Maybe Lawrence Martin could write for A/The Daily Show

I thought I had tossed out Monday’s Globe, but while tidying my desk I found it again. That's good because I wanted to share a snippet from Lawrence Martin’s column.

It's naturally behind the subscriber firewall, but in essence he's saying Stephane Dion should firmly shut down the election speculation and make clear he won't force an election until this fall. I won't rehash his argument, suffice to say I disagree and I've already said why I think we should go this spring, before the budget.

What I wanted to share were the last two graphs from Martin's column, what we in journalism call the kicker, because I thought it was pretty hilarious:

"…Their leader has little chance of growth under such circumstances because, instead of serious debate. The politicians engage in gamesmanship and the media focus is limited to horse-race cosmetics.

Mr. Dion should simply issue a statement saying that barring some alarming development, he anticipates no election until the fall at the earliest. That would shut everybody up and give him the time he badly needs to repair the damage of year one.”

Umm, yeah. It's as simple as that.

Everybody who believes that Dion coming out and saying he won't force an election until the fall will result in everybody shutting-up and the media suddenly covering policy, let me know. I've got some lovely swampland in Florida to sell you.

Yeah, I can just see the headlines now…

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

The media needs longer attention spans, and so do we

Lawrence Martin is bang-on in the Globe today, talking about the Afghan detainee document cover-up at DND and another disturbing DND story I hadn’t heard about, their monitoring of a Canadian anti-war activist, Steven Staples.

A pattern is emerging, said Martin. Too often both DND and the rest of the Harper government are using Access laws to cover-up wrongdoing and embarrassing information.

Writes Martin:

The government, it need be recalled, promised a new era of transparency and accountability. After Liberal malfeasance, it was elected, in at least some measure, for this very reason.

Some might wish to remind the generals and others of the pledge. And they need to be reminded more than once. In many cases, what happens is that officials wait for the media blow-over effect. They realize that, after a couple of days, journalists will move on to other fare. Stories such as Steven Staples being put under surveillance will be forgotten, and they will be off the hook.

The media's memory has to be longer. They can't allow it to happen.

He’s exactly right. I’d never even heard of the Staples case, and the detainee document story has gotten minimal play. The media have been too busy going ga-ga over Conrad Black, but that’s another rant.

Whatever happened to investigative journalism? To the analysis piece? To keeping the pressure on until there are answers? Until the media start picking-up the ball I think it’s up to us as bloggers to keep highlighting these issues, keep talking about them and keep the pressure up.

The fact that neither O’Connor, Harper or any other elected CPC member has even commented on the document classification issue is glaring, but it’s not surprising. Without the spotlight of QP to provide easy stories for a lazy press gallery, Deceivin’ Steven is hoping it will just go away and be forgotten by fall. And I like his odds, frankly.

We can’t let that happen.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers