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EBSCO Publishing : eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 10/16/2021 5:23 AM via UNIVERSITY CANADA WEST AN: 463483 ; Taras, David, Waddell, Christopher Robb.; How Canadians Communicate IV : Media and Politics Account: ns012452

H o w C a n a d i a n s C o m m u n i c a t e I V

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How Canadians Communicate IV Media and Politics

Ed ited by Dav id Ta ras a nd Chr istopher Waddel l

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Published by AU Press, Athabasca University 1200, 10011 – 109 Street, Edmonton, AB T5J 3S8

ISBN 978-1-926836-81-2 (print) 978-1-926836-82-9 (PDF) 978-1-926836-83-6 (epub)

Interior design by Sergiy Kozakov Printed and bound in Canada by Marquis Book Printers

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Media and politics / edited by David Taras and Christopher Waddell.

(How Canadians communicate ; 4) Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued also in electronic formats. ISBN 978-1-926836-81-2

1. Mass media--Political aspects--Canada. 2. Social media--Political aspects--Canada. 3. Communication in politics--Canada. 4. Canada--Politics and government. I. Taras, David, 1950- II. Waddell, Christopher Robb III. Series: How Canadians communicate ; 4

P95.82.C3M45 2012 302.230971 C2012-901951-8

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CFB) for our publishing activities.

Assistance provided by the Government of Alberta, Alberta Multimedia Development Fund.

Please contact AU Press, Athabasca University at aupress@athabascau.ca for permissions and copyright information.

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Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgements ix

The Past and Future of Political Communication in Canada: An Introduction 1

D av i d Ta r a s

part I The Changing World of Media and Politics

1 The Uncertain Future of the News 29 F l o r i a n S au va g e au

2 On the Verge of Total Dysfunction: Government, Media, and Communications 45

E l ly A l b o i m

3 Blogs and Politics 55 R i c h a r d D av i s

4 The 2011 Federal Election and the Transformation of Canadian Media and Politics 71

D av i d Ta r a s a n d C h r i s t o p h e r Wa d d e l l

5 Berry’d Alive: The Media, Technology, and the Death of Political Coverage 109

C h r i s t o p h e r Wa d d e l l

6 Political Communication and the “Permanent Campaign” 129 T o m F l a n a g a n

7 Are Negative Ads Positive? Political Advertising and the Permanent Campaign 149

J o n at h a n R o s e

8 E-ttack Politics: Negativity, the Internet, and Canadian Political Parties 169

Ta m a r a S m a l l

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9 Myths Communicated by Two Alberta Dynasties 189 A lv i n F i n k e l

10 Throwing the Baby Out with the Bathwater: Canadian Forces News Media Relations and Operational Security 213

R o b e rt B e r g e n

part II Citizens and Politics in Everyday Life

11 Exceptional Canadians: Biography in the Public Sphere 233 D av i d M a r s h a l l

12 Off-Road Democracy: The Politics of Land, Water, and Community in Alberta 259

R o g e r E p p

13 Two Solitudes, Two Québecs, and the Cinema In-Between 281 D o m i n i q u e P e r r o n

14 Verbal Smackdown: Charles Adler and Canadian Talk Radio 295 S h a n n o n S a m p e rt

15 Contemporary Canadian Aboriginal Art: Storyworking in the Public Sphere 317

T r o y Pat e n au d e

16 Intimate Strangers: The Formal Distance Between Music and Politics in Canada 349

R i c h a r d S u t h e r l a n d

Final Thoughts: How Will Canadians Communicate About Politics and the Media in 2015? 369

C h r i s t o p h e r Wa d d e l l

Contributors 379

Index 383

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Illustrations

Tables

1.1 Regular readers of a daily newspaper, 2009 33 1.2 Regular readers of Montréal daily newspapers

(Monday to Friday) 34 1.3 Advertising revenues by medium 36 3.1 Blog readers versus non-blog readers 60 3.2 Reasons given for reading political blogs 62 3.3 Blog readers’ familiarity with ideological blogs 63 5.1 Voter turnout in Ontario communities, 1979–2000 114 6.1 Canadian national political campaigns, 2000–2009 137 6.2 Total contributions from corporations, associations,

and trade unions 142 6.3 Financial impact of proposed $5,000 limit, 2000–2003 143 6.4 Quarterly allowances paid to political parties, 2004–7 143 7.1 Political party election advertising expenses, 2004–11 158 7.2 Political party advertising in non-election years 160

Figures

1.1 Total daily newspaper paid circulation in Canada, 1950–2008 32 15.1 Norval Morrisseau, Observations of the Astral World (c. 1994) 322 15.2 Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, I Have a Vision That Some Day All

Indigenous People Will Have Freedom and Self-Government (1989) 326 15.3 Heather Shillinglaw, Little Savage (2009) 330 15.4 Bill Reid, The Spirit of Haida Gwaii (1991) 336

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Acknowledgements

This book is the result of a collaborative effort between Athabasca University and the Alberta Global Forum, now based at Mount Royal University. We are particularly grateful to Frits Pannekoek, president of Athabasca University. Without his insights, guidance, and commitment, this book would not have been possible. The book and the conference that gave life to it received gen- erous support from a grant awarded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We are deeply appreciative. We are also grate- ful to Gina Grosenick, who did a magnificent job of helping to organize the conference, and to Peter Zuurbier, whose assistance in collecting the indi- vidual essays and preparing the final manuscript was indispensable. Walter Hildebrandt, the director of Athabasca University Press, was extremely sup- portive and as always brought impressive ideas and good judgment. Those who worked on the volume for AU Press, Pamela MacFarland Holway, Joyce Hildebrand, Megan Hall, and Sergiy Kozakov, were all first rate. Everett Wilson helped with the original poster design for the conference and pro- vided ideas for the book cover.

Christopher Waddell would like to thank the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University for giving him a wonderful vantage point over the past decade from which to watch the evolution of Canadian media, politics, and public policy. He is also grateful to his wife, Anne Waddell, and their children, Matthew and Kerry, for giving him the time to do that and to his mother, Lyn Cook Waddell, whose life as an author has had a tremendous influence on his own work. Chris adds a special thanks to Frits Pannekoek and Gina Grosenick for everything that they have done to make the conference and this volume possible.

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x Acknowledgements

David Taras would like to thank Chris Waddell and Frits Pannekoek for being such insightful and inspiring colleagues, Dean Marc Chikinda and Provost Robin Fisher of Mount Royal University for their faith and vision, and Greg Forrest and Jeanette Nicholls of the Alberta Global Forum for their leadership. Gina Grosenick was magnificent, as always. Claire Cummings provided excellent assistance for the AGF on a whole series of fronts, which included helping to organize the conference. David would also like to thank his wife, Joan, for her support and understanding.

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Dav id Ta ras

The Past and Future of Political Communication in Canada An Introduction

In June 1980, in the wake of the Québec referendum on sovereignty and the 1979 and 1980 federal elections, the Reader’s Digest Foundation and what was then Erindale College of the University of Toronto co-sponsored a conference on politics and the media.1 The Erindale conference brought together promi- nent party strategists and organizers, journalists, and scholars. Participants spoke about the power of television images, the presidentialization of Canadian politics, the concentration of media ownership, the failure of lead- ers to address policies in a serious way during elections, the sheer nastiness and negativity of political attacks, the power of the media to set the agenda and frame issues during elections, and the need for politicians to fit into those very media frames if they wished to be covered at all. None of these concerns have vanished with time. If anything, they have hardened into place, making them even more pervasive and intractable.

Yet even as so much has remained the same, so much has changed. When the conference “How Canadians Communicate Politically: The Next Generation” was convened in Calgary and Banff in late October 2009, the media and political terrains had been dramatically transformed. The revolu- tion in web-based technology that had begun in the mid-1990s had hit the country with devastating force. As online media depleted the newspaper industry, TV networks, and local radio stations of a sizable portion of their audiences and advertising, the old lions of the traditional media lost some of their bite. The stark reality today is that every medium is merging with

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2 Introduction

every other medium, every medium is becoming every other medium, and all media are merging on the Internet. Most critically, a new generation of digital natives, those who have grown up with web-based media, is no longer subject to a top-down, command-and-control media system in which messages flow in only one direction. Audiences now have the capacity to create their own islands of information from the endless sea of media choices that surround them, as well as to produce and circulate their own videos, photos, opinions, and products, and to attract their own advertising.

And the country has also changed. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the absorption of more immigrants from more countries than any other soci- ety in history, the growth of global cities, and connectivity have all produced a profoundly different society. Furthermore, years of constitutional battles and another much more desperately fought referendum in Québec in 1995 have culminated in both frustration and exhaustion. Living on the edge of a precipice could not be sustained indefinitely, even in Québec. The coun- try has also grown proud of its accomplishments. Canada’s banking system withstood the most punishing effects of the financial meltdown that ravaged the world financial system in 2008 and 2009; multicultural experiments that appear to be failing in other societies, such as France, the United Kingdom, and Germany, are succeeding in Canada; and arts and culture are burgeoning.

The “How Canadians Communicate Politically” conference, organized by Athabasca University and the Alberta Global Forum (then based at the University of Calgary and now at Mount Royal University), brought together distinguished scholars from across Canada with the intention of examin- ing what the next generation of political communication would look like. We asked contributors to view politics and communication through a much different and more expansive lens than was the case with the 1980 Erindale conference. While much of this volume deals with media and politics in the conventional sense—examining such topics as the interplay among journal- ists and politicians, the future of news, and the effectiveness of negative cam- paigning in both online and TV advertising—we also look at politics through the frames of popular culture and everyday life: biographies, off-road politics in rural Alberta, Québec film, hotline radio, music, and Aboriginal art. The noted Swedish scholar Peter Dahlgren has observed that changes in popu- lar culture both reflect and condition political change.2 Once a trend or idea becomes firmly implanted within a culture, it is only a matter of time before

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Introduction 3

it permeates and affects public policy. While some of these essays deal with aspects of popular culture, our search was wider—we wanted to see how poli- tics takes shape and change occurs in places that are beyond the prescribed battlegrounds of politicians and political parties.

