Contributing to the public debate
By Ken Waddell
There are two “traditions” in the newspaper business that have done great harm to public debate.
One is the fact that among the newspapers that actually publish an editorial, its written by an editorial board or, if written by an individual, it’s written anonymously. There is a marked difference between an editorial and a column. What you are reading here is called an editorial but by today’s definition, it’s a column. In today’s newspaper world of anonymity and weak journalism, what they call an editorial would never have a writer’s name or picture attached it. It wasn’t always that way. Some famous, even notorious editors have applied their names and pictures to editorials over the years. Somewhere over the years it was decided that an editorial can’t be an individual opinion, it must be a “corporate” opinion. Corporations don’t have a conscience so how can they be expected to have an opinion?
Perhaps the reason for anonymity could be to avoid backlash or repercussion against an individual writer. In times past, readers who disagreed with an editorial might even inflict violence on a particular writer. Not many editorials conjure up that level of animosity any more. Today, anonymity prevails even over the most bland of topics. In 20 years of writing I have only had one threat to my life. It came early in the days of The Banner when I got an anonymous late night phone call from a man with a distinct British accent. He claimed to be a labour union leader and he assured me that I would be taken out of I kept on writing against the unions.
In Canada’s style of political blandness, there are few issues that generate the level of animosity that could result in harm to an editor. In many countries that is not the case and journalists and editors face danger and death all the time. In Canada, the only topic today that might generate any real threat to a writer would be if he dared to discuss the terrorist intentions of certain Islam extremists.
The other newspaper “tradition” that has developed is the fact that all the news industry has far too many “repeaters” and too few “reporters.” Getting the real news in the papers isn’t that hard. It takes some work and a willing staff at a local paper to accommodate local submissions. Most local newspapers do that fairly well. Some not so much. Community newspapers are having a bit of a struggle as ad revenues seem to be a bit more elusive than say 10 years ago. However, it’s obvious that small towns still like their newspapers as, including our own two papers The Neepawa Banner and Rivers Banner, there are a dozen or more scattered across western Manitoba. They have a fair bit of local news, the kind that matters to local readers.
Where the problem comes up is that even in local newspapers and certainly in the larger daily papers there is lots of news that a reader has seen on the internet the day before or on television. Reporters, and editors, seem happy enough to take stories off a wire service and plunk them on a page and call it news. Well it’s not really news unless it contains fresh facts. At least it should be written from a local perspective.
The real problem is that newspaper ownership is too concentrated. The corporations such as Quebecor and Glacier have bought up papers by the dozens. They figure that they can run a newspaper with very few people. And they can, if all they do is “repeat” the news rather than “report” the news.
About 10 years ago, an astute editor of a community paper started to peruse the large dailies across the country. He looked at the front page story in about 20 large newspapers. Eighteen or 19 had the same front page story. Now, it’s really sad that there’s that little original thought going into our daily papers.
In order for there to be proper public discourse, readers need fresh news and opinion columns that are both local and original. We try to do that. Readers can help us by sending in news stories, pictures and news tips. We prefer email but a phone call works too. Dropping by our offices is nice too but we may not be able to visit for a long period of time.
As far as editorials and news columns go, may the day never come when we have to resort to unsigned columns. And if you want to call what we write on these pages, editorials, that’s fine with us. An editorial should have a name attached to it. Surely we can have that much freedom of speech in Canada.