Today Prime Minister Harper shuffled Julian Fantino out of his post as Minister of Veterans' Affairs and into a less visible spot in his cabinet. Clearly, the PM is cleaning house, dealing with irritants that might get in the way of getting votes. He is assuming a) Canadians are stupid and will forget all about the various gaffes and atrocities in Veterans' Affairs over the past few years and b) Canadians are stupid and don't realize that, as odious as Mr. Fantino appears to be, he is not running anything, everything that happens in this government comes from the PMO and starts in Mr. Harper's head.
CBC news network covered the announcement of this shuffle by reading the press release from the government. That is not journalism. That is reciting the government's talking points. Even when pressed to discuss the implications of this move, the reporter seemed to suggest that now Fantino was gone from this post, everything was hunky dory and all that bad blood between veterans and the government could be put to rest.
Fortunately Tom Mulcair had the guts to get in front of the cameras and come right out and say that what happened in Veterans' Affairs happened because Stephen Harper wanted it to happen. Even so, the commentary on Mulcair's speech was hesitant and careful to stick to repeating what he had said, rather than examining this issue.
In other news... It appears that a video clip of CTV anchor, Don Martin, saying that Harper was "flirting with fascism" when it came out that the PM and the CPC were preparing legislation that would circumvent copyright laws, allowing them to use news footage for campaign ads without compensating the news agency that produced it, has been wiped from the internet.
You can see the comments here but if you click the link to see the clip, you will be informed that Bell media has removed the clip because of copyright issues. Oh, the irony!
The CTV is not entirely virtuous in terms of political objectivity, by the way. It was found in breach of the code of ethics governing Canadian broadcasters in 2009 when Mike Duffy interviewed then Liberal leader Stephan Dion and broadcast clips that were not to be aired and which were later used by the CPC to discredit Dion. Mike Duffy got a senate seat. Dion lost the leadership of the Liberals and Harper won the election.
The attempts to suppress criticism have been many and varied this past year. Probably the most publicized spat between a columnist and the government involved an opinion piece by Toronto Star's Heather Mallick, and the angry response by Conservative Party political operations director Fred DeLorey. Ms Mallick rightly retorted that her job is to express opinion. It is not intended to be neutral or objective. DeLorey attempted to suggest that holding a critical view of the PM or the government was somehow seditious, and he goes on to attempt to undermine the public's faith in mainstream news media: "We’re up against the Liberals and the NDP in the next election, but we also have to fight an uphill battle against all their friends in the Ottawa media. Since we can’t count on fair coverage, we’re going to need to speak directly to voters. It’s not cheap, but it’s the only option."
And in still other news, it seems the federal government doesn't like its staff checking out Blacklock's Reporter. The accredited news source, specializing in parliamentary news, has been blocked on government servers. If you are not familiar with Blacklock's, the publication is not your usual news outlet. You won't see traffic accidents or fires or sports scores. It is a very serious, often very dry medium that deals with the doings on Parliament Hill; bills, regulations, Access to Information and federal courts. They take the quality of their reporting very seriously and, in so doing, have often been critical of the government. Not just this government, by the way, previous governments have not been spared the Blacklock scrutiny.
Not only does the CPC want to make sure federal civil servants are protected from news regarding their places of employment, it has also worked very hard to make information nearly impossible to access by members of the press. Investigative reporter, Mike DeSousa, offers an insight into the difficulty many journalists encounter when trying to do their jobs in Canada these days. Months of waiting to get documents that have been completely blacked out. That is not transparency, or accountability, or access to information.
Many people are unaware that things are deteriorating rapidly here in Canada. Between 2013 and 2014, Canada slipped 10 places in the World Press Freedom Index, landing at 20th. Sad, because in 2002 we were in 5th place. A brief synopsis of the decline in press freedom in Canada can be found here.
But, back to the CBC. Every government has disliked the CBC. This is because the CBC has been doing what it was intended to do: speak truth to power, ask the tough questions, and dig for the deeper story. As an independent publicly-owned broadcaster, the CBC was not reliant on advertising and so could not be pressured by corporate interests to cover events in any particular way. All other mainstream media in Canada is owned by corporate interests and relies on advertisers (other corporations) to be able to operate. This financial reliance leads to a tendency to frame the news in ways that please the corporate interests. It can slant the news, sometimes to the point where it barely resembles the actual facts.
But the CBC, like the BBC, was a public broadcaster, and therefore not beholden to corporate dollars. The Liberals were no fans of the CBC when they were in power, but they accepted that it was part of Canada's cultural fabric. The CPC, and especially PM Harper, do not accept it. They hate it. They hate that public money is supporting any publicly beneficial organization, from Canada Post to the Canadian Wheat Board to Parks Canada. They feel that people should pay for services like postal delivery, health care and education. But they especially hate that public money is supporting an organization that asks questions and sheds light on things they would rather keep hidden.
The CPC war on the CBC goes back well before 2006. Back in the days of the Northern Foundation and the National Citizens' Coalition, Harper was already engaged in a war of words with the public broadcaster. Since gaining power in Ottawa he has steadily whittled away at the CBC, cutting funding, cutting jobs, bad-mouthing the CBC to fund-raise, installing a new Board of Directors comprised of hand-picked CPC supporters... He has even gone so far as to change the bargaining process so the BoD has a say in compensation and staffing. It certainly appears that word has gone out: criticize the PM or the government and your name will go on the list for the next round of job cuts.
The changes are evident, from the cuts in staff, to the choices made in lead stories. The CBC, once the most reliable and relevant news source in Canada, is becoming a mouthpiece for the government. And soon it will be moot. It was recently announced that the federal government has contracted, to the tune of millions of taxpayer dollars, to have a company write "custom" news stories. Back in the day, this was called "propaganda". Soon there will be no need for the CBC, CTV, Global, or the print media. The government will provide all the news they want you to see...
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