Shame
on the media for the Punch and Judy Sgro show
After 16 years of jerking Canada around,
Mr. Singh got what he deserved: a plane ticket back
home
TORONTO, February 5, 2005
globeandmail
Want a good reason why so many people recoil at the
thought of entering politics? Judy Sgro.
Ms. Sgro was Canada's immigration minister until a
few weeks ago. She had been given a rough time in Question
Period, and her political career had taken a pummelling.
But that's not what ended her ministerial career.
Instead, a man named Harjit Singh, a schemer and someone
who had spent 16 years making a fool of this country's
refugee-determination and legal systems, made allegations
against Ms. Sgro.
These allegations -- that he supplied her campaign
with pizza in exchange for ministerial favours -- were
splashed all over the front page and backed by censorious
commentary in the Toronto Star, Ms. Sgro's hometown
paper. Other media, in typical feeding frenzy mode,
tore into the minister, who resigned to clear her name.
(Honourable mention, though, to Marina Jimenez of this
paper who never bought Mr. Singh's accusations and outed
him as a liar and cheat.)
From the start, it was not Ms. Sgro who had to clear
her name but rather her accuser, Mr. Singh, whose record
of mendacity and gall had exposed the refugee-determination
system's pathetic and debilitating inability to get
things done in a timely fashion.
Finally, this week, after 16 years of jerking Canada
around, Mr. Singh got what he deserved: a plane ticket
back home. He had avoided deportation for years through
various legal schemes and bogus claims for humanitarian
assistance. He obviously tried one last Hail Mary play
to remain in Canada by making the allegations that ended
Ms. Sgro's ministerial career.
So the question now is: What's a minister to do when
confronted with frenzied media that seize on a schemer's
allegations? If Ms. Sgro had stood firm and fought from
within cabinet, her accusers, led likely by the opposition
parties and most certainly by the frenzied media, would
have demanded her head.
Once she resigned, and once it became clear that her
accuser had a history, did we hear demands from the
media and the opposition for her reinstatement? Did
we see front-page editorials from the papers that had
ruined her subsequently apologizing for their horribly
distorted coverage?
These are rhetorical questions, of course, for if there
is one golden media rule (great newspapers excepted),
it is: Never apologize and never retreat.
But here's one small voice that says Judy Sgro deserves
to go right back into cabinet. There is an ethics investigation
into how she handled another file, an embarrassing one
to be sure, about strippers allowed into Canada. If
that investigation -- which has been long delayed because
of the death of the ethics commissioner's wife -- reveals
she did nothing wrong, she should return to cabinet
the next day.
Judy Sgro was no roaring hell as immigration minister.
She got overwhelmed early on by the complexity of the
file, the incessant demands of MPs, ethnic groups and
claimants, and the huge and pressing weaknesses in both
the immigration and refugee-determination systems.
She had neither the time nor the political clout to
do much about these weaknesses, although in fairness,
immigration is about the touchiest subject around for
a party that depends so heavily on votes from multicultural
communities. She fired her staff after the last election,
a sign of ministerial desperation, and disgruntled staffers
leaked against her.
So, okay, maybe Ms. Sgro can't go back into cabinet
as immigration minister. Maybe she should be given a
smaller portfolio. But if her ministerial career is
finished because of the toxic combination of manic media
coverage and the allegations of a guy who played the
entire country for a song, then you tell me, dear reader,
who of sane mind would ever want to enter the political
arena if this sort of combination can knock you from
the ring?
The Sgro affair ought to set off reflections in the
Canadian media, and not just for how the file got covered,
but because it illustrated how the media have become
part of a dysfunctional political culture in which assumptions
of wrongdoing are pervasive, cynicism abounds, negativity
prevails, and few, if any breaks, are given anyone who
serves in public life -- except, of course, those paid
to be watchdogs on those we elect, such as auditors-general,
judges, whistle-blowers, prosecutors, inquiry heads,
Democracy Watchers, ethics "experts."
There ought to be, as in the United States, robust
media criticism and analysis from the universities,
newspaper ombudsmen, blogs and people in the industry.
In the United States, schools of journalism and communications
-- to say nothing of the great institutes about the
media at Harvard, Penn., Columbia and elsewhere -- are
seriously and steadily critiquing the media. In Canada,
heaven only knows what goes on in the journalism schools,
such as they are.
There isn't an industry in the country that hands out
more criticism than the media industry, or that is more
thin-skinned about criticism it receives and less eager
to promote serious self-reflection about its own mores
and practices.
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