The 2009 conference included a session about Alberta politics, or what might be called the Alberta political mystery. The province remains the only jurisdiction in North America, and arguably Europe as well, where a single party, the Progressive Conservatives, so dominate the political landscape that elections have become non-events, with little campaigning, debate, discus- sion, or voter turnout. Though other provinces may have traditional lean- ings, the party in power typically shifts with some regularity. In almost every American state, the governorships and senate seats change hands with the political tides. In Alberta, the tides of political change never seem to arrive. One could argue that the media in the province are just as unchanging. Yet, as Roger Epp points out, beneath the surface, political battles rage, ideas are tested, and meeting places are formed. Alvin Finkel, however, contends that power in Alberta is not only self-perpetuating but brutally imposed.

This book focuses on three changes that have taken place in the nature of political communication since the Erindale conference more than thirty years ago. First, we have moved from a media landscape dominated by the traditional media to one where Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and smart phones play an increasingly important role. The future of the news industry cannot be taken for granted. Newspapers have been corroded by a steady drop in both readership and advertising. They employ fewer journalists, paying them far less than they used to, and younger readers have fled in droves. In 1980, the conventional over-the-air networks—CBC, Radio-Canada, CTV, Global, and TVA—had the capacity to set the political agenda because they had the power to attract mass audiences. While the national news shows of the main networks are still a main stage for Canadian political life, much of the action has moved from centre stage to the sidelines of cable TV, where there are a myriad of all-news channels, each with small but stable audiences. As Marcus Prior demonstrates in Post-Broadcast Democracy, a book that some scholars regard as a modern classic despite its relatively recent arrival, the more enter- tainment options available to viewers, the more likely they are to avoid news entirely, and as a consequence, the less likely they are to vote.3

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4 Introduction

A second change since the Erindale conference is in the nature of politi- cal life in Canada. On one hand, the party system has remained surprisingly resilient: the same three parties—the Conservatives, the New Democrats, and the Liberals—that dominated in 1980 still dominate the political landscape today, with a variety of insurgent parties such as the Créditistes, the Reform Party and then the Canadian Alliance, the Bloc Québécois, and the Greens falling more or less by the wayside. On the other hand, the rhythms of politi- cal life are now very different: a never-ending 24-hour news cycle, changes in party financing laws that demand non-stop solicitations, the development of databases that allow for the microtargeting of both supporters and swing voters, and cybercampaigns that are fought daily on party websites, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and YouTube have meant that political parties now wage per- manent campaigns. Simply put, the political cycle never stops. Parties have also learned more definitively than ever before that negative campaigning works. The need to define and therefore place question marks in voters’ minds about opponents consumes Question Period, appearances by the “talking heads” that parties designate to appear on cable news channels, and the ad campaigns that are waged before and during campaigns.

Just as there are questions about the future of news, there are questions about the future of politics and whether the new political style limits debate, makes tolerance for and compromises with opponents more difficult, and delegitimizes politics as a whole. These questions are vigorously debated in this book, with contributors lined up on different sides of the arguments.

A third change in the nature of political communication is the result of changes in Canadian society. While today’s digital natives are more global, multicultural, and tolerant and have a greater command of technology than previous generations, they are also “peek-a-boo” citizens, engaged at some moments, completely disengaged at others. Despite the galvanizing power of social media, fewer people under thirty join civic organizations or politi- cal parties, volunteer in their communities, donate money to causes, or vote in elections than was the case for people in the same age group in previous generations. They also know much less about the country in which they live and consume much less news. In fact, the ability of citizens generally to recall important dates in history or the names of even recent prime ministers, as well as their knowledge of basic documents such as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, is disturbingly low.4 Digital natives in particular view historical

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Introduction 5

Canada as a distant and, to some degree, foreign land that is barely recog- nizable and, for the most part, irrelevant to their lives. How to draw digital natives more fully into the Canadian political spectacle remains one of the country’s great challenges.

I : T h e C h a n g i n g W o r l d o f M e d i a a n d P o l i t i c s

The first part of this book open with an article by Florian Sauvageau, a former newspaper editor, TV host, and university professor who served as director of Université Laval’s Centre d’étude sur les médias and recently produced a docu- mentary on the future of news. At first glance, Sauvageau’s article reads like an obituary for the news industry. While he is reluctant to administer the last rites, Sauvageau chronicles the decline of newspapers and, along with them, much of the “reliable news” on which a society depends; readers are led to conclude that even if newspapers survive in some form, they will be mere shadows of what they once were. As Sauvageau states: “Not all print newspapers will die, but they are all stricken.” There are simply too many problems to overcome. Younger readers are vanishing. Classified and other ads are migrating to web- based media, where they can target younger and more specialized audiences, and to social media sites, which allow users to reach buyers and sellers without paying the costs of advertising. Newspaper websites capture only a portion of the revenue (around 20 percent, by some estimates) that print versions gener- ate, and digital culture has created different news habits. As Sauvageau points out, consumers have become accustomed to munching on news “snacks,” short bursts of information and headline news, rather than the larger and more nutritious meals provided by newspapers. The expectation among young con- sumers in particular is that news has to be immediate, interactive, and, most important of all—free. In fact, a survey conducted for the Canadian Media Research Consortium in 2011 found that an overwhelming 81 percent of those surveyed would refuse to pay if their favourite online news sites erected a pay wall. If their usual news sources started charging for content, they would simply go to sites where they could get their news for free.5

According to Sauvageau, the problem for society is that newspapers are still the main producers of news. They have the largest staffs and the most resources, and produce almost all of the investigative reporting. He quotes an American study that found that 95 percent of the news stories discussed

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6 Introduction

or quoted in blogs, social media, and websites came from traditional news sources—mostly newspapers. As Sauvageau explains: “If the other media didn’t have newspapers to draw on, their news menu would often be meagre indeed. If newspapers stopped publishing, radio hosts who comment on the news would have trouble finding topics, and bloggers would have precious few events to discuss. In large part, newspapers set the public affairs agenda. If the crisis gripping newspapers worsens, it will affect all media and therefore the news system that nourishes democratic life.” Simply put, if newspapers die, the whole news industry won’t be far behind.

Sauvageau describes various solutions to the problem—apps on mobile phones, for example, may give newspapers a second life, and in France, the government has come to the rescue by providing subsidies. In a few cases, wealthy moguls eager for prestige and power have saved newspapers from the brink, and there are innovative schemes for turning newspaper companies into charitable non-profit institutions, as is now the case with Québec’s most influential newspaper, Le Devoir. But ultimately, he concludes that reliable news needs to rest on reliable foundations and, in the end, people have to be willing to pay for news.

The most devastating and pessimistic critique of the changing media landscape and its effects on Canadian political culture in this book is by Elly Alboim, a long-time Ottawa bureau chief for CBC television news, a profes- sor at Carleton University, and a principal in the Earnscliffe Strategy Group in Ottawa. Alboim believes that news organizations have lost the capacity to be a “more effective link in the process of governance” and that they feel “no real attachment to or support for current institutions.” Any pride in having a broader “civic mandate” has been lost in the drive to entertain audiences: when politics is covered, for instance, stories are invariably about conflict and scandal, failures and fiascos. Compromise—the life’s breath of effective politics—is treated as a sign of weakness. The message to citizens is that gov- ernments are mostly ineffective and that all politics must be viewed with sus- picion. In Alboim’s words, media coverage is “a priori adversarial, proceeding from a presumption of manipulative practice and venal motive.”

This has created an immensely destructive feedback loop. Political leaders fear being caught in the undertow of negative media coverage for whatever actions or positions they take. Rather than engage the public in discussion, the easier course is to fit the “media narrative” with attention-grabbing pictures

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Introduction 7

and snappy sound bites that convey the image but not the substance of actions and policies. The lesson learned through bitter experience is that issues are to be managed, controversies suppressed, and ideas or policy initiatives rarely if ever discussed in detail. It’s hardly surprising that the end product is a dis- engaged public. The process is circular. The public’s cynicism and disinterest feeds back into and justifies media narratives that view politics with suspi- cion—which prompts political leaders to avoid clashes with the media and therefore serious engagement with the public.

Some observers hoped that web-based media would bring greater inter- action and debate. If anything, according to Alboim, web-based media may have accelerated the “decoupling” process by allowing users to live in their own media bubbles. Alboim’s worry is that “if you don’t know what you don’t know and are unwilling to delegate others to tell you, you begin to narrow your uni- verse to one driven by your preconceived interests. Governments can exacer- bate the problem when they determine that it is not in their interest to devote extraordinary efforts to engage the disengaged.” Not everyone would agree with the portrait that Alboim draws of a closed circle in which disengagement is constantly reinforced. The distracted nature of Ottawa political reporting is not the only measure of the media’s engagement in politics. In fact, one could argue that the exact opposite phenomenon is occurring—that we live in a time of political excess and hyper-partisanship, rather than the opposite. Quebecor, for instance, which dominates the Québec media landscape and owns the Sun newspaper chain and the Sun News Network, is consumed by politics. In the case of Quebecor, what is extraordinary is not the absence of politics but the naked aggression with which ideas and passions are promoted. It’s also hard to argue that the media has turned its back on politics when both national news- papers, the Globe and Mail and the National Post, regional giants such as the Toronto Star and La Presse, and chains such as Postmedia take strong editorial positions, often openly displaying their politics on their front pages. At the very least, the theory of media disengagement from politics needs much greater examination.

Alboim’s assertions about citizen disconnectedness on the Internet can also be disputed. Some scholars would argue that, in some ways, citizens are more connected than ever before—they are just connecting differently. One of the most contentious issues, however, is whether web-based media suppress debate and dangerously divide publics by creating media ghettos. Leading

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8 Introduction

observers such as Robert Putnam, Cass Sunstein, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Joseph Cappella, and Eli Pariser have made the case that users increasingly dwell in their own self-contained media ghettos that shield them from facts or opinions with which they disagree.6 For instance, Jamieson and Cappella found in their 2008 study that right-wing conservatives in the United States tended to watch Fox News, read the Wall Street Journal, and listen to Rush Limbaugh. They were unlikely to venture much beyond this ideologically secure gated community and were cut off from views they found uncomfort- able or inconvenient. The same closed media circle has developed among lib- erals in the United States, who might read the New York Times, watch CNBC, and read blogs such as Talking Points Memo. In the Canadian context, pre- sumably viewers of the Sun News Network will also listen to talk show hosts like Charles Adler, read the National Post, and follow Tory bloggers.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the algorithms that direct search engines provide users with information based on their previous searches. As Eli Pariser points out, “There is no standard Google anymore.”7 When conducting searches, people with conservative views will be directed to different websites than people with liberal views.

