It’s hard to talk about the CBC these days without referring to cutbacks in the same breath. But it’s precisely because of the threat posed by those cutbacks-the context for numerous editorial polemics about the legitimacy of public broadcasting-that we have chosen to pay tribute to what many call “The New Yorker of the air,” and a vehicle for rich, full-length journalistic investigation.

Last fall, 3.6 million English-speaking Canadians tuned into CBC radio-more people than ever before. Ideas, one of the shows they tuned into, could easily be labelled as quintessential public broadcasting fare. The hour-long program, which airs five days a week on the AM network, is everything commercial broadcasting is not. It makes no attempt to target the lowest common denominator to attract a mass audience. It is just concerned with Ideas. As a result, the show has been charged with being eccentric, esoteric, even elitist.

“Ideas is not in any way parochial…. [The producers] go at something with the idea they are going to wrestle it … not with a stupid insecurity that is so common. They don’t have to moronically Canadianize things,” says journalist and filmmaker Kevin McMahon, who has done two shows for Ideas that were eventually made into films (The Falls, a historic and symbolic look at Niagara Falls, and In the Reign of Twilight, about the militarization of the Canadian Arctic during the Cold War).

Ideas is a good idea-and it’s been one for 30 years. In a deadening sea of talk, all-news and oldies formats, Ideas remains an island of intelligence. “There is an incredible fossilization of ideas …. All public discourse is built on a set of assumptions and beliefs… A good idea is one that examines and challenges those types of assumptions,” says Ideas executive producer Bernie Lucht.

Still, an episode of Ideas can be exhausting. The in-depth, probing nature of the show takes you on a mind-bending journey through topics ranging from HIV infection, witchcraft, beatnik culture and the rise and fall of the middle class, to the hanging gardens of Babylon. Its broad scope covers the humanities, sciences, pop culture and the arts.

The show is known for its high production values, and uses sound to transport you to Charles Dickens’ London, modern Korea-or into the mind of a schizophrenic. For some 360,000 listeners, or six percent of the potential English-speaking audience, according to October 1995 Broadcast Bureau of Measurement (BBM) statistics, it can be a smooth and enlightening journey. For others, it’s, well, boring.

Ideas wants to elicit the “ah-ha” response from its listeners: producing shows that will make people think, visualize-a daunting task in an age where communications technology encourages instant gratification and helps shrink attention spans. Ideas endeavors to illuminate and delight by connecting theories and events within a historical context so patterns can be observed. Sound confusing? Well, sometimes it is.

Not all episodes work, as Lucht admits: “Shows don’t succeed when we don’t go beyond what other journalism organizations are already providing; or sometimes the storytelling element is not clear.”

When asked why Canadians preoccupied with an economic bottom-line should continue to fund a show like Ideas, its host and 51-year broadcast veteran Lister Sinclair segues into another analogy: “Vivaldi, called El Preto Rojo because he had red hair, was the musical director of a girls’ orchestra in Venice. Jean-Jacques Rousseau imagined the girls to be as beautiful as their music and wanted to see them … but they were mostly deformed, abandoned orphans of syphilitic prostitutes brought up by sisters! They were the best orchestra in Europe at the time-not second best, the best. The main point is that these poor women-deformed, short-lived, deprived-Vivaldi gave them all self-esteem, pride and honour. He did something more than be a great musician …. We toured Venice-evervone was grumbling about cutbacks……”

Ideas is just about as satisfying as an hour can be-if you’re interested in ideas. Consider these five:

THE PLAGUE

“Close the town! Walls and barriers. Bricks and visas. The old-fashioned ones kept people out-the Great Wall of China. The up-to-date ones kept people in-the Iron Curtain. The postmodern ones-who knows? Like the wall around the graveyard-unnecessary. Those inside can’t get out and those outside don’t want to get in …. And then there’s ‘Checkpoint Charlie,’ because even under plague, living towns are not always as simple as graveyards…,” Sinclair drones, in his ominous, ethereal, mid-Atlantic voice.

“The Plague” is an example of a show that would be hard to imagine in any other format but radio. It forces listeners to conjure up images, work on their symbolic meaning in order to shed light on historical events, and then apply these revelations to more recent occurrences.

Producer Sara Wotch uses French existentialist Albert Camus’ plague analogy as an allegory of plagues of the spirit: facism, tyranny and ethnic cleansing. The central image is of an Alpine town infested with plague: a metaphor for Europe before WWI. It is a place where everyone is diseased-but they are up above it all and fail to notice what is going on. “The Plague” reveals historical patterns of behaviour and applies them to contemporary scenarios: “Rwanda, East Timor, Argentina, Vietnam, Chechnya, Lebanon, Korea, Northern Ireland, trouble in the Balkans …. The war to end war, each and every one of them. All the news, the blood, the sweat, the lies and tears of history….”

COMMON CHORDS

“Dip peu dip peu dip peu dip peu dip peu … dip, do, dom, bome bi bome, bome bome bome bome bome bome … da da da da da da, da da….” American trumpet player Wynton Marsalis’ scats what sounds like an upbeat jazz riff. But he is actually demonstrating the baroque invention of 8/9 time. Marsalis’ beats are overlaid with one of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. By “listening to this old music in a new way,” says producer Alan Guettel, an understanding of classical music isn’t necessary to appreciate the connections between old and new. His two-part series, “Common Chords,” enlightens listeners with jazz music’s baroque roots. We learn that the early 17th-century rejection of the restrained and orderly style of Renaissance art lead to dramatic innovations in music, like the musical chord. We also discover that the delineation of treble and bass resulted in harmonic progressions that remain the foundation of contemporary music. “Common Chords” takes listeners on a musical history tour from Gregorian chant to Herbie Hancock.

THE END OF DAYS

“For a time, the land itself conspired with the inhabitants to create magic and harmony….” Sound up: birds chirping and fast-flowing water, as a man’s voice describes a land of corn, oil, wine, fruits, gardens and orchards. Then the sound of cow bells and a busy marketplace.

We are in medieval Spain, a time of conviventia, or the tolerant co-existence of three great religions-Judaism, Christianity and Islam-one of the West’s most intellectual and artistic societies. In “The End of Days,” author Erna Paris, who wrote an eight-part Ideas series on sex and civilization in 1975 (one of the first pieces of Canadian journalism to explore historical and philosophical attitudes towards women), loops from the 15th century expulsion of Spanish Jews to 1992, when the historic bonds between the Spanish monarchy and Jews are celebrated in Madrid. Paris moves from medieval times to the Spanish Inquisition, when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella championed the cause of “religious purity” to form a modern, centralized state. Ideas tells the story of the rise and fall of an integrated society and raises questions about ethnicity and religion which resonate today.

SOWETO -SO WHERE TO?

Ideas goes to the new South Africa. Writer Sifiso Ntuli tells the story of a trip through his homeland, a year after the 1994 election of African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela. The show blends interviews of “people of the sun”-Zulus, Swazis, Afrikaners, English, Asians-with indigenous and contemporary South African music and clips from the media before and after the end of apartheid.

Ntuli calls Johannesburg “the City of Gold-where the rich and poor are rubbing shoulders with people with BMWs and cellular phones.” A black South African filmmaker explains: “Blacks were never prepared for the consequences of their own freedom. We need to own the real corporate wealth; build our own empire.” Post-apartheid, black people continue to work for white people. Nelson Mandela may be in charge, but white people still own the land.

In the new South Africa, black doctors actually practice on who they want. Ntuli explains: “We weren’t allowed to see Madam [white women] in a state of undress.” An old schoolmate, “Dr. Don,” chuckles: “We weren’t allowed to see white boobs.” Yet, Mandela’s government has failed to deliver its promise of free health care and many blacks must steal to afford basic services. While the show exposes some progress in racial equality, it makes it clear the “seeds of change” have just sprouted.

FEMALE EJACULATION

Producer Sue Campbell’s show on female ejaculation confronts the phenomenology of sexual pleasure. Are men and women wildly different-apples and oranges-or just variations of each other-more like apples and crab apples?

Ideas invites listeners to sit in on a ejaculation workshop: Dr. Shannon Bell, a professor of feminist theory and political philosophy, demonstrates that women can and should ejaculate.

“In order to get an internal erection-brrrrrummmmm … one of the best things is a really small vibrator … it really sort of … ummm, feels nice … I ejaculate normally pretty easy-I’m in the scientific group they call easy expulsers; it takes me between one and three minutes….” Low buzz of the vibrator, then 15 seconds of dead air. “I’m feeling like … I’m starting to … to have to ejaculate … I can feel sort of … ahh … internal contractions….” A loud brrrrr as the vibrator revs up its speed. “I like to ejaculate on mirrors … it makes this phenomenal sound-it’s actually very beautiful … I’m ready to ejaculate and I’m masturbating … I’ve got my finger between my two lips … I’m also pushing on the ducts that surround my urethra-I can feel them filling with fluid … haaaa … aaaah.” Her breathing quickens. “I’m getting turned on … ahhhh … I’m getting more turned on … ah uh … ah uh … [deep inhale] … ahhhh … ah uh, … ah uh, .., ah uh, .., ah uh, ah uh, ah uh ah uh [inhale, sniff] …. AHUHHH .. YESSS…! BINGGG … YES … WAH-HOOO … ! ” Bell’s successful ejaculation is followed by ecstatic laughter and cheering. Elapsed time-about two minutes.

Sometime in August 1993, I found myself rattling in an ancient Cessna over one of the densest parts of the Brazilian Amazon dressed partly in my pyjamas and a soiled pair of khakis that I had discarded in a dark corner of my hotel room the night before.

I barely had enough time to dress after the 5 a.m. call from the pilot, who identified himself only as Captain Marvel. After nearly two weeks of bureaucratic wrangling, Captain Marvel finally received clearance from the Brazilian Air Force to take a group of local reporters and two foreign journalists (myself and a colleague from the Los Angeles Times to the site of what Brazilian authorities were calling the largest massacre of native people in modern times.

A few weeks earlier, the Brazilian press had reported that 73 Yanomami Indians had been killed by gold prospectors in the remote Amazon state of Roraima, near the Venezuelan border. But the Brazilian Ministry of Justice and the military had temporarily closed off the area, so many of my colleagues in the foreign press corps languished in the Amazon city of Boa Vista, about 320 km from the actual site, waiting impatientlv for Brazilian government clearance.

For many, the clearance never came because they were reluctant to wait more than a few days. However, that didn’t stop colleagues from such well-respected news organizations as The Miami Herald, Reuters and The New York Times from pounding out graphic stories of murder and devastation that hit front pages around the world. For example, the Brazil correspondent for The New York Times spent a total of 12 hours in Boa Vista, a seven-hour flight from his base in Rio de Janeiro, before returning to his bureau with the story of the massacre.

What followed was an Amazon version of “telephone” played out on a global media scale. Rumours and assumptions replaced facts and credible sources did not exist. “Did the massacre really take place?” became the central question of this story, which proved to be one of the most challenging exercises that I’ve experienced in foreign reporting. Unfortunately, the manner in which many in the foreign press covered the Yanomami massacre is indicative of what usually passes for mainstream reportage on contemporary Third World issues.

Those of us who hung out in the Amazon and had the resources and the time to report the story properly by flying as close as possible to the massacre site were surprised by the course of events. When our small planeload arrived at Homoxi, a Yanomami village, we found no evidence of a murder. A few of us even ventured into, what was for us, the uncharted reaches of the forest, only to spend a day lost in thick foliage and swarms of killer mosquitoes before the Brazilian military was forced to send a rescue team to find us.

It didn’t take long for us to realize that we were severely handicapped in our ability to report the truth. Not only were we restricted by difficult geographical conditions, all of our facts were filtered through opposing political points of view about the Yanomami Indians themselves.

Further hampering our ability to report the story was the fact that nobody in the local or foreign press corps could speak Yanomami. The only source was a Yanomami Indian named Antonio, who had heard about the massacre from a member of his tribe. Antonio did not speak Portuguese, yet an interpreter hired by the Brazilian Ministry of Native Affairs somehow ascertained that Antonio saw 73 dead Yanomami. Upon further investigation, Antonio’s story appeared suspect. Anthropologists who have studied the Yanomami contend that the Indians never openly discuss their dead with outsiders, nor do they count beyond the number two. Yanomamis count “one, two and many.”

Despite the lack of evidence, the federal Indian affairs agency, known by its Portuguese acronym FUNAI, was quick to condemn the slaughter and did a good job convincing the foreign press that 73 people had indeed been butchered by a group of wild-cat gold miners somewhere in the Amazon rainforest.

But like so many other so-called sources in this story, FUNAI had its own agenda. FUNAI, which lobbies the Brazilian president on behalf of the country’s native people, was using the foreign press to create international outrage that it hoped would pressure the Brazilian government to officially demarcate nearby lands for the exclusive use of two other native groups.

The region’s gold prospectors also had reason to contradict reports of the massacre. Most resented the Yanomami because their land in northern Brazil, which is technically off-limits to outsiders, rests on some of the country’s best mineral reserves. The prospectors, many of them impoverished migrants from other parts of Brazil, were angry that in 1992, the Brazilian government had given 9,000 Yanomami Indians a tract of land the size of Portugal. As far as they were concerned, the Indians were already getting too many special privileges.

A month after the original reports of the massacre, authorities did indeed find evidence of mass killings. They discovered the remains of 16 Yanomami Indians-in Venezuela.

I often think back on the difficulties of reporting the Yanomami massacre when I read foreign dispatches, especially from Third World countries. I wonder what kind of an effort the reporter actually made to get the most objective information. Anyone who has been to a developing country knows that reporting is often an all-consuming challenge. How can you worry about the most basic tenets of journalism when you’re too busy searching the Amazon for a phone that works? How do you go about finding the best sources in a place like Angola when you can’t even find a taxi to take you from the airport to your hotel?

With so many difficulties facing reporters in the Third World, it’s not surprising to see many relying on assumptions rather than reporting. In the Yanomami story, I watched my colleagues report unsubstantiated rumours as truth because they were simply too lazy or too inexperienced to check their facts.

Closer to home, the coverage of the Lamont/Spencer case in Brazil by most of my colleagues in the Canadian press over the last six years was largely based on a similar kind of assumption- and rumour-based journalism. Many Canadian reporters, who were perhaps overwhelmed by the complications of reporting from Brazil, relied heavily on stereotypes of the country as a corrupt, banana republic that had victimized Christine Lamont and David Spencer, two “innocent” Canadians who had somehow (if you believed the Canadian press) got unwittingly involved in Brazil’s most sensational kidnapping.

In December 1989, Lamont and Spencer were arrested along with eight Latin American terrorists for the kidnapping of Abitio dos Santos Diniz, an executive with the Pao de Acucar supermarket chain. Diniz was held for six days in in underground cell in the house that Lamont and Spencer were renting in São Paulo. The kidnappers had demanded $30 million (U.S.) in ransom.

Although there was much direct and circumstantial evidence linking the two Canadians to the crime, many in the Canadian press assumed they were innocent because Lamont and Spencer and their supporters in Canada said so. In the early years of the case, much of the reporting was based on an expensive lobby campaign largely financed by Lamont’s parents, to free the two Canadians. The campaign was so successful that many journalists overlooked the facts and apparently didn’t bother to read trial transcripts and Brazilian press reports (most of them available in English) that showed conflicting testimony on the part of Lamont and Spencer. After reading these reports, it becomes clear that Lamont and Spencer lied about what they were doing in South America and lied about their participation in the kidnapping. For instance, the transcripts show that they had rented two São Paulo houses (one of which was used in the kidnapping) using false passports and forged letters of reference. What’s more, they showed that Spencer had bought the building materials to construct the underground cell, which housed the victim. Spencer helped guard Diniz for several hours at a time.

