Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Friday, December 07, 2012

Should Peter Kent still be in the broadcasters’ hall of fame?

So here’s the latest from the office of Environment Minister Peter Kent — Mr. Kent being the former distinguished journalist who was a big believer in the people’s right to know.

David Tarasick, a researcher in Kent’s department, wanted to talk to scribes who were seeking comment from him about an important study he had co-authored on the giant ozone hole in the Arctic.

It’s the type of story that Kent once pursued avidly for the CBC. But Kent’s office, as revealed by emails recently obtained by Postmedia, brought out the big muzzle and clamped it on Tarasick’s jaw.

When the issue first arose early in the year, Kent denied issuing any gag order. “We are not muzzling scientists,” he told the House of Commons. It was just, he said, a case where circumstances did not allow Tarasick to give interviews.

The emails contradict this version of events. They reveal officials in Kent’s department thought it would be fine to go ahead with the interviews. But Kent and the Prime Minister’s Office wanted their own propaganda spin on the ozone report — and so they silenced the scientist.

Further to this, the documents reveal that Karen Dodds, assistant deputy minister at Environment, was prepared on behalf of the government to discuss the subject of unmuzzling scientists at a Vancouver conference. But Ms. Dodds was then muzzled from participating in the unmuzzling discussion. Instead, an official response on the subject — vetted by Kent — was released saying that Environment Canada is “exemplary” at responding to media inquiries.

The Tarasick case wouldn’t be so bad if it had been just a one-off thing. But it is one of many such gagging episodes. Others have been documented in our media and in magazines like Nature and Science. The controls aren’t all that far afield from what I used to deal with once, long ago, while covering the Kremlin as a correspondent in Moscow. Never thought I’d see it in 21st century North America.

It’s all the more remarkable that someone with the journalistic track record of a Peter Kent seems to have disavowed the principles he stood for and imbibed the Conservative Kool-Aid to the point where he is seen as one of the government’s muzzlers-in-chief.

You’d think that, if one Conservative minister had the courage to stand up and say, “Wait a minute prime minister, this is not the way a democracy works, this is not the way freedom of speech works,” it would be Peter Kent. You’d think he’d be asking the question: “What are we afraid of? What is wrong with airing different views on the subject? If we disagree with Tarasick, we can say so.”

It was Kent who had a hand in blocking opposition members from attending a climate conference in Durban, South Africa a year ago. He then, quite incredibly, stood in the Commons and chastised NDP environment critic Megan Leslie for not being there. That was what prompted an incensed Justin Trudeau to jump to his feet during question period and call the minister a piece of excrement.

Kent the journalist covered the Vietnam war, was an anchorman for CBC News and Global, and served in several bureaus for the NBC network. His father, the late Parker Kent, was associate editor of the Calgary Herald. His younger brother, Arthur, was the celebrated ‘scud stud’ journalist of the first Gulf War. One wonders what they would think of his handiwork as a government minister.

Kent is a member of the Canadian Broadcasters’ Hall of Fame. Is it becoming fair to ask whether that membership might be reconsidered in light of his enthusiasm for the suppression of free speech?

“If scientists working within the government are not free to discuss their science and the potential implications of it, then what does that say about us as a society?” asks Jeffrey Hutchins, a Dalhousie university professor. Good question. One wonders whether Kent, who works for a government which has little regard for scientific consensus, would be allowed to answer it without first running off to the PMO for his talking points.

Here’s what he has said to some of the criticisms. “There is an element in all of this controversy, second-hand information and criticism from the scientific community abroad responding to a few, a very small number of Canadian journalists who believe they’re the centres of their respective universes and deserve access to our scientists on their timeline and to their deadlines. And it simply doesn’t work that way.”

Kent’s spokesman says further that the great majority of interview requests are granted. But the released emails — heavily redacted, for whatever reason — suggest that the requests are granted only after Kent’s office and higher-ups have approved them. In cases where the interviews are allowed, our scientists are outfitted with media chaperones, babysitters who record their every utterance to make sure they stay on script.

One suspects that if reporter Kent had run into such far-reaching controls in the Mulroney or Trudeau era, he would have led off a news report with a scathing commentary asking whether — as climatologist Andrew Weaver or commentator Allan Gregg now wonder — we are an entering Orwellian phase.

Kent says that “it is an established practice to coordinate media availability.” Indeed it is. But it’s a matter of degree — and try finding anyone with a knowledge of our history who has ever seen this degree of control.

“Where we run into problems,” Kent observes “is when journalists try to lead scientists away from science into policy matters.” What he’s saying is that his government can’t tolerate a scientist questioning government policy. This is coming from a former stand-out journalist — the same guy who once believed that information is the lifeblood of a democracy.

Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Lawrence Martin

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