Blatchford’s Timing

So there I was, it was supposed to be a nice lunch with two friends, both nationally known working journalists, and wouldn’t you know it, an argument breaks out. It was just 36 hours after the death of Jack Layton and I found myself in the middle of a heated discussion about Christie Blatchford’s article, you all know the article I’m talking about, the one that questioned Jack, especially his letter. Blatchford created a storm of controversy because she did not fall into line with the adoration that Layton was receiving by friend and foe alike.

On one side of this noon hour confrontation was one of the best news and documentary television producers in Canada. He felt that Blatchford went far overboard in her criticism and further, maybe most important, her timing was terrible. Writing that kind of stuff while the body was still warm was beyond acceptable.

On the other side a thoughtful newspaper columnist who insisted that not only was Blatchford correct in almost everything she said, but more important, what better time to write this column than when it was most newsworthy and therefore most relevant?

Reading the reaction to the Blatchford column since that lunch, it appears that most journalists, even those on the right, seem to agree that the timing was poor. Certainly the public reaction was almost completely against Blatchford, at least the published reaction I have read in dozens of newspapers, blogs, commentaries and the like.

At first I was onside with the generally accepted opinion. Now I’m not so sure.

First let me make it clear that I am no fan of Christie Blatchford and her writing. I find her to be knee jerk and predictable. No cop or right wing politician can ever be wrong and no left leaning person can ever have a valid point of view. Hers is a black and white world that can only exist in her fantasy world of courts and controversy.

That being said, I have come to appreciate what Blatchford did and to accept the principle that as a columnist it is not only her prerogative, but her duty too, to write what she thinks. It is not her job to self-censor so that the public will feel less queasy. In many ways she was the only national newspaper writer with the guts to tell us exactly how she felt about Jack Layton, the letter he wrote to Canadians from his deathbed (along with the help of his wife and at least two NDP functionaries), and her honest reaction to the media love-in that followed the announcement of Jack’s death.

While I don’t totally agree with the Blatchford column, I have to admit it was an important statement that was written and published at an important time.

What made me change my mind was thinking back to the death of Richard Nixon. I was working at TVO at the time and was disgusted by the media whitewashing the life and times of Tricky Dick. I was nauseated by the columns and commentaries that talked about what a great president he was. How he opened relations with Communist China (Canada had had relations with China for over a decade when Nixon traveled to Beijing.), his mastery of foreign affairs, and his success in passing dozens of bills through Congress.

In fact Richard Nixon was a crook and a racist. Nixon not only aided in the Watergate break-in, he lied about it and covered it up for years, in fact never truly admitting his part in the affair. This was a man who harassed his opponents using the power of his office illegally to go after those he disagreed with. Richard Nixon was a thoroughly unpleasant character who should never have been rehabilitated by the press, even in the days after his death.

I railed about the positive stories about Nixon at that time.

So now, these many years later, how can I object to Christie Blatchford’s column?

Just because I may like Jack Layton more than I liked Richard Nixon doesn’t give me the right to be upset when someone does exactly what I did. I guess, having given it some thought, I realized my initial reaction to Blatchford had more to do with my heart than my head. I was wrong and I believe so are the majority of people who are responding to Blatchford. Not the ones who are arguing about the nuances of Jack’s personality or policies, but the ones who believe it was crass and unacceptable to write so negatively about the man on the day of his death.

Look, I think Jack Layton’s death was a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. A leader on the cusp. A man who may have changed the country in ways that we can only imagine at this time. But that doesn’t mean his ideas and his life are beyond question. Surely we are free and open enough as a country to accept those who ask the tough questions and have a different point of view.

If your only objection is the timing, then I have to ask you when is the right time? One day later? After the funeral? Let’s be honest here, there is no way of picking a time that would be acceptable to everyone. We would each and every one of us choose a different time.

*I just want to add a short note about the death of Ron Haggart. Ron’s loss is a great one for Canadian journalism. He was a shining star in the world of television journalism. A man who never lost sight of the importance of his profession and held us all up to his high standards. He will be greatly missed.

Filed under: Media Commentary, Christie Blatchford, Jack Layton, Richard Nixon, TVO

No News is Bad News

At the end of the year it’s traditional to look back at what occurred during the past twelve months and pick out the highs and lows. Most years there are a few examples of each. 2009, however, has proved to be one of the most dismal years for news and current affairs in Canada ever. I can’t think of a worse period in my lifetime.