In the early days of the case, some journalists, particularly at the CBC and Saturday Night, seemed to set out to prove the innocence of the pair. Instead of approaching their subjects with a heavy dose of skepticism, many journalists ended up defending the couple’s feeble rationalizations of why they had been caught by Brazilian police at the Sao Paulo house where the kidnap victim and a sizeable cache of arms had been hidden in the basement.

In a 1992 documentary for CBC’s the fifth estate, Victor Malarek appears to have gaps in his research. He questions Lamont about why she was travelling on a false passport in Brazil. She replies that she was engaged in unspecified human rights work. However, nobody who worked on that CBC documentary seems to have put in a call to Amnesty International in Ottawa. If they had, a spokesperson would have informed them that legitimate human rights workers never travel on false passports. The Lamonts enjoyed the fifth estate documentary so much that they used it as propaganda material in their vigils to free their daughter and her boyfriend.

Nearly four years after the incident, a bunker exploded in Nicaragua, revealing falsified documents that linked Lamont and Spencer to the kidnapping in Brazil. However, newspapers, such as The Vancouver Sun, based in Lamont’s hometown, still came to their defense.

For a time, the Lamonts dictated the press coverage. They told us that Lamont and Spencer were in Midnight Express-like jails and were pawns in a Brazilian political game. There was little truth to this information, but few journalists bothered to check. Many mechanically cited Amnesty International statistics about the murder of street children in Rio de Janeiro and rural union leaders in the country’s northeast. Never mind that none of these issues had anything to do with Lamont and Spencer or their case.

The press coverage became so absurd that some journalists even sought out the families of Spencer and Lamont for their expertise on Brazilian justice, economics and politics.

In the end, neither the lobbying on the part of the Lamonts and their supporters nor the biased press coverage in Canada did the couple any good. Ultimately, it backfired in Brazil, where the two lost appeal after appeal.

I naively hoped that my book on the case, published in April 1995, would generate a debate about how First World reporters cover Third World issues. Instead, it just generated bad feelings.

However, there were exceptions. In March 1995, both Saturday Night and CBC Radio’s Morningside publicly admitted that they had not reported all of the facts in the case.

Still, most journalists seemed too caught up in their own self-importance. In a 1995 Citytv Media Television segment about my book, Victor Malarek called me arrogant and complained that I did not have the good manners to call him before I criticized his two documentaries on the case. (For his part, Malarek insists that I should have contacted him as part of my research.) But the issue is not about personalities; it’s about journalism and I felt Malarek’s documentaries certainly spoke for themselves. Nobody called me when they criticized my book in newspapers across the country. And why should they?

Most Canadian journalists seemed too busy nursing their bruised egos to worry about what was truly important here – the story. In Lamont and Spencer’s most recent appeal, Brazil’s Supreme Court upheld the couple’s 28-year sentences. The journalists who had so diligently covered every rash and headache that Lamont developed in jail were uncharacteristically slow to report this bit of bad news, probably because it meant defeat in the campaign to free our compatriots.

Canadian journalists also missed what may be the best part of this story. In the summer of 1995, Lamont and Spencer and their eight fellow kidnappers admitted that the Diniz kidnapping had been part of an elaborate “operation” to raise money for the guerrilla cause in El Salvador, which Lamont and Spencer openly supported before leaving for South America in 1989. Lamont and Spencer may not have completely admitted to the crime of kidnapping, but for the first time in six years their story changed; essentially, they admitted they were not the innocent dupes the Canadian press liked made them out to be for so long. Too bad nobody in this country reported it.

In a world dominated by CDs, AM sound quality doesn’t cut it anymore. Music is simply better on FM. But even though AM’s share of Canadian listeners fell from 64 percent in 1982 to 48 percent in 1992, AM stations still managed to capture five of the top ten places in eight of the nine biggest markets last year. Why? The cultural phenomenon of talk radio. While Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh may be household names in the United States, the talk on AM in Canada is not as shrill. But is it any better? To find out, we sent three reporters to look at three different components of the AM band in Canada. The results? Read on

The Good
Why Ideas is still a good idea

By Erin Wright

The Bad
Why I’ve grown to hate CBC radio

The Ugly
Why Bill Carroll is toning down

By Wendy Rudnik

The Town Hall theatre at the University of Toronto is a modern haven of academia. The chairs are plush and comfortable, and the room, though it seats around 200, has an atmosphere that manages to be both intimate and scholarly. The people filling the hall on this Thursday evening in mid-November 1995 come in a range of ages: a small number are under 20, wearing student uniforms of jeans and jackets; most are in their mid-30s and 40s, and among them are a handful of the bearded, academic variety. But there are others too, who are certainly in their 70s.

This eclectic crowd has gathered for the Harold Innis Memorial Lecture. The evening’s subject is “How Business Journalism Took Over the World: The Disappearing Notion of the Common Good.” The speaker is Linda McQuaig.

Journalist, bestselling author, and oft-requested guest speaker, McQuaig takes her place at the microphone and enjoys herself. She’s smart, funny and passionate-a dynamic figure with a runner’s build. To emphasize a point, she cups the air with her hands, or leans forward, one arm stretched full across the lectern. Her voice punctuates her sentences, rising almost to a squeak as it takes off, and then, brought back to earth, becomes deep and assured. Tonight’s audience hears the echoes of its own anxieties, delivered in a direct and entertaining style. Anti-inflation policies, she says, warming to her theme, have been responsible for high unemployment-the highest negation of the public good. Collective goals, she warns, are impossible without the sense of personal value which comes from work.

After 20 years as a journalist, McQuaig has been embraced bv a large community of people who not only need to hear what she has to say, they need to claim her as their own. Their response to McQuaig is spurred by an uncomfortable suspicion that all is not well in Canadian society. She articulates and substantiates their concerns, and in so doing makes a significant contribution to public debate. “I’m reminded of a speech by Jane Kelsey, a professor at the University of Auckland,” says The Toronto Star’s Richard Gwyn. “She’d just written a book critiquing [the debt and deficit cutting in] New Zealand. When the change happened in 1984, it provoked very little opposition. Kelsey said, ‘We had no alternative because all of us on the left or the centre left had spent all the proceeding years talking and thinking only about social policy and foreign policy and we’d become economic illiterates.” But in Canada, says Gwyn,”Linda McQuaig has filled part of that vacuum.”

Hers is the voice of a dissident, somewhat of a rarity in Canadian journalism. For that, she is both applauded and attacked. Throughout, she has continued to pursue her own ideas and interests, to present analyses that have evolved from her convictions.

At the end of her speech, McQuaig takes questions. One young man steps up and thanks her for writing her books on the politics of economic issues.

These books have all become bestsellers-and unlikely ones given their subject matter: Behind Closed Doors (1987) is an examination of the inequities of Canada’s tax system; The Quick and the Dead: Brian Mulroney, Big Business and the Seduction of Canada (1991) exposes the pro-business motive behind the Canada-U.S. free trade deal; The Wealthv Banker’s Wife (1993) presents a strong rationale for the welfare state; and Shooting The Hippo: Death by Deficit and Other Canadian Myths (1995) concerns the Bank of Canada’s role in creating the deficit.

The books, says the young man, are a valuable public service, worth far more than what’s commonly dished out by politicians. McQuaig laughs. She’s made uncomfortable by such statements. But the audience applauds its agreement.

At 44, McQuaig is a remarkably complex combination of impassioned and meticulous journalist, articulate author, fiery speaker, and mini-skirted femme fatale. She is also thoroughly unpretentious and quick to give credit when she feels it’s due. A petite blonde with a great big smile that transforms her face, she has an engaging ability to laugh at herself. Ian Austen, freelance journalist and old friend, remembers a time when “it was alleged that in Spanish there was a word, lagarto, which meant both lounge lizard and freelance journalist; McQuaig adopted that for her occupational title.”

While McQuaig can poke fun at her job, she is dead serious about the themes she explores. “What interests me,” she says, “has always been how the elite is using its clout and its influence and its power to make the system favorable to its own interests. It’s a view that everybody implicitly agrees with, but if you use evidence to back that up in a news story, you get all kinds of resistance in the media.” In 1996, at a time when the neoconservative views once considered extreme are now firmly entrenched in the mainstream media, McQuaig is a strong counterforce.

Still, she dislikes labels and is not formally associated with any left-wing organization. “I would come down strongly on the egalitarian side and for a strong public sector. To me, ‘public’ just represents a notion of the common good, that there’s a common sphere that we all have-a community of interests,” she says, summing up her position.

Most of McQuaig’s work is contained within a moral framework that challenges the status quo and presents a case for a perspective that is less represented in the mainstream press. She is one of the few Canadian journalists who is willing to comb through arcane material often considered too dull or too contrary to have real value. Her method and commentary carry on a tradition established in the early 1900s by one of journalism’s first muckrakers, Ida Tarbell. Her lengthy, serialized magazine accounts of the back-door deals that lead to John D. Rockefeller’s monopoly in the burgeoning oil industry were based on years of original research. Tarbell’s expos?s of the systems that enabled the transfer of wealth from the many to the few, like McQuaig’s book-length examinations of the intricacies of government policy and business practice, were hugely popular with the reading public. McQuaig offers a simple description for what she does: “I take a lot of the stuff that’s known to a small group of experts, information that contradicts popular perceptions, and I put it in readable form so ordinary people can have access to it.”

In Shooting the Hippo, which was nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award, she writes: “The anti-deficit campaign has been portrayed as a non-ideological battle against a common foe. We are told, ‘The debt problem has become so extreme that we have no choice but to cut social spending.’ Now, imagine if a media commentator made the following assertion: ‘The debt problem has become so extreme that we have no choice but to raise taxes on the rich….’ Both statements express opinions-opinions about how the resources in our society should be divided up. What is remarkable is how, in the first case, the opinion expressed has become so widely endorsed and often repeated that its bias has become all but invisible.”

McQuaig reworks the dry matter of economics into simmering thrillers. Whether she’s tackling tax policy or free trade, she draws vivid and memorable characters. In Behind Closed Doors, she introduces Mickey Cohen, then president of Paul and Albert Reichmann’s Olympia and York Enterprises and a man who had previously worked in both the Trudeau and Mulroney administrations: “Cohen is the ultimate chief of staff, the loyal servant at the top, dedicated to understanding his master’s wishes and delivering them. He is the trusted knight in the prince’s court, the one chosen to walk within a few paces of his master. To Cohen, Reichmann is simply ‘Paul.'”

The response to the publication of Shooting the Hippo in the spring of 1995 ranged from high praise to damning condemnation. “Some things aren’t worth debating, wrote The Globe and Mail’s Andrew Coyne, who satirized McQuaig’s writing: “Conventional wisdom has it that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. However, in my iconoclastic new book, Hooting the Dippos, I challenge this self-serving orthodoxy……” Freelance journalist William Watson, writing in Montreal’s The Gazette, called McQuaig’s ideas “mindless, leftist dreck.” Other critics charged her with making too much of “a little learning” and of reducing complex issues into tidy moral arguments that allow for facile solutions.

Maclean’s Anthony Witson-Smith wrote that McQuaig’s theories, “like mood rings, bell-bottoms and pet rocks, have been discarded and discredited for more than a decade.” At the root of the criticism is the belief that McQuaig’s polemics ignore national and global fiscal realities. Report on Business Magazine’s Anne Walmsley wrote, “[McQuaig’s] central argument rests on pick-and-choose facts and unsubstantiated accusations.”

Her supporters, however, are quick to point out that she is a skilled analyst whose ideas are based on the work of highly respected scholars such as Pierre Fortin, president of the Canadian Economics Association, whose economic theory is central to McQuaig’s commentary in Shooting the Hippo. “I myself don’t subscribe to many of her arguments,” savs Gwyn, “but I certainly appreciate that she had the guts and the intelligence to come up with a coherent intellectual criticism.”

Noam Chomsky, American linguist and policy critic, says McQuaig’s role is to make “people question what they have drilled into their heads… indispensable in any society that even pretends to be functioning democracy.” In The Ottawa Citizen, Susan Riley wrote: “McQuaig’s book … [is] powered by ideas that are repudiated or belittled by those who now hold power. Indeed, the ferocity of the attacks [on her] shows how dangerous these ideas are.”

But when the attacks come, McQuaig is well armed and ready to defend herself. She spends hours in interviews and wades through volumes of reports, statistics, documents and history. Tax professor Neil Brooks, one of the experts she’s used in her work, says, “She always insists on seeing the studies herself, and going over them very, very carefully. She continues to push her sources until she understands exactly what they’re saying and what the implications are.”

Her perseverance is combined with a pleasantly vague interview style and the natural stops and starts of her somewhat scattered conversational manner. “She can feign being extremely ill-informed and naive,” savs Ian Austen, “and as the interview progresses, and the subject is drawn in, her debating techniques come to the fore and she closes the trap.”

Friends and colleagues call McQuaig brave, a notion she dismisses as ridiculous. “I don’t want to labeled as a rebel,” she says. “I fundamentally don’t deserve that.” But she can certainly be called somewhat eccentric. While she’s able to distill the essential tenets of economic theory, she can also be amusingly vascillating. “Take McQuaig to a restaurant and, if you’ve been there before, she wants you to order for her,” says Austen chuckling. When the waitress arrives, McQuaig’ll ask,”‘Now this poached chicken, how is it cooked?” or, ‘This baked potato, do you bake it?…”

In the ’70s, she co-owned a house in Toronto’s east end with Tom Walkom, now columnist with The Toronto Star, and three other friends. The house, affectionately dubbed “The Pit”, was home to weekly dinner parties attended by artists, academics and media folk. It was also the location for a parade of oddballs and friends of friends that showed up for gigantic house parties which were, recalls Austen, a “fire marshal’s nightmare.”

McQuaig was probably best known back then for her flamboyant approach to clothes. At parties, says Austen, she would appear in “skimpy, mad things, inevitably in some feline print, and very tiny.” She is unabashedly flirtatious, with a long string of romantic relationships behind her. Most of the men, however, remain good friends. Eight years ago, she met defence lawyer Fred Fedorsen. “We fell in love and decided we wanted to get married and have children,” recalls McQuaig. “We bought a house together after we’d known each other for something like two months?really amazing,” She was devastated when the marriage ended in 1994. But their four-year-old daughter Amy is her joy. That’s evident when McQuaig tells her ‘cute kid’ story. She recalls overhearing Amy talking on her toy phone: “…Yes … yes … I have to go now-I have to make a speech on the deficit.”

In the late ’80s, McQuaig’s collegial sense of burnout made her a central figure in what was called Mellowville, a corner of the The Globe and Mail’s newsroom that was a haven for those reporters who sought an antidote to the paper’s rather stodgy and conservative environment. Mellowville pranks were halted shortly after the gang sent cockroaches housed in tape cassette cases to each of the paper’s national bureaus.

McQuaig could take as good as she gave. The copy on the promotional material for her first book read: “It could start a class war in Canada.” Colleagues from the Mellowville Art Gallery pasted photographs of Stalin, McQuaig and Lenin to the bottom of the promotions. “We festooned the office,” recalls Kirk Makin, the Globe’s justice reporter. “You could do something like that which would, at the very least, embarrass her and maybe even jeopardize her career, and she would never complain.”

In the mid-’80s, McQuaig combined her sense of humour and feminist ideas with a lively, entrepreneurial venture. She tried to duplicate the success of Trivial Pursuit with a board game aimed at a decidedly adult audience. McQuaig describes The Make-Out Game as “a satire on the different ways men and women approach sex.” The explicit graphic design on the board (a women wearing only high heels with legs spread wide) and the titillating rules are the vehicle for a hilarious feminist statement on the contradictory approaches of men and women to sexual negotiations. “My only embarrassment,” says McQuaig, “is that it was a flop.”

McQuaig was born into a comfortable middle-class family in 1951. Both of her parents trained as psychologists. Her father Jack, now semi-retired, established the McQuaig Institute of Executive Development and wrote books on personal development. Her mother, Audrey, gave up her own career to raise three boys and two girls.

“Linda was a rough and tumble kid with a yen to win,” says Audrey, who has kept all of the trophies her second-eldest child won in the school’s annual 100-yard dash. “She was much more willing to try things” than her older brother, who was constantly challenged to keep up with her. At age 7 she published the DeVere Weekly, a one-page newspaper named after the quiet north Toronto street on which the family lived. The last issue was published when McQuaig was 9; its focus was the birth of her sister Wendy. “The morning [after the birth] I got a neighbourhood teenager to type it, and I raced out and delivered it that afternoon,” laughs McQuaig.

That discipline and determination spilled into the family dynamic. She describes her father as politically conservative, but with a strong sense of social justice. Consequently, she adds, “Everybody [in the family] had a strong position on things. We all absorbed this incredible interest in politics.” Fervent dinner table discussion centred on social and political issues-great grounding for the presidency of the debating society at Branksome Hall, a private school for girls she attended from 1963 to 1970.

Branksome was an environment that challenged and supported McQuaig, and she graduated with the Governor General’s medal for academic achievement. Gene Allen, a producer with CBC’s Witness documentary series, recalls meeting McQuaig at Bishop Ridley College when the boarding-school boys debated the Branksome girls. Allen recalls a girl with a disposition to challenge authority, to ask questions. McQuaig was “exotic,” smiles Allen, “She was really smart and funny-could tear up anybody in debate.” She was a sexy intellectual.

“I always felt very frustrated by the role of girls,” recalls McQuaig. When she discovered Simone DeBeauvoir at age 14, she was struck by the concept that gender does not determine fate. Along with the notion that women could directly pursue their own goals came what McQuaig describes as an absolutely crucial lesson. “The social institutions in our lives are not a reflection of human nature,” she says, “they’re a reflection of social creating …. Once you see that, you’re free to challenge the institutions that dominate our lives.”

McQuaig took that philosophy with her to the University of Toronto, where she first became involved in journalism. Her friend, Tom Walkom, was a couple of years ahead of her and worked on The Varsity, one of the university’s student papers. “She’s always been moved by injustice, by a sense of fairness,” he says. Once angered, or intrigued, McQuaig worked hard to get the story.

In 1971 she took off her second year of studies to work as co-editor with Walkom on The Varsity. “In those days,” says McQuaig, “there was a real tradition of political activism. We were interested in all those political issues, but at the same time we were interested in journalistic integrity. If we had a vision, it was to make a really good newspaper.”

As a reporter, McQuaig recognized the value of storytelling. She searched for ways to bring a strong narrative to her stories, unwilling to act simply as observer and recorder. The Varsity staff’s decision to accept recruiting advertisements from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and a strip club prompted two first-hand stories. “Rather than censor such ads, they should be printed, but at the same time examined, first-hand, and exposed for what they are really selling,” wrote the editors. McQuaig and three other reporters responded to an ad for topless dancers. She vividly remembers her audition, dancing to The Guess Who’s “American Woman,” and then giving Varsity readers a vivid taste of how the women felt, stripped to the waist, dancing on stage for an indifferent audience: “Kill, kick, spit, God, no longer nervous, just angry. Fuck, I hate it …. I hate them for watching me.” It was, she says, the sort of journalism where, “you’re trying to bring stories to life by going out and getting right into them.”

Her strong story sense landed her a full-time job at the Globe in 1974, where she had already proved herself as a summer student who could get front-page stories. One of her early sucesses was a refugee deportation story trial that concerned a Uruguayan who feared he’d be tortured if returned to his homeland. At the time, the Canadian government believed the ruling regime tolerated political dissent. In her story, McQuaig pointed out otherwise and learned a double-barreled lesson: “Never trust what officials tell you,” and “When people throw sources at you, check the source.”

While daily reporting can be gratifying, it does have constraints, and so in 1976, McQuaig left the Globe. Her intention was to pursue a PhD in history, but she went instead to Paris to recover from the emotional aftermath of a too complicated love-life. While there, she learned French and wrote a novel (a semi-autobiographical tale of a woman journalist in Paris who has an affair with an Arab worker). It was never published, “because,” she laughs, “I’m sure it was no good.”

Always eager for a challenge, McQuaig’s adventurous spirit compelled her to try different forms of journalism and to travel. In 1977, she joined CBC radio’s As It Happens as a story producer. Co-worker Pamela Wallin, now host of her own CBC Newsworld show, recalls McQuaig as someone “with a sharp focus of what was important in the world.” Once intrigued, adds Wallin, McQuaig would “dissect and explain and expose.”

In 1979, McQuaig went to Iran as a freelancer to report on the Khomeini revolution. She filed stories for the CBC, the Globe and Maclean’s. In 1982, she took time away from her job at Maclean’s to go to Lebanon, Israel and the West Bank. As well as reporting on the war, she also wrote on the media’s coverage of the West Bank and the Palestinians. One of those pieces appeared in THIS Magazine, one of Canada’s few contrary left-wing mediums. The article lead to Noam Chomsky, whom she introduced to Maclean’s readers in 1982. Along with some of Chomsky’s earlier work, she’d read Manufacturing Consent, an analysis of the propagandist nature of the U.S. mass media, and had been immediately engaged by his ideas.

McQuaig joined Maclean’s as a senior writer in 1981. Her most controversial story was a February 1983 investigation into Canadian financier Conrad Black’s attempted take-over bid of Hanna Mining. Co-written with Ian Austen, then assistant business editor, it was her first major investigative piece on Canada’s elite. (Much later, in a 1989 Toronto Sun column, Black obviously still felt the sting. He called her “a weedy and not very bright leftist reporter.”)

But far more significant for McQuaig was an article she’d read by tax professor Neil Brooks. After interviewing him, she came away convinced she’d met “a brilliant guy who understood every nuance in the system, and who is a deeply progressive person.” The resulting story, which appeared on May 2, 1983, was the first piece that articulated the ideas that would become a recurring theme in her work, Under the title “Canada’s tax system: Is it fair?” McQuaig wrote a provocative analysis of how tax breaks favoured the rich. “While there are more than 100 tax breaks open to all Canadian taxpayers,” she wrote, “their benefits go overwhelmingly to the wealthy.”

In January 1984, McQuaig returned to the Globe, where, under managing editor Geoffrey Stevens, she was granted a great deal of latitude. Though she was hired as a political reporter, she continued to pursue tax stories. “My theory,” says Stevens, “is that if you have a reporter who has a nose for a certain kind of story and can do a good job, give them their head. You couldn’t have six people on staff all trying to write tax stories, but in fact, Linda was the only one out chasing a lot of those stories and she’s very good at it.” McQuaig flourished in that environment. One front-page story, which described how 239 wealthy Canadians escaped paying taxes, had a direct influence on public policy. In the 1984 federal election leader’s debate, the New Democratic Party’s Ed Broadbent challenged Conservative leader Brian Mulroney with McQuaig’s figures, causing Mulroney to promise, and later implement, a minimum income tax.

In the fall of 1988, after a year’s leave of absence to write her first book, Behind Closed Doors, McQuaig was back at the Globe, keeping a sharp eye on tax stories. The Mulroney government’s Goods and Services Tax was still in the planning stages at the time, but McQuaig was on it quickly. In the weeks leading up to the November 21 federal election, her GST stories had begun to generate wide media attention. Midway through the campaign she was abruptly removed from the tax beat. The GST was threatening to divert attention from what was otherwise a single-issue campaign, focused on free trade. The independence McQuaig had enjoyed was gone.

She does not know who gave the order to remove her from the tax stories, but the message was clear enough. “I certainly realized at that point that the Globe was not pleased with certain things I was doing,” says McQuaig, “I was really, really, disappointed.”

Certainly the paper had reached the end of an era: within three months, William Thorsell would replace Norman Webster as editor-in-chief, managing editor Stevens would leave under disagreeable circumstances in January 1989, and publisher A. Roy Megarry would continue to steer the Globe into a more conservative future. The paper no longer had room for reporters who constantly tested its flexibility.

“She’s like a dog with a rag,” says Kirk Makin, “and if they won’t run a story, she gets a new angle. She’s just tenacious when she thinks that there’s something that has to be said.”

“I think Linda sort of outgrew The Globe and Mail,” says Stevens. “She was doing stories which required a fair commitment from management and from her editors, and required a willingness on the part of the paper to tackle subjects which weren’t always popular with some of their more influential readers or advertisers. I think it got to a point where, basically, that support wasn’t there.”

McQuaig left the Globe in the spring of 1990-she had asked for another year’s leave of absence to write her second book, The Quick and the Dead, but the paper offered her less than three months. “I’ve found that every place in the media there’s always a fair bit of restraint in terms of the subjects you’re encouraged to pursue,” she says, “whereas [when] you write a book, the freedom is just phenomenal. It’s very satisfying to be able to gather all the information you can and write it up in the way that you think is most effective and truthful,”

Linda McQuaig is busy nowadays. She has begun work on another book and has been out promoting the paperback edition of Shooting the Hippo, launched in March. She still writes occasionally for Eye (a Toronto-based entertainment weekly owned by The Toronto Star) because she is drawn to its irreverent editorial style, and enjoys its “off-the-wall sense of humour.” She files a weekly two-minute commentary for CBC’s Infotape, a freelance news service that is distributed to morning shows across the country, and packs in as many speaking engagements as she can handle. She handles the bookings herself-an agent would eat into the fees-and the income subsidizes her writing. As her own agent, she’s also free to speak to groups who have little or no money to pay her.

People come to hear her speak because they have read, or have heard about, her books. Duncan Cameron, editor of The Canadian Forum, points to the precariousness of her position: “She’s very vulnerable in the sense that she has to produce a title that’s worthy of notice every three or four years at the most …. She’s doing all this fine work, but she’s in a small market with a Canadian subject.” Cameron, who is also president of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a left-wing think tank based in Ottawa, says McQuaig’s work is read and cited in political circles. It “puts the pressure on them, turns the heat up,” he says. Charlotte Gray, former political columnist for Saturday Night magazine, disagrees. She believes McQuaig’s ideas have little influence in Ottawa. “She challenges the prevailing wisdom in Canada, but the prevailing wisdom is ironclad convention in Ottawa. I don’t know that she has influence on anyone in power.”

The ideas McQuaig reveals are not original, but they’re rarely heard and that’s why people are anxious to read her books and hear her speak. “I do pride myself on being a good reporter,” she says, “The fact that I’ve been able to develop a political or philosophical point of view is, to me, icing on the cake. The main thing is to get the facts out.”

Two months after her town hall appearance, McQuaig is back on the U of T campus. It’s a blustery January night, and at the Hart House Theatre, people are lined along the length of the stonewalled hallway and up the stairs almost to the front door. The theatre seats 459, and the doorkeepers have warned that it’s almost full. Around the entrance there is a gauntlet of people selling papers named the Socialist Worker or The Militant. The anticipatory chatter of the crowd is punctuated by the occasional chant of “stop the Harris cuts.”

At the front of the line a man is selling buttons for the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty. McQuaig arrives with five minutes to spare for her speaking engagement. Moving quickly along the side of the line-up, head dipped, she stops and buys a button. Her $2 contribution made, she hurries into the hall unrecognized. Moments later, those in the line-up (as many as 200) are told the hall is full. The predominantly left-wing student crowd disperses slowly, frustrated and disappointed.

McQuaig is increasingly attacked at such gatherings-for not going far enough, for not offering prescriptions for action. The politically turbulent times have placed McQuaig in the peculiar position of having to defend herself not only against the charges from the right, but increasingly against those from the left who think that she should do even more to fix what they perceive as Canada’s problems. The information that drives debate is no longer enough.

“I do get criticized because I’m not activist enough,” says McQuaig of the people who tell her, “‘Your books don’t go far enough … this is no good to us in the labour movement, you never take it to the next step.'” While McQuaig appreciates their frustrations, she’s not about to be swayed. “I’m just a journalist. And I get criticized for that a lot. But I’m quite adamant about that. I don’t want to be more than a journalist.”

The commercial break is over. A camera pans the studio of the current affairs program POV: Women and then pulls in tight on host Sylvia Sweeney’s face as she begins her introduction. She tells us that her next guest is Carol Camper, a woman of mixed race and author of Miscegenation Blues. Sweeney turns to welcome her.

They talk briefly about the book and Sweeney asks the standard question. “Why did you write it?” Camper responds and then the conversation heads in another direction as Sweeney slowly leans towards her guest, readying to pose more personal questions. She wants to know what it’s like being a woman of mixed race. She wants thoughts, feelings, fears.

“What is the issue-the most prevalent issue-that is troublesome to you?” “Well, I think just identity, just the self. Who am I? Who are these women? It’s not just ourself according to our own concept of self, but where do we fit in in our particular society?”

Camper, who has one black and one white parent, goes on to explain the trouble she faces trying to fit into white communities. She says her white friends expect her to be one of them. They want to know her so they can prove they’re not racist, yet they don’t want to learn about the problems she faces because she’s part black.

After another commercial break, the two are joined by Katie Brock and Karen Hill (two more women of mixed race) and Jeannette Ong, the second of POV’s three hosts. The five women sit together around a coffee table and continue the discussion as the cameras move back and forth around them. These are the “talking heads” that by this February 1995 evening have come to symbolize the Women’s Television Network, which airs POV. The program doesn’t use any special graphics and the interviews are nearly always in the studio, hence the talking heads. Visually, this arrangement isn’t enticing, but I find that the women’s stories are: each grew up afraid of the pain and rejection that resulted from questions like “What are you?” or “Where do you come from?” They know people ask these questions for different reasons.

Since this isn’t standard television, the hosts throw their own personal experiences in for discussion: Ong is Asian, but grew up with a white family in England. Sweeney is black, but had a white boyfriend whose mother was concerned about what colour her grandchildren would be.

After nearly 10 minutes, Sweeney wraps up the interview. She manages to cut off Ong in mid-sentence, but that’s another little problem the show needs to work out. This is just one of the many times that transitions from segment to commercial are too abrupt-done more often than not with a quick, “Thank you, we’ll be right back,” as the interviewee’s mouth hangs open.

Each edition of POV lasts an hour and usually has four to five segments that deal with such issues as: women and health; women in the professions; women and politics and women’s movements. On this particular evening the third host, Helen Hutchinson, returns after the break to discuss the subject of women and heart disease with two female physicians. This is followed by a conversation about battered women who try to claim refugee status.

I watch the program intently. It’s earnest and raw and unlike anything I’ve ever seen on TV-a strong journalistic forum for women, one in which serious issues can be debated openly and at length. Little did I know at the time the program would only be on the air for another month.

POV was designed to be the flagship program of WTN, one of six new English-language specialty cable television networks that debuted on January 1, 1995. According to early news releases, WTN’s mission was “to address the many facets of Canadian women … from their diverse backgrounds and family life to the pressing issues they face today.” Its programs would “focus on women’s roles, relationships and expanding horizons within the worlds of business, politics, science, technology, medicine and the arts.” Those shows include GirlTalk, which looks at teen issues; HerStory, a women’s history program; and Songbirds, a show that profiles female singers. POV was an essential part of the mix. Nothing resembling a women’s news program had ever before made it to air.

The first week of programming set the tone. POV offered studies on female genital mutilation, HIV babies and women’s hockey. It covered gender wars and native issues, with quirkier pieces done on video games for girls.

When I first visited WTN’s Toronto office, it was a late-February 1995 afternoon, and a group of women had just gathered in a small room to discuss a story idea for POV-the abuse of women in an Ontario penitentiary.

