Why no Canadian “Deep Throat”? Why no Investigative Journalism in Canada?
May 31, 2005 · By Max West
With Watergate back in the news with the revelation that “Deep Throat” was the FBI’s second in command, the question for Canadians is, where are our investigative journalists? Why have our media failed in their journalistic duty to uncover political crimes? Why have they not even attempted to do their job?
Watergate was a scandal about the cover-up of a single minor burglary at a Washington hotel – small potatoes, by Canadian crimino-political standards. The events revealed daily to the Gomery commission are about an incomparably larger, longer-term crime, the ongoing theft of many hundreds of thousands of dollars in a systematic operation within the Liberal party that operated with impunity for many years.
Where were the Canadian journalists when all this was happening? Why did no one in the Canadian media establishment dig into these events? Why was it uncovered finally by a bureaucrat, rather than by investigative journalists?
Why did the media not uncover the earlier HRDC scandal? Why did they not write stories when they saw George Radwanski around Ottawa living it up on your money? When was the last time the media uncovered any political wrongdoings on their own? When did they last blow the whistle on any political misdeeds?
The answer is that in Canada, the media are part of the central establishment. Ottawa is a town of insiders, and the parliamentary press gallery are members of the insider party.
Ottawa is a Liberal town, and the media are by-and-large Liberals, at least socially if not also politically. They go to the same restaurants and send their children to the same schools. They jog on the same pathways and belong to the same gyms. They’re of the same social class and many of them are close friends. Many have spouses employed in various ways by the Liberal political class.
The Ottawa media are political insiders whose number one job is to keep out the outsiders, especially the foreign rubes from the West. They share the barely concealed contempt that Central Canada generally has for the junior partners from the West.
Canadian journalism has sold its soul for the privileges of the Ottawa high-life. They’re of the center, by the center and for the center. They are part of the problem, part of the Canadian centralist disease.
Well…You could say that the minor equivalent to Deep Throat could be Gurmant Grewal.
But, he’s already been outed. It was fun while it lasted.
You will be linked tonight, BTW.
The media - so cheaply purchased and now
so swiftly sweeping us towards socialism.
I am finished with Ontario and what it stands for.
Surely we won’t believe them again when they cry “wolf”.
[...] arts in terms of investigative reporting uncovering corruption, see Max West at thePolitic here. On the [...]
If the media are to be blamed for this (which I am not convinced they should be), and if it is true that the Ottawa media keep Western media out of the loop (which I am not sure is possible), then Western media had better step up to the plate (which they clearly have not).
If Western media choose to just complain about not being part of the “Ottawa boys club” (Western alienation?) and continue to not do their jobs (i.e. dig around), then it truly is a sad time in Canadian history.
On the contrary, I believe western media have stepped up to the plate admirably. The problem is at this point, the western media consists mainly of the Western Standard, and a handful of independent weeklies dotted across the prairies.
Now, I seriously doubt our Liberal owned dailies and Liberal-funded national broadcaster are too keen to slit their own throats, so in the mean time, the western media outlets that are left are handicapped by geography and a lack of available resources. The WS is making great strides to dig in to the layers of scandal that envelope the Liberals, but aside from them, I don’t know of any independent western media that is capable of doing this kind of research.
I don’t think the Okotoks Western Wheel has the resources to have a full time Ottawa bureau.
Are you volunteering Lyndon?
[...] ke their Liberal friends look better. The mainstream coverage of the Grewal affair proves again that the establishment [...]
I suppose the nearest you got was our friend over at Captain’s Quarters. Why no Canadian “Deep Throat ?”
FEAR
Fear that they’ll end up as “silt at the bottom of the St Lawrence”.
I wish someone would invistigate this person Mark Robins for crimes against sex trade workers.
He goes by the name of johnq on gterb.com an escort review board and verbally abuses the ladies, calims the police are watching us and is being sued by an Ottawa escort for libel,slander but she has been trying to get him to court for 3 years and because he is cunning and because of who he is, he is gettin away with making sex trade workers life hell.These ladies need help and have noone to turn to.