Adventures in one-sided journalism

Continuing to highlight the importance of Catholic Press Month, let’s examine some stories currently being reported by the “non-Catholic press.” The way those stories are being covered is very enlightening.

First, if you enjoyed last week’s risqué Super Bowl halftime show, you found no shortage of praise among Canadian media. Vancouver newspaper reports said the performance by Shakira and Jennifer Lopez was “highly entertaining.” One national newspaper called it “joyful and exuberant,” while the other said it was “great,” although “wildly provocative.”

If on the other hand you were shocked by the display, you’ll have to go elsewhere for a review more in line with your thinking.

Meanwhile, it’s Day 6 of the two local papers’ revelations of a gender pay gap among B.C. public employees. Page after page of the week-long series documents the wage imbalance between men and women in government, education, and Crown corporations. (The reporters calculated the wage gap in a somewhat peculiar manner, running the first names of public employees through an internet site that tells you the gender based on the name. The result, we are told, was “reliable gender information for two-thirds” of the names submitted.)

Like the Super Bowl embarrassment, we are offered only one side to this story, and if you think it’s actually more complex than just calling for more diverse hiring policies, government regulation, and universal daycare, you won’t find it in this series. Not once has the series mentioned polls showing most mothers would rather be at home with their children than out in the workforce, or questioned efforts to push more mothers back into the workplace. As Pope John Paul II said in Familiaris Consortio, “the mentality which honours women more for their work outside the home than for their work within the family must be overcome.”

Finally, there’s Prime Minister Trudeau’s visit to Africa, where he is trying to get support for Canada’s bid for a UN Security Council seat. Pundits say Canada’s relationship with African nations has suffered because of inadequate foreign aid and peacekeeping commitments. Despite the reams of analysis, there’s been no mention of Canada’s tying of foreign aid to “reproductive rights,” which is seen by many in Africa as a form of colonialism.

Obianuju Ekeocha, a Nigerian-born biomedical scientist who authored Target Africa: Ideological Neocolonialism in the Twenty-First Century, says “Africans are asking for food, education, clean water … we are not asking for condoms, contraception, or sexuality education, that kind of advice, or abortion given to us by Western donors.”

But you won’t see any mention of this in the media coverage of Trudeau’s charm offensive in Africa.

Three stories, three examples of media promoting a particular news narrative. Ironically, those who see political intervention as the solution to everything may be excited to see the Canadian government is also troubled by the state of journalism in the country. Ottawa keeps thinking out loud about its desire to regulate fake news and police the internet. It dropped another hint last week when Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault speculated about the government licensing news outlets, a bad idea that’s been around a long time and keeps resurfacing.

Guilbeault was commenting about a federal review panel recommendation to regulate news organizations and ensure they link to “trustworthy” sites.  The CRTC would create a list of “accurate, trusted, reliable” Canadians news sources and regulate their “media aggregation and media sharing undertakings.” The panel recommended online news media be registered with the government, which would impose Canadian content rules and “spending requirements or levies on all media content undertakings.”

Thanks to the public storm that erupted, the government quickly retreated, but now that fake news is a government concern, expect it to keep looking for ways to prevent the media from making bad decisions.

In the end, more government involvement is not always the best solution to a problem. What would be more beneficial is media responsibility, and a return to age-old journalistic practices like telling both sides of stories, seeking out truth, and setting aside personal agendas.