Months earlier, the office had been vacant. Susan Stranks, the executive producer, remembers having to sandblast walls and pour concrete for the floors. She was in charge of putting together WTN’s Toronto operation. It wasn’t easy. The network had been granted its broadcasting licence only six months before it was scheduled to start broadcasting. Stranks recalls the period with a little dismay. “It was hell. When I started, we did not have these offices. We did not have a studio facility. We did not have staff. There were three women working in another office, a very small little room. And basically, we had to put together an in-house production unit in Toronto to produce four programs-one of them a daily show and three of them weekly. That’s a lot of hours of programming. Getting ready was a nightmare. I remember coming on one day. I looked around and cried. There was nothing. Not a computer, not a stick of furniture.”

Solving the problem of where to get hardware was easy compared to the task of figuring out how to do POV. There was no example to follow. As Stranks says, “It was like inventing the wheel. You’re trying to figure out what kinds of stories you should be doing. What issues should we be covering? We don’t like saying women’s issues because we figure most issues are of interest to women-some more than others. So what is a good current affairs story for POV: Women? Well, it could be sornething as obvious as a medical breakthrough in breast cancer. Or it could be something less obvious like tap dancing. It can run those gamuts. What are women interested in? They’re interested in all kinds things, but they have specific health concerns, they have specific financial concerns, they have specific concerns in all areas and in mainstream media those concerns are considered to be soft. They’re not considered to be part of a traditional newscast. You will find that, proportionately, much more of the stories they do on women slide into the back half of the program or the last five minutes of the news unless the woman happens to be murdered, raped or cuts somebody’s penis off.”

“What we’re saying is that we don’t have hard and soft stories. We don’t differentiate between the two. What women are talking about now is what we consider current affairs for our audience.”

Reviewers were not impressed. A February 6, 1995, Maclean’s story is representative. It stated that POV was “too constrained by a women-only focus” and that its production values were “typically subpar.” In an early report card on the six new specialty stations, Antonia Zerbisias, The Toronto Star’s editorial media writer, stated that she felt WTN sometimes looked as if it were run by amateurs. As for POV, she said it wasn’t as strong as it could be.

Others were more aggressive and attacked the network as a whole. A January 30, 1995, article in Alberta Report stated that “the network is burdened by the intellectual portmanteaux of modern feminism: the exaltation of victimization, the weepy white guilt over the fate of the Third World, the wild revisions of history.” Susan Ruttan of the Calgary Herald was a little calmer, stating that she appreciated the efforts of the women who launched WTN, but that she, too, was uncomfortable with the restrictive concept of a women-only channel. “It’s like the women’s pages newspapers used to carry-they implied the rest of the paper was for men.” Still, many felt POV was a program that had potential despite its many flaws. But it was never given the time to correct them-the time to work out technical problems; the time to find creative ways of breaking up discussions that could be too rambling and indulgent; and the time to develop some attitude (guests and hosts always seemed too darn polite).

By March 1, only two months after it went to air, WTN was last place in the ratings. The network realized that to draw more viewers-and thus more advertising revenue-it had to be more entertaining. And so the boring show with the talking heads had to go-and with it the dream that there could be room for at least one serious women’s news program in the 500-channel universe.

It’s a late afternoon in November 1995. The small meeting room in WTN’s Toronto office is empty. Stranks isn’t in her office anymore either. She left the network months earlier and has been replaced by Barbara Barde, former VP of programming for WTN.

POV has also been replaced-by Take 3 , a magazine-style program that deals with a variety of topics. Barde describes the program as a look at women at work, at home and at play. Within the hour there are close to 10 segments, all of them designed to be short. Why so many? “If there’s a segment that really didn’t interest you, i.e., you weren’t a parent so you didn’t want to watch the parent segment then you know it’s not going to last forever,” says Barde.

Take 3 is a far cry from POV. It’s livelier, quicker, certainly more entertaining. But heavy-duty journalism it’s not.

Segments such as “WomanTalk,” “ManTalk” and “MoneyTalk” are usually service-oriented-financiers tell women how to budget, or shopping experts provide details on what to look for when buying certain products, like in-line skates. Then there are entertainment pieces, which include discussions with performers like actors Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless or singer Liberty Silver. There’s also an interactive service called “Go To The Pro,” which allows viewers to call in with queries (for instance, “What’s the hardest language to learn?”). Take 3 investigates and then broadcasts the answer. In addition, there are usually two “streeter” segments. People are stopped and asked simplistic questions: What’s your idea of a romantic evening? Would you rather work for a man or a woman? Who was your first crush? What would be the worst job? Discussions similar to those on POV do exist (Barde refers to them as panels), but there are only four per week. Topics have included fertility, breast cancer and stalking. These are held in the studio and are conducted by one of the three hosts: Helen Hutchinson, Jennifer Rattray or Kit Redmond. (Ong didn’t receive a contract renewal for the new program and Sweeney left the show when her contract ended in December.)

Barde explains the new program rather simply: “We’re providing fresh information and/or entertaining information. It’s different. It’s not the same stuff you’re going to read in Chatelaine and it’s not the same stuff you’re going to read in any kind of magazine. It’s like being on the cutting edge, but at the same time providing interesting profiles of people that you might not know instead of just the rich and famous.”

Barde is wrong when she says her show doesn’t offer the same kind of content that magazines like Chatelaine do. The content is exactly the same. Still, her program does have its merits. The panel discussions deal with topics that a female audience would be interested in, such as women in the workforce or women in theatre. During one discussion, three women debated the pros and cons of breastfeeding. Megan Lafore, a mother and filmmaker, Ruth Bradley-St-Cyr from Growth Spurts magazine and Elisabeth Sterken from the Infant Feeding Coalition were joined by Helen Hutchinson. Sterken emphasized the need for women to make informed choices about feeding infants, but threw in something that caused a little debate-she stated that breastfeeding is better than using formula. Lafore snapped back, stating that her comment was offensive to those who are unable to breastfeed. Hutchinson closed the debate by referring to the stir caused by Margaret Trudeau when she was seen breastfeeding in a Toronto restaurant. “That incident,” she said, “seems symbolic of where we still stand on the issue.

By fall 95 WTN had done more than introduce Take 3. Old favourites like reruns of Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda were added, as well as decorating shows like The Renovator and Debbie Travis’ Painted House.

Although the network chose to become more entertainment-oriented, Stranks says the replacement for POV could actually have become a true current affairs program like the fifth estate. But an investigative program, admits Stranks, takes a lot of money and skilled people-neither of which, she adds, were readily available.

Barde has similar sentiments. “It’s really hard to do current affairs if you don’t have a lot of money. It’s really hard to he immediately reactive. You don’t have enough staff or money. You can’t compete with all the current affairs shows that are out there and if you try to compete, it’s really hard to do it well.”

And so we are left with a show that at least tries to incorporate journalistic analyses, but also a show that presents something called “ClassAct,” a segment that “tackles prickly etiquette situations” for those “afraid to make a faux pas.” Its host is a grandmotherly woman with a sweet smile who advises Canadian women on social do’s and don’ts. She’s already told viewers how to handle introductions and even how to be good houseguests. On other shows, we learned how to talk intelligently about wine and got the ins and outs of laundry room manners.

Whenever I watch her, I can’t help but think of former WTN president Linda Rankin’s intentions for POV: Women. “We’ll look at what’s going on in the world through the eyes of women,” she said. “For example, Bosnia. What are the women’s stories coming out of Bosnia?” And while I admit to sometimes wanting to know how to tackle prickly etiquette situations, I’d much rather watch what Rankin promised-courageous women dealing with prickly life and death situations.

POV: Women definitely had trouble delivering those stories, but at least it tried. The etiquette lady sure won’t.

The green neon words that throb out into the street are the most noticeable part of the Carlsberg Light billboard that hangs on the red brick wall above Novack’s Drug Store. “Great Pride Makes a Great Beer” it reads in an obvious reference to the gay pride that fills the neighbourhood, the corner, the people who stroll by. It is the outest strip of real estate in Canada-the corner of Church and Wellesley, just east of Toronto’s Yonge Street.

The intersection is surrounded by stacks of apartments full of gays and lesbians. On the side streets, there are health clubs and spas. On Church Street, there are the bars-Sailor, Woody’s, Bulldog-each one packed with young men who look just too well dressed, too well cut to pass for straight. And, right above the Byzantium restaurant, the big glass windows that line the offices of Xtra! hang over the passing readership.

Xtra! is the voice of the gay community in Toronto, a combination bar guide and political muckracker with just the right amount of bare asses, sexual opinion pieces and gentital references to arouse both libidos and right-wing zealots. Depending on whom you talk to, the bi-weekly paper is “bold,” “flashy,” “too fluffy,” “too unfluffy,” “not serious enough” or “way too serious.” Here, at the paper’s office, I hook up with David Walberg, editor-in-chief and publisher. We head out to Marshall’s restaurant where Walberg orders a designer cafe au lait in a giant white mug and defends his publication from a criticism that has recently arisen: that his paper will never grow, nor move on to grab new readers if it doesn’t tone down the sex.

As he speaks, Walberg’s eyes light up, showing off the combination of energy and intelligence that has driven him from production worker to editor at Xtra! in seven years. He tells me about those “nuts who call themselves journalists in Canada,” referring to some members of the gay and lesbian caucus of the Canadian Association of Journalists, most of whom work at mainstream publications. In March 1995, the caucus held a panel discussion entitled “Is mainstreaming queers’ issues progress or trivialization?” A panel debated, among other things, the future of the alternative gay press.

Walberg wasn’t impressed: “Their argument was sort of, ‘Now that straight publications talk about gay issues so much, and now that gay magazines are getting so much mainstream advertising, the gay publications will have to tone down their content.’ That’s such a load of bullshit.”

Or, in other words: as the gay world has become accepted by the straight world, the mainstream media has begun covering gay issues, from bashing to spousal rights. As a result, gay publications can no longer rely on gay readers to come to them for information. Fewer readers means less money, so to keep in business, gay books have to go after the big money(corporate advertisers (some of whom, suddenly, love the idea of targeting gay readers). But, not surprisingly, the majority of companies don’t feel comfortable running their ads next to pictures of naked men. Therefore, the hardcore stuff must go back in the closet.

One U.S. publication that has taken an editorial and commercial cold shower is The Advocate, the venerable voice of gay life for 28 years. It stopped running high-sex classified ads. Another American gay magazine, Out, was created in 1992 with a decidedly mellow view towards copulation. Its pages hold celebrity profiles, political viewpoints and lifestyle journalism. In Canada, the Canadian Gay Newspaper Guild (CGNG), an advertising co-op which includes eight publications from Halifax to Vancouver, has a rigid rule for membership. “If they have a preponderance of sexual explicitness in their publications, I would avoid them,” says the co-op’s head, Derek Stringfellow.

Xtra! and the CGNG have been anything but friends. At the very mention of the co-op, Walberg is dismissive: “I don’t really know them or any of their publications. They’re all pretty low-profile.” But Walberg does know them. In Masthead magazine last year, Stringfellow called Xtra! oversexed and “fluffy.” In response, Xtra! reacted much the way Walberg is now, smacking his spoon against his saucer. “Our publication has never been more sexually explicit than it is now. We’ve never had more corporate advertising than we do now. The two have grown in tandem,” he says.

“The press engages gay men, lesbians and others in a struggle for their sexual liberation by providing them with mass media in which to express their sexuality….” That’s the “Mission Statement,” the first line in a handout that every new employee of the Pink Triangle Press (Xtra!’s parent company) receives.

Rick Bebout, an ex-editor and staff relations consultant at PTP who is now researching the history of the gay press in Canada, was part of a group that created the statement. The mission they put into words is the motivation and justification behind everything, from running editorials to setting up live-sex chat lines.

“We wanted to make sure that [our employees] shared the views of the organization,” says Bebout. “We knew there were some, but knew that they hadn’t been very well articulated.” So they decided to find these views. What they found, of course, was gay and lesbian sex.

And Xtra!’s pages are thick with its depictions. For example, advertising for the March 14, 1996 issue: for the fully licensed spa on Maitland, we see a man reaching in, ready to grope his penis, his jeans splayed open at the front to show tight abs with a light dusting of hair; for New Release Video, we learn that its “Best Titles” are part of a going out of business sale: Hot and Hung 3, Beach Bums, Shoe Lust; and, for the phone service Cruiseline, we are shown the illustrated ass of the perfect man, with the message, “Get down and dirty with raunchy, foul-mouthed men.”

The March 14 issue also has examples of corporate ads: for Baileys, we see a drag queen sitting over an Irish Cream on ice, suggesting we drink up “‘Cause you’re an original too.” Other companies that have advertised in Xtra! include Mazda, Quality Music, Smirnoff, Saturn and Absolut.

Xtra!’s editorial is full-frontal as well. In the March 14 edition, David Greig wrote, “It’s as clear as the dick on your face,” a column in praise of showing penises in public. Meanwhile, columnist Lynna Landstreet asked dykes to please, please make their personal ads hotter (“Eight inches of hot clit” read the headline). For her part, sex columnist Lushus Lucy defended woman-girl love.

The 56-page paper breaks down into five basic sections. “Up Front” covers the news in a distinctly homocentric light. AIDS notes, gay bashings, updates on gay-friendly and unfriendly politicians and police raids are just a few of the regular beats. The section also takes on controversy, such as the unfashionable defence of those arrested by Project Guardian, the anti-child porn sting in London that netted mostly gay men.

“Mixed medium: ideas, opinions & analysis” is a mid-book feature section invented by Walberg as a showcase for longer discussions on the community’s issues. He sees it as a key to keeping Xtra! out of the mainstream. “You can read news stories about spousal rights in The Toronto Star,” he says. “But they’re not necessarily targeted to a lesbian and gay readership. There are still very few spaces for people to discuss how they live their lives, their own realities.”

Following “Mixed Medium” is “Art Xtra,” the entertainment section which is packed with the regular highlights: profiles of homosexual artists, a litany of reviews and media columnists. At the back is “Out in the City,” a listing of ,gay and lesbian events, and “the Xchange,” the classified section thick with “erotic massage,” “friends male” and “models & escorts” ads.

The Pink Triangle Press began as a writing collective in 1971 when it began publishing, The Body Politic, the only national gay magazine the Canadian market has ever seen. Back then, Toronto’s gay scene was vastly different(only two gay bars and one political organization. Even then, TBP didn’t flinch from overt sexuality. Gerald Hannon’s pedophile-friendly “Men loving boys loving men” was only the most famous of the articles that landed it in court.

But TBP had two problems. For one, it was overly academic, with articles that attracted the opinion-makers in the gay community rather than the average gay on the street. “At one of our trials, one of the witnesses said that The Body Politic couldn’t possibly be a dangerous publication because you had to have a university education to read it,” says PTP veteran Rick Bebout. The other problem was that it was a financial disaster. At an emergency meeting in February 1987, the collective, which was $80,000 in debt, picked Ken Popert as their interim publisher. He decided to kill The Body Politic but save something else: Xtra!, the little paper that was originally a free promotional tool.

At one glance Xtra! proves that it’s reaching new heights of financial security. When the paper first came out in 1986, it was a four-page foldout with only a 3,000-copy print run. Today, the paper prints 37,000 copies with an average 56 pages. The Pink Triangle Press also puts out Vancouver’s Xtra! West and Ottawa’s Capital Xtra! Both papers are just over two years old, both are in the black, and together they have a circulation of 39,000. In 1994, PTP was named the 51st-fastest growing company in Canada by Profit magazine.

