The Huh Factor

Lots of things make me go ‘huh’ and I am forced to ask myself, why? Yesterday’s big international picture of the day seems to be Saddam in his gotchies doing his laundry in jail is just one of the things which rate a double huh in my mind. I understand that newspapers are in the business of selling papers but having Saddam Hussein in his underwear on the front cover just doesn’t motivate me to shell out the loose change to buy a copy. Though it does make me wish that I hadn’t seen it - which in turn leads me to speculate about the kind of people who are motivated to buy a copy to get the inside scope on Saddam’s gotchies.

I realize that a case can be made that Saddam Hussein is a worthy subject of ridicule and belittlement but somehow showing him in his underwear seems to undercut the very real pain and suffering that he inflicted on the Iraqi people that he has yet to answer for. According to this Times Online article (via Neale News) Saddam’s lawyers are going to sue The British Sun for publishing it and the requisite US authorities for allowing the pictures to be taken and smuggled out of the jail. Well, whatever.

I think that the editorial judgment in putting this picture on the front cover is the more important story and highlights where my thinking has been going in the last few days. Sitting in my jammies in front of my computer in Toronto I have wondered where all the real reporters in Canada have gone? I am not talking about the political column pundits for the major dailies but the rank and file reporters and editors. I started to read about the Oil-for-Food scandal over two years ago and even then it was obvious that there was a real Can-con factor but to date it still ranks as one of the most under reported scandals in Canadian papers.

If you didn’t read US papers, blogs or Canada Free Press online and you blinked; you could have easily missed it from reading Canadian dailies. I would even go so far to suggest that the Boo-linda perfidy has gotten more word play than the Can-con content for Oil-for-food. With the way things are going the whole alleged “sexist” issue will continue to get more word play in the coming weeks and months than the allegations put forth by MP Grewel against the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, Tim Murphy’s (alleged) dalliance in vote buying despite Jack Layton’s recent calls for the RCMP to investigate.

The London Fog has probably the best example of where editorial direction is mired in this country from an online article from the Toronto Star:

Harper made Parliament's rafters ring denouncing the Liberals' tawdry wrongdoing. Yet the Tories continue to trail in the polls. Most voters remain unpersuaded that the Martin team is fatally tainted. Voters fault the Liberals on ethics, of course, and rightly so. But most feel Canada-U.S. relations, managing the economy and health care are higher priority matters. And they give the Liberals higher marks on these issues.
(…)
The time has come to cool the fury in Parliament, to ease the pressure on Martin to resort to seedy vote buying, and to let him deliver on his many promises, including ethical promises. Martin has vowed, for example, to bring in tough, transparent rules for advertising contracts. While important steps have been taken, Gomery suggested this week more must be done. Martin should follow up.

When maintaing bias is more important than ethnics or content; is it any wonder that the Editorial Board of the largest Canadian daily suggests that Liberal perfidy of the public trust is a small matter and that Official Opposition’s proper role is not to be pressuring the current government for a full accounting and that said pressure only exacerbates or causes the lack of ethics or integrity shown by the Liberals. I would have presumed that there would be reporters all of the country hitting their keyboards daily in a call for a clean sweep of the Liberal party from the top down but instead we read an editorial board calling on the Official Opposition to stop making noise and suggesting that only a liberal can clean the liberal muck.

I would have thought the any reporters worth their ink would be pounding the pavement to dig up the full breath and depth of corruption in Liberal management of government instead of arguing that managing the economy, Canada US Relations and healthcare are more important than ethics and can be managed competently without ethics. In my mind, its’ akin to putting a pedophile in charge of daily operation of a daycare and it is no wonder that Liberal ethics now reminds me of my favourite Oscar Wilde quote, “I can resist anything put temptation.” And that is the reason that I am extremely discriminating in where I spend my disposal dollars for media content.

Here’s a hint to any aspiring journalists and editors at the Toronto Star; think gun registry. But I won’t hold my breath as long as the editors and reporters of One Yonge Street insist on wearing their sunglasses inside the building and it is hardly surprising that they continue to give the Librano's a passing grade.