ARTICLE
WE HAVE BECOME THE UNQUESTIONING MOUTHPIECE
by: JOHN ASHBRIDGE
We are living in a police state. Our corporate broadcast management has been patrolling the frontiers. And, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
We have surrendered, for the most part, our role as the independent watchdog over society?s rights and freedoms. And those who are charged with enforcing the law have been quick to move in on the territory we have abandoned.
What broadcast journalist has not run into the standardized response that now exists in law enforcement, wherein the simplest request for information on a case under investigation is met with an expression of shock that we would presume to question those who would keep us safe from crime, followed by the admonition about how the media?s constant intrusion into ?police matters? could well subvert the course of justice?
Following further inquiries there may be a reluctant sharing of the barest of facts, usually written in a form understandable only to its author, distributed in a form that provides too little opportunity for clarification, even less for elaboration.
And too often we accept these meagre handouts. For it seems we are no longer deserving of the corporate budget or staff required to spend time asking more questions on behalf of the public, whose right to know we are still entrusted with protecting.
If arrests are made and charges brought, we are in the same lamentable position of being ill-equipped to follow the story as it makes its way down the judicial path in search of a satisfactory legal outcome.
Not that the authorities have stopped at a reluctance to come clean in the initial instance Weeks or even months after the fact, it is now increasingly the fashion to entertain a request to revisit the original event in the hope that we can help to jog the public?s collective memory in an effort to solve the unsolved aspects of the case.
Again, too often, we meekly comply.
Is it any wonder the law enforcement sector has come to the logical conclusion that their friendly, neighbourhood radio and/or television broadcaster is only too happy to help out at the mere issuing of an official, if sometimes indecipherable, news release? In another era, some would have labelled it as ?complicity?.
The alternative is to simply roll over and play dead. An equally satisfactory state for both the authorities and our owners, just so long as our carcass isn?t blocking traffic or adding a foul odour down there, near the bottom line.
We have become the unofficial, unquestioning mouthpiece for whatever message law enforcement determines the general public would be better off being told. And, in doing so, we have allowed the broadcasting outlets we are charged with operating in an independent and unbiased manner, all the while safeguarding the public?s right to know, to be taken over for the purpose of conveying what amounts to little more than police propaganda.
If we do complain, we aren?t likely to get a lot of support from head office. Whatever the Broadcasting Act has to say about fulfilling a semi-sacred role to ?entertain and inform? our viewers and listeners in return for the right to avail ourselves of Canada?s precious public airwaves in order to convey the message has been largely overlooked in the issuing of far too many new-age corporate ?Mission Statements?, wherein our new goal is that of first meeting the needs of our corporate shareholders. Everything else is secondary.
We should not be reluctant to ask the pointed, even the embarrassing, question. Nor should we settle for a reply of ?no comment? or ?it?s under investigation?. Nor should management be allowed to shirk its responsibilities in helping us keep the public sector on the straight and narrow, be it holding the constabulary?s spurs to the fire or seeking a route through the phalanx of political spin-doctors in a bid to ensure our elected officials are properly defending our vision of a democratic way of life.
Today would be a good day to start. Tomorrow, at the very latest.
Veteran Vancouver broadcaster John Ashbridge has hung up his headphones, resigning full-time newsroom duties. Ashbridge started at CKNW in May, 1965, and ?? aside from some short stints elsewhere ?? spent more than 36 years at the station. He can be reached by e-mail at jash980@telus.net.
Mike Cleaver referred to this recently
with thanks to Broadcast Dialogue