Since 1993, Pink Triangle’s revenues haven’t slipped below $2 million, and PTP, a not-for-profit organization, expects to have a $200,000 surplus in 1995. It’s a remarkable growth spurt and PTP owes much of it to a machine hidden away in a small room at Xtra!’s headquarters. The tiny profit centre is an audiotext system, which allows the press to run two pay phone-in services: XTC Talking Classifieds, for men looking to meet anybody from a bear to a bisexual; and Cruiseline, a live-sex chat line. In 1991, the year both services were created, they generated a small amount of money. A year later, they were bringing in $275,000 annually.

But not any more, thanks to increased competition. While the chat lines and talking personals were responsible for 52 percent of Pink Triangle’s gross revenue in 1993, that number dropped to 18 perent in 1994.

Despite the decline, PTP still sees a use for audiotext. “You get someone from outside of Sudbury who may have never seen a gay publication, may have somehow heard of us in The Toronto Star or something like that. It’s sort of an entryway into a sense of community,” says Shawn Syms, publisher at PTP’s Electronic Media Office. That entry into community usually involves sex. “Some of the people who use this system might see a political aspect to it … other people, who are more gay-identified, might say, ‘Oh, this is just a way to get a quick fuck,’ which, as far as we’re concerned, is a good and noble end unto itself.”

To replace audiotext revenue, Xtra! is only too happy to accept corporate advertising. Marketers now call the gay reader an ideal logistic. In research done for the U.S. gay magazine Out, the following numbers popped up: the average gay household income is $51,624 (U.S.); 80 percent of gay men have a university education; and gays take 5.8 times as manv business and personal trips as the average American. Although there are few comparable Canadian statistics, it’s widely believed that gays in this country share similar appealing characteristics.

Another reason marketers want to reach gays is that they are cultural trendsetters. People look at what’s going on in the gay world and carry those styles into the mainstream. “Gays and black urban youth are probably the precursors of things to come in the entertainment field, fashion, arts,” says Randy VanDerStarren, a senior vice president and group account director at the Toronto advertising firm Lowe SMS. And if he can get the gay audience hooked on Labatt Ice, then the straight audience might follow.

VanDerStarren headed a group that last year studied gay-directed advertising in Canada, a project that included everything from a statistical analysis of U.S. gays to interviewing bartenders along Church Street. What he found was promising: Toronto gays are out, are out drinking, and are extremely brandloyal. So he helped Labatt Ice launch campaign in the pages of Xtra! and Fab, a smaller Toronto-based gay publication. Labatt’s full-colour, two-page spread featured ideal spots for gays to enjoy their ice-filtered beer: “11:12 p.m. Bars at Church and Wellesley,” ” 12:36 a.m. West End Night Club.”

Such ads are the sign of more enlightened times. “With clients, five years ago they were certainly not as receptive as they are now to the gay community,” VanDerStarren says. “So if we had the idea five vears ago it probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere. The time is right now for us.” He also thinks the initial reluctance of advertisers to market their products to gays is similar to their reluctance to sell on the Internet: “You’re going to see leading edge clients get involved in it and then, like anything, the early bounders break ground. Then everyone else follows.”

Over at Xtra!, the staffers’ view of corporate marketing is mixed(it’s nice while you have it, but it’s not to be embraced. So while they welcome corporations onto their pages, they want to maintain a local advertising base as well. Absolut Vodka can, in hard times, get by without special advertising in the gay and lesbian community,” Ken Popert, the president of Pink Triangle Press, says nonchalantly. “I regard corporate advertising as gravy.”

And Rick Bebout thinks that using a conservative sexual tone to attract large companies, the strategy used by the CGNG, is misguided. “It’s silly to pander to one’s own fear of advertisers. Advertisers want an audience, And they don’t really care what you do to get it,” he says.

Out on the street, under the Xtra! offices, a poster heralding “Michelle Ross, Queen Diva” is smacked up on a lamppost. Another one of those well-dressed, perfect-hair men is handing out flyers featuring two Adonis-bodied men, an advertisement for the Aztec Club. On a street like this, Xtra! beats its critics. If the paper toned down its sexuality, it would be turning its back on the readers. And so it doesn’t try to.

“For 25 years, we’ve been an organization that says you don’t win things by trying to be respectable. You don’t win things by trying to fit in,” Bebout told me. “And what is it you’re trying to fit into anyway?”

On October 11, 1995, Toronto’s Sing Tao newspaper changed the face of mainstream Canadian journalism forever. At a lavish event held on the Board of Trade floor inside First Canadian Place, a large crowd ate hors d’oeuvres, drank from an open bar and applauded when the editor of one of the country’s premier publications took the microphone. “This is a proud day for Maclean’s,” Robert Lewis said as he welcomed everybody to the launch of Maclean’s Chinese edition, a groundbreaking joint venture between the magazine and Sing Tao.
Chinese-language print journalism-Canada’s largest and fastest growing ethnic media-has flourished over the past few years. When Sing Tao began in Toronto in 1978, it had no competition. Founded in Hong Kong in 1938, Sing Tao opened its first North American edition in 1964 in San Francisco and now operates 13 others, including Vancouver (in 1983) and overseas in Paris, London and Sydney, Australia. In the mid-’80s, a few other Chinese dailies tested the Toronto market. Only one, the Taiwan-based World Journal, set up shop (in 1987). Although Chinese characters are universal, the papers cater to different audiences. Sing Tao appeals to readers from Hong Kong and Southern China, where the Cantonese dialect is predominant. The Journal, which started up in Vancouver in 1992, attracts those from Taiwan or northern China, where the majority speak Mandarin, China’s official language.

Three years ago, a third paper arrived in Toronto and Vancouver when the Hong Kong daily Ming Pao launched its first North American edition. Throughout its 37-year history, Ming Pao has catered to the wealthy, educated elite, and so it quickly attracted the attention of educated, affluent Hong Kong immigrants. With the coming repatriation of Hong Kong to China in July 1997, thousands have immigrated to Vancouver and Toronto. Between 1981 and 1991, Hong Kong was the number one source of new immigrants to Canada; China was third.

Together, the new arrivals form a huge market. In the Toronto area, for instance, 100,000 Chinese-language newspapers are sold daily. Weekend readership is even higher. None are audited, so the following circulation figures are estimates from a variety of sources: Sing Tao is the largest, with approximately 40,000. Ming Pao is second, with about 35,000 readers. The Journal is third with 25,000.

The first papers saw their primary role as informing readers about their mother countries. But now, with competition and reader demands for local content, the papers have evolved. In addition, they are sometimes uncertain as to how to react when their own community makes the news in the mainstream press. One such news story concerned Carole Bell, deputy mayor of Markham, an affluent suburb north of Toronto. At a Council meeting in June 1995, Bell said the influx of Chinese residents moving into her city was causing the “backbone” (Caucasian) community to flee. In response, Sing Tao,Ming Pao and World Journal each published a series of articles that chronicled such subsequent events as Bell’s refusal to apologize; Mayor Don Cousens’ refusal to condemn his deputy; and a petition signed by 12 Greater Toronto Area mayors that denounced Bell’s comments. But none of the three Chinese papers condemned her on the editorial page. Why? Because they don’t have editorials-just one of the details I found out when I visited the Toronto offices of the three publications.

At Sing Tao, it is a quiet autumn night. Most of the reporters have gone home and there is only a small team of translators and editors left. Inside the spacious building are rows of new computers, “The recession didn’t affect our paper,” says editor-in-chief Tony Ku.

Sing Tao has come a long way from its original 12-page format and five workers. Since 1992, the paper has almost doubled its staff to 100, 25 of whom work in editorial. Today, the 108-page paper is published seven days a week at a new $6 million high-tech plant-a marked improvement from when it was printed in New York and shipped north by Greyhound bus at dawn.

“There was a time when people only cared about the restaurant business and their old communities. Now the community structure is totally different,” Ku says, As an example, he tells me about a recent story on the Chinese community and its participation in the United Way walk-a-thon. “[Our readers] are active not only in the Chinese community, but they also want to help mainstream society,” he adds.

It wasn’t always so. Chinese immigrants, like all new immigrants, faced discrimination and a language barrier, so they had no choice but to keep to themselves. But now readers want more from the papers-more about the community in which they live. The paper’s partnership with Maclean’s stemmed from the Chinese community’s need of a “reliable and informed” source of Canadian news.

Like the staff at Ming Pao and the Journal, most of Sing Tao’s editorial workers are journalism graduates, educated abroad. Ku says staff are encouraged to report from the perspective of a Chinese-Canadian, “We always educate our readers,” he says. “When you come to Canada, you have to live peacefully with people from different backgrounds.” While the paper has no editorials, it does have a commentary column called “People’s Talk,” which runs Monday to Saturday. In this space, senior editorial staffers write about issues such as the referendum. However, there were surprisingly few comments about Bell. The ones that did run basically stated that she was out of line given her position. In addition, the paper ran several stories about how hurt the community felt by her comments. Still, Ku insists the paper remained impartial: “It’s important not to take sides. Readers need to know the facts of an event to make their own mind up. Our challenge is to cover mainstream and Chinese society using only facts.”

The Ming Pao office is tucked away in Scarborough, far from traffic and noise. News editor Vivian Chong and I sit in an impressive boardroom. From its start-up in 1993, Chong tells me, the paper made local news coverage its top priority. “We want readers to know what is happening in the Canadian community. Because many are new immigrants, they have to establish and get familiar with local issues. For example, our Queen’s Park reporter focuses on ridings with a high concentration of Chinese residents.”

There are 15 editors and reporters, 140 staff in total. Translators work on Canadian Press and Reuters wire stories. Editorial content takes up 35 percent of the paper’s usual 92 pages. Ming Pao has become famous for its three weekly, glitzy and colourful magazine supplements, which entice some Sing Tao and Journal readers to jump ship. Among them are: the Ming Pao Property Gold Pages, a real estate buyer’s guide which includes analyses of the property market, stories on mortgages, Canadian real estate law and interior design (its editorial-ad ratio is 20:80) and a monthly Chinese-language edition of Toronto Life.

Chong sees Ming Pao’s Tuesday bilingual Public Forum page as a promising project. Non-Chinese people are encouraged to write in, expressing views about such stories as Carole Bell, whose comments hit Ming Pao readers especially hard since they’re largely the people moving in to Markham. Comments on the Forum page were tougher than those of the paper’s writers. “While I do not personally see Ms. Bell’s comments as necessarily racist, I have no doubt that they give comfort to some with racist views,” wrote one reader. The paper’s own commentary on Bell basically consisted of two overly diplomatic articles written by deputy chief editor Calvin Wong, who writes under a pseudonym. The paper, however, did run a Toronto Star editorial on Bell. “Chinese media looked to the mainstream press for guidance,” says award-winning Star reporter Tony Wong, “when it should have been the leader on this issue.” But Wong also praised the papers for their progressiveness: “It would be a disservice to say the papers are merely ethnic papers because issues covered are very mainstream. Beyond the Carole Bell matter, the papers are aggressively covering city hall and Queen’s Park. Comprehensive work is done with limited resources and they’ve become an influential voice outside the constraints of the Chinese community.” Among those listening, says Wong, are politicians, and even the police. Following one shooting incident at a Chinatown restaurant earlier this year, police had articles from Sing Tao translated and were quick to give their response to what they thought were critical portrayals. Markham Mayor Don Cousens was also incensed over Ming Pao articles that he believed showed him in a negative light. At one point, he refused to talk to the paper.

On the subject of Cousens’ deputy Mayor, Chong would only say: “Carole Bell’s comments have some validity. Some may not feel comfortable with a lot of Chinese immigrants moving in, like intruders. But she did not address it in an appropriate way, as a publicly elected official.”

Chong does say that an editorial stand on the Bell controversy was needed, but then admits that the main reason Ming Pao does not have editorials (its parent paper does) is the lack of staff to write them. “We don’t want to write editorials in a loose way,” she says. “If we were to write, it would have to be in an analytical, comprehensive manner. Because much of our staff is not very familiar with the issues, a lot of time has to go into research for editorials. Right now, no one has that kind of time.” So at the moment, Chong’s paper is trying to help readers familiarize themselves with Canada.

“Our paper is trying to bring readers out to see the world and show that you have your role here, which is completely different from your role in your home country, One way is to enhance political participation and community involvement. See, the Chinese are quite politically low-profile people,” Chong adds, noting that China, Taiwan and Hong Kong have traditionally had non-democratic governments.

The World Journal is a two-minute drive east from Sing Tao, but its appearance couldn’t be more different than its predecessor in the city. Inside are peeling walls, cluttered desks and a generally run-down ambiance. “Our supporting staff is 3,000 worldwide,” says editor-in-chief Louis Chiu. “Our parent paper is very strong. In fact, we are the largest [Chinese paper] in North America.”

The Journal, like its Cantonese counterparts, is trying to cover more local news. Chiu shows me the day’s front page as proof: lead stories include Jacques Parizeau’s resignation and a rise in the Canadian dollar. Canadian news accounts for 30 percent of the paper’s editorial content (it subscribes to Canadian Press). The Journal is a satellite paper, with only 60 workers, 14 in editorial. Much of the news content comes directly from its New York and Taipei headquarters. Although its local news content is lower than its competitors, Chiu says he’s satisfied.

“I think proportionately it’s about right-now.” He offers no other explanation, but to emphasize his point, he tells me the paper yesterday carried four pages about the referendum. But what Chiu didn’t admit was that his paper can’t afford more pages for local news because it’s only getting a fraction of the advertising dollars his competitors are. Advertisers prefer to deal with aesthetically pleasing papers like Ming Pao, which has lots of colour and reaches a richer audience.

“The majority of Chinese in Toronto are from Hong Kong and speak ‘Hong Kongese,'” explains Chiu. “They are used to their own style and language. So some aren’t familiar with our presentation. The Cantonese have their own slang and writing style-almost their own language. The Journal is more traditionally Chinese, more purebred.” Chiu is referring to the distinction between Mandarin and Cantonese, which goes back dynasties. The Mandarin-speaking north has been the traditional home of the ruling class in China; people from there tend to opt for literary, rather than colloquial, writing. Colloquial writing has only gained acceptance in the last century, as the scholar-official class regarded folk and vernacular literature as beneath them.

The Journal published many articles on the Bell affair, but Chiu doesn’t say much about them. Instead, he says he was pleased with The Toronto Star’s coverage because it allowed mainstream society to become more aware of a Chinese-Canadian issue. Chiu’s only other comment on Bell was that people need to improve relations around them to further avoid such conflicts.

The paper often runs the editorials its Taiwan parent prints. Of the three Toronto papers, the Journal is the least independent from its base abroad. This is one reason the future of Chiu’s paper is questionable. Also, it has no plans to pair up with any mainstream publications or upgrade facilities.

“The Journal is the weakest editorially of the three papers for local content,” says Tony Wong. “But their coverage of Taiwan and China-one of their main mandates-is done extensively and in a comprehensive manner. Despite that they’re the smallest Toronto paper, it belies the fact that they are a huge conglomerate with vast resources.”

The long-term future of Toronto’s three Chinese-language papers is uncertain. Their continued prosperity depends in large measure on what happens to Hong Kong under China’s rule after 1997. If China follows its traditional policies, emigration from Hong Kong will be severely curtailed-and the wave of newcomers will end. In addition, many Chinese immigrants are fluent in English-it’s taught in Hong Kong schools-so a Chinese-language paper may not be essential over the long-term.

Chinese characters are peculiar. One character can have multiple meanings depending on what others are written with it. The characters ming and sing together mean “movie star.” Although the papers are enjoying this kind of status in Toronto now, I wonder where they will be a generation from now. But I suppose, like Hollywood’s people, they are enjoying success while they can.