But it’s not clear that all of the evidence supports the “ghettoization” thesis. Marcus Prior, for instance, refutes the claim that people are becoming the equivalent of political shut-ins. His data show that people who are consumed by politics tend to go to multiple sources; they follow the journalistic action wherever it leads.8 Researcher Cliff Lampe also found that people on social media sites were better able than others to articulate opposing viewpoints, especially as their circle of online friends widened. So it may be too soon to make sweeping judgments.9

The only non-Canadian scholar to speak at the “How Canadians Communicate Politically” conference was Richard Davis of Brigham Young University, a former chair of the political communication section of the American Political Science Association and a leading expert on the effects of web-based media on American politics. In his chapter on blogs, Davis argues that the blogosphere is shaped like a pyramid: a few influential bloggers dwell at the top of the pyramid and command a great deal of the traffic while the vast majority of bloggers get little, if any, attention. A-list bloggers are read by policy-makers and journalists, and are part of the opinion-making and agenda-setting elite. Most of the others write for themselves and a spoonful

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Introduction 9

of friends or fans. While the blogosphere is vast, the readership for politi- cal blogs is small (only one in twenty Americans who are online regularly read blogs) and confined to a predominantly male, white, well-educated, and higher-income group. To some degree, media ghettos are built hierarchically and are based more on social class than on political or ideological views.

One is tempted to extrapolate from blogs to other parts of the Internet, including social media such as Facebook and Twitter. These are remarkable tools for those who are already active in politics, allowing them to follow politicians and journalists, organize, become informed about events, pub- lish, and swap and redact materials as never before. But web-based media are unlikely to mobilize people who take little interest in politics to suddenly take an interest; rather, they allow the attentive to become more attentive, leaving the vast majority to remain on the sidelines, where they prefer to be. In fact, a survey conducted at the beginning of the 2011 election campaign found that only a small minority, 4 percent of those between eighteen and thirty-four, used social media to discuss political issues on a daily basis. Surprisingly, the percentage of older and middle-aged voters who turned to social media for political debate and information was substantially higher.10

Election campaigns are the largest canvas on which the relationship among media, politics, and publics is played out. Elections are for political journalists what the Olympics are for athletes. They test what news organi- zations are made of. Christopher Waddell and David Taras review the 2011 election campaign with an eye toward how the rituals of campaigning and campaign coverage might be reformed. Despite much hype about the power of social media to engage young people, voter turnout, especially among digi- tal natives, remained low. This may have been due to an absence of galvaniz- ing issues and big ideas. Party policies seemed little more than a hodge-podge of micro-promises aimed at mobilizing distinct categories of swing voters. Critical questions such as the future of health care, how governments would cut spending in order to balance budgets, the state of the country’s cities, and the shrinking market for good jobs were avoided by the parties as if they were political kryptonite. It’s hard not to conclude that by allowing political lead- ers to sidestep the major issues facing the country, journalists had become “enablers”—allowing these practices to take place while pretending not to notice.

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10 Introduction

Journalists covered the photo ops and daily messaging from the leaders’ tours, and they were obsessed with the horse race in much the same way that journalists were in 1980. In this regard, not much has changed, and there is little indication that it will. Waddell and Taras conclude that both media and party election scripts have become strangely disconnected from the country and need to be rewritten in critical ways.

Waddell picks up the theme of disconnection again in the next chapter. A former national editor for the Globe and Mail and Ottawa bureau chief for CBC Television News before becoming director of the School for Journalism and Communication at Carleton University, Waddell believes that we are wit- nessing the “death of political journalism.” In his view, political journalism did not die suddenly as the result of a single blow but succumbed to a series of blows over the last twenty years. First, there were decisions by local newspa- per and owners to eliminate their Ottawa bureaus due to financial pressures. This severed a vital lifeline between the Ottawa press gallery, local commu- nities, and their MPs. Waddell uses the following analogy: “Would as many people go to an Ottawa Senators hockey game, a Toronto Blue Jays baseball game, or a Calgary Stampeders football game if all the local radio, television, and print media in those communities simply stopped covering the sport with their own reporters, instead using occasional stories written by wire services such as Canadian Press?” The effects on the political system as a whole were quite substantial. Because they seldom made news, MPs became almost invis- ible in their communities. Their lack of local influence was refracted back to Ottawa, where MPs with little recognition and hence little leverage in their communities became increasingly powerless and ineffective.

But additional blows would follow. To save costs, Ottawa bureaus elimi- nated reporting jobs, dispensing almost entirely with specialized reporters— such as those who covered courts, foreign affairs, or the environment—in favour of general assignment reporters, who, the assumption went, could cover any story. The problem was that reporters without the time needed to develop expertise and contacts of their own fell prey to quick and easy jour- nalistic practices, relying on Google and on party spin merchants for infor- mation and focusing on conflict and personalities. At the same time, news organizations were also slimming down the complement of reporters in pro- vincial legislative press galleries. Young reporters once cut their teeth cov- ering provincial politics, gaining valuable experience and local connections,

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Introduction 11

before being called up to the big leagues of the Ottawa press gallery, but that career ladder has been all but removed.

To Waddell, the final blow is the rise of “BlackBerry journalism.” The very devices that are meant to connect journalists to the pulse of the country have had the opposite effect—they have allowed journalists to construct an “alternate reality” based on Ottawa insider politics. Through BlackBerrys and other smart phones, as well as social media such as Twitter, reporters and party operatives trade information and gossip, discuss party strategies, and constantly react to each other. But as Waddell concludes: “Instead of using technology to bridge the communications gap between voters in their com- munities and the media, the media has used it to turn its back on the public, forging closer links with the people reporters cover rather than with the people who used to read, watch, and listen to their reporting.”

It’s interesting to view Waddell’s argument against the backdrop of Davis’s discussion about blogs and other web-based media. While there is great euphoria about the connected society and the ability of web-based media to mobilize and involve young people, in particular, into the nexus of politics, the evidence is that these media are being used to narrow rather than widen the gates of public connectedness. Hierarchies, A-lists, insider baseball, gated communities, and a press gallery that’s been “Berry'd alive” have become met- aphors for increased worry about how web-based and mobile media are being used. Waddell’s article echoes a theme raised by Alboim: that the media’s neglect of politics has produced a self-fulfilling prophecy. The less priority news organizations give to political reporting, the less the public becomes interested in politics, the less pressure there is on media organizations to cover politics well. The cycle feeds endlessly on itself as the bar is continually lowered.

Another development that has altered the relationship between media and politics in the last thirty years is the notion of the “permanent campaign.” At the time of the 1980 Erindale conference, political campaigns took place exclusively during elections. After an election, the music more or less stopped until the next one was called. Today, campaigns are perpetual, with politi- cal parties always in motion. While the phrase “permanent campaign” was first coined by Sidney Blumenthal in 1980, the notion was refined by Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann in a book published by the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution in 2000.11 The term was meant to apply

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12 Introduction

to American politics. Saturation polling and the ability to track the popularity of political leaders on a daily basis, the advent of cable TV channels and the 24-hour news cycle, and the huge fundraising quarries that had to be mined for campaign costs, including TV ads in particular, had risen not only dra- matically but exponentially. Add in a short two-year election cycle for those in the House of Representatives, and campaigning never ceases.

Tom Flanagan, a former chief of staff to Stephen Harper and national cam- paign director for the Conservative Party, and a noted scholar, believes that the permanent campaign not only has taken hold but has come to dominate Canadian politics. In Flanagan’s view, “the arms race” never stops. What did change were the minority governments that governed the country from 2004 to 2011, along with party fundraising laws that curtailed how much could be given by corporations and unions. From 2004 to 2011, when these subsidies were abolished, parties benefited from quarterly allowances that they received from government coffers, the amount being determined by the number of votes that the parties had received during the previous election. Having inher- ited extensive voter ID lists from the populist Reform and Canadian Alliance parties, the Tories were also able to create a “direct voter contact” machine that churned out money 363 days a year. These fundraising lists also became the basis for their formidable campaign contact and get-out-the-vote efforts. The Liberals failed to develop the same machinery and, as a result, lacked much of the artillery that was critical to the Tories’ success.

The principal innovation however, was that the Conservatives used their fundraising advantage to launch a series of pre-writ ad campaigns. The strat- egy was to use these ads to define Stephen Harper before he could be defined by his opponents and to define his opponents before they could define them- selves. It also needs to be pointed out that the Conservatives had received a lesson from the school of hard knocks courtesy of the Chrétien Liberals, who used negative ads against the Reform and Canadian Alliance parties with dev- astating results. Not mentioned by Flanagan is an ad that aired before the 2011 election showing Harper in the prime minister’s office working late at night on his economic plan. The message was that Harper was the dependable man, minding the store when everyone else had gone home. But the Conservative attack ads directed first against Liberal leader Stéphane Dion and then against his successor, Michael Ignatieff, were both personal and brutal. In fact, one could argue that Ignatieff, who had been away from Canada for thirty-four

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Introduction 13

years before returning to enter politics, never recovered from the downpour of ads that claimed that the Liberal leader was “just visiting” and “just in it for himself.” The conventional wisdom in politics is that no attack should go unanswered for very long. Arguably, without the money needed to respond quickly to these attack ads, Dion and Ignatieff were never able to undo the damage that had been done to their images.

Numbers speak volumes. According to one estimate the Conservatives spent more than $50 million in research and advertising between 2008 and 2011.12 In the week prior to the federal budget that was presented just before the Tories were defeated in the House of Commons and that precipitated the 2011 election, the Conservatives ran 1,600 ads compared to just 131 for the Liberals.13

Jonathan Rose of Queen’s University agrees with Flanagan that the per- manent campaign has become the “new normal.” He worries that party pol- icy-making has been taken over by strategists, pollsters, advertisers, and PR specialists to such a degree that political parties have become little more than props in a stage show managed by others. As Rose warns, they have become the tools of PR and advertising agencies: “Party members serve as a backdrop for PR firms in communicating their arguments about how best to sell the party. The purpose of the party organization is now to be a network for the dissemination of ideas that have been focus-group tested and marketed, and appropriately branded.” The increasing disconnect between voters and civic life is at least partially linked to the emptying of political parties and to the fact that calculated and manufactured messages are now so blatantly false and manipulative that voters tend to view everything with suspicion.

