Response to: Fortune’s still knocking at Harper’s door, Lawrence martin Globe & Mail
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I felt compelled to write a quick response to Lawrence Martin’s Oped piece in the Globe and Mail today, in which he laments how Stephen harper may get a majority by dodging several bullets – damning parliamentary reports on his government’s corruption, abuse of power, coverup and manipulation.
The link to the comment at the Globe and Mail is: TrivCap note, and
………..the article link is http://j.mp/i2zU9B
Text of comment is reproduced below:
I think you guys may not like to hear it, but some of the blame for Harper’s free ride has to be laid on the media. Even this week the nightly news hours are using precious time to cover ad nauseum the Royal wedding. I mean, that can’t be covered in 2 minutes and then left to the already too many royal wedding specials?
I don’t know what the solution is to the information lock Harper keeps on the government, ministers and appointees. Maybe more investigative pieces. But there does have to be a realization, a point that Rachel Maddow over at MSNBC makes eloquently, there is no equivalence between the lies of the right and left. harper has imported US Republican governing and election tactics – repeat repeat repeat lies enough times and the public wont know who to believe, be misleading, say the opposite of the truth, character assassination. These are things the media can call harper and cronies on – don’t let them get away with whopper lies in interviews (the few times they do agree to be interviewed). Rachel Maddow is probably one of the best, most thoughtful investigative journalists out there right now. I only wish she would move here, or we had our own homegrown version.
Another thing….there’s a ridiculous assumption out there that somehow the right are better economic managers than the left. There’s no actual evidence of this (I know US studies that say the US stock market, economy GDP, median incomes all do better under Dems, however u adjust the regression analysis). So media’s gotta jettison this assumption, and then reporters also have to spend more time getting up to speed on economy, budgets and finance themselves, because right now they automatically buy into far too much right wing voodoo economics….on the surface the voodoo economic talking points seem right, feel right, sound right, but, well, they are upside down. (A good start for any reporter would be to begin following Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz or Yves Smith over at the Naked Capitalism blog).
Related Articles
- Fortunes still knocking at Harpers door (theglobeandmail.com)
- Bill Mann’s Canada: Eight things we’ve learned about Canadian politics (marketwatch.com)
