by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
June 14, 2004
The passing of the 40th president of the United States was big news in the Canadian media. With certain few exceptions, the coverage of his life and death was fairly balanced. Right of centre newspapers such as the National Post and the Toronto Sun gave prominence to the fact that Ronald Reagan played an important if not a pivotal role in the fall of the Soviet Union. The left wing media on the other hand failed to mention a word about the collapse of Communism until their hero, Mikhail Gorbachev, acknowledged it while sending his condolences. Once Gorby said it, the media elites treated it as if it was current news. Even 10 years after the communist leader of the Soviet Union brought in perestroika and glasnost, the left are still, as Rush Limbaugh would say, having Gorbasms.
any examination of bias against Ronald Reagan in the media can be seen in the early reports following his death. Objectively speaking Ronald Reagan was an influential world leader and negative comments about him in the short pieces that were released shortly after his death reveal the biases of the media. The day of his death was not the time to make critical comments; those are best kept for the future.
The CBC managed to take a shot at the late president on their website, by setting out their in-depth coverage of Reagan under the banner, "the movie star president dies". This would be nothing wrong with this if we could be sure that the CBC would describe Jimmy Carter’s passing by saying, "peanut farmer president dies". That of course will never happen; Carter will no doubt be described as the "Nobel Peace Prize winning president.
The worst offender by far was Toronto’s Citytv. although there is an argument that the boys and girls of Citytv and Citypulse News shouldn’t be held to the same standard as real newspapers and television networks, those stations have a large following and impact on Toronto and surrounding areas. During an early and concise announcement of Reagan’s death, talking head Francis D’Souza stated that "trickle down economics didn’t work". It’s one thing to debate the american economy during Reagan’s presidency; it’s another to throw that one-liners like that one out before the president’s body was even cold.
In an article posted on CP24’s website on the day of Reagan’s death, after setting out all of his "scandals" the article went on to say, "He’s also remembered for pushing the Strategic Defence Initiative or ‘Star Wars’." They had space to say that but failed to mention that the SDI caused the Soviets to increase their military spending that helped speed up their country’s collapse. The article went on to mention that "despite the setbacks" that they never quite explained, Ronald Reagan left office with the highest rating of any president. City can’t quite understand why those ratings were so high and could not help express its surprise. But considering the source, the surprise stems more from ignorance than from any intentional bias.
Considering that we are now in the middle of an election campaign where the left wing media are warning the populace about the evils of conservatism, they did a pretty fair job of remembering Ronald Reagan.