Rose also agrees with Flanagan that TV ads have become weapons of choice in the political battlefield. They allow parties to bypass the media’s filter and target specific groups of voters by advertising on certain shows or spe- cialty channels, and their effects can be magnified through sheer repetition. Echoing a debate that has recently been joined by Ted Brader and John Geer in the United States, Rose asks whether attack ads have become destructive to the political process.14 First, there can be no doubt about their effectiveness. Their messages tend to be remembered longer by voters than those of other ads: once questions about opponents have been placed in the voter’s mind, they are difficult to erase. But according to Rose, recent studies also show that attack ads can have a positive effect: they tend to focus on policies and provide

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14 Introduction

voters with real information, and they are more truthful than so-called posi- tive ads. They are also likely to generate debate or controversy. Those who are attacked either have to disable these political explosives by responding quickly to them with facts of their own or risk suffering serious and perhaps even fatal damage.

Some analysts, however, question the value of negative ads. They believe that negative TV spots suppress voter turnout by making politics seem venal and nasty. They also note that ads can elevate false charges, appeal to fears and emotions rather than reason, and create a highly contrived and perhaps false view of the choices available to voters. Attack ads routinely depict opponents as looking foolish or sketchy, take odd or unintended remarks out of context, and dredge up unsavoury business deals or personal relationships from the distant past. Some countries are so wary of their power that they ban them entirely. Others regulate what can and cannot be shown or limit attack ads to discrete corners of the TV schedule. Canadian election law imposes no rules or limits about what can be shown or said. The notion is that the public can be trusted to discern truth from falsehood. If ads are seen as too negative or hard-hitting, or if they don’t ring true, they will backfire on those who pro- duced them.

Tamara Small of the University of Guelph, one of the leading experts in the country on online campaigning, believes that web-based media have con- tributed to the permanent campaign. Party websites are continually updated; some leaders tweet their followers, including reporters, almost daily and sometimes several times each day; the blogosphere is constantly massaged and monitored; and, as Small notes in her chapter, specialized websites are created as issues and needs develop.

Party websites are the very opposite of the open spaces that idealists envi- sion. They are based entirely on one-way, top-down communication because parties fear losing control of their message by giving a platform to people with controversial views or those who want to hijack sites, turning them into platforms for issues that parties wish to avoid. Parties are so protective of their sites that, as Small points out, they set up new and different sites for negative messaging. While the main party sites are part of a party’s public face and have a pristine and official look, attack sites are for mudslinging, delivering bloody noses, and mocking opponents. In the rough-edged back alleys of the Internet, political parties descend to new lows.

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The remaining two articles in this section, Alvin Finkel’s description of Alberta politics and Robert Bergen’s analysis of the ways in which the Canadian military’s media policy has evolved in wartime situations from Kosovo to Libya, are case studies in how governments have managed issues in ways that suppress public engagement.

Alberta may be the pre-eminent example of a government’s ability to dom- inate and dictate debate and discussion. Finkel believes that the Progressive Conservatives’ long rule in Alberta is the result of a confluence of factors: charismatic leaders such as Peter Lougheed and Ralph Klein, the perceived need for strong provincial governments that can defend the province against encroachments by Ottawa, the prosperity created by a burgeoning oil and gas industry, and the Conservatives’ use of communication strategies that co- opted much of the media. Although Finkel’s chapter doesn’t deal with wider media theories, his analysis fits with the notion of “indexing” that has become popular in the communications literature. Scholars such as Daniel Hallin and Lance Bennett and his colleagues believe that media reporting mirrors the debates that take place among political elites.15 When a consensus existed— as was the case in Alberta during the energy wars that the province waged against Ottawa in the early 1980s or when the main political parties supported dramatic budget cuts during the early to mid-1990s—government public relations strategies were remarkably successful. When this consensus broke down—as was the case with the failure of government interventions in the economy under Premier Don Getty or during the controversial royalty review initiated by Ed Stelmach—media strategies failed. In fact, press criticism during Klein’s last years in power, and for most of Stelmach’s reign, was often quite stinging. The key question, perhaps, is how the Conservatives remained in power even when their media strategies seemed to collapse. Finkel’s analy- sis suggests that the answer lies in a largely compliant society that accepts Conservative ideologies and a press that gives the opposition little coverage and hence little credibility.

Robert Bergen’s description of the media strategies employed by the Canadian Forces is an indication of the adept ability that governments possess in avoiding real engagement with the media and the public on critical issues. In Bergen’s view, questions about war and peace—including the very reasons for Canadians being in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Libya—were deflected by what the military saw as the need to protect operational security. Bergen, a

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16 Introduction

former reporter who has been assigned to war zones, contends that the cam- ouflage of operational security has prevented Canadians from knowing very much about what their military has done on overseas missions over the last fifteen years. His detailed analysis of military briefings during the Libya cam- paign of 2011 raises key questions about the limits of the “operational security” argument in a democracy. If very little can be revealed about the nature of Canadian involvements and the public is continually kept in the dark, then how can these missions be considered legitimate? On the other hand, Bergen understands the need to safeguard the troops and their families. The question is where to draw the line. Interestingly, he argues that the explosion of web- based media has made little dent in the ability of the Canadian Forces to use the media to create a single and unchallenged view of Canada’s involvement in recent wars.

The themes that emerge in this first section on the changing world of media and politics are disconnection, dysfunction, and crisis. Sauvageau, Alboim, Small, Waddell, and Taras all believe that institutions and/or certain practices are in need of reform and rethinking. Flanagan believes that the instruments and rules of power have changed and that those best able to adapt to the new rules will survive. He doesn’t make judgments about whether the rules are fair or in the public interest. In Rose’s view, the negativity that many see also has a positive side: issues are discussed and exchanges take place. Finkel and Bergen believe that governments still have an extraordinary capac- ity to set the media agenda and, under the right conditions, to suppress debate and controversy.

The contrast between this section and the one that follows couldn’t be greater. The next section is about creative engagement, activity, and involve- ment. When it comes to the spontaneous combustion of popular culture and grassroots activism, there is far more reason for optimism.

I I : C i t i z e n s a n d P o l i t i c s i n E v e r y d ay L i f e

Historian David Marshall’s exploration of Canadian biography provides us with an extraordinary vantage point on Canadian political history and iden- tity. The advantage of biography is that, as Marshall argues, “biography makes debates concrete because people can more readily identify with individuals and personalities than with abstract concepts.” Yet Canadian biography has

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Introduction 17

changed dramatically over the last century. Where biographies were once largely hero literature that celebrated the deeds of powerful people and thus reinforced the institutions that they represented, today’s biographies expose personal flaws and magnify the errors and injustices that their subjects com- mitted. And where biographies once focused only on the public aspects of public lives, revealing little about personal passions or demons, today’s biog- raphers take great delight in ripping away the protective masks worn by their subjects. The result is that some of the very best writing about Canada comes in biographies.

Marshall compares the recently published Extraordinary Canadians series of biographies edited by John Ralston Saul with the Makers of Canada series published over a hundred years earlier. The Great Man theory of history has clearly been overthrown since the new series includes those who lost battles— such as the Cree Chief, Big Bear; Louis Riel; and Gabriel Dumont—as well as those who fought for social change, such as Nellie McClung and Norman Bethune, but who never saw the promised land that they fought for. The new pantheon includes artists, athletes, writers, and a sports hero, Rocket Richard.

One effect of biography is that it reorders public memory. While politi- cal leaders such as Mackenzie King, John Diefenbaker, and René Lévesque may have triumphed on the political battlefield, their reputations have not survived their biographers’ scalpels. Others, such as R. B. Bennett, have been resurrected, and the legacies of John A. Macdonald and Wilfrid Laurier have been resignified by recent biographies. David Marshall’s pantheon of great works includes David Hackett Fischer’s biography of Samuel de Champlain, in which Fischer lays out both a theory of Canada and a guide for politi- cal leadership. John English’s magisterial biographies of Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau do the same, although the private lives and political styles of the two men couldn’t have been more different.

The next chapter in this section is by Roger Epp, a political scientist at the University of Alberta. Although the article deals with grassroots poli- tics in Alberta, the questions that he addresses resonate throughout the entire book. The most salient issue that Epp raises is how, in the absence of central meeting places and an “adequate deliberative forum,” citizens can come together to test ideas and weigh solutions to problems. The “political deskilling” that Epp sees occurring in Alberta is occurring elsewhere in the country, except that in Alberta politics, the situation is more extreme. In a

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rural Alberta now pockmarked by transmission lines, oil and gas wells, and giant feedlots, Epp argues that a culture of “negotiating and acting together” has taken hold. The “off-road politics” of Alberta, just as much, perhaps, as the off-road politics of the Web, has produced conflicts that are typically “eruptive and short-lived” and “may generate no more than an inchoate proto-politics.” But it is politics nonetheless—meaningful, authentic, and practical. As Epp observes, without these informal openings for dialogue and debate, democracy is “managed.”

Teaching a class on recent Québec films at the predominantly anglo- phone University of Calgary, Dominique Perron finds that the old certainties about Québec identity—and, indeed, about Québec’s relationship to the rest of Canada—can no longer be taken for granted. Her classes are made up of students who have come from all over the world, from global Canada, with the result that the “elements of recent Canada-Québec relations are almost completely alien to them. They might know certain facts, but they are cul- turally, as well as generationally, disengaged emotionally from these conflicts between the solitudes.” Surprisingly, many of her students didn’t view these Québec films within a Canadian context at all. Students relocated the films, fitting them into a global context. Even movies about Rocket Richard and an Inuit hunter were renegotiated so that comparisons were made with Asian or Latin American situations.

These reactions caused Perron to reflect on the transformations occurring within Québec itself. The animosity and distrust produced by generations of conflict with English Canada have given way to what can be described as a “Canadianization through globalization.” The emergence of Montreal as a global city in terms of both the economy and immigration has had the effect of connecting it to Canada. There is now a cohort of highly educated, mobile, cosmopolitan Québecers whose lives and experiences are interchangeable with elites in English Canada. While they strongly identify with Québec, this technocratic group “does not consider the territory of Québec as a limitation on its goals and visions.” Perron is also persuaded by Jocelyn Letourneau’s thesis that there remains another Québec—a Québec that is rural, dependent on the vagaries of primary industries, more insular and traditional, and far more nationalistic.

In the wake of Québec’s wholehearted embrace of Jack Layton and the NDP, and the evisceration of the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois during the 2011

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Introduction 19

federal election, there was much speculation in English Canada about the death of separatism in Québec. More than a few pundits eagerly declared vic- tory. The reality, as Perron’s discussion about the reception of Québec films by English-speaking students suggests, is far more complex. While there may be increasing interaction and comfort on some levels, the chill of isolation and mutual indifference remains. After all, it took enrolling in a class for English-speaking students to be exposed to Québec films. Although this old married couple may not be near divorce, which was certainly the issue when the Erindale conference took place in 1980, it’s not clear how well English- speaking Canada and Québec know each other.

Shannon Sampert analyzes a very different aspect of media culture in her article on Canadian talk radio. Sampert, who teaches at the University of Winnipeg, focuses on Charles Adler’s national radio show (Adler is also a host on Sun TV), comparing it to the spectacle of professional wrestling. Like wrestling, talk radio “has clearly defined heroes and villains, pageantry, outrageous posturing, and high drama, and it attracts fans much in the same way that wrestling does.” Her main point, however, is that just as wrestling is a “morality play,” Adler’s show “adjudicates issues of morality.” He rails against the injustices of daily life, airs popular grievances, and promotes his show as the only place where you can hear the truth. The “truth,” according to Adler and his listeners, is that liberals, feminists, and special interest groups have transformed work, schools, and the broader culture in ways that are absurd and destructive to Canadian values. Adler’s role is to hold “those in authority accountable.” The show is a conservative counterattack, a space for venting anger against institutional and social forces that listeners often find incompre- hensible and overwhelming.

Sampert points out that Adler is part of a long line of talk show personali- ties stretching back to such original characters as Jack Webster and Rafe Mair in Vancouver, Ron Collister and Dave Rutherford in Alberta, Ed Needham in Toronto, Lowell Green in Ottawa, and Andre Arthur in Québec City, to name but a few of Canada’s radio stars. While some observers see talk radio as a media dinosaur, one of the last meeting places for an older and more conser- vative male audience at a time when younger listeners are increasingly going elsewhere, Sampert argues that Adler is still “an agenda setter, selecting and framing central issues of the day for other political and journalistic elites.” In other words, one ignores talk radio at one’s own peril.

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The relationship between the majority of Canadians and First Nations peoples is haunted by a problem of “knowing.” Nature guide and artist Troy Patenaude describes how this gap is being closed, at least to some degree, by the widespread acceptance of Aboriginal art. While it’s important to point out that the art of the Inuit is very different from Haida art or the art produced by Native artists on the prairies, the special power of Aboriginal art, according to Patenaude, is that it is rooted in “storywork.” Through storywork, artists tell stories that are rooted in the natural and the spiritual worlds, and participants are invited to share that knowledge. In this way, “contemporary Canadian Aboriginal artists are sustaining an age-old tradition of communicating with other generations, species, entities, and cultures through forms of art, or story, from the ground up.” Their works are intensely political because they inte- grate other Canadians into Native cultures and world views while naturalizing Canadians with their own environment in doing so. Patenaude quotes George Melynk, a leading interpreter of Canadian culture, as saying that there is now a “métisization of art” that has allowed Canadians to see their history and place in the world differently.

While the article examines the storywork of a number of path-breaking Aboriginal artists including Norval Morriseau, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, and Joanne Cardinal Schubert, Patenaude believes that the work of Haida artist Bill Reid deserves special reverence. Reid’s majestic sculpture The Spirit of Haida Gwaii, whose image adorns the back of Canada’s twenty-dollar bill, has come to symbolize Canada itself. A boat is occupied by thirteen mythi- cal creatures, each representing an aspect of life on Haida Gwaii off of British Columbia’s west coast, formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands. Those who view the sculpture are asked to respect the individuality and special place of each of the characters. In one sense, the sculpture is a metaphor for Canada, but in another, it brings us all “into a profound relationship with Haida Gwaii: its people, land and ecosystems.”

There is, however, an ironic twist. The centrality now given to Aboriginal art also coincides with the increasing marginalization of Native peoples in Canadian life. Canada’s symbolic terrain is shockingly different from the Canada that really exists. The level of neglect and destitution, as well as the violence on many First Nations reserves, is deeply disturbing. Large num- bers of the homeless who wander city streets are Aboriginal, and levels of education, housing, and sanitation on reserves are often abysmal. While the

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Introduction 21

majority of Canadians have been invited through storywork to enter the world of Aboriginal peoples, one could argue that everyday life holds few such encounters.

The same cannot be said about the music that is part of the everyday experi- ence of most Canadians. While Richard Sutherland of Mount Royal University reminds us that music is overwhelmingly about entertainment and typically divorced from politics in Canada, the reasons behind this divorce tell us much about the country. Because music is “a marker of identity,” Canadian music, much like the country itself, is divided by regional and linguistic identities. Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Québec, and even Alberta, with its deep country- and-western sensibility, all have musical traditions that reflect distinct styles and passions. Not unexpectedly, the sharpest distinction is between Québec and English-speaking Canada. In Québec, popular music and politics have long nurtured each other. Chanson created by artists such as Felix Leclerc and Raymond Lévesque expressed the emotions and patriotism behind the sov- ereignty movement and became anthems sung at mass rallies. As Sutherland points out, in the rest of Canada, groups such as the Guess Who, Blue Rodeo, the Tragically Hip, or the Rheostatics often refer to Canada in their lyrics, but the message is almost never about politics. In the case of popular artists such as Bryan Adams, Sarah McLachlan, Alanis Morissette, Jean-Pierre Ferland, or Leonard Cohen, their songs “register as Canadian (at least with Canadians)— not because they offer a distinctly Canadian musical style or contain lyrical references to Canadian places or people,” but simply because audiences know that they are Canadian. While Canadian politicians use music in their appear- ances and campaign ads, music almost never uses them.

T h e C h a l l e n g e s A h e a d

A final essay by Christopher Waddell summarizes one of the main dilemmas posed in the book: our capacity to access information and connect with each other has increased to such an extraordinary degree that in some ways, we now have less information and are less involved than in previous decades. According to Waddell, the 2011 federal election campaign was “a campaign in which everyone talked about new technology, the digital revolution, social media, and interactivity, but virtually no one used it to communicate with voters.” Moreover, at the same time that the digital revolution has produced

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22 Introduction

massive amounts of information about every imaginable topic, interest, or passion, the Harper government has eliminated the long census form and made access to information far more difficult, and rarely speaks candidly about issues or decisions. Waddell hopes that by 2015, the year in which the next federal election will likely be fought, our political gyroscopes will have changed—that, by 2015, Canadians will have become more involved in com- munity and civic life, information that is so vital to people’s lives and to public debate will no longer be hidden, and political parties and journalists will have broken out of the deep ruts they now find themselves in. If we fail to meet this challenge, then 2015 will look much like 2011.

One of the major changes to take place since the 1980 Erindale confer- ence is the shrinking of our great public spaces. Much of this volume will chronicle the diminished space that Canadians have in which to communi- cate with each other, to deliberate, and to be informed about politics. The transition from mass media to Me-media has meant that the news organiza- tions that the country once depended on to produce news—the old lions of the Canadian newspaper industry and the evening newscasts of the main tele- vision networks—are in retreat. While we must be careful about suggesting that we are anywhere close to holding a deathbed, candlelight vigil, traditional news media’s ability to assemble a mass audience, to conduct “shoe leather” investigative journalism, and to offer journalists viable careers is evaporat- ing. It is less clear if web-based media provide comparable meeting places. Despite the kinetic power of social media and their extraordinary ability to mobilize, inform, and create, the audience for politics appears to be sporadic, elusive, and, to some degree, highly ghettoized. While Twitter and Facebook are magnificent tools for engaging those who are already mobilized, they do little to engage a mass public. In fact, if we accept Marcus Prior’s contention that the vast cornucopia of entertainment now available through web-based media and on cable TV has made it more likely that large numbers of people will avoid news entirely, then the break between large numbers of citizens and the political system may be extremely difficult to bridge.

A second loss of space has occurred as a result of the changing nature of politics. Election campaigns were as cutthroat and negative thirty years ago as they are today; politics has, after all, always been brutal and personal. But only recently has the campaign season become permanent. The combina- tion of negative politics and the permanent campaign has created a new toxic

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Introduction 23

mix. Two surveys taken during the 2011 federal election campaign show that many Canadians are deeply frustrated by the negative attacks that characterize so much of Canadian politics. An Angus Reid/Toronto Star poll taken at mid- campaign found that over 60 percent of those surveyed believed that Canadian democracy was in crisis, and almost 80 percent, an astonishingly high number, thought that politicians were less honest than in the past. Most expressed a mix of emotions—mistrust, cynicism, and alienation—and none of the parties were seen as a satisfactory choice by a majority of those who were asked.16 Another Angus Reid poll, conducted after the leaders’ debates, found that a majority of those who were shown clips of the debates online were “annoyed” by what they saw.17 Respondents reacted with irritation when the leaders attacked each other but responded positively when the leaders discussed their policies. In other words, people were genuinely interested in learning about issues rather than lis- tening to contrived messages and spitball attacks.

It’s difficult not to conclude that the never-ending maelstrom of negative politics that has become one of the earmarks of the permanent campaign has produced a cancerous by-product—a strong distaste among voters for the political system. While scholars have focused their attention on why younger voters in particular have turned their backs on politics, the reality may be that the political system has turned its back on Canadians.18 The question is also whether news organizations have added to the problem by highlighting conflict and personalities instead of changing the media script so that political leaders have to address the major issues facing the country. That health care, the future of cities, the environment, or job growth could be almost entirely ignored during the 2011 election is an example of how both politics and journalism have become smaller. Interestingly, this narrowing of the arteries has taken place at the same time that web-based media was expected by many observers to produce the opposite effect—to widen discussions and reinvigorate the public square.19 The result, at least so far, has been to turn politics inward.

When it comes to grassroots politics and some aspects of popular culture, the country seems much more vital. While Canadian culture has always been a minority culture in Canada because of the overpowering presence of the US entertainment industry, Canadian literature, music, drama, film, and art are filling more and more of our psychic landscape. Although most of grassroots politics and popular culture has little to do with formal politics, the “story- work” of artists, writers, and filmmakers is often intensely political. Their

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24 Introduction

work has entered the bloodstream of national discussion, and has altered per- ceptions and consciousness. Québec films, Aboriginal art, political biogra- phies, and the off-road politics of rural protest are also part of politics.

n o t e s

1 Politics and the Media: An Examination of the Issues Raised by the Quebec Referendum and the 1979 and 1980 Federal Elections (Toronto: Reader’s Digest Foundation of Canada and Erindale College, University of Toronto, 1981).

