TANKED: CANADIAN THINK TANKS and the DAILY PRESS Uncritical
TANKED: CANADIAN THINK TANKS AND THE DAILY PRESS A report prepared by George Fetherling for the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership, June 2007 1 Uncritical ears In an uncharacteristic move one day in March 2007, the National Post (and some other Canwest newspapers) ran a news story based on a report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a progressive think tank it described as “an independent research institute based in Toronto.” The report was an unsurprising one that deplored the growing disparity in incomes between haves and have-nots. It was, however, given good display, taking up 16 column inches atop one of the news pages in section A of the Post . That same morning, John Ibbitson dealt with the issue in his Globe and Mail column. “Most think tanks in Canada are a waste of time,” he wrote. “Those on the right twist and distort data to prove the country is overtaxed and underproducing. Those on the left use the same data to prove that society is increasingly unequal and unjust.” Put another way, think tanks are perfect illustrations of what Jane Jacobs, in her book Systems of Survival , called our present society’s two ethical systems: the commercial moral syndrome and the guardian moral syndrome. The real question, I believe, is whether Canadian newspapers are outsourcing the news when they run material from ideologically driven think tanks that pop up at an alarming rate. Are the papers not, in this era of deteriorating circulation and declining budgets, backing away from a part of their responsibility? Where think tanks are concerned, are newspapers in danger of becoming printed blogs or mere public bulletin boards, giving space to anyone who sounds sane and is not committing libel? At the very least, are they not grinding other people’s axes along with their own? To be sure, much is thought, taught and written about the increased corporate concentration of Canada’s news media, but too little attention is given to the corresponding concentration of news itself.
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