Email this article The Silent Revolution: Media, Democracy and the Free Trade Debate
This book is the outcome of a two-day conference held during the summer which followed the last federal election. Having lost at the polls, an assortment of Liberal and NDP politicians, leftist academics, patriots in a losing cause, journalists, and pseudo-journalists gathered at the University of Windsor for a wailing session.
They were full of sour grapes, and found the news media to be a handy whipping boy. Most of the 30 contributors to this book blame the media for aiding and abetting the Conservative victors in the 1988 "free trade" election. They castigate the newspapers in particular, and accuse publishers, senior editors, advertisers, big business, and the Tories of joining forces to hoodwink the public and sell the nation down the river.
We are told that commercialism has prevented the media from telling the public the "truth," and that the media should stop making fat profits and start pumping up Canada's flaccid national identity. We get the scoop on capitalists who plotted to destroy the economy if the Conservatives had lost the election, and there is all kinds of stuff about the media's role in the conspiracy to turn us into lackeys of international commerce.
Five Opposition party MPs had their say, but there was not a single Conservative voice to reply. There were no publishers or people from management either, although a couple of journalists disagreed with the premise that corporate concentration inevitably leads to biased reporting. Left-wing writers masquerading as journalists got a lot of play, along with a couple of real reporters who obligingly confessed to defiling their principles and debasing their calling.
James P. Winter, professor of communication studies at the university and editor of the book, concludes that "the media are the accommodating delivery system of the corporate-Conservative agenda." Winter seems willing to sacrifice freedom of the press to set things right. Among other things, he wants to turn the press into a public utility and create a print version of the CBC. One shudders to think of the implications of that, no matter which party is in power.
This is a good book if you are looking for the losers' view of the media's role in the "free trade" election, but do not be deceived by suggestions on the cover and in the introduction that you are going to get a debate or a balanced discussion. This book is as one-sided as it accuses the press of being.
