Saturday, November 25, 2006

Lawrence Martin Cuts Harper To The Bone

Interesting piece by Lawrence Martin in today's Globe. He analyses whether Harper's bold initiatives are driven by the wellbeing of Canada or merely vote-pandering. On issues such as Quebec as a Nation, GST cuts, the softwood lumber sellout, environmental protection and global warming, the Afghanistan mission and day care, Martin shows that they're all pretty much political maneuvering.

Martin lays a lot of the blame at the feet of our media:

"Higher standards might prevail if the media focus was less on the politics of every government action and more on how the decisions affect the wellbeing of the country. It used to be that when politically driven considerations superseded the national interest they were exposed and scorned, not saluted."

Yes Lawrence but that was before Ibbitson, Marcus Gee and their ilk were appointed Harper cheerleaders at your paper.

2 comments:

wilson said...

Why is it that reporters think they are smarter than our elected politicians or the people electing them? Just asking...

The Mound of Sound said...

As a former reporter myself (in a long past life) I think it's because so many politicians suck up to them and because they're uniquely unaccountable for the nonsense they write. If anyone else screwed up as badly and as often as some of these journalists they'd be fired - they'd fully expect to be fired.