On a narrow road in the hills of Bosnia, Daniel Gunther, a Canadian infantry corporal, sat in the turret hatch at a white armoured vehicle. The midday sun blazed down on the parked carrier as he surveyed the landscape ahead through a bulky pair of binoculars that he held just under his light blue United Nations helmet. Gunther, 24, had only been in Bosnia for about a month, since soldiers of the Royal 22ieme Regiment replaced an Anglophone unit in Visoko, about 20 kilometres northwest of Sarajevo.

Earlier that morning, June 18, 1993, two armoured personnel carriers, one driven by Gunther, rattled out of the Canadian compound at Kiseljak, near the peacekeepers’ main position at Visoko. Their mission: to stop at an observation point on the Kiseljak-Visoko road near the village of Buci. Once there, they hoped that a visible, stationary UN presence would stop the warring factions from attacking civilian traffic. It was the kind of workaday peacekeeping operation that Canadians hear little about. By 9:30 a.m., the two vehicles, one known on the radio net as Seven-One and the other as Seven-One-Alpha, had taken up positions about 500 metres apart.

At Seven-One, Captain Yvan Pichette and Sergeant Mario Robert sat in the carrier while Gunther scrutinized the landscape through his binoculars. As the morning wore on, the three soldiers in Seven-One-Alpha-Master-Corporal Richard Martin, Corporal S.R. Phaneuf, and Private J.P. ThEberge-tinkered with their broken radio, eventually giving up. At 12:30, Phaneuf left the sheltering armour to relieve himself.

“It was at that point that I heard the first explosion,” Phaneuf said. He sprinted back toward the little open door in the back of the white carrier. An instant later, he heard another blast-this one Much closer. Bullets smacked the air around both vehicles.

Inside Seven-One, Sergeant Robert was rocked and deafened by that second blast. The interior of the carrier was suddenly filled with acrid smoke. He slammed the heavy rear door and, he later remembered, “shouted at Corporal Gunther to start the vehicle and get out of the area as quickly as possible,”

But there was only silence from the turret. An anti-tank rocket aimed at the carrier had exploded where Gunther sat, missing the main body of the vehicle but killing him instantly. Investigators later found fragments of his shattered blue helmet 30 metres away.

Later that day, in Ottawa, National Defence Headquarters issued a press release which appeared in paraphrased form in most Canadian dailies the next morning. It differed from what had happened in one crucial detail: Gunther, it stated, had been killed when a mortar round hit the carrier.

“Corporal Gunther was probably halfway out of his vehicle when the shrapnel of what seemed to be a mortar hit him,” Major Jean-Pierre Sabourin, a spokesman at the military base a Valcartier, Quebec, told French-language newspaper Le Devoir. Several other papers phoned Visoko and talked to a military spokesman, Captain Bruce Stock, who confirmed the story. (A dispatch from Southam, however, correctly attributed the death to an anti-tank round.)

The distinction between the facts as they occurred and the facts as they were presented to the media is important. A mortar is fired in a high sloping arc at its target, which is an area rather than a specific object. An individual mortar round is not a particularly accurate weapon. What’s more, if a mortar round had struck the thin roof of the carrier, the explosion would have devastated the interior, killing all three men. An anti-tank rocket, by contrast, is fired at a deliberately selected target-there’s nothing random about it.

The official military account wasn’t publicly challenged until December 1993, when the Ottawa military magazine Esprit de Corps got two anonymous calls from soldiers with a different view of events. Because he wanted to publicize the soldier’ version as quickly as possible, Scott Taylor, the magazine’s iconoclastic publisher, called The Toronto Sun’s Peter Worthington, who broke the story in his column.

In January 1994, Esprit de Corps ran an angry, bitter article that contrasted the information given to the public and Gunther’s wife and family with what an internal board of inquiry had found to be the cause of Daniel Gunther’s death. “Beyond all doubt,” the three officers on the board of inquiry had written in a report dated July 10, 1993, “the weapon used was in fact an anti-tank weapon and not a mortar round.” Their report was given a restricted classification.

Beyond Esprit de Corps and the Toronto and Ottawa Suns, however, the story got no wider coverage-a lucky break for the military’s public relations officials, says Taylor: “At that point the trust in [Department of National Defence] communications could have been blown wide open.”

By June 1993, there had been other deaths of Canadian peacekeepers, but they were accidents of a war zone, like the sergeant who had been killed by a land mine the previous August, or the carelessly handled rifle that killed a Canadian in Somalia. Gunther, however, had been killed by soldiers who deliberately aimed a rocket at a clearly marked UN vehicle. His tragedy signalled the opening of a new and ominous chapter in Canadian peacekeeping, and should have started a public debate about the dangers of sending peacekeepers to an active war zone. And it also should have led to a debate in journalistic circles about the glaring deficiencies in the way military matters are covered.

Unsurprisingly, there are conflicting explanations as to why the military didn’t admit immediately after the board of inquiry came to its conclusion that Gunther had been killed by an anti-tank rocket. Some see it as an act of deliberate dishonesty, one designed to downplay the dangers that peacekeepers faced in Bosnia and thus avoid a public controversy that might lead to withdrawal. “It was politically unacceptable to have a murder of a Canadian UN soldier,” says Peter Gunther, Corporal Gunther’s father. “That’s what the problem was.” Esprit de Corps’ Taylor agrees with the assessment. “Six months after the Board of Inquiry was concluded, the Public Affairs branch was still lying to the people of Canada, claiming Gunther was killed accidentally by random mortar fire,” he stormed in the August 1994, issue of his magazine.

National Defence Headquarters, for its part, blames the discrepancy on bad information from the battalion in Bosnia in the immediate aftermath of Gunther’s death. In response to written questions from the Ryerson Review, Commander Barry Frewer, a military spokesman in Ottawa, attributed the error to “initial reports submitted from the field under the ‘fog of war,”‘ and pointed to a press release issued by army headquarters in Montreal in May 1994, correcting the misinformation in NDHQ’s statement the previous June.

With Gunther’s death causing few political waves, there continued to be little public awareness of the danger to which Canadian peacekeepers in Bosnia were exposed. Little happened to change that perception until December 1993, when a group of Serbs took 11 Canadian peacekeepers prisoner, disarmed them, and subjected them to a mock execution. The story, however, was not broken by anybody in the Canadian media. That honour belonged to The New York Times, a newspaper that hadn’t let its military coverage atrophy. The actions of the Serbian soldiers startled and disturbed the public, and an anxious debate over the presence of Canadian troops in the Balkans finally began.

Those on both sides of the gulf that divides reporters from the military’s PR structure agree that coverage of the armed forces has, in the last generation, become a weak spot for Canadian journalism. There are several reasons: cultural barriers, the loss of a tradition of military reporting, the clannish nature of military societies, and the lack of a consistent presence of reporters with Canadian troops on operations, particularly in Bosnia and Croatia.

“On the ground,” says military public affairs officer Captain Bob Kennedy, “there have been 2,000 soldiers for the last three years being shot at, killing people who shoot at them and, every day, generating fabulous stories. And not a single Canadian news agency has been smart enough to put somebody there with them [full-time].”

They have, however, sent journalists overseas on short-term visits, which raises the sticky issue of costs. Although the military is willing to support reporters from resources that already exist in the field, most major news agencies insist on paying the full cost to preserve their independence-a process that Kennedy describes as “spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars a day avoiding the hospitality of the Canadian Army.” Between transportation, reimbursing the military (several news organizations demand to be billed) and insurance, the cost of sending reporters and photographers to cover Canadian troops in a war zone, let alone keeping them there, quickly becomes prohibitive to a cashstrapped news operation. The result: visits to Canadian troops abroad that are relatively brief and rare.

Whether journalists should go on the military’s supervised tours of war zones (termed “junkets” by some) is a debatable point. Unlike such easier ethical judgement calls as rejecting gifts from the sub, jeers of articles, there is little unanimity among reporters about the degree to which news agencies should accept help from the armed forces, or whether their objectivity would suffer if they did. “You’re going to be biased for the cost of a plane flight to Somalia?” asks John Ward of The Canadian Press.

David Pugliese, who often covers the military for The Ottawa Citizen, defends his newspaper’s decision to pay its own way: “I think that you do get respect from some military people when you’re not on a free ride. They seemed impressed by that.”

Be that as it may, having the military pick up the tab hasn’t always stopped embarrassing stories from being told, Jim Day, at the time a reporter for the Pembroke Observer, flew to Somalia in March 1993, on a trip mostly paid for by the armed forces. Day, who happened to arrive in the immediate aftermath of the murder of a Somali teenager by members of the Airborne Regiment, ended up breaking the first story of what became the Somalia scandal. Day’s article led to a spate of revelations about bizarre initiation rituals and anarchic violence in the unit, culminating in the regiment’s disbandment in disgrace on a parade square in Petawawa in March 1995.

An organized tour is probably the only way most Canadian reporters get military experience-few of them grew up in a society in which the armed forces were anything other than peripheral, Peter Worthington, editor emeritus of The Toronto Sun, and an infantry platoon commander during the Korean War, is one of the few combat veterans left in Canadian journalism: “For a couple of decades after World War II,” he says, 11 the media was filled with people who’d been soldiers, sailors, airmen or some, thing, and had a visceral understanding of the mentality, and could assess it.”

Some lament the loss of the old-fashioned Canadian war correspondents, people like Charles Lynch or Ross Munro, who landed with Canadian troops in Sicily and Normandy. But “there haven’t been any Canadian wars to cover for the last 40 years as a war correspondent,” Kennedy observes. “[That earlier] generation drank whiskey instead of Perrier, chain-smoked, kept an eye on the track, and all that stuff: the whole Hemingwayesque routine.”

All the reporters interviewed by the Review, like The Ottawa Citizen’s David Pugliese and John Ward of The Canadian Press, agreed that the military, which often complains that it is poorly (as distinct from negatively) covered, must shoulder much of the blame itself.

Canada’s military culture is physically and intellectually isolated from the mainstream of Canadian society. Its attitudes, especially its assumptions about women, often seem to have sprung from another era; to this day, soldiers’ wives who go overseas with their husbands fall directly under military authority, and the archetype of wife-as-subordinate is alive and well in large parts of military society. As well, the ethnic makeup of the fulltime part of the armed forces reflects that of Canada half a century ago.

“The military is a closed, regimented structure, and the media are a group of people who are trained to test authority,” notes The Toronto Star’s Peter Cheney. Reporters are largely urban in outlook, liberally educated, and temperamentally skeptical. Often, relations between these two contrasting guardians of society are marked by mutual anger and confusion.

“[The military] had a lot of stuff to hide, and they did it for a long time,” Cheney contends. In January 1994, he published a large investigative feature in the Star about the Airborne Regiment’s disturbingly anarchic and hyperaggressive subculture, the first thorough look in the media at the regiment’s problems. He says he later got a death threat. “The military is a club. It’s like cops. If you get a story that involves the cops, you’re up against the entire police force.”

While all armed forces are closed to journalists to one degree or another, some reporters argue that Canada’s is too closed. “After the Gulf War, I sent in a request for the war diaries,” Ward remembers. “What did we drop bombs on, and what were the bomb damage assessments? They finally gave me an expurgated version of the war diary, but without any of the bomb damage assessments. They were done by the Americans, therefore this was a communication with a foreign government, and it was exempt. My problem with that is: the Americans didn’t give a hoot. They were giving out the bomb damage assessments on CNN. Who [is the Canadian military] trying to hide it from? The Iraqis?”

In April 1993, a few weeks after Somali teenager Shidane Arone was murdered by Canadian soldiers, an American Court-martial in Mogadishu convicted a sergeant of wounding two Somalis with a shotgun. “Unlike the Canadian military,” Pugliese pointed out at the time in The Ottawa Citizen, “the Marines are open about investigations against their soldiers. The log books of their military police are open to the media.”

Some reporters believe the military sometimes crosses the line from guardedness to active deceit. At two points in 1994, the CBC filed requests under the Access to Information Act for briefing notes used by public affairs officers. They had realized that the notes contained not only information for release to reporters, but also background information not intended for release. The CBC asked for copies of both.

“We applied for them,” explains CBC Radio reporter Michael McAuliffe, “and we received a stack of documents. And it wasn’t until a month or two [later] that we became aware that in fact the documents we’d been given had been altered. In some cases they were edited. In some cases they were rewritten. But basically the documents were re-created so that it concealed the alterations that had been made.” (At press time, a military police investigation was in progress.)

AT 10 IN THE MORNING on October 30, 1995, referendum day in Quebec, the public inquiry into the Canadian deployment to Somalia began another week of hearings in downtown Ottawa. Across the river in Hull, the polls were opening. Four reporters, clinical about their chances of having their stories published on the morning after the referendum, were in the press room. Others dropped in during the day, always asking if new documents had been released.

The inquiry was still studying the period before the Airborne Regiment went to Somalia. In the press room, the mass of released documents had already filled two bookshelves. They covered a surprising range of issues-from a major general’s explanation of his grievances, to the rules of engagement for the mission. There was also a copy of one of the famous videotapes. Clearly, a rich mine of story material.

Reporters welcomed the information; it afforded glimpses of a hidden culture that is otherwise difficult to penetrate. “What you need is something like this inquiry, with subpoena powers, and the documents start coming out,” says CP’s John Ward.

But one officer sees the media focus on the inquiry as a cop-out. “The Somalia story only became a story again it became an Ottawa story-who told what to whom about what when. It is not a military story,” says Kennedy. “It is a political story, which all of a sudden is happening in Ottawa, and finally Somalia could be covered just by strolling over to the National Press Theatre. My contempt is unbounded.”

But Esprit de Corps’ Scott Taylor feels that the inquiry, by providing a starting point for a small group of journalists, has done much to improve coverage of the military. “The facade of the uniform is no longer enough to deflect [reporters]. They are delving into it. They’re now students of this whole thing. The people, the characters, the personalities, the way it interacts with the bureaucracy.”

Taylor, who looks a bit like former Maple Leafs’ coach Pat Burns, has been a gadfly to the military establishment for years. His Ottawa office is decorated with military prints and clippings, trophies of his magazine’s exuberant war with the powers that be at National Defence Headquarters. Founded as an in-flight magazine for military charter aircraft, Esprit de Corps has since settled into a role as an abrasive defender of the ordinary soldier against what it sees as corrupt and careerist leaders.

It is these ordinary soldiers who supply the magazine with an unceasing flow of brown envelopes, faxes and furtive telephone calls. In his Ottawa office, Taylor gestures at four linear feet of documents on a bookshelf: “Almost every one of those is an unreported example of corruption which we can’t get to.”

There is an argument about the coverage of the Somalia inquiry that keeps coming back to me. It goes like this: all of the daily revelations about the misconduct of the Airborne are an indictment of the media’s earlier relative apathy. Why did we hear after the Airborne left for East Africa that there were severe problems in the regiment on the verge of its deployment-that members were eating their own excrement and blowing up cars and that the brigade commander fired the unit’s commanding officer? Why didn’t we hear about these things when they happened, so that questions could have been raised publicly about the regiment’s suitability for its mission?

To this charge, I think the media has to plead guilty. After all, the public, which pays for the armed forces and in whose name they operate, deserves strong and aggressive military journalism-strong enough to tell us about the problems in the Airborne before they went to Somalia, and strong enough to make sure that a family knew the truth immediately about how a son and husband died.

“We still don’t know who killed our son,” says Peter Gunther. “I’m sure somebody knows. What really upsets me and my wife is: We had a Somali incident; there was a Somali killed. And you notice all the hoopla that is going on about that. The investigations, the boards of inquiry, the courts-martial, because a Somali was killed by a Canadian. My son was killed by someone, and that’s it. That’s all they did. Too bad, he’s dead. There was no effort to find out who did this, and to bring that person to justice. That’s what upsets us the most. Somalia is a war zone, Yugoslavia is a war zone. Big deal. You could still find out who the hell did this. There was no outcry here in Canada, because it was never stated that this was a murder, and it was a murder; the vehicle was directly attacked.”

