Scheer, Ford copying worst of Trump
One of the more despicable themes of Donald Trump’s disgraceful presidency is the constant attack the former reality TV host launches against the mainstream media.
Day after day Trump goes after journalists, accusing them of spreading “fake news,” of being “the enemy of the people” and “crooked media.” He has praised a Montana politician who bodyslammed a reporter, made fun of a disabled journalist and cheered on supporters who at one rally chanted “Kill them, kill them.”
It’s a deliberate strategy to fire up his hard-core supporters, who thrive on hatred, mistrust and bigotry. It’s a tactic that appears to be working, given the resiliency of his base, which hates the mainstream media — except for Fox News — with a passion.
It’s the same strategy Trump uses with his dog-whistle appeals to the far-right and lunatic fringes of America, who hate immigrants, minorities, liberals and Democrats — too often with deadly results.
That fury against the media has manifested itself to extremes when a suspected pipe bomb was sent to CNN’s offices in New York City and with the physical and verbal assaults on journalists covering Trump’s rallies.
Sadly, the two most powerful Conservative leaders in Canada have decided to mimic the U.S. president by bashing the media, bringing the worst of Trump to this country.
Both Ontario Premier Doug Ford and federal Conservative leader Andrew Scheer are suddenly best buddies in their hatred of Justin Trudeau, Liberals and journalists.
Clearly it’s a strategy that plays to their core voters and helps with fundraising, but it ultimately works to undermine our democracy and creates an opening for hatred that too often can spill out into the open, as we have seen happen tragically in recent weeks in the U.S.
Ford has long despised most journalists, except for fawning columnists and editorial writers at the Toronto Sun and National Post. Throughout his political career he has attacked journalists, suggesting many of them are liars, “downtown elitists” or Liberal hacks.
Now Scheer has joined the anti-media gang, telling party loyalists at a recent rally in Ottawa that he will stand up to “the media” and claimed — falsely — that the Tories don’t get same treatment from mainstream media as do the Liberals and Trudeau. At the same time, Tory politicians have been branding some journalists as “Liberal reporters.”
It’s nothing new for politicians of all stripes to complain about their press coverage. What is new is the ferocity of today’s attacks and how they feed into the populist rage that has emerged in Canada as well as the U.S.
As we see in the U.S., that rage is aimed at discrediting the media and other institutions that have long been key elements in our democracy.
In a new book released earlier this week, veteran journalist and former Maclean’s editor Bob Lewis argues that in the age of the tweet and social media, political reporting is more important today than ever.
Lewis says in his book Power, Prime Ministers and the Press: The Battle for Truth on Parliament Hill that our democracy depends on the mainstream media presenting context, background and the truth.
Despite Trump’s chants of “fake news” and growing criticism here about biased and dishonest journalism, Lewis maintains that the news and media are more honest today than ever before because of the intense scrutiny on everything that is written or broadcast.
As Scheer and Ford ratchet up their hate-filled rhetoric against the media, they would be well advised to listen to the words of Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of the Pittsburgh synagogue where 11 people were killed in last weekend’s anti-Semitic shooting spree. Myers urged all politicians to speak responsibly and to end hate-filled speech. Americans “get their instructions from you,” he said on CNN. “When you speak words of hate, you say to them, ‘This is OK, you can do it as well.’ ”
Myers warned of a vicious circle. “Hate promulgating more hate promulgating more hate. We need to be better than this, we can be better than this.”
Scheer and Ford can indeed be better than this. Hopefully they will be.