The Toronto Media Go to War
by John FitzGerald, publisher emeritus, NEW IMPROVED HEAD.
As missiles flew across the desert into Iraq on March 20 it was still early in the morning in Toronto. The local media were putting on their bravest war faces, or about the bravest war faces you can put on in a neutral country. Dawn revealed their stern commitment to serious war coverage.
At the Star, the front page of the website was enlivened by an article in which publisher John Honderich enthused about how newspapers plan for war:
"Planning for war – newspaper style. For big city newspapers, there is nothing quite like it."By "big city newspaper" Mr. Honderich apparently means the Star, although the staff at the Asahi Shimbun probably have different ideas on that score. Anyway, drawing on his vast experience of running his dad's newspaper, Mr. Honderich went on:"Being in the right place at the right time – capturing the image of firemen raising the debris of the World Trade Center or witnessing a U. S. serviceman dragged through the streets of Mogadishu – often demands an element of luck."There we see the journalistic mind in all its glory. To a journalist the brutalization of an American serviceman by a mob is not horrifying, it's not disgusting, it's not disgraceful, it's a nice little bit of luck. A journalist is someone who wakes up in the morning hoping a lot of people died horrible deaths overnight.But Mr. Honderich isn't going to count on luck. He continues: "To seize that fleeting opportunity to record a piece of history is more often the product of countless hours and days of painstaking pre-planning and careful plotting."
Well, that pre-planning is your key. Planning things after they happen is rarely successful. Anyway, here again we see the journalistic mind at work. Journalists don't just write stories to fill the space between the ads (a space known on newspapers as the hole), they record history! That idea would be a little more persuasive if journalists had in recent years at the very least least shown an interest in getting their facts straight. The Star's recent escapades involving racial profiling come to mind.
Anyway, what journalists record is what they see. That's why so many "analyses" of events in foreign countries quote cab drivers – they're the only locals that reporters talk to, on their way from the airport to the hotel. History is the product of thoughtful analysis of evidence, an activity journalists are not noted for – when you take a history course, the reading list does not contain back issues of the Star, or of a real newspaper, either.
Oh, well. I still haven't got over the Star calling me politically correct (an episode you can read about in issue 2). The Star's home page was serious enough, although I wouldn't have put the article TTC Unveils Growth Strategy on it. For one thing, it means you have to read about the chair of the Toronto Transit Commission, Howard Moscoe. Reading about Howard Moscoe and a war on the same page is more than we should be expected to bear.
Over at the hawkish National Post website, the home page was enlivened by a special report. It wasn't about the war, though, but about home decorating. "If your dining room is taupe (come on, admit to it), imagine it dressed in the colours of a salad." Or perhaps in the guts of several exploded Iraqis. The Post did offer extensive coverage and a good range of comment, though, and the "special" report was at the bottom of the page. Maybe they just overlooked it, victims of a failure to put in countless hours and days of pre-planning.
At the Sun, Iraq was the headline story, directly above a basketball story headed Vince Doesn't Quit, the Vince being Vince Carter of the Toronto Raptors. It's heartening to know that while his countrymen are off risking their lives Mr. Carter isn't just standing idly by. No, he's helping the Raptors win comeback victories! The Sun's big opinion piece urged the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to cancel the Academy Awards presentation, but concluded that the decision would probably be made by advertisers. That was probably the most acute analysis of the war made in any of the Toronto media.
So the honours among the English-language newspaper sites go to the Globe and Mail, which presented a packed, serious, fluff-free home page. Among the television news sites, the honours go to the CBC (What? Yes, the CBC is a Toronto media organization; that's where the HQ is). Its home page was also packed and serious, although it went for the maudlin with Talking to children about the war. If it's Iraqi children they're talking about, I'd say the best thing to tell them is to take cover.
The other television sites were having trouble getting into this war thing. At CTV the war was not allowed to interfere with regular promotions. The home page featured war news plus promos for Canadian Idol and something called the Stars of Neutrogena Contest. Omni (formerly CFMT) ignored the war completely. Its home page reported news about grants for program production, their Bollywood movie schedule, and Lucy Zilio's cooking show . Global is not a Toronto organization, but it does have a Toronto page, whose headline story today was Toronto Fashion Week gives us a turn on the runway.
On screen, Omni made a grudging concession to the war, with Pay Chen periodically announcing that if you had to have war news before the evening you could try MSNBC.com. CBC was its usual earnest self. Much of the early morning was taken up by a close-up of Jack Straw as he fielded questions at a press conference – no crawling messages at the bottom of the screen, no inset shots, no gaudy frame, no nothing.
CTV, on the other hand, was holding a field day for whizbangery. Much of their coverage was centred on a big touch-screen monitor, also seen the evening before, on which Seamus O'Regan and Tom Christianson, the military expert of the hour, got all sorts of different screens to pop up and Tom drew lots of splashy red arrows with his telestrator. In between Lisa LaFlamme anchored the show from Doha, talking by satellite with other correspondents in the Gulf with inset close-ups and full screen upper-body shots. For sure someone at CTV had been putting in their countless hours and days of pre-planning.
On the whole, though, CBC's approach was probably closer to being informative. At least they let you get the bullshit from the source instead of through a talking head.
At NEW IMPROVED HEAD, of course, our blog has been providing breaking news about Iraq for months, and continues to do so. We report stories you never see in the mainstream press! And here at the main site we wrote this article. You lucky people.
The Toronto Media Go to War © Coolth, 2003
Posted on March 20, 2003
Click the banner or click here for Coolth
Commentary | Home