More politeness needed in this rage-filled world

The Star’s longest-serving public editor, Kathy English, is leaving us after 13 years. It’s a moment I had dreaded but like buying tickets in January for an event in June, you think why not, the moment will never arrive. Invariably it does.

Her successor is Bruce CampionSmith, who appears to have filled almost every newsroom job in his career, a terrific background for conveying to the reader what the Star is trying to achieve. But the most necessary quality for a public editor is … calm.

Both English and Campion-Smith have it. They’ll need it.

English has written repeatedly that “Opinion journalists — columnists and editorial/op-ed writers — have wide latitude to offend, annoy and express their own views.” But readers often seem unable to distinguish between reporting and commentary, despite the Opinion label and the mugshot, the personal photo that signals personal opinion.

I never wish to offend. Since 2016, the worst year of my life until this one, I have taken a deep breath and said “compassion” before beginning to write. If the column’s about bullying Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, the compassion vanishes as quickly as steam from your coffee. But still, I am trying to be kinder in a world where people are as taut as a bow string.

In a recent column, English wrote about criticism of journalists being eternal, but “the tone from those who are annoyed and angry seems darker, most hateful and increasingly more polarized. Could you all please stop with the ‘fake news’ epithet?”

As journalism struggles in Canada, Canadians are getting much of their news from the U.S., which is a nonstop blast of madness and rage. Awed, we’re watching videos of, say, the Palm Beach County, Fla., hearing room where citizens expressed their rage at being told to wear face masks for COVID-19 safety.

These citizens are wealthy. They are lucky people. Yet they say Satan is in the room, the commissioners are going to hell, and then shout “I don’t wear a mask for the same reason I don’t wear underwear! Things gotta breathe!” The commissioners were accused of smirking under their masks, which they were, as were Canadians. We “peace, order and good government” people are always reliably underweared. You can count on that.

Nevertheless, something sneaks in. Kathy English is right. We’re being pushed into extremism in our words and tone, and I say part of it is caused by watching an avalanche of American bad behaviour even though it would never be tolerated in our country.

We are living in the most upsetting times of our lives, at least until climate change begins to bite hard. Readers, like journalists, are distressed by racism, the frantic and violent semi-war being conducted in the United States, the pandemic, economic fear, and panic about the future so severe that some of them feel broken by it.

We don’t quite trust institutions because some of them may have disappointed us. Take policing, or grocery stores, a court system flailing over social distancing and a municipal failure to help the homeless or even find a place for their tents.

The stress is enormous. We watch videos of Black and Indigenous people being horribly assaulted by police, sometimes dying on video, slowly and painfully, as breath leaves the body. What does that do to your soul? Americans may welcome Fox News into their shrinking soul, but in Canada, we have rules. We don’t mix opinion and reporting. Columns exist because newspapers need distinctive voices freely expressed. They don’t want desiccators, columnists who turn fresh news into dry matter.

Chantal Hébert said what? (I have never disagreed with her on anything.) Karon Liu thinks I should cook that? (I love Karon so I’ll try.)

My worst criticism comes from marginal beardy men twisted by the knowledge that a woman, of mixed-race as they point out, has the job they want, a column in a major newspaper. Sorry, dudes.

We are all anger magnets now. But public editors are the biggest magnets of all because the Star holds it readers in high regard and asks them to send in complaints to be carefully evaluated.

Please keep them polite. Public editors have the roughest job in the newsroom.