media should tread carefully with Ford

The media is not the Official Opposition, George Abraham says.

The U.S. president’s chief spokesperson gets kicked out of a Virginia restaurant because she is seen as aiding and abetting a serial dissembler. America finds itself divided into two polarized camps that talk past each other. Civility all but disappears.

The American media’s treatment of this recent story involving Sarah Huckabee Sanders was the latest example of a race to the bottom that began as soon as Donald Trump announced his presidential bid. From the point of view of his supporters, the media vilification is having an equaland-opposite effect: The Trump legion keeps growing. Dialogue and discourse have become abstract concepts in this state of dysfunction.

In my view, the conflating of Trump’s obvious character flaws with his policy choices has shortchanged the American voter. The overriding tone of news media coverage is now one of condescension. The U.S. media landscape is even more divided than American politics. It’s therefore no wonder that descriptions of media as the enemy are now part of every presidential speech.

There is a lesson here for Canada. New Ontario Premier Doug Ford has the potential to be just as polarizing, though in a much more restrained country. But Canadian news media can play a mediating role by doing things differently from their American colleagues, taking care not to over-step their role in a democracy. In my humble view, it would behoove us to regain our fundamental role to “inform” our audience. Let’s give them just the plain facts. We already had a taste of what is to come in Ford’s opening salvo on the refugee asylum file. His government sees no reason to kowtow to the federal one in dealing with the settlement of thousands of refugees who have streamed in from the U. S. News media commentary has largely been unsympathetic to Ontario’s new heartless position, ridiculing Mr. Ford as a “maple-glazed” version of the xenophobe down south. And I expect all hell to break loose when the Ford government begins reviewing the school sex-ed curriculum this summer.

Yet whatever one thinks of him, Ford can rightly claim to have won a mandate. More people seem to have been swayed by the Progressive Conservative Party’s pseudonews broadcasts via Facebook than by slanted coverage in mainstream media.

Even if those who voted for him did so holding their noses, he won fair and square. He has democratic legitimacy and the media would do well to keep this in their rearview mirrors as they sharpen their pencils to caricature a Ford administration. But I fear they will treat him with the same contempt that was the hallmark of the tenure of his brother, Rob, at Toronto City Hall.

I suggest a return to the days of journalist Walter Lippmann and his “objective method” of reporting facts.

It would be unwise to question the new premier’s motives and dig up his past or his family’s tortured history at every turn – unless it is absolutely pertinent to the story. The people of Ontario – and by extension, Canada – deserve a respectful relationship between elected leaders and their selfappointed media critics. Let’s not forget that the average Canadian is just as derisive of journalists as he or she is of politicians: The media are not the Official Opposition.

We will need to distinguish between the man’s many personal foibles and his politics. Otherwise, we risk going down the same arc as our American cousins, resulting in corrosive discourse and a poisoning of the well. We will rue the day when we won’t have a common set of agreed facts (as a U.S. Pew study recently revealed) to underpin our important discussions over policy.