1. a person of distinguished courage or ability, admired for brave deeds and noble qualities.
2. a model or ideal.
3. in classical mythology: a being of godlike prowessand beneficence who often came to be honoured as a divinity.
Synonyms: lead, star
Antonym: villain
Of course a big group of us gathered around the television screens in the middle of the Gazette newsroom when we heard Toronto Mayor Rob Ford would be giving a press conference about “probably” smoking crack cocaine “while in a drunken stupor.” Who could resist this spectacle?
And yes, when asked to fill out a survey for Canada’s top newsmaker of 2013, I wrote “Rob Ford.” I would like to have voted for Lac-Mégantic’s dignified, determined mayor Colette Roy-Laroche instead — but when it came to one individual creating news this year, there seemed to be no contest. Lac-Mégantic was the story of the year, but Ford was the newsmaker.
Still, it didn’t feel good.
A week or two after Ford’s news conference, we sat in a story-idea meeting and talked about the unrelenting stream of demoralizing news about people who should be considered leaders in society: Ford, senators and government officials involved in the expenses scandal, the ongoing revelations of the Charbonneau inquiry into corruption, business leaders getting big bonuses or golden parachutes for leading companies in worse shape than when they took over, athletes using substances and procedures like blood doping to push their bodies beyond human ability ... and there seems to be so little inspiring behaviour to balance it. In fact, we seem to be deliberately glorifying bad behaviour with our obsession with reality TV, celebrity news and the nasty, uninformed level of a lot of online commentary.
What does this say about us as a society? Who have we become? Why have our standards become so low?
A question that didn’t come up in that meeting, but did come to mind a little later, is whether mainstream news organizations are contributing to this corrosive state of affairs.
No one could have missed The Gazette’s emphasis during the last couple of years on corruption and collapsing infrastructure. We are at the Charbonneau inquiry for every minute of testimony; in fact, we are part of a pool of news organizations challenging publication bans and other restrictions at the hearings, in an effort to publish even more testimony. We are also working to get every detail we possibly can on the state of bridges, roads, public transit and bike paths.
But even we sometimes look at our coverage and think, “This is kind of depressing.” Corrupt officials, overpayments, inferior work, poor service ... I worry that Montrealers just can’t keep caring deeply enough to continue reading these stories day after day. In that case, is our journalism contributing to low expectations of what behaviour we should expect from public figures?
Our aim is the opposite. We think Montreal is a fabulous city that deserves the best. We think it can’t become a better city until there is a clear understanding of what is going wrong — how the system allows corruption, who has undue influence, what processes lead to bad decisions or poor planning — essentially, who and what are responsible. Nothing can be fixed without that.
We try, though I know we don’t always succeed, to focus on potential solutions. The last message we want to convey is that things are hopeless. They aren’t. But there is a lot of discouraging information to process and learn from before things can be turned around.
I am convinced of the value of this kind of journalism.
But after our meeting when we talked about behaviour and role models, and we wondered where people were finding inspiration if not from public personalities — who are the heroes, then, we asked? — I started worrying anew about how little we were doing on the inspiration side. Newspapers have long been criticized, with some reason, for publishing only the bad news and not bothering or being too cynical to look for the inspirational. We are a smaller newsroom than we used to be at The Gazette, and we need more people covering city hall and other public institutions than we used to — often doing very time-consuming investigative journalism.
But this can’t be an excuse. Reporting on role models — in government, in other public life, in small acts of random kindness — has to be considered as important a part of covering Montreal as reporting on corruption.
A resolution for the new year.
Original Article
Source: montrealgazette.com/
Author: Catherine wallace
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