2 Peter Dahlgren, Media and Political Engagement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 136–48.

3 Marcus Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy: How Media Choice Increases Inequality in Political Involvement and Polarizes Elections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

4 See, for instance, Ipsos Reid/Dominion Institute, “National Citizen Exam: 10 Year Benchmark Study,” June 2007, http://www.dominion.ca/Dominion_Institute_Press_ Release_Mock_Exam.pdf.

5 Canadian Media Research Consortium, “Canadian Consumers Unwilling to Pay for News Online,” March 29, 2011, http://www.cmrcccrm.ca/documents/CMRC_Paywall_Release. pdf.

6 Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), chap. 9; Cass Sunstein, Republic.com 2.0 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); Kathleen Jamieson and Joseph Cappella, Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You (New York: Penguin, 2011).

7 Pariser, The Filter Bubble, 2. 8 Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy, 271–74. 9 On Lampe, see Rory O’Connor, “Word of Mouse: Credibility, Journalism and Emerging

Social Media,” Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, Discussion Paper Series (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2009), 18–19.

10 Greg Markey, “One-Fifth of Canadians Discussing Politics on Social Media,” Vancouver Sun, April 11, 2011, http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/archives/story. html?id=d8e38ac2-b13c-4df6-aacd-3d43817c7ac7.

11 Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, eds., The Permanent Campaign and Its Future (Washington: American Enterprise Institute and The Brookings Institution, 2000).

12 Robin Sears, “Quebec Storm Sweeps Canadian Electoral Landscape: The Realignment Story of Campaign 41,” Policy Options (June–July 2011): 31.

13 Paul Wells, “The First Mistake,” Maclean’s, May 16, 2011, 16. 14 See Ted Brader, Campaigning for the Hearts and Minds: How Emotional Appeals in Political

Ads Work (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); and John Geer, In Defense of

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http://www.cmrcccrm.ca/documents/CMRC_Paywall_Release.pdf

http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/archives/story.html?id=d8e38ac2-b13c-4df6-aacd-3d43817c7ac7

Introduction 25

Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

15 Daniel Hallin, The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Lance Bennett, Regina Lawrence, and Steven Livingston, When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News from Iraq to Katrina (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

16 Susan Delacourt, “Voters Filled with Dashed Hopes, Angus Reid-Star Poll Suggests,” Toronto Star, April 25, 2011, http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/979612--voters- filled-with-dashed-hopes-angus-reid-star-poll-suggests.

17 Susan Delacourt, “TV Debates Annoyed Canadians, Poll Finds,” Toronto Star, April 16, 2011, http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/975746--tv-debates-annoyed- canadians-poll-finds?bn=1.

18 See Henry Milner, The Internet Generation: Engaged Citizens or Political Dropouts (Boston: Tufts University Press, 2010).

19 See Matthew Hindman, The Myth of Digital Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), chap. 1.

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the changing world of media and politicspart i

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Flor ia n Sauvageau

The Uncertain Future of the News

The financial crisis gripping the traditional media, especially newspapers, has put fear into the hearts of people who hold that a vibrant democracy depends on an informed citizenry and that the news function played by the media is therefore vital. In the United States, the past few years have been disas- trous for newspapers, bringing closures, shifts to Internet-only publishing, and massive layoffs of journalists. The worst of the storm happened in 2008 and 2009, but the situation has continued to deteriorate, although at a slower pace (see www.newspaperlayoffs.com). Meanwhile, we have been inundated with studies, reports, conferences, and blogs on the decline of the press and its political consequences.

In his evocatively titled book Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy, Alex S. Jones, director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University, explains that what we risk losing is not freedom of expression or opinion, which is in fact flourish- ing on the Web; rather, we face “a dearth of reliable, traditional news.” For it is news rather than commentary that shapes opinion. In a chapter titled “Newspapers on the Brink,” Jones summarizes the situation in the United States in one terse sentence: “Panic is not too strong a word for the collective mind of the newspaper industry.”1

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30 F l o r i a n S au va g e au

Even though the level of anxiety is not as high in Canada, the situation is just as worrisome. Many journalists have been laid off, in print and television alike, and the working conditions of the survivors have, in many cases, dete- riorated. In English Canada, severe job cuts (six hundred, or 10 percent of the workforce) were announced at the end of 2008 at the Sun Media newspaper chain, owned by Montréal-based media giant Quebecor. Significant buyouts and layoffs, along with retraining of reporters for the digital age, have also occurred at the Postmedia newspapers, including the flagship National Post, since this newly formed company acquired Canwest’s newspapers in 2010. (The Canwest group had entered bankruptcy protection in 2009.) More lay- offs and buyouts were announced in the fall of 2011 by Postmedia and Torstar, owner of the Toronto Star. In Montréal, La Presse management threatened to close the newspaper in December 2009 if the employees did not accept major changes to their collective agreement, and in January 2009 the Journal de Montréal, published by Quebecor, decreed a lockout, which lasted more than two years, until February 2011. Ultimately, three-quarter’s of the newspa- per’s employees lost their jobs, and the newsroom staff was reduced by half.2

My topic is the future of the news, but I shall discuss, above all, newspa- pers because their fates are intertwined. Newspapers play a dominant role in the gathering and dissemination of the news. Their newsrooms are far better staffed than those of the other media, and each day, in most of the communi- ties they serve, they cover more events than their competitors do, and often in greater depth. In the United States, a study of Baltimore’s news “ecosystem” by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism did a fine job of demonstrating the preponderant role of newspapers. Even though the news sources available to the public have proliferated in recent years, especially on the Internet, we tend to find the same news everywhere. The study showed that 95 percent of the articles and reports that contained original information came from traditional media—most of them newspapers.3

The situation is somewhat different in Canada because of the presence of the public broadcaster, especially in French Canada, where it claims an outsized share of journalistic manpower. A survey conducted in 1996 showed that 31 percent of the journalists working for the country’s French-language media were employed by Radio-Canada and that almost a fifth (19 percent) of all Canadian journalists were employed by CBC/Radio-Canada.4 It is probably safe to assume that this situation has not changed much. Even so, newspapers

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The Uncertain Future of the News 31

also play a vital role in the country. If the other media didn’t have newspapers to draw on, their news menu would often be meagre indeed. If newspapers stopped publishing, radio hosts who comment on the news would have trou- ble finding topics, and bloggers would have precious few events to discuss. In large part, newspapers set the public affairs agenda. If the crisis gripping newspapers worsens, it will affect all media and therefore the news system that nourishes democratic life.

Moreover, many studies point out that the print media foster an informed citizenry (Henry Milner provides an exhaustive review in Civic Literacy: How Informed Citizens Make Democracy Work). Newspaper readers, especially those who read the broadsheets, are better informed than non-readers and are more likely to be involved in the political and democratic life of their country. On the contrary, people who watch a great deal of television, especially com- mercial TV, are less informed about public affairs. The adage “words fly away but writings remain” appears to be true.

This brings me to the financial crisis, which is accompanied, in my opin- ion, by a crisis that is just as profound: namely, that of a style of journalism that is slightly dated and has difficulty adapting to technological leaps and to the behaviour of a fragmented, diversified public. In this chapter, I shall try to explain the roots and consequences of both crises.

A M u lt i fa c e t e d C r i s i s

The financial crisis that the print media is experiencing is twofold: in eco- nomic parlance, it is both cyclical and structural. The recession (the cyclical aspect) and the falling advertising revenues that go hand in hand with it have accelerated the slow decline that newspapers have been experiencing for years, suddenly turning it into a freefall. But the difficulties will not magically disap- pear as the economy recovers. The roots of the crisis go deeper. To understand the changes that are occurring, we must look at a broader framework: that of the decline of the mass media as we knew them in the twentieth century and the rise of niche media based on digital technology. This phenomenon is similar to the decline of the department store, which offers everything for everyone, and the triumph of the specialized store, which enables shoppers to satisfy a specific need or a particular passion. Just as generalist television has seen a portion of its audience and revenues migrate to TSN and other specialty

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channels, daily newspapers are coming under attack from websites of every kind imaginable.

That being said, the problems that newspapers are experiencing were foreseeable long before the advent of the Internet. For decades, newspaper circulation has been out of sync with population growth and increases in the number of households (see figure 1.1). Even so, newspapers still had enough readers to continue to attract advertisers, and their profits caused owners to turn a blind eye to the public’s declining interest in their product. But more recent consumer behaviour—especially that of young people, who rarely buy newspapers—as much as advertiser behaviour, has caused newspaper owners to sound the alarm.

Figure 1.1 Total daily newspaper paid circulation in Canada, 1950–2008 (percentage of households)

SOURCE: Adapted from Canadian Media Research Consortium, The State of the Media

in Canada: A Work in Progress, May 2009, http://www.cmrcccrm.ca/documents/SOM_

Canada_0702.pdf, 52.

It is often said that in United States, each newspaper reader who dies leaves no heir, which is not far from reality. In 2007, according to figures provided by the Newspaper Association of America, one-third of young adults (namely people aged eighteen to thirty-four) regularly read a newspaper, as opposed to two-thirds of people aged fifty-five and over.5 The proportions are about the same in Canada (see table 1.1). Most young adults go elsewhere for the news. Unlike their parents, they are not loyal to one newspaper or newscast; instead, they nibble away at the news, whenever and wherever they feel like it. They prefer frequent news snacks to regular full meals. They take the news,

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The Uncertain Future of the News 33

shape it, comment on it, and exchange it with their “friends” on Facebook or via Twitter. Their relationship with the media is characterized by the desire for interactivity, the need for a mobile medium, and the attraction of the free- bie—not to mention a dose of mistrust toward the large press groups.6

Table 1.1 Regular readers of a daily newspaper, 2009

Age Group Percent

18–34 35.9

35–49 43.3

50+ 58.8

SOURCE: Calculated by the Centre d’études sur les médias on the basis of NADbank data.

The freebie culture that has developed among young Internet users plays a determining role in their overall news-consumption behaviour. They will- ingly read a newspaper if they don’t have to pay for it. In Montréal, the free newspapers Métro and 24 heures are very popular with young people, so per- haps we should take their supposed rejection of printed newspapers with a grain of salt (see table 1.2). But that doesn’t solve the financial problems of the traditional media. Who will pay for news gathering if the customers of tomorrow won’t and if advertisers are ever more reluctant to do so? It appears that the business model is broken, and efforts to find a new model have thus far been unsuccessful.

