reporters wait to report on what they have. In CTV’s case, they wait a week. In the Halifax Chronicle Herald case, they wait months and claim not to even have bothered listening to it until the briefing book affair. Does this sound like the competitive journalism that has led to the breathless scandal-chasing we’ve come see as normal in Ottawa?  

Then the unemployed aide goes to court to get an injunction and everyone in government and the Conservative Party who is asked, claims not to have funded the process and not to be involved in any other way. The attempt at prior restraint fails as every other such attempt has and the story gets wider exposure as a result.  And now a dying story without “legs” has become the Eveready bunny. Is this competent crisis management from the allegedly strategic political machine currently in power?

None of it makes any sense or stands up to scrutiny. It is baffling.

Elly Alboim is an associate professor of journalism and a strategic communications consultant at the Earnscliffe Strategy Group. He was CBC TV’s Parliamentary Bureau Chief  for 16 years during which time he thought he’d seen just about all there was to see on the Hill. He was wrong.

Adams and Waddell in Policy Options

Posted by padams under All, Media Commentary, Political Strategy

Paul Adams

Chris Waddell and I both have pieces in this month’s Policy Options.

Lost and found

Posted by cwaddell under All, Media Commentary, Political Strategy

Christopher Waddell

Let’s say you work in a store or business and someone comes to see you for a meeting. At the end of the meeting they leave, but forget a binder of documents they brought with them. What do you do?

You could wait and see if they notice they have misplaced something and if they don’t call, just throw the material out. You could look through the material in the folder to determine if there was anything in it that you could use to your advantage and then maybe let them know they had left it behind.  (You would have to decide whether to tell them that you looked through it.)

Or you could decide not to look through it but just call the person right away to let them know they had forgotten something and they should come back and retrieve it.

I know that’s what I hope would happen if I was the one who left something behind. It’s clear to me that is the most ethical way to deal with such an issue.

Should the same ethical standard apply when it is a binder of documents about Atomic Energy of Canada left by a minister in this case Natural Resources minister Lisa Raiit or a staff person, in a news organization’s office?

CTV doesn’t think so. It kept the binder for six days presumably waiting to see if anyone would notice it was gone (although it isn’t clear how CTV would determine if that had taken place), read it and reported some of its contents on the air.

It raises good questions that should be debated within news organizations.

On what basis does the media apply a different ethical standard to its activities than the standard we would like applied to us as individuals if we had made the error?  Do they need to explain that to the public?

Is there a difference between leaving a document in a public place like a coffee shop or on a bus or blowing down the street, than leaving something at an office where you attended a meeting? I think there is.

What if the story had been handled somewhat differently – calling right away and telling the minster something had been left behind and not looking at the contents. Then deciding whether to report that the minister was careless with documents – which is a legitimate story – by explaining to viewers the circumstances and telling your audience that on ethical grounds you had made the decision not to read the contents of the binder.

Unrealistic? Too much to ask?

Christopher Waddell is associate director of the School of Journalism and Communication and Carty Chair in Business and Financial Journalism at Carleton University. He is a former reporter, Ottawa bureau chief, national editor and associate editor of the Globe and Mail and a former CBC-TV parliamentary bureau chief and executive producer-news specials for CBC TV News.

Flying to Beirut

Posted by padams under All, Media Commentary, Political Strategy

Paul Adams

I am going to be blogging this week from Lebanon, where parliamentary elections take place on Sunday. I will be there as part of an election observation team put together by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, better known as NDI.

When I was in Lebanon a few weeks ago as part of a preparatory mission, there were rumours circulating that some Lebanese parties were going to fly in expatriates from places like Canada to help enhance their prospects.

Since I’ve come back, I’ve talked to many Lebanese Canadians about these rumours — everyone from cab-drivers to the (many) Lebanese dads on my son’s soccer team. Everyone had heard the rumours. Some dismissed them as nonsense; many insisted they were true, but were hard-pressed when asked if they knew anyone personally who was getting a free ticket. I have met a couple of people who have told me they re-arranged summer travel plans, already underway, to make sure they made the vote, but they weren’t getting any help from anyone they said.

Now, the CBC is breaking a story that suggests that there may be some truth to the rumours.

This may seem like a preposterously expensive way to win an election, but there are a couple of reasons why it might make sense. First, the races for an estimated 85-90% of the seats in Sunday’s elections are considered to  have been settled already through a process of inter-party bargaining which produces agreed-upon “slates” of candidates. Second, there is some ambiguity (I am told) about whether such subsidies would be covered by the new campaign finance laws.

