September 29, 2003
When Bernard Goldberg published his book, Bias, in 1996 it generated a firestorm of outrage and indignation among America’s media elite. It was as if Goldberg had divulged a deep, dark family secret, something along the lines of having an uncle that’s gay, or a cousin who is doing time.
Some seven years later, talking about that cousin or uncle isn’t so bad any more. It has become a largely undisputed fact that most mainstream media today have an extreme left/liberal bias and they tailor their reporting of the news accordingly.
Take our fair city of Toronto, for instance. Our mainstream media’s biases are hanging out all over, kind of like a fat drunk’s beer belly. It’s reminds me of the old joke making the rounds among journalists about the end of the world. The Stars' headlines would report that ‘World Comes to Fiery End--Women and Visible Minorities Hardest Hit.
Media bias is not really new in that for as long as there have been news organizations, their owners and employees have tailored the news to suit their own ends.
However, it does give one cause for concern, when the news media is able to affect the outcome of elections. The Recently released Ipsos Reid poll about the Toronto mayoralty race is a good case in point. According to the media’s interpretation of the poll, we don’t really need the formality of an election. Let’s just have a coronation for Queen Barbara II. (You may recall that Queen Barbara I came to an ignoble end at the hands of Mel the Mouth, after her less than stellar performance as Mayor of Toronto six years ago).
Some CFRB commentators even went so far as to applaud the fact that Barbara Hall took a head start from her competitors by starting to campaign early. This despite the fact that a Justice of the Peace charged her with four counts of breach of the Municipal Elections Act. (A charge that was later dismissed on a technicality by Mr. Justice Trafford, who indicated in his ruling that there was indeed evidence of wrongdoing on Hall’s behalf).
The Toronto Star’s Royson James, offers another tawdry example of media bias. In the September 10th issue of the Star, Royston James lamented the fact that none of the candidates running for mayor of Toronto had any good ideas. He then went on to criticize four of the five leading candidates, while generally expressing his dissatisfaction with the slate. Conspicuously absent from his critique of the candidates was any mention of Tom Jakobek, whom a number of Toronto’s less biased reporters have lauded for having good ideas.
I wondered why Mr. James didn’t mention Jakobek and e-mailed him at the Star. I asked whether he didn’t know about Jakobek’s campaign, or if he was too lazy to research more than 4 candidates, but he did reply, "I didn't mention Jakobek because he's not fit to be mayor," was his reply. In a subsequent article he wrote about Toronto’s new mayor needing enhanced power. Throughout the article he kept referring to the new mayor as "she" and "her", as if it’s a sure bet the new mayor is going to be Barbara Hall.
This gives me cause to wonder. Why is Royston James, or any other member of the media so uniquely qualified to decide who is and who is not fit to be mayor of Toronto. Isn’t that a matter for the voters to decide? But if you were to believe the Royston Jameses of this world, there really is no need to go through the time and expense of having an election because they have already decided who will be the next mayor.
While there is nothing we can do about biased reporters and media organizations who abuse their unique position, it is important to our system of democracy to make up our own minds about who gets our vote. In order to achieve this, we must take anything they say with a grain of salt and find out for ourselves.