At the same time, we must not exaggerate the current scope of the changes. Even though Canada’s newspapers and other traditional media are a bit short of breath, they are by no means on their last legs. The situation is evolving slowly. Over the past twenty years, I have, on dozens of occasions, cited Vannevar Bush, a former science advisor to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt: he said we tend to exaggerate the short-term impacts of new tech- nologies while minimizing their long-term impacts. Television isn’t dead, and printed newspapers won’t all disappear next year. But the general trend shows that profound changes are taking place.

Canadians are increasingly using the Internet to stay informed, but tele- vision is still the preferred media platform of the majority. In Québec, two surveys by the Centre d’études sur les médias, carried out two years apart and

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involving the same group of people, show that the new media’s share of the time spent consuming the news increased by 3.4 percent from 2007 to 2009, rising from 12.6 percent to 16 percent of total time, but that the traditional media were still dominant. The 2009 survey obviously indicates that younger people are using the new media much more to track the news, but television remains, for them as for their elders, the main news source. Another study, focusing on heavy users of information technology, yielded additional reveal- ing findings. Many respondents identified a combination of media (especially television and the Internet) as their main news source. Newspapers played almost no role as a news source for heavy users of the new media. This study confirms that the general trend does not bode well for printed newspapers over the long term.7

Table 1.2 Regular readers of Montréal daily newspapers (Monday to Friday)

Newspaper 2004 2009 Difference

Le Journal de Montréal 642,000 612,500 - 29,500

La Presse 459,200 384,600 - 75,200

The Gazette 358,100 267,300 - 90,800

Métro 260,500 337,300 76,800

24 heures 152,500 267,600 115,100

Le Devoir 77,000 54,300 - 22,700

NOTE: In Montréal, the free newspapers Métro and 24 heures, which, as the table shows,

have the wind in their sails, are especially popular with the 18 to 34 age group. Regular

readers of Métro are on average ten years younger than readers of the broadsheet La

Presse (39 and 49 years of age, respectively). In Toronto, readers of paid newspapers are

also older than readers of free newspapers. Readers of the Toronto Star are on average 51

years old, and those of the Globe and Mail are 50. Readers of the free newspapers Metro

and 24 Hours have an average age of 40 and 43. These data pertain to the print editions

of the newspapers in question.

SOURCE: Calculated by the Centre d’études sur les médias, on the basis of NADbank data.

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The Uncertain Future of the News 35

A d v e r t i s i n g L o o k s E l s e w h e r e

In North America, advertising has traditionally provided the lion’s share of newspaper revenues—from 75 to 80 percent. Montréal’s Le Devoir is an excep- tion: it obtains half of its revenues from newspaper sales and has therefore fared better in the difficult economic climate of recent years.

Newspapers as a group suffered the first blow when classified advertising sites appeared on the Web. Classified advertising traditionally provided about a third of the advertising revenues of Canadian newspapers. In the United States, newspapers have been hit harder by the migration of classifieds to the Internet, but the phenomenon is also prevalent in Canada, where classified ad revenues fell an estimated 25 percent from 2005 to 2009.8

In 1964, Marshall McLuhan wrote in his celebrated book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, “Classified ads (and stock-market quotations) are the bedrock of the press. Should an alternative source of easy access to such diverse daily information be found, the press will fold.”9 This other source of information—easy to access, faster, and more practical—exists today, not only for classified ads and stock-market quotations but also for other news of the day. Not all print newspapers will die, but they are all stricken.

Advertisers follow consumers wherever they go. If consumers switch to the Internet and to niche media, advertisers will follow, in part because specialized media enable them to target more easily and for less money con- sumers who are potentially interested in a given product. It is more costly to advertise in the mass media, which attract consumers with diversified inter- ests and profiles, many of them indifferent to a given advertiser’s goods. For instance, when owners of car dealerships saw that customers were showing up on their lots after spending hours on websites dedicated to cars, they realized the time had come to allocate a portion of their advertising budgets to the new media, and newspapers sustained another blow. Table 1.3 shows that printed newspapers’ share of advertising spending has been dropping since the start of the decade.

A newspaper is a package of content (such as comics, political news, weather forecasts, and, of course, advertising) that consumers read for differ- ent reasons: some are interested in current events, others in the sports scores, and still others in current movies and arts events. Today, large portions of this content are migrating to the Internet, along with their audiences and revenues. Until only recently, classified advertising revenues may have paid the salaries

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of journalists assigned to Parliament Hill, and ads placed by car dealerships may have financed costly public affairs investigations. Content bundling and the inter-financing that it enabled are breaking down. As the Canadian Media Research Consortium notes in its 2009 report on the state of the media in Canada, “For the past 100 years, journalism has lived within a bundled prod- uct called media, and that bundle now is beginning to unravel.”10 The impact on civic life is obvious.

Table 1.3 Advertising revenues by medium

Medium Revenue (in millions) % growth

1999 2008 2009 1999–2009 2008–9

Television $2,370 $3,393 $3,102 30.89 -8.58

Newspapers $1,629 $1,680 $1,380 -15.29 -17.86

Radio $953 $1,547 $1,469 54.14 -5.04

Magazines $460 $692 $590 28.26 -14.74

Outdoor $243 $463 $416 71.19 -10.15

Internet $50 $1,142 $1,355 2,610.00 18.65

Total $5,705 $8,917 $8,312 45.70 -6.78

NOTE: Between 1999 and 2008, advertising revenues rose for all media, although the

growth was far less substantial for newspapers. But the economic downturn in 2008

affected all media except the Internet; print media (newspapers and magazines) were

hit especially hard. Advertising revenues for newspapers were much lower in 2009 than

they had been a decade earlier, or even in the previous year.

SOURCE: Calculated by the Centre d'études sur les médias on the basis of data published

by the Television Bureau of Canada in Net Advertising Volume, 2009. Revenues for

newspapers and the Internet do not include classified ads.

Newspapers may find themselves without enough resources to continue the news gathering they are now doing—a development that could have dramatic results: fewer journalists in the field, less investigative reporting, and a dearth of original, in-depth news. Those who disagree with this analysis will argue that newspapers are just as present on the Internet, to which advertising is shifting, and that they can benefit from the shift—but that is only partially true. The websites of large newspapers receive only a portion of the advertising that is

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migrating to the Internet. You can find advertising everywhere: on Google, on social-networking sites, and on every other kind of site. In the short term, Internet-only publishing would spell disaster for printed newspapers. For example, the revenues from the online version of the New York Times cover only 20 percent of the cost of the current editorial department.11 Of course, things are changing, but slowly. One day, newspapers will perhaps be able to generate from their digital editions alone enough revenue to offer content com- parable to that of today’s print versions. But when will that day come?

Today, newspapers are pinning their hopes on mobile devices such as smart phones and reading tablets, which are quickly developing and expand- ing. The most optimistic publishers believe that electronic tablets, especially the iPad, can change people’s news-consumption habits, just as the iPod has changed the way people consume music. And why not? Whether readers get their news from the printed page of a newspaper or from an electronic tablet doesn’t really matter. What counts is the content.

Some see this development as the opportunity to correct the mistake made by newspapers, which, by offering their content free of charge on the Web, have helped create the prevailing freebie culture. “It’s not much of a revolution yet,” writes Curtis Brainard, “but what is increasingly apparent is that mobile devices have the potential to offer the journalism business that rare and beau- tiful thing: a second chance—another shot at monetizing digital content and ensuring future profitability that was missed during the advent of web 1.0.”12 Does the future of the news depend on smart phones and electronic tablets? If so, salvation won’t be arriving tomorrow. The period of transition during which revenues from print editions continue to fall while those from digital publishing rise, but not enough to make up the difference, may continue for some time, with predictable consequences.

T h e S tat e , P h i l a n t h r o p i s t s , a n d W h o E l s e ?

Let’s get back to the question I raised earlier: Who will pay for news gathering and distribution if customers and advertisers won’t continue to do so? The state? South of the border, fears that some large cities, such as Boston and San Francisco, could find themselves without a major newspaper sparked a quick reaction from various political and administrative authorities. The US Senate held hearings and analyzed various ways of helping the press. Certain

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proposals deserve to be examined, such as possible joint projects by publish- ers and journalists to convert their newspapers into non-profit corporations to secure more favourable tax treatment.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the public sector has always subsidized the press in the United States, albeit indirectly, but this support is declining and could be reduced further. Many states, for example, are expected to shift to the Internet their mandatory publication of public notices, which in 2000 represented 5 to 10 percent of the revenues of certain local newspapers. This development couldn’t come at a worse time.13

Is government support for newspapers the answer? For decades, the French government has been spending a fortune (€900 million in 2010 alone) on all sorts of assistance for the print media to ensure diversity and pluralism. It is true that without government assistance, some journals of opinion—such as l’Humanité, a newspaper with communist leanings—would have ceased to exist long ago. Even so, as French media expert Jean-Marie Charon points out, the system has not been able to prevent the disappearance of many publica- tions or to prevent struggling symbols of journalism’s independence, such as Le Monde and Libération, from passing into the hands of financiers or large media groups.14 It is therefore entirely legitimate to ponder, as some analysts do, whether we need to help news gathering rather than specific media.

A report that was commissioned by the journalism school at Columbia University and received a great deal of coverage in late 2009 suggests that what we must protect is independent reporting. The authors of the report, published under the challenging title “The Reconstruction of American Journalism,” clearly explain that they do not recommend “a government bail- out of newspapers, nor any of the various direct subsidies” found in European countries. They add: “Our recommendations are intended to support inde- pendent, original and credible news reporting, especially local and account- ability reporting, across all media in communities throughout the United States.” Each sizeable community should have a range of diverse sources of news reporting, commercial as well as non-profit, which “should be adapting traditional journalism forms to the multimedia, interactive, real-time capa- bilities of digital communication, sharing the reporting and distribution of news with citizens, bloggers and aggregators.”15 In this spirit, various jour- nalism experiments, including investigative journalism projects, have been carried out by our neighbours to the south with the assistance of foundations,

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philanthropists, and other similar sources of funding. But such foreign exper- iments are not necessarily compatible with Canada’s traditions and its social and political environments. Generally speaking, in Canada, especially in Québec, the philanthropist approach does not have the same historical base as in the United States. In the best-case scenario, it would represent only a partial solution to the media’s difficulties. We also see that, in the United States, some foundations tend to emphasize specific areas, such as health coverage, and the press does not always find that such patronage offers the independence and freedom of choice that are vital to fulfill its role. There is no single answer to the difficulties of the press. The solutions will depend on the traditions and circumstances in each country.