Interestingly, almost all the remaining 10-15% of seats at issue are in Christian areas. Therefore it might be possible to concentrate the subsidies on people whose votes would likely make a difference. Of course, Canada’s Lebanese population is disproportionately Christian (compared with Lebanon”s).

Paul Adams teaches journalism at Carleton. He is a former Middle East correspondent for the Globe and Mail, a former director of NDI’s Palestinian program, and a frequent participant in election observation missions in Africa and the Middle East.

Some pension suggestions

Posted by cwaddell under All, Media Commentary, Political Strategy

Christopher Waddell

Further to Elly’s interesting post about pensions, some have been thinking about this for quite a while. Here’s what then Governor of the Bank of Canada David Dodge suggested in a speech in Montreal in November 2005 needed to be done to address some of the concerns Elly quite correctly noted are even more important issues today.

“If defined-benefit plans are to survive, grow, and provide a source of funding for long-term, riskier assets, it is important that Canadian policy-makers consider taking steps to rebalance the incentives for sponsors to operate defined-benefit plans. Let me mention a few of the things that could be done.

Read more…

The looming politics of pensions

Posted by ealboim under Media Commentary, Political Strategy

Elly Alboim

Fixing the Canadian pension system is now emerging as one of the urgent public policy priorities arising from the financial meltdown. It is also becoming a significant political priority because not fixing it will likely have significant electoral consequences.

When Canada’s governments came together a decade ago to ensure the sustainability of the Canada Pension Plan, the result was a triumph of political will and good public policy. The CPP has become a hybrid somewhere in between a fully funded plan and the pay-as-you-go pyramid scheme that many other countries cling to because they are unwilling to set premiums high enough to sustain future benefits.

The CPP is now sound although its maximum annual pay out still falls below $10,000.

That achievement masked an earlier failure to come to terms with the future costs of the other part of the public pension system, Old Age Security and its low income companion program, the Guaranteed Income Supplement. The OAS is clawed back progressively as income grows but the claw back doesn’t fully recover all payments until fairly high (and politically sustainable) thresholds of income. It is also indexed against inflation. Further, eligibility is based on individual income not family income the way the GIS is. That means that a low income partner in a high income family still qualifies for OAS, sometimes at the full benefit level.

Read more…

Cable canoodling

Posted by padams under Media Commentary

Paul Adams

The CTV/Canwest Global campaign to get us to pay for their local stations through cable fees seems to be breaking new ground. Not only are the TV networks using their news programs to shill for their request to the CRTC individually, they have now teamed up to make the front pages of a Canwest newspaper part of their PR campaign.

Today’s Ottawa Citizen has a front page story celebrating the local CTV station’s “Save local television” event. 

A “huge crowd” turned out, and local anchor Max Keeping “appeared touched” by the crowd. 

There was no mention of the fact that CTV recently shut down the evening news at its “A Channel” affiliate here in Ottawa.

The fact that it is lobbying for an new cable fee is mentioned only near the end of the story and the likelihood that this would translate into an increase in cable rates for consumers is not mentioned at all.

Nor is there any indication that anyone at the Citizen phoned up the cable companies to hear their vociferous objections to the plan.

Luckily, Shaw Cable purchased a full-page add in the Citizen today making their case — the only place in the paper where it is acknowledged.

What a journalistic embarrassment.

Paul Adams teaches journalism at Carleton

PMs redux: Chretien and Mulroney still make news

Posted by jsallot under All, Media Commentary

Jeff Sallot

The private business affairs of two colourful  former prime ministers continue to play out publicly,  providing fresh material for journalists.

So, thank you Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien.

The Mulroney case, involving cash payments from a German lobbyist for arms dealers, has been unfolding at a commission of inquiry, making headlines for many days.

The next chapter in the Chretien story opens at the Supreme Court of Canada this month.
Mr. Mulroney threw The Globe and Mail, the paper that first broke the cash payments story,  a curve the other day when he testified editors had suppressed a related story that would have placed him in a better light.

That’s not what Globe editor Ed Greenspon remembers. He says Mr. Mulroney tried to barter his way out of trouble, promising to provide information for another explosive  story if the paper would spike the cash payments story.

Read more…

The negative cycle

Posted by ealboim under Media Commentary, Political Strategy

Elly Alboim

The Conservatives’ attack ads have unleashed a torrent of comment that splits along a traditional divide – those who find negative advertising morally repellent (particularly in the current economic context) and those who report on it dispassionately as a political tactic.

The latter group, almost exclusively journalists and political strategists, generally says that while negative ads are offensive to most, they “work” because they tend to move opinion among target audiences. That is indisputably correct in certain circumstances and at certain times. And because they work, it is hard to imagine political strategists foregoing their use.

Read more…