Everybody has already noted the disaster that is the new National at CBC: thin gruel masquerading as news, the worst reporting staff in CBC Television history, the inability to fill sixty minutes with relevant stories, and this doesn’t even refer to the ludicrous and totally unmotivated standing around to read the news and do interviews. The good news is that the audience numbers are way down. Perhaps this will induce the CBC bosses to see the error of their ways. I’m not holding my breath.

The CBC’s last great journalism show has also been diminished. The Fifth Estate has been moved to the dead zone of Friday night where it is almost impossible to garner decent ratings. The reason for the move: a better night to run Being Erica. Now I’m all for Canadian drama but why do the schedulers at CBC need to promote Canadian drama at the expense of their flagship current affairs program?

CBC fell further under the leadership and thrall of the evil emperor, Richard (Darth) Stursberg. He and his hand-picked minions of “yes” people seem to be doing the best they can to wreck CBC News and Current Affairs. Under his rule we have seen the degradation of national news, the moving of The Fifth and local news to dead zones, the virtual disappearance of the once popular program Market Place (it finally reappears after New Years), the now almost non-existent documentary, and I haven’t mentioned the terminally unwatchable CBCNN. There are those within the network, the cynics I guess, who believe Stursberg wants to see news and current affairs fail miserably so he can take the money and spend it on new drama, comedy and reality. If that’s the case the man has not looked at the history of television. News has been, and still is, one of the best ways to build an audience for your entire schedule. Hello, Dick, is the CBC still the CBC without Little Mosque on the Prairie and Being Erica? Is the CBC still the CBC without The National and The Fifth Estate?

CBC Radio has fared a little better but those in charge there believe it is purely a case of benign neglect and they fear that neglect is coming to an end. One producer of a flagship current affairs program on radio told me that Stursberg and company are beginning to look at radio. Scary. Ratings are good, but they can better if the shows are “dumbed –down” like over in CBC-TV land, at least that’s the idea the radio producers are getting from their bosses.

Over at CTV and Global the news is not much better. The bulwarks of “Capitalist Broadcasting” are coming to the government cap-in-hand begging for money in the form of cable and satellite fees. Their hook: they want to save local TV. Local TV, isn’t that the part of their empire they have abused and chopped going way back before they had a small financial dilemma? To prove how much they care about local TV they have been closing local stations even before they find out whether the CRTC will grant them their millions in unearned cash and they have steadfastly refused to guarantee that the dollars they squeeze out of cable and satellite subscribers will go to local TV. Save our shareholders! I guess that doesn’t sound so good in a television ad.

In the meantime CTV still runs W5 but buries it by running it against hockey on Saturday evening and if and when they invest in a documentary, it always airs in the W5 timeslot.

Over at Global, they bury their current affairs in their schedule too. Hands up anyone who has seen or heard about a Global documentary. I saw one on the rise of religion in Canada but that was only because a friend produced it and was kind enough to let me know when it was going to air.

CTV and Global news do a much better job of appealing to Canadians than CBC News does. For proof of this I only have to point out that both get over a million viewers regularly while CBC has trouble reaching half-a-million. Both are better produced and slicker than CBC’s effort but there is little room for celebration. Neither makes any attempt at depth or context. In a world where ABC, NBC and CBS have long understood that fewer stories told more completely is the best way to compete with all-news TV; CTV and Global are still doing newscasts the same way they were done pre-CNN and the internet. Here too CBC News’ failure may be a key. CTV and Global have always done a better job when they were pushed by excellent coverage at CBC. Now that the “Corpse” news has sunk below CTV and Global’s level there is no need for the privates to try harder.

In the U.S. we have witnessed the disintegration of the CNN audience with the odious Fox News being the main recipient of new viewers. Serious stories go unreported south of the border while the balloon boys, disappearing politicians and “birthers” dominate the airwaves. Sensationalism is winning and stories like Copenhagen are losing. Worse still the all news folks are challenging each other to see who can distort or get the facts more wrong. Any coverage of the health care debate by Fox or MSNBC is sure to make a Canadian’s eyes roll.

The good news? Well 60 Minutes somehow continues to tell excellent stories and surprise, surprise, gets a big audience too. The Fifth Estate still has the ability to do the best research and find the best stories. PBS’ new Newshour format is even better than it was before. CTV’s reporters, as a group, are as strong as any reporting team I can remember; perhaps that’s because they took their best and added some of CBC’s best to create a kind of dream team of news reporting. The Agenda with Steve Paikin gets better every year and deals with the kind of topics that only PBS and TVO tackle; oh, and surprise, surprise, they get pretty good numbers doing it in the middle of prime time against the toughest competition. CBC Radio has so far stayed the mostly fine course (we can only pray that lasts). And finally, Lou Dobbs is gone from CNN, this alone could be reason to celebrate the New Year.

