I have to agree with Pat Tracy's column of June 14, Another reason to distrust journalists, although I will add another dimension of concern.
Pamela Wallin and Mike Duffy are surely bad examples, but much worse are those media moguls, whether in TV, news paper or radio, who covered up or refused to ask questions about the Iraq war.
For example, Phil Donahue, of NBC, who opposed and challenged the White House script about the Iraq war, was summarily fired from his job and ostracized, even though he was right and the weapons of mass destruction, etc. were outright lies.
The sanitized version by the imbedded journalists, as agreed to by the U.S. military, was swallowed hook, line and sinker by the press.
The consequences of this catastrophic unwarranted mass murder will go down as one of the most disgraceful media journalistic coverups in human history.
Having said that, the news media in this country is little or no better, and that includes the CBC.
As a contributing member of Friends of the CBC, while I am frustrated with its continuing irrelevance, I want it back the way it was. I know the Harper government would like nothing better than to privatize CBC Radio and television or boot it off the air and put an end to any investigative journalism.
It's no problem: just continue to cut the budget, cut it off at the knees financially, cut or under-mine the world-recognized talent, ensure bad management, have it run by political appointees and servants rather than by people of merit. Discredit the CBC and, in the end, dismantle it and turn it over to the cable and satellite monopolies that now control most private broadcasters in the country.
So, I agree with the Pat Tracys of this world. I believe that (excluding people like Mike Duffy and company) most journalists are "part of the quest for truth, honesty and justice" - journalism that provides us with facts, to fulfill the media's licence and obligation to the country so that people can make rational and reasoned decisions.
I would suggest that many journalists self-censor their work in order to keep their jobs and put bread on the table; otherwise, how could any honest investigative journalist survive working for the disgraced and convicted media empire owned by Rupert Murdoch - a media so pervasive to the political process that it came close to bringing down the British government.
As bad as Duffy and Wallin are in cheating us out of our hard-earned money, cheating people out of the truth and honest reporting is, in my opinion, much worse.
As the poet Lord Alfred Tennyson put it, "Cursed be the lies that warp us from the living truth" or - as we were warned by George Orwell in his books Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four about government surveillance - Big Brother, media control and brainwashing.
Recent examples of silencing or cancelling scientific government research or withholding it from the media, and public scrutiny by the Harper government is a crime.
Relying on the course of whistleblowers to get at the truth is only an unfortunate alternative.
We have much to be concerned about. Duffy and Wallin are just the tip of the iceberg and small, though significant, part of the problem.
Bill Zander is a New Westminster resident and a frequent letter writer to the Burnaby NOW's sister paper, The Record.