It is June 1975 and Sally Barnes is climbing the red-carpeted stairs to the press gallery at Queen’s Park, home of the Ontario Legislature, as she has done almost every day for the past five years. This day, however, isn’t like the others. Barnes has just made one of the most difficult decisions of her career and she’s apprehensive about telling her colleagues.

As she ascends, Barnes thinks about her 15-year journalism career. She has made her mark on the world at Queen’s Park, where she knows she is as hungry for a good story as every other reporter on the beat. Barnes has never been ashamed of her ambition, but today as she reaches the top of the staircase, she isn’t proud of herself. She takes a deep breath and readies to announce that she has just accepted an offer to become press secretary to Bill Davis, future Tory premier.

“At the time, the Tories had been in power for 35 years,” says Barnes today from her home in Kingston. “As a member of the press gallery, I prided myself as being part of the unofficial opposition. Now here I was joining the enemy.”

Born and raised in Napanee, Ontario, Barnes started reporting for The Kingston Whig-Standard as soon as she graduated from high school in 1961. After stints at The Ottawa Citizen and The Toronto Telegram, she was hired by The Toronto Star in 1967, becoming the paper’s Queen’s Park correspondent in 1970 and joining a press corps which was as legendary for its hard drinking as it was for its political reportage. Barnes recalls, for instance, how at the end of a long day, a press lounge steward would throw a bucket of beer into the gallery and she and her cronies-all men except for herself and two other women-would drink and play poker well into the night. Barnes thrived in the “old boys club” atmosphere of the press corps and, in 1972, she was elected by her peers to become the first female president of the press gallery. Admittedly, she was one of the guys, but she was also a feminist and, among her notable successes from that period, she became the first press gallery president to wear a miniskirt to the prestigious Speaker’s Dinner.

But that was all in the past as she prepared herself for her colleagues’ reactions to her announcement. Stunned silence was the initial response, then the gallery filled with good-natured boos and some jealous murmurs about “selling out.” Barnes admitted to them that yes, she was leaving because she had been offered an obscene amount of money, but she also thought it might be fun to see what it was like on the inside of the political spectrum for six months or so. In the end, six months turned into seven years.

Sally Barnes now runs her own public relations consulting firm and also writes a weekly column for The Toronto Sun. She was hardly the first journalist to be labelled a “sell-out,” nor will she be the last. But the fact remains that she and many others have jumped over the fence to public relations because the news business no longer measures up to their expectations. While they may admit to missing the rush of an early deadline or the camaraderie of a newsroom, the downsides of the business-burn-out, poor pay, little opportunity for advancement and job insecurity-outweigh most feelings of nostalgia and regret.

After they have written or broadcast a few hundred reports and chased one too many ambulances, many journalists find there aren’t too many stories that still spark their enthusiasm. Burn-out is a common problem in an industry where you are only as good as your last story. It lead Stephen Boissonneault to leave the CBC after 18 years. Initially, as an eager, ambitious graduate of the Ryerson Radio and Television Arts class of 1970, Boissonneault was willing to do anything in his new job for the CBC’s Ottawa bureau. For several years, he tried his hand at broadcast reporting, writing and producing. Then he became a parliamentary correspondent, covering the first election of the Parti Quebecois in 1976, and the 1980 Quebec referendum. After earning his stripes in the political arena, he became the senior reporter and host of the CBC Radio public affairs show The House. By most journalists’ standards, Boissonneault had served out a successful career for himself, but he was disturbed when he saw healthy journalistic skepticism often combined with cold indifference. “I spent a lot of time around politicians and in the end,” he says, “it made no difference to me what party they represented or what they said, no matter how stupid it was. They became like bricks to build a house-one brick was as good as another.”

Boissonneault is now director of public affairs for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, a job he finds fulfilling and challenging because it involves both media relations and policy advice. Looking back, he feels journalism’s “unidimensional nature” left him intellectually hungry, and ultimately pushed him out of the news business. “It’s the only profession I know where you are given 15 minutes to become an expert on any issue.”

Jeff Ansell, an award-winning investigative reporter with Toronto’s CHUM radio and Citytv in the ’80s, also grew tired of insensitive journalism. At the beginning of his career, he felt his job offered an “opportunity to make the world a better place,” and he was always willing to go undercover, whether to expose Nazi war criminals, catch drug dealers or close negligent old-age homes. But over time, Ansell became disillusioned by the fact his fellow journalists were becoming increasingly indifferent to human tragedy.

“It was a very slow news day in August and all we had as a potential lead story was a stabbing victim,” Ansell says of his last day in a Toronto newsroom. “At about five o’clock, I learned that the victim had died and when the murder was announced over a loudspeaker, journalists in the newsroom erupted in a cheer because they now had a lead story for deadline.” After 17 years in an industry that had brought him great personal satisfaction and professional recognition, this event was enough to make him change his life. “I was disgusted,” says Ansell. “That day, I decided that it was time for me to get out of journalism.”

Ansell now runs his own PR company, a career that gives him a renewed sense of purpose. “Journalists can aim to serve the public good, but the news itself is entirely too subjective to be able serve it effectively,” says Ansell, whose clients have included former Ontario Liberal leader Lyn McLeod, “I realized the skills I developed in journalism were respected, recognized and rewarded in the public relations sector, and it is in this sector that I feel I am better able to serve the public good.”

Not every journalist leaves the industry for ethical reasons. Sometimes departures come down to dollars and cents. As one anonymous reporter remarked over the Internet, “As you get older, a big byline can seem less important than a big bank account.” Laura Fowley worked as a reporter for The Financial Post for five years before she left to do public relations for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. “If I was getting paid better, I never would have left journalism,” she says. “But I had a baby and if I was going to leave her at home and pay a babysitter, it really wasn’t worth it at the wages I was making at the Post. At CIBC, I was hired with a 40 percent pay increase.”

A raise in salary was certainly one of the reasons Laurie Stephens left journalism in October 1990. Bob Rae had offered her a 20 percent pay increase to become his press secretary, but after working nine years at The Canadian Press, it was her dissatisfaction with the slow pace of advancement that firmly closed the door on her journalism career. She had spent the majority of her years at CP on the night desk, covering sports, business and news. In 1988, she was assigned to Queen’s Park and discovered she loved the rush of political reporting. “I had twenty minutes to file, three or four times a day, on Rae’s election bus,” says Stephens. “But I was writing the best stuff I’d ever written because there was no time to think. It was just written.” Unfortunately for Stephens, once her two-year rotation at Queen’s Park was up, she couldn’t face returning to the tedium of desk work. “That’s the problem with CP,” says Stephens. “There is a scarcity of good reporting beats … and I wasn’t going anywhere by returning to a desk job.”

Stephens realized that the time was ripe for a career change and luckily for her, Bob Rae had noticed her work on the election bus. Stephens got the job on her first interview and suddenly discovered how difficult it was to be on the other side of the information business. “I had been as cynical and as critical a reporter as everyone else,” she says, “but when I was on the other side I was sensitive to criticism. Some of my friendships survived and some didn’t.” Professionally, Stephens flourished. “I learned more about politics in two months than I did in two years covering Queen’s Park.” After having her second child in 1992, Stephens left Rae to work in communications for the Ministry of Intergovernmental Affairs. She is now associate partner at Core Communications after leaving the civil service in the aftermath of Mike Harris’ election.

Like Stephens, Sam Bornstein had also been discontented with the direction of his journalism career. He’d been a reporter with Newsradio in Toronto for nine years before deciding to take a job writing speeches for the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services in 1985. “Public relations provided me with long-term career opportunities,” Bornstein says. “I really couldn’t see myself as a 40-year-old and still running around with a tape recorder on my shoulder.”

Bornstein is now the vice-president of media relations at National Public Relations. Sitting in his spacious sixth-floor office in downtown Toronto, he insists that there are endless similarities between his old and new profession: “Like a journalist, I must write to deadline, ask tough questions of my clients, and be able to quickly recognize what is an important issue and what is not.” Bornstein is not alone in using this comparison. In fact, many former journalists infer there are so many transferable skills that crossing the street is simply a natural progression-a progression which, incidentally, often includes more money, more opportunity for advancement and more job security. The switch may sound too good to resist, but if one listens carefully and gets underneath the jargon, many former journalists concede that they are never fully content with the work they do in public relations.

John Proctor couldn’t believe his good fortune when, in 1988, Canada Post offered him the choice of three PR positions at a $10,000 increase from his salary at CBC. After hosting Quebec A.M., on CBC Radio from Quebec City in the early’80s and moving on to anchor television news in Hong Kong, Proctor returned to Toronto in 1985 to work in radio and television at the CBC. Three years later, he reached a turning point. He and his wife had just had their first child, and the CBC would not offer him a permanent contract. If he stayed at the CBC, Proctor would continue to fill in for various hosts and face the uncertainty of renewal every 15 weeks.

“I loved journalism,” says Proctor. “The creative elements made me feel invigorated, but the insecurity pushed me over the edge …. I began to ask myself, ‘Where is my career going? Am I going to fill in for everyone and their brother or will I carve out a niche for mvself?'”

When Proctor accepted a position at Canada Post in Ottawa, his new employers paid for a six-week stay in a hotel while he looked for a house, covered the legal fees incurred in moving, and gave him $3,000 to decorate the new home. Despite the soft landing, Proctor soon experienced the harsh realities of his new profession. “Public relations gave me the security I needed to raise a family,” says Proctor. “But the price you pay for perks is a loss of freedom and sense of self. As a journalist, I had to come up with the idea, find the sources and write the story. But in the corporate world I am limited to what my boss and my boss’ boss want me to do. I am only a cog in the wheel.”

For many journalists like Proctor, public relations filled some gaping holes in their wallets, but also tore apart the basic fabric of their professional integrity. Yes, they gained money, opportunity and security, but they lost what was essential for creative fulfillment: control over their work and pride in what they did for a living. For some, the glaring lack of these values in public relations reopened their eyes to the virtues of journalism and led them back into the fold.

William Burrill worked in communications for the Ontario Ministry of the Environment for only 19 months before returning to writing columns and editing for The Toronto Star and acting as managing editor for eye, an alternative Toronto weekly magazine. As a government communications officer, Burrill had an office with a door for the first time in his life. Despite that perk, Burrill lost enthusiasm quickly as he learned how little the ministry respected journalists. “I was about to give information to a reporter,” says Burrill, “when the minister’s press secretary stopped me, saying, ‘Hey, I’m the one who gives out the candy to the clowns.”‘

As a journalist, Burrill had never realized to what extent the government PR machine controlled the media’s access to information. But as his written words started spilling out of the minister’s mouth, he soon saw the power of public relations in shaping news and public opinion. He was continually amazed at how easily PR people manipulated the press. “It was like pulling puppet strings to them,” says Burrill. “They had favourite reporters, to whom they would courier reports. But they would send the same reports third-class mail to the ones they didn’t like. These reporters then had to answer to their editors. The government got people replaced.”

Jennifer Lanthier was only 26 when she left her job as a labour reporter for The Financial Post to take a position as communications coordinator for former premier Rae. Perhaps her youth warded off Burrill-like cynicism, but her negative experience in government PR made her remember what she loved about journalism. Ironically, Lanthier was prompted by her journalistic curiosity when she went into public relations. “I had no mortgage and no kids,” remembers Lanthier. “Someone says to you, ‘This is the first socialist government in Ontario…’ you think to yourself, ‘I’m never going to get inside any story as much as this opportunity will grant me.”‘

Lanthier’s dream of an inside scoop quickly evaporated. She realized that working in public relations did not get her “in the know.” In fact, it left her outside of the proverbial loop. “The fact is you never really get inside because there are always smaller and smaller circles in government,” says Lanthier. “Public relations is the last stop on the way out the door. Decisions were made behind closed doors, and [we] were handed the policy as fait accompli and told to sell it.”

Lanthier returned to The Financial Post in October of 1995 because she wanted to feel that she had accomplished something at the end of each day. “At least as a journalist, you can say ‘For better or worse, words and all, it’s mine,'” says Lanthier. “In PR, what’s really important is when something really contentious dies. So, at the end of the year, you say ‘Wow, look at all these problems I made go away.’ That’s not a great way to live.”

Charles Davies has worked in journalism for two decades. He recently spent four years doing communications for the CIBC, before returning to The Financial Post as assistant managing editor of features in October 1995. Like Lanthier, he resented being left outside the decisionmaking process. “As a communications person, you are a little vestigial to the organization,” says Davies. “You are always a bit on the fringe … and your ability to control things is absolutely minimal. You can find yourself being caught between competing forces in an organization whose agendas you may be completely unaware of.

“When you work for a bank, somehow you are like an itinerant witch doctor,” he adds. “On one level, they respect what you do and think it’s great that you’re around. But on the other hand a rather large number of them seem to feel they can do your work for you…They don’t understand the difference between professional writing and the stuff they crank out on their desktop.”

Burrill, Lanthier and Davies are exceptions in an industry which does not typically permit a revolving door between itself and public relations. Stevie Cameron, author of On the Take and contributing editor at Maclean’s, claims return performances are rare. “Once a journalist takes that step, it’s almost impossible to go back,” she says. “Once in a while people do, but they are never totally trusted. The media is a mean and unforgiving master.”

Lanthier had been advised that she might have trouble getting back into the field, but experiencing blatant discrimination still came as a shock. In one instance, the editor of a prominent Canadian newspaper (Lanthier would not divulge the name) told her: “Anybody who worked for Bob Rae will never work for this newspaper.” Not every editor shares these prejudices. Maryanne McNellis, editorial director of The Financial Post, rehired Lanthier easily. “I think a short stint in PR, and I want to emphasize short, is sometimes beneficial just because journalists see how the other half lives,” says McNellis. “It can be a broadening and eye-opening experience to step up to that side of the fence.”

Paul McLaughlin offers the view of someone who straddles that fence. McLaughlin, a 20-year veteran of journalism, has worked as a researcher and producer for CBC radio, has written four books, including How to Interview, freelanced for magazines and, for the past decade, has taught journalism at Ryerson Polytechnic University. But since 1990, McLaughlin has also acted as a communications consultant for forensic accountants Lindquist Avey Macdonald and Baskerville. He ridicules the notion of the two industries as polar opposites: “It’s as if somehow journalism is pure and holy, and then you have this other tainted world called public relations. Journalists say ‘selling out’ like they are working for a cottage industry. Actually, journalism is a terribly paid, cut-throat, huge corporation.”

What’s more, McLaughlin believes a dangerous imbalance is created between journalism and public relations when only one side-PR-trains its people in the fine art of communication. “If you look at the resources that the PR people in the business and political communities put into trying to understand cornmunication compared to the resources that the journalism community puts in …you realize that journalism is falling behind. And anytime you fall behind in research ard training … it’s dangerous.

“I’ve taught at three J-schools and none of them see pure communication skills-the study of human behaviour, body language and how people interact with one another-as a necessary course. Journalists see it as airy-fairy bullshit [because] there’s this old-fashioned attitude that you just go out there, grab your quotes and don’t stop to think …. But how can you be a good journalist and not study how to talk to people?”

