Democracy, Churchill once famously said, is the worst form of government – except for all the rest. Objectivity may have a similar relationship to journalism. It’s hard to achieve, bothersome, limiting, at-times disingenuous and often plain boring – but what are the alternatives? We are now seeing what happens when a discipline dominated by practitioners who reject the very idea of objective truth discard journalism’s formerly animating idea. Newspaper publishing veteran Peter Menzies links the traditional news media’s advanced state of decay to its willful abandonment of objectivity. Yet Menzies also finds glimmerings of a renewed commitment to objectivity in some unlikely places.
The New York Times had an award rescinded after its reporters were conned by the Canadian fabulist Shehroze Chaudhry, who claimed he had committed atrocities in Syria on behalf of ISIS. Scrutinizing the claim that racism is rampant in Canadian journalism, Josh Dehaas concludes the real scourge is identity politics.
The UN wants the world’s “migrants” – 258 million of them, by its own count – free to move about the world, presumably from poor countries to rich countries. It demands that those rich hosts not only open their arms, but make all their generous social programs instantly available. And, to help this process along, that countries clamp down on any “intolerance” – policing public speech, news media and even academic research. In short, it wants to shut down debate about immigration. In Part II of this special two-part report, with a federal election just weeks away, Lloyd W. Robertson illustrates the importance of talking about immigration while we still can.
Mark Milke had a ringside seat in the Alberta election as the lead architect of the United Conservative Party platform. What he saw was a startling disconnect between media coverage and the issues that mattered most to Albertans. The economic focus of UCP policy earned the party a million votes and a huge majority. Through bias, ignorance, or both, the media often missed the story.
The Mueller report icing the Russian collusion charges did not end Trump Derangement Syndrome. You can still trigger an argument just by wearing a red baseball cap with a certain caption on it. But a new book about the Trump era so far, by American conservative scholar Victor Davis Hanson, is mercifully TDS-free. Hanson’s bias in The Case for Trump is that whatever the failings of the disruptor, the Deep State needed disrupting. As the SNC scandal lifts the veil on Canada’s own Deep State, Barry Cooper wonders if it will be the harbinger of our own disruptor.
For those who seek to divide and conquer Western culture, the ends always justify the means. Hence the rise of “hate crime hoaxes,” exaggerated or invented incidents of racism. Recent fake villains include the Covington high school kids in the U.S., and, here in Canada, a Fort McMurray minor hockey team. There are fake victims too, notably actor Jussie Smollett in his worst performance yet. Making up stories to ignite race war takes a special kind of evil. Believing those stories, as so many in the media and positions of authority are wont to do, abets it.
The National Women’s Hockey League earlier this week announced it is expanding into Toronto. Stephen Harper’s book, A Great Game: The Forgotten Leafs and the Rise of Professional Hockey, recounts the troubled relationship between Hogtown and pro hockey. For James. R. Coggins, the book’s undeclared subtext is that hockey (and Canada) wins when Toronto loses.