Truth, lies and videotape

Opinion

It’s a stale truism that our perceptions are coloured by our preconceived biases.

As an old warhorse journalist whose biases have always skewed toward rabid dislike of anyone who tries to control the media, and who delighted in running politicians down into legislature washrooms as they tried to escape my incessant nagging questions, my biases are working overtime right now.

And I really wanna run somebody down.

Mark Carney has observed, in his sedate fashion (too sedate; he needs to inject some passion into his Spock-like logic), that he is not a career politician.

It shows.

His handlers haven’t been advance-screening reporters’ questions, nor do they appear to preselect those who will be permitted to ask questions. So some awkward ones slip out, and he’ll calmly reply that he rejects the premise of the question, or will sometimes sidestep, especially with the clearly barbed ones revolving around his personal financial history — an issue the Conservatives are gleefully keeping alive.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre … well, all he’s ever done is be a politician. And while he’s tried, briefly, to sound statesmanlike at first during some campaign stops, inevitably the attack dog begins snarling at Carney’s heels.

His handlers preselect four media people and allow only one question from each. No followups. The content of each question is strongly suggested by those handlers, who, during a stop in Petty Harbour, N.L., not only prevented media from shooting video outside the venue — which would have shown no spectators other than the 30 or so the campaign had bused in — but tried to manhandle one media member who refused to stay corralled as the handlers demanded.

Carney, so far, has stuck with subtle derision — suggesting, for example, that Alberta Premier Smith might be sent to negotiate with Trump, than backpedalling with a sly “well, maybe not.”

Smith took that as misogyny. Most thinking people would see it as a small mockery of her fondness for MAGA right-wingers.

Yet though there’s been plenty of discussion about Carney’s problematic financial holdings, even about how much time he actually spent in his Rockcliffe, Ottawa, home while working abroad, the media, except for an aside coy reference or two during political pundit panels, hasn’t called out the Poilievre camp’s blatant manipulation.

I find that bothersome. My generation of journalists would have slathered Poilievre’s compulsive media control all over the headlines.

I also find it bothersome that Poilievre’s half-truths, innuendos, or actual lies have not been shot down hard by anchors or commentators. Never mind that his attack-dog stance is frighteningly reminiscent of Trump at his nastiest, that his avowed policies bear alarming resemblances to Trumpworld positions. Nobody seems to be fact-checking.

Bothersome also. My generation of journalists would have been ripping the lies to shreds.

So I find it puzzling that some sideline observers of the CBC (and deriding the CBC is a bit of a traditional national pastime these days) claim the CBC is being soft on Carney. My biases tell me it’s the exact opposite. My biases also tell me nobody’s drilling down to expose the reality of Pierre Poilievre.

Maybe none of the media feels it’s their responsibility.

Yes, politics has changed a great deal in the 30 years since I haunted the halls of the Manitoba legislature. Media handlers now pump politicians full of talking points and adjure them against straying from parroting those points.

I remember, with misty-eyed pride, media scrums in which the politician deflected a reporter’s question and turned to another reporter, who would strongly request an answer for the previous reporter. If the politician ignored that, a third reporter would chime in, ”answer that question, please, sir.”

It was pack journalism at its finest, and it usually landed the quarry.

Back in the day, during elections we kept exact track of the quantity of coverage provided each side, counted in minutes and seconds or column inches. That was the extent of control imposed upon us by our media masters (it was actually a federal requirement) — except for one additional annoyance our CBC supervisors insisted on.

We had to answer, daily, one simple question: “Is that true?” If it wasn’t, we were required to report that the politician had lied, or not to report it at all.

Maybe it’s just me being old and nostalgic.

And yes, those were much, much simpler times. But I wish that simple rule, at least, still applied.

Judy Waytiuk, clearly, is a retired Winnipeg journalist who spends way too much time mentally reliving past glory.