Hugh Segal shared his articulately-worded yet scathing critique of today's media, tempered by suggested rules that he believes would assist things, at the Canadian Journalism Foundation's annual Democracy and Journalism lecture in Toronto last week. It reminded me of Maclean's editor Ken Whyte's
analysis delivered a handful of months ago.
On the upside, Segal clearly believes in the vitality of journalism to our democracy, but on the downside, he's pretty depressed about things. He worries that national political reporting has fallen into a pretty big rut, focused on the events of Ottawa over the reality of the country.
For example, Question Period is news, he argues, "on occasion," but as something that's "utterly predictable, scripted and regularly occurring," he's unclear why it's treated as such. Acknowledging that, "it's not the job of journalists to make politics look interesting or noble when it's neither,' he nonetheless believes journos must better sort out how much of what goes on in Ottawa is actually news.
He'd like to see more a little more homework, hypothesizing that the reason the work of the Auditor General of the Parliamentary Budget Officer is so popular with journalists is that it's work they can and should be doing themselves.
He is also unsparing in his criticism of the CBC, particularly the TV part.
I liked his concluding idea: "When do we have a dinner, perhaps organized by the Foundation for Quality Politics, to talk about integrity, shallowness and quality in public life now that the good Senator has lectured us?"
He has eleven other suggestions, too numerous to summarize here. So in the the spirit of his address, please do your research. The webcast is
here; the transcript is
here (although it doesn't include the amusing banter at the beginning).
And what about that dinner?