Here’s a follow-up-up to
last week’s column about how angry, autocratic politicians are working to turn
voters against journalists.
Journalists ask questions
about questionable government affairs. They dig out facts and write stories that
autocratic politicians don’t like because they are neither flattering, nor favourable.
So the autocrats call the
journalists names, such as losers and enemies of the people, and urge voters to
turn on them. That thinking seeps down into the government’s agencies and their
bureaucrats, important sources of information about a government’s work.
When its employees follow
the government’s lead, journalists are cut off from the help they need to
produce the stories that the public wants and needs.
The Ontario government
provided an example of this with its non-helpful approach to journalists trying
to cover the story of two teenage girls missing in Algonquin Park.
I was involved in that story, having been asked by
some southern Ontario newspapers to drive to Algonquin Park to assist with the
reporting.
I arrived at Smoke Lake air
base on Highway 60 and saw the parking area jammed with police, paramedic and
volunteer searchers’ vehicles. I went through the open gate and into the
aircraft hangar where three OPP officers sat at a table.
I asked them if this was the
search command centre and whether the news media would be allowed here. One
officer, a polite and respectful young guy (he even called me sir!), said he
did not know but he would ask his sargeant on my behalf.
As he left, I was grabbed by
the arm and yanked around. I found myself looking at a belligerent Algonquin Park
ranger who demanded: “Do you not know how to read?”
That I learned later was a
presumed reference to a No Unauthorized Persons sign out by the open gate.
My first thought was to say:
“Yes, I can read: enough to have written and published 10 books despite being
blind in one eye. Now get your paws off and let me finish my business with the
OPP.”
But experienced reporters
understand that their job is to stay focussed on the story, not to fight with
people in authority. Their editors have lawyers to do that.
As I was being escorted off
the property an OPP officer ran up and told me that reporters would not be
permitted at the search command area but could get information about the search
through the OPP media office in Smith Falls. I thanked him for his help, while
resisting the temptation to ask him if he would mind giving human relations
lessons to Ranger Bob.
The result was that myself,
and a few other media types who arrived later, stood on the Highway 60 shoulder
hoping to pick up bits and pieces of what was happening with the search. That
created a dangerous situation in which the media people, and passing motorists,
could have been hurt.
One reporter, trying to read
her cell phone screen in the bright sunlight, absent-mindedly backed into the
traffic lane. If a couple of others had not
shouted at her, she could have been hit by a passing car.
The authorities at Smoke
Lake were just doing their jobs, although the park ranger could use training on
how to do it without the storm trooper tactics.
Their bosses, the autocrats
at Queen’s Park, were not doing theirs. If there had been an accident out on
the highway, the blame would have rested solely with them.
This is a government that
despises the media, in fact is afraid of it, and will do whatever it can to
stop journalists from doing their jobs.
Professionally-run governments
know how to handle these situations. A professional government operation would
have had an information officer at Smoke Lake; someone to organize journalists
into a safe area where they could view comings and goings without bothering search
teams.
That’s how it works in a
democratic world.
But angry autocrats know
nothing better than shouting slogans about journalists being ”the enemy of the
people” and scumbags working “in the weeds.”
The Washington Post masthead
warns that “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
I see our democracy dimming
every day, and it has nothing to do with advancing age, or having one blind
eye.
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