Bob Reguly would disagree with McLaughlin. In Reguly’s eyes, the problem with journalism isn’t a need for human interaction, but the lack of hardhitting questions in a business dominated by “arrogant female television reporters who are all teeth, hair and stupidity.” Clearly Reguly has never attended a lecture on sensitive communication, but he could definitely give a few about investigative reporting. Reguly, after all, is the reporter who discovered both notorious labour leader Hal Banks in New York and call-girl to cabinet ministers Gerda Munsinger in Bavaria. Reguly is a three-time National Newspaper Award winner who, after 15 years at The Toronto Star, joined CTV in 1973. But, perhaps unjustly, it was his short stint at The Toronto Sun five years later that made him famous in J-school classrooms as a textbook ethics case for “what not to do.” Reguly became the scapegoat when an insider trading investigation ended in a libel suit between the Sun and Liberal cabinet minister John Munro. Reguly was pushed to resign from the Sun and was soon offered the position of acting director of communications for the Ministry of the Environment, joining what Bill Burrill describes as “a foreign legion of disgraced journalists.”

Reguly’s “take no prisoners” type of journalism may be a thing of the past, but his long experience gives him a perspective from which to question the cautious journalism that has evolved, he feels, partly from his own mistakes. In his days with the ministry, Reguly saw journalists becoming “unpaid members of the civil service,” by printing press releases verbatim, albeit with a new lead. In his opinion, “it’s child’s play to delude the press,” because many of today’s journalists are afraid of poking holes in government policy by asking hard questions.

Reguly has a theory about why some journalists shy away from tough stories. Although he admits he made the biggest mistake of his career while at the Sun, he also sees his experience as a valuable lesson. “The Sun withdrew from my defense and left me high and dry,” remembers Reguly. “It was the first time in Canadian history that a newspaper would not support its reporter. That tells young journalists, ‘Why take risks?’ It’s safer to take it easy. Now you have stenographers calling themselves journalists.”

The lack of in-depth, investigative journalism which fully explores and explains an issue was a concern echoed from almost every journalist interviewed for this article. Many are concerned that journalists are “dumbing down the news” by attempting to satisfy the public demand for entertainment. Most television journalism covers only the black and white details of sensational conflict between good guys and bad guys, without leaving time to discuss the complexities of any given issue. In print, it also seems to be harder to portray the subtleties of a story in today’s economically strapped and space-starved publications. When Laurie Stephens started at CP in 1981, she was allotted 1,200 words for a feature article. Bv the time she left in 1990, features were down to 600 words. Many journalists find no professional satisfaction in a day’s work which ends in a 15-second clip or two inches of print.

Sally Barnes blames the dismal economy for many of the problems in journalism today. Primarily, Barnes fears what she sees as a narrowing journalistic vision in Canada. “I worry about the diminution of the number of journalists telling larger numbers of people what’s important and what’s right and wrong,” says Barnes. “I pick up my paper in Kingston, and it’s the same columnist as in six or seven newspapers across the province. No one can afford a different voice.”

The problems of fewer voices, shrinking space and diminishing investigative journalism are ever present in today’s industry. Journalism will continue to lose talented people to public relations when journalists are constantly asked to do more with less. Unless the industry miraculously turns around, salaries probably won’t rise, job security will lessen and opportunities will evaporate as magazines fold and newsrooms downsize. The question remains: what will keep gifted journalists from jumping ship?

For Stevie Cameron, there is no question. “I could never go into public relations,” she says. “It would break my heart. Journalism is my craft. This is what I do. This is what I am.”

But for others who have faced the question, there may not be such a definitive answer. Charles Davies recognizes the faults in a journalism career, but he has an indefatigable faith in the tenacity of his colleagues and the fundamental draw of his craft. “A lot of journalists love what they’re doing,” says Davies. “And once you have sampled what the other side is like, it tends to reinforce your desire to stay in journalism. We had a difficult time in the recession, and things haven’t bounced back the way we would like. These are the harsh realities, but there are still opportunities out there. I guess I’m living proof of that.”

FIRST PERIOD

On Saturday April 15, 1995, Hockey Night in Canada host Ron Maclean invited Winnipeg Free Press sports columnist Scott Taylor to be his guest during the second intermission. That night, fans in Western Canada and Ontario watched as the Toronto Maple Leafs battled the Jets in Winnipeg. The score was 2 to 1 for the Jets by the end of the second period. But the action Maclean wanted Taylor to comment on was not taking place on the ice. Rather, he wanted the columnist to talk about the game that Jets owner Barry Shenkarow, who had been threatening yet again to move his money-losing team out of the city, was playing with a local business group called Manitoba Entertainment Complex (MEC), which was negotiating to buy him out. (The asking price: $110 million.) And that wasn’t the only game going on: the business types behind MEC said they couldn’t close the deal unless the province of Manitoba coughed up $37 million toward the construction of a new arena. (Both the federal and municipal governments had also been asked for $37 million each.) Ten days before the provincial election, the future of the Jets had become a hot voting issue.

“I said that the Liberals were not prepared to take a position on the issue yet; that the NDP were opposed,” recalls Taylor of what he told Maclean. “And that the Tories would put $10 million into a new arena.” After the Tories, under leader Gary Filmon, won re-election, Taylor was accused by those who opposed the provincial handout of using national television to pressure Jets? fans into voting Progressive Conservative. Taylor now scoffs at the charge. “Come on, to say that no one wanted it, but then voted for Filmon anyway because of me, that’s just bitter and twisted.”

The reason critics came to credit Taylor with so much power was that the Winnipeg media treated the Jets not as a news story but as a cause. What’s more, Jim Silver, a member of Thin Ice, the group opposed to using public funds for a new arena, believes that his group was marginalized by the media, and that journalists stepped into the spotlight and stopped acting like reporters.

Almost two weeks after Taylor appeared on Hockey Night in Canada, disaster struck the group wanting to keep the Jets in Winnipeg. While the city and provincial governments each coughed up their $37 million, the federal government was noncommittal. In addition, the NHL suddenly decided to limit the MEC’s use of the franchise as collateral.

Shenkarow also got body checked by the NHL. He was told the league would charge him an onerous fee of at least $15 million if new owners attempted to move the team out of Winnipeg. Shenkarow, who would now have a tougher time selling to anybody but a local group, was frustrated and said: “I’m devastated. To me, this was out of left field. It’s a tremendous shock.” The MEC responded by saying it had been “ambushed.” Even some members of he media called the restrictions “deal-killing.” But not Taylor. He, together with colleagues at the Free Press and local radio station CJOB, thought the deal to keep the Jets in town need not die – which gave hope to the thousands of fans who wanted to save the Jets.

SECOND PERIOD
Around the time of the NHL demands and the iffy response from the feds, Vic Grant, host of a nightly two-hour sports phone-in show on radio station CJOB, walked into his office. In his voice mail were messages from dozens of concerned hockey fans. Every caller wanted to donate money to keep the Jets in Winnipeg. “I had people phoning me up, saying, ‘I’ll give you $1,000. I’ll give you $5,000. I’ll give you a $10,000 cheque right now,'” he says. Sure enough, they backed up their promises with paper: in a few days, Grant had collected $50,000. And he wasn’t the only one at the station receiving calls and letters. “Over a period of several weeks, we had listeners calling our talk shows to make donations,” says program manager Ted Farr. “The staff, in general, supported it.”

CJOB was a natural place for fans to turn, Since 1991, the news-and-talk format station has been the Voice of the Jets. “Hockey [broadcasts] bring people to the station,” explains Farr. “We compete for listeners, and there is no denying that the Jets are an important tool for us.” So it was no surprise when the station decided to spearhead a public fanfest. CJOB helped promote special Jets donation accounts at major banks, and set up an information line at the station in May.

The movement gained momentum on Friday, May 12, when Shenkarow announced that MEC had until noon on Thursday, May 18, to raise a down payment of $60 million. So MEC turned to the public for money, although there was no real indication as to how much the business group wanted. CJOB announced that, for the next four days, the station would devote all its air time to fund-raising. It called the campaign “Operation Grassroots.”

At the Winnipeg Free Press, a save the Jets campaign was also in full swing. Thin Ice’s Silver insists that the paper’s coverage was driven by Taylor, who has covered the Jets for 15 years. “He travels around the continent with the Jets, which he particularly enjoys,” says Silver, and “has frequent radio commentary [on Winnipeg’s CITI-FM] on them.” But Taylor was hardly alone in writing about the campaign. Each day during Operation Grassroots, the paper set aside several pages for pro-Jets stories. One front-page feature predicted that without the Jets, people in their 20s would desert the city and that Winnipeg would soon become the “coldest retirement community in the world.” In other stories: Free Press editors decided it was news when Jets general manager John Paddock declared the quality of life in Winnipeg would go down without a team; when one family rolled pennies for the Jets; and when an eight-year-old boy cried himself to sleep during a CJOB game broadcast. “Rescue Effort Top Gear,” was a typical headline. The Winnipeg Sunalso jumped on the bandwagon and ran a story about a family that cashed in an RRSP to give to the campaign.

Both CJOB and the Winnipeg Free Press felt they occupied the high moral ground. “Many people think that we make a fortune from the Jets,” says CJOB?s Farr. “That’s not true. We had many reasons for taking on the role that we did, but money was not one of them.” He compares supporting a multi-million-dollar sports organization’s bid for public funds to doing charity work. “If it had been a hospital that was closing in Winnipeg, we would have done the same thing,” says Farr. “We are a mirror to the community.”

But some in the community saw a mirror reflecting only a partial image. “We found it difficult to get the media to cover what we were doing and saying. When we were covered, we were buried in the story” recalls Thin Ice’s Silver. “The coverage [was] … 100 to one for the proponent.” In fact, the Free Press even interviewed a sports psychologist, Cal Botterill, who somehow found a way to put a positive spin on Thin Ice’s legitimate economic concerns about spending public money on a new arena at a time when Winnipeg was recognized nationally as the child poverty capital of Canada. “We need [Thin Ice’s] vibrancy,” said the sports psychologist soothingly. “They will make sure the arena is built with a bigger picture in mind. Thin Ice has sensitized us; it would be almost impossible to proceed without them. They will still be there when the arena is built, and will be the ones talking about expanding efforts such as Goals for Kids, the Jets’ [charity] fund-raiser.”

At CJOB, callers who opposed Operation Grassroots were often ridiculed and cut off. During one show an elderly man phoned in to morning-man Peter Warren. He was worried about a rise in taxes because of the decision of provincial and municipal governments to help fund a new arena. The DJ’s response: “Shut the hell up.” The next caller was a young man who said the city would be better off if the old guy just stopped taking his heart pills. Warren thanked the man for supporting his position. (Warren refused to comment for this article, stating he had “been castigated by the media” and had “a lot of shit dumped on me.”)

For Silver, taking an unpopular position had more serious consequences. “At the height of the frenzy, the huge crowds [at the rallies] were kind of scary. They were mostly young men who did not care about the arguments. They could have cared less about our position. The police were worried that one rally would get out of hand, that I would have crowds of young men coming to my house afterwards. I personally had police protection for a day,” he says. Two members of Thin Ice even received death threats.

No wonder Silver had such contempt for what he sees as a media-created frenzy. “I’ll admit that there were times when we may have lost our perspective,” says John Douglas, a Free Press business reporter who also covered Operation Grassroots. The interview with Cal Botterill, he adds, “was badly done….We lost perspective. We put a positive spin on a story when it should have been negative.”

But Douglas doesn’t buy Thin lce’s accusation that the media created a public frenzy: “I was in Ottawa as the Free Press correspondent during the Meech Lake and the Charlottetown accords. And if the media couldn’t get the public to support issues of that magnitude, what makes them think that the media can do it for a hockey team?”

The day before Shenkarow issued his ultimatum, at least one member of MEC – one very familiar with journalism standards – publicly protested the media hype. For days, journalists had been excited when they heard that CanWest Global chairman and CEO, Israel (Izzy) Asper, had joined MEC. He would be the saviour, they reported, and the team was just a signature away from staying. But on May 13, Asper said the media had jumped the gun. “It’s quite dangerous and damaging to all concerned to fan false hopes and toy with people’s emotions, not to mention their political or private reputations.”

That didn’t stop MEC, however, from using the hype to its advantage. MEC members were readily available to the media for that week, and often downplayed any concerns about the deal, or how negotiations were going with Shenkarow. What’s more, MEC fully endorsed any rally that the media organized?the biggest of which took place on Tuesday, May 16, midway through the four-day Operation Grassroots campaign. More than 35,000 people gathered for a public fund-raising event at The Forks, where the Assiniboine River meets the Red River and where Tom Jackson, Fred Penner and CJOB celebrities encouraged them to donate money. Earlier that day, organizers publicly announced they had commitments of $62 million from the business community. At the rally – the biggest in Winnipeg’s history since WWII – both the business consortium and the media seemed to be reading from the same press release. However, it was the last time they would be reading from the same page.

THIRD PERIOD
Two days later, on the night of Shenkarow’s deadline, Operation Grassroots collapsed. Ottawa announced that it would give only $20 million – not the requested $37 million. And MEC stated it was still $28 million short of its goal, despite raising $62 million from the businesses and $13 million from the public. But at the same time that some members of the media were still insisting that the deal was doable, Shenkarow said he was selling the team to Minnesota.

All summer long, MEC tried to cobble together a counteroffer. But after such a humiliating failure in May, the group decided to keep all further negotiations quiet. During June and July, only tiny bits of information were allowed to leak out.

On June 2, Taylor wrote that the public should have doubts that a new deal could be reached with MEC. In mid-June, the Free Press and CJOB hosts warned the city that the Jets would almost certainly go to Minnesota since MEC’s latest plan for buying the team called for yet another $20 million to be raised, a favourable tax ruling, and charitable status for a fund that would cover any future financial losses.

Yet despite their more critical stance, the Winnipeg media missed a major part of the story. Shenkarow wanted to remain Jets president; MEC wanted him out. This caused a major breakdown in negotiations. No one reported this development, although there were rumours about fighting among MEC members. On July 19, Asper announced that he would no longer financially back the deal and was pulling out of MEC.

But MEC (reorganized and relabelled Spirit of Manitoba) continued on regardless and officially launched the $20 million fund-raising campaign that Taylor and CJOB had warned about in June. This one consisted of commercials, infomercials and a song, but failed miserably. What’s more, the business consortium failed to land a single large donation or investment. Throughout the second campaign the media had regained their perspective: the fund-raising campaign was treated as news; CJOB didn’t cover the issue 24 hours a day; and the Winnipeg Free Press kept Spirit of Manitoba stories to a minimum. In fact, the Free Press even reported that the fans had been tapped out and that the reconstructed group couldn?t expect the fans to take it seriously. On August 14, the business group admitted defeat.

CJOB?s Grant’s main regret is that the boosterism didn’t work – not that what he did crossed the line into hype. “I didn’t do enough,” says Grant “I sat back and after the success of the Grassroots campaign and the emotion and it being put into the hands of the MEC and the Spirit of Manitoba – they fumbled it. I should have realized they fumbled it and started making people aware that these guys had their own personal agendas.”

Scott Taylor has more regrets about his approach to reporting the Jets sale. “Looking back,” he says, “I would have done more on the group looking to put the deal together. When the yelling took place [between the MEC and Shenkarow], the media should have realized that was not the right way to [put the deal together].” Still, he defends the boosterism. “CJOB has taken a lot of flak for supporting a campaign that couldn’t be saved, but it was something the community wanted.

MEC’s key members don?t want to talk about the media’s role. “We are just glad to get out of it and get on with our lives,” says a spokesperson at InterGroup Consultants, an MEC partner. “All we can say was that the media response was very varied, but most of [what was reported] was fiction.”

As they reported the Jets’ mediocre last season in Winnipeg and that the team had finally been sold – not to Minnesota but to Phoenix – disillusioned journalists privately vowed that in the future, the business dealings of all pro sports teams would be more closely scrutinized. Now, with the Canadian Football League season set to start in June, they have another chance. At a CFL news conference in January, it was announced that the Winnipeg Blue Bombers are $4.5 million in debt – that shaky league’s most financially troubled team. What does this mean to the media? Stay tuned. CJOB is also the Voice of the Bombers.