Who will pay for news gathering and distribution in the future? No doubt, we must limit the scope of the question. We don’t have to find support for all the news but only the news that feeds democracy, to use Alex Jones’s expres- sion. But a question remains unanswered: Is there a sizeable public for this type of journalism? I believe so. There will always be a role, and a demand, for journalism that tries to make sense of the news of the day, that presents the “day’s events in a context which gives them meaning.”16 How can we guarantee the future of free and independent news gathering in a digital world where facts and rumours intermingle, where lies are found alongside well-founded opinions, where manipulation is widespread? In a world where citizens inform one another and often place greater trust in their “friends” on social networks than they do in the major media? What purpose do journalists serve in this universe of information overload? What is their niche? It is up to the media and journalists to demonstrate their relevance.

J o u r n a l i s m i n C r i s i s

In my opinion, it isn’t just the mass media that are in a state of crisis. Journalism is too. The economist Robert Picard, who is one of the most astute observers of the print media and journalism, questions the very essence of the work done by journalists. He believes that what today’s journalists produce is often of little value. In a world where we had only a few newspapers and radio sta- tions, and only one or two TV channels, information and news were scarce commodities. Digital technology has changed all that.

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In today’s world of abundance, the news is covered by everyone with the same techniques, is written in the same style, is endlessly recycled from one medium to another and is remarkably similar. That is why it no longer has value. This kind of journalism, which is ubiquitous, will persist. Some people are satisfied with it, as long as it is free of charge. Those who are more demanding will be prepared to pay, provided they are offered something dif- ferent. Picard stresses innovation: “Journalism must innovate and create new means of gathering, processing and distributing information so it provides content and services that readers, listeners, and viewers cannot receive else- where. And these must provide sufficient value so audiences and users are willing to pay a reasonable price.”17

Standardized, formatted journalistic prose often reads like a coded mes- sage. The traditional model is based on the “lead” and the inverted-pyramid writing technique, which gives the facts in descending order of impor- tance; this technique came about as a result of the constraints imposed by old technologies, such as the telegraph and printing, and is poorly adapted to the expectations of an audience accustomed to the new media’s capabili- ties. Young people, especially, do not quite know what to make of a language from another era—that of the journalist often cast in the role of a quasi-oracle who selects each day from on high the facts that the public ought to know. Journalism, previously a lecture, has now become a seminar or a conversa- tion. In this new world, shaped by the Internet and interactivity, the journalist must have a dialogue with the public, for better or for worse.

Old-fogey journalism is dead. Long live neo-journalism! So wrote Christophe Barbier, the managing editor of the French magazine L’Express, a tad excessively. In an editorial stressing the need for radical change, he wrote that journalism no longer involves the vertical soliloquy of an expert address- ing the ignorant: nowadays, readers are more knowledgeable and skepticism is widespread. According to Barbier, neo-journalism is modest. It accepts and even solicits contradiction. It animates the agora without monopolizing it.18

Journalists have no choice but to adapt to the new hand they have been dealt. They must rethink their role and clarify their distinctiveness and their ways of doing things in this world of interactivity and overabundance of news. They must hold fast to the ideal of public service, which continues to be the purpose of their métier, but avoid nostalgia for a mythical golden age. They must respect tradition but also be able to innovate.

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The “reconstruction” of journalism involves not only a profound re-exam- ination of its practice but also, according to Picard, sustained co-operation between journalists and management. Journalists cannot be passive witnesses to the changes in progress. They need to acquire entrepreneurial and innova- tion skills that make it “possible for them to lead change rather than merely respond to it.”19 That also means profound changes in mindsets, the culture of journalism, and the training of future journalists. Some schools of journalism have already created courses designed to develop students’ entrepreneurship and to prepare them for becoming independent suppliers of the news.

In the years to come, journalism will be practiced and financed in many ways, which could contribute to the diversity of information and opinion, and thus strengthen democracy. But the ultimate solution to the problems plagu- ing the print media may require an introspective effort rather than merely a quest for a magical new business model.

A K i n d o f E p i l o g u e

Thirty years ago, the Royal Commission on Newspapers (also called the Kent Commission, after its chairman, Tom Kent) was “born out of shock and trauma” in a context of newspaper closures and takeovers. At the time, it was the concentration of newspaper ownership in the hands of large groups and the disappearance of independent newspapers that was causing concern. The decrease in competition was creating fear that the diversity of news and opin- ion would be jeopardized: this was the dominant concern in the commission’s report—and rightly so. It is also what retained the attention of the media’s commentators at the time, but it overshadowed a fascinating portion of the report.

In a chapter titled “An Industry in Transition,” the commission devoted several prescient pages to the “convergence” (don’t forget that this was almost thirty years ago) of the telecommunications sector, the computer sector, and broadcasting; to the two-way nature of what was then called telematics; and to the consequences of these technological innovations for the print media. The report stressed the possible impact on the print media of the explosion of new electronic media that coveted newspaper readers’ time and attention as well as advertisers’ dollars.

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Newspaper owners and journalists would have done well to pay close attention to this other aspect of the commision’s report. The new forms of electronic media “clearly have the potential to affect newspapers, starting in the second half of this decade,” wrote the commissioners. “The effect could become critical in the 1990s.”20 The shakeup came about ten years later than they predicted, but today we are starting to feel its full impact.

I would like to thank Marilyn Thomson for her help with the translation and editing of the text.

n o t e s

1 Alex. S. Jones, Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 164.

2 Stéphane Baillargeon, “L’offre patronale est acceptée à 64% au Journal de Montréal,” Le Devoir, February 28, 2011.

3 Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, “How News Happens: A Study of the News Ecosystem of One American City,” Journalism.org, January 11, 2010, http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/how_news_happens.

4 David Pritchard and Florian Sauvageau, Les journalistes canadiens: Un portrait de fin de siècle (Québec City: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1999), 64.

5 National Newspaper Association Foundation, “Youth Media DNA: In Search of Lifelong Readers,” http://www.naa.org/docs/Foundation/Research/Youthmediadna.pdf.

6 Claire Boily, The 18–24 Age Group and the News (Québec City: Centre d’études sur les médias and Institut national de la recherche scientifique, and Vancouver: Canadian Media Research Consortium, 2006).

7 See How Quebecers Consume the News (Québec City: Centre d’études sur les médias, and Vancouver: Canadian Media Research Consortium, 2010).

8 Calculated by the Centre d'études sur les médias on the basis of data furnished by the Television Bureau of Canada, Net Advertising Volume, 2009.

9 Quoted in Canadian Media Research Consortium, The State of the Media in Canada: A Work in Progress, May 2009, http://www.mediaresearch.ca/documents/SOM_ Canada_0702.pdf, 40.

10 Ibid. 11 Michael Hirschorn, “End Times: Can America’s Paper of Record Survive the Death

of Newsprint? Can Journalism?” The Atlantic, January–February 2009, http://www. theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/01/end-times/7220/.

12 Curtis Brainard, “A Second Chance—How Mobile Devices Can Absolve Journalism of Its Original Sin: Giving Away Online Content,” Columbia Journalism Review, July–August 2010, http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/a_second_chance.php?page=all.

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d un de r U. S. o r

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http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/how_news_happens

http://www.naa.org/docs/Foundation/Research/Youthmediadna.pdf

http://www.mediaresearch.ca/documents/SOM_Canada_0702.pdf

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/01/end-times/7220/

http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/a_second_chance.php?page=all

The Uncertain Future of the News 43

13 Geoffrey Cowan and David Westphal, “Public Policy and Funding the News,” USC Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism, Center on Community Leadership and Policy Research Series, University of Southern California, January 2010, http://communicationleadership.usc.edu/pubs/Funding%20the%20News.pdf.

14 Jean-Marie Charon, “Indépendance et pluralisme de la presse—Une presse peut-elle être indépendante quand l’État lui apporte en aide 900 millions d’euros?” Le Devoir, March 10, 2010.

15 Leonard Downie, Jr., and Michael Schudson, “The Reconstruction of American Journalism,” Columbia Journalism Review, October 2009, http://www.cjr.org/ reconstruction/the_reconstruction_of_american.php?page=all.

16 Commission on Freedom of the Press, A Free and Responsible Press—A General Report on Mass Communication: Newspapers, Radio, Motion Pictures, Magazines, and Books (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947), 20.

17 Robert G. Picard, “Why Journalists Deserve Low Pay,” Christian Science Monitor, May 19, 2009, http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2009/0519/p09s02-coop.html, 1.

18 Christophe Barbier, “A Suivre . . . ,” L’Express, January 8, 2009. 19 Picard, “Why Journalists Deserve Low Pay,” 3. 20 Canada, Royal Commission on Newspapers, Report of the Royal Commission on

Newspapers. (Hull: Canadian Government Publishing Centre, Supply and Services Canada, 1981), 195.

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http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2009/0519/p09s02-coop.html

http://communicationleadership.usc.edu/pubs/Funding%20the%20News.pdf

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El ly A lboi m

On the Verge of Total Dysfunction: Government, Media, and Communications

In the spirit of full disclosure, I should emphasize at the outset that my views reflect a particular set of experiences—sixteen years in television news, as a parliamentary bureau chief and national political editor, thirty years as a journalism educator, and now eighteen years as a communications strategist who is informed by public opinion research specifically designed to aid com- munications and media management. Over that time, my views have become less certain, less fixed, and more pessimistic. What follows is an amalgam of experience-based impressions, supplemented to some degree by the more rigorous analysis available in current literature in the field.

Any discussion like this probably needs to begin by considering the role, performance, and impact of the media with respect to government in Canada, particularly the media that report on the conduct of government. There is an obvious conundrum about chickens and eggs—but it is clear that media cov- erage has a profound impact on the design of government communications.

People involved in governance—whether directly or indirectly, in an effort to influence it—tend to think that the media have a responsibility to inform and educate and to act as fair witness to the process. Actually, the media have no interest in becoming a more effective link in the process of governance, nor do they currently have the ability to do so. Although journalists tend to

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