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Canadian Association of Journalists
Journalists are often interesting, not infrequently quite talented, and usually have some professional pride, or at least common decency. Those who rightly call themselves journalists in this country might wonder why this admittedly (and reassuringly) declining occupational association is the carrier and propagator of the pernicious virus of malicious invention. It doesn't represent journalistic standards and if it did, no one would know any facts at all about any subject of public interest, other than to the extent any individual was directly aware of what was being reported.
What we have here is a refusal to communicate. We have a prime minister who refuses to explain why three of his Conservative senators have been forced to resign from his party. When it comes to codes of silence, His Worship the oafish mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, has learned a lot from the nation's chief magistrate.
Just before our recent over-sentimental overindulgence in gifts, food, drink and religion, the Star came out with a massive two-page spread titled "A Culture of Secrecy." It's a splendid rebuttal to the myth spreading through our culture that newspapers like the Star are doomed.
Slowly, slowly, the dwindling band of journalists who survive all the cuts are being acclimatized to the notion that their job is no longer to serve the people in our democracy -- a tradition proudly built up over the past couple of hundred years, often at great cost -- but to serve their employer. So why don't we, the people, take over -- subsidize our precious democratic journalism ourselves? Here's the plan.
What the hell has happened to Canadian journalists? In Canada, one of the world's most multicultural nations, our main media are controlled by a tiny group of almost entirely white newsroom decision makers who live in a world cut off from ordinary people like you and me. One result of this is that they produce journalism for each other.
So what do 300 Canadian journalists bitch about when they get together for their annual conference? Speaker after speaker had the same complaint: Canadian authorities are preventing Canadian journalists practicing journalism in this participatory democracy.