Filed under: Media Commentary, 60 Minutes, ABC, Being Erica, CBCNN, CBS, CNN, CTV, Fox News, Global, Lou Dobbs, Market Place, MSNBC, NBC, PBS, Richard Stursberg, The Agenda, The Fifth Estate, The National, TVO, W5

Newsworld at 20

It’s the 20th anniversary of Newsworld and try as they might at the CBC they can’t get anyone to celebrate with them. Oh sure, there have been a few “puff” pieces in the newspapers over the weekend, but even those were mostly buried deep inside the paper.

The worst article I saw was by Oakland Ross in the Saturday Toronto Star. I remember Mr. Ross as a fine foreign correspondent for The Star. Either he’s a terrible feature writer or he couldn’t be bothered with this assignment. Not that I blame him. It was a lousy assignment. How to you turn the sow’s ear of Newsworld into a silk purse?

Oakland Ross writes “If sheer survival is among the abiding themes of Canadian history…then Newsworld must be defined as a success.” Whoa, is that a load of manure. Newsworld has been a cash cow for the CBC. Even if nobody watched the network, Newsworld would make a fortune for CBC. Every Canadian who has cable TV or satellite television has to pay a subscription fee of over a dollar a month. For twenty years we have had no choice in the matter. That’s millions of dollars every month going to support a network that few Canadians watched. There was no way it would be taken off the air. The CBC couldn’t afford to.

A few years ago my partner, Lon Appleby, and I were doing a series of specials for C-Pac. We got paid peanuts but we enjoyed the cinema verite coverage they allowed us to do of conventions and elections. The people in charge of C-Pac at the time loved our work so much they brought us in to train their staff. What they were most proud of at the time was that their audience was usually larger than Newsworld’s. That’s C-Pac, hands up those of you who are regular C-Pac viewers.

At the time we joked that it would be far cheaper for Newsworld to go off the air and send video tapes to anyone who was interested in their programming. But then they would have to forgo the CRTC mandated millions they were collecting.

The old timers interviewed by Oakland Ross love to talk about the good old days when Newsworld was on top of the Meech Lake Accord or the Wars in Iraq. The truth is the best rated shows on the network were programs like Antiques Road Show. Does that even belong on an “all news” channel?

As Newsworld heads towards a new beginning, a fresh look that aims to be newsier, faster, using the CBC’s words, more like CNN, I wish them all the luck in the world. The changes are an admission that what they have been doing hasn’t worked. But they’ve chosen a steep hill to climb. Especially when the CBC doesn’t have the resources to cover very much outside our major cities, let alone the rest of the world. When a crisis happens in Mumbai will viewers tune to CBC or CNN? In the past Canadians have voted with their channel changers. They have tuned into CNN and the U.S. networks in droves. Do you want to watch people reporting from the scene or from a desk in Toronto? I know CBC got a reporter to Mumbai, luckily a CBC staffer was on vacation in the region. But while CBC News was getting its first reports back CNN was coming live from the streets of Mumbai.

I don’t blame CBC News for this. CBC is a small underfunded network that on the main channel at least, seems less interested in the news service than Being Erica and Little Mosque on the Prairie.

What I do blame CBC News for are the unrealistic goals being set. Wouldn’t it be far better to aim for a network that provided context and depth to major stories in Canada and around the world? Forget about CNN Headline News Channel. Look at the panels and discussion shows that are also successful at CNN. Look at TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin which gets a better audience in Ontario than Newsworld gets coast-to-coast by staying within their means and doing what they can do well. Sure, let us know when a story breaks, that’s what all-news is about, but just as important, help us to understand what is happening and why. Canada, and especially Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, are a perfect venue for panels and discussions. No matter where an event happens in the world we have experts living right here. People who understand the foreign context and the Canadian context and can bring the two together. And guess what? We can do this extremely well with the money and resources at our command.

The last word has to go to a former CBC News chief editor, Cliff Lonsdale, who I am quoting from the Oakland Ross story, he said, “Across journalism, we need more in-depth coverage. In a world of Twitter, what we desperately need is context.”

Filed under: Media Commentary, Antiques Road Show, Being Erica, C-Pac, CNN, Little Mosque on the Prairie, Newsworld, Oakland Ross, The Agenda with Steve Paikin, The Toronto Star, TVO