Mirror? Searchlight? Interloper?: The Media and Meech
**** MEISEL ************** EJC/REC Vol. 1, No. 2, 1991 ***
MIRROR? SEARCHLIGHT? INTERLOPER? -- THE MEDIA AND MEECH*
John Meisel
Queen's University
Abstract. The Meech Lake experience was a
turning point in that neither the process of
constitutional revision nor its coverage will ever
be the same. Despite high exposure to the
coverage, the media failed to convey the substance
of the proposed constitutional changes. Through
their reporting, the media entered into the
negotiations. They also influenced the state of
mind people brought to the constitutional debate,
by for example, fanning animosity between English
and French-speaking Canadians. Nevertheless, in
defense of the CBC it can be said that the crisis
atmosphere of its reporting was justified in view
of the impact a failed Meech has had on the
country. Despite shortcomings in media coverage
generally, anyone wishing to be informed could do
so without too much trouble. The failure of many
Canadians to do so must be ascribed in part to
media performance, but also to general social
conditions, such as the entertainment
characteristics which have encroached on news and
public affairs programming, at least ostensibly in
response to public demand. Hence, there were
shortcomings on both sides - the media and their
audiences. It may be easier in future to change
the former than the latter.
MIRROIR? PROJECTEURS? INTRUS? -- LES MEDIAS
ET MEECH La situation du Lac Meech constitue un
point tournant puisque, desormais, ni le processus
de revision constitutionnelle ni sa couverture ne
seront plus jamais les memes. En depit de
l'importance de l'emphase mise sur la couverture,
les medias ont failli dans leur tache de faire
comprendre l'essence des modifications con-
stitutionnelles proposees. Par leur reportage,
les medias se sont immisces dans les negociations.
Ils ont aussi influence l'etat d'esprit des
participants au debat constitutionnel, par
exemple, en attisant l'animosite entre
Canadiens-anglais et Canadians-francais. Nean-
moins, l'atmosphere de crise des reportages de la
CBC se defend etant donne l'impact d'un echec du
Lac Meech pour le pays. Malgre la faiblesse de la
couverture mediatique, quiconque desirant etre
informe pouvait l'etre sans probleme. Le
manquement de la part des canadiens de s'informer
sur les negociations est attribuable en partie a
la performance des medias mais aussi, a des
conditions sociales generales comme l'emprise des
techniques de divertissement sur la programmation
de nouvelles et d'affaires publiques et ce, selon
les medias, en reponse a la demande du public.
Donc, il y eu des problemes des deux cotes, chez
les medias et chez leurs auditoires. Dans
l'avenir, il apparait plus facile de modifier les
premiers que les seconds.
A realistic appraisal of the role of the media in
constitutional reform requires that two related but
nevertheless separate dimensions be explored: coverage
of specific constitutional events as well as media
impact on the prevailing sense of community, societal
ties, and the way in which diverse individuals, groups
and regions react to, and value, one another. Although
both these dimensions are touched upon in this paper,
the former receives the major attention.
What follows is a somewhat impressionistic examina-
tion of a number of discrete aspects which together
illuminate the role played by Canadian media during the
recent era of constitution-making. The approach adopted
is McLuhanesque in the sense that it is non-linear;
although the evidence gathered does not comprise a fully
comprehensive, systematic survey of media coverage, it
provides a sufficient base on which to rest a number of
concluding observations and recommendations for the
future.
These are the features of media behaviour that
struck one observer as being particularly salient during
the recent process of constitutional review.
THE MEECH LAKE EXPERIENCE AS A TURNING POINT
Neither the process of constitution-making nor the
coverage accorded it will ever be the same as before or
during the Meech Lake episode. It became obvious, as the
Accord was reached and then debated at length, that a
significant number of Canadians found the method of
escaping Canada's constitutional impasse, perhaps imposed
by the incomplete arrangement of 1982, quite unaccept-
able. For some, the monopolization of the negotiations
by governments was self-defeating; others concluded that
the time imposed for ratification by the Canada Act was
counter-productive. Several groups considered that their
rights to being directly involved, or at least viably
consulted, had been ignominiously flouted. Many could
not accept what they saw as the too secretive character
of much of what went on. Widespread head-shaking was
also caused by what some considered the exclusive, or at
least excessive, involvement of constitutional lawyers
and politicians and consequent preclusion of the
ordinary citizens from efforts to find a new constitu-
tional arrangement. These and other such reactions
caused the Meech Lake experience to become totally
discredited as a model for revising the ground rules
guiding the country's governance. Next time, other
means would have to be found.
One belief shared by almost all critics of the
constitutional process from the late 1980s to the Meech
Lake debacle is that future efforts will have to be much
more open. A vital concomitant of this conclusion is
that the media will have greater and probably different
access to what will transpire. The opportunities for the
media to influence how people see forthcoming efforts
to adjust or replace Canada's constitution will there-
fore be even greater than they were in the past.
The full meaning of this conclusion can only be
appreciated when it is realized that the 1990 coverage
was much more massive than anything Canada had seen in
this domain before. Two developments in particular were
responsible: one is the highly dramatic climax of the
First Ministers' Ottawa meetings in June and the after-
math in the Manitoba and Newfoundland legislatures; the
other concerns the advent on the broadcasting scene of
Newsworld, the CBC's 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week,
satellite-delivered television news channel. Although
the service was available only in English and only on
cable, it drew very large audiences to its non-stop
programming which originated or was rebroadcast in
centres throughout the country. Quite apart from the
attention paid the constitutional game by the other
electronic and printed media, the regular CBC coverage,
special newscasts and background information, with
Newsworld now on the scene, the country was blanketed
by journalistic reports originating with the CBC. It was
estimated that on the final Saturday of the First
Ministers' Conference in June, almost four million
Canadians watched the CBC at one time or another during
the day.1 This widespread attention indicates that there
is considerable appetite among TV audiences for public
affairs programs when they are exciting and that in the
future, more open and participatory constitution-making
is likely to offer broadcasters huge and rich markets.
HIGH EXPOSURE/LOW COMPREHENSION
The large audiences for the Meech Lake coverage
present us with an intriguing paradox: despite what was
clearly extensive exposure, a high proportion of
Canadians believed that they were inadequately informed
about the content of the Accord. A CBC News-Globe and
Mail poll in early February 1990 reported that 71 per
cent of those interviewed said they knew little or
nothing about it, and only 28 per cent said they knew
a fair amount or more.2 After the 1988 election, the
Meech Lake Accord succeeded free trade as the most
prominent domestic political concern. During the year
starting in October 1988, it ranked fifth in network
coverage of national issues.3 Nevertheless, two thirds
of Canadians told an earlier CBC News-Globe and Mail
poll that they were slightly informed or not at all
informed about the accord.4
The media clearly had not succeeded in conveying the
actual substance of the constitutional changes enter-
tained by Canada's governments. It is, of course, a
moot point whether the communication failure is to be
ascribed to flawed media presentation or to the uninter-
ested, inattentive character of the population.
An admittedly limited study (it focused only on the
CBC) during the early stages of the Accord (30 April to
5 June 1987) found that the CBC's television coverage
"was highly abbreviated, sensationalized and oriented
to conflict and personalities . . . . As a consequence,
some of the broader issues underlying the Accord were
never fully explained to the audience . . . . The
newsformat," the author concludes, "severely distorted
the public's views of Meech Lake."5 Studies cited later
in this paper demonstrate that the CBC's record was no
worse than that of other media. Lydia Miljan, of the
Fraser Institute, who examined the performance of both
English networks, concluded that "it is not necessarily
the time constraints which dictate coverage of issues;
it is what television newscasters choose to emphasize
in the time allotted and who they choose to interview
that dictates coverage."
(N)ews personnel choose to emphasize trivial
matters because those matters best adhere to
the news personnel's definition of news. Many
news reports went in[to] detail about politi-
cal maneuvering and as a result did not have
the opportunity to discuss substantive points.
This attitude was echoed by Peter Mansbridge
..."News is news: it's what happens that
day. It's what's different; it's what's chang-
ed. It is not a backgrounder on constitutional
matters."6
In light of the evidence at hand, we must, there-
fore conclude that the blanketing of the country with
media reports does not necessarily ensure a high level
of public understanding. Thus, thought should be given
to what needs to be done to improve the quality of
public affairs coverage, irrespective of its quantity.
I shall return to this matter below.
THE MEDIA AS ACTORS
Communications theories assign a plethora of func-
tions to the media, ranging from modest roles to ex-
traordinarily intrusive effects on social and political
life.7 It is usually assumed that, at a minimum, they
reflect events occurring in the world, and that they
inform people of current developments. Some observers
conclude, in addition, that they set the agenda of what
will be discussed by the political class, of what will
receive public attention. The constitutional develop-
ments in the period under review were thrust onto
everyone's consciousness by governments and politicians,
who, after the 1984 federal victory of the Conserva-
tives, decided to revise the Constitution. In this
instance, the media covered events "created" by others,
but they nevertheless had an immense political in-
fluence. They did not merely report on what was happen-
ing -- their actions actually affected the political
process itself. The media were significant actors.
Among the many instances illustrating this phenomenon,
three stand out.
First, at the time of the 1990 First Ministers'
Conference, the Quebec media, which have for a long
time tended to be strongly independentist, made it
quite impossible for Premier Bourassa to make any
concessions, even in the unlikely event that he had
wished to do so. It had been widely accepted in Quebec
that absolutely no changes could be made to the Accord
and there was much fear in nationalist circles that in
the pressure cooker that was the First Ministers'
Conference, Bourassa might be persuaded to yield ground
on some points important to the other governments,
particularly Manitoba and Newfoundland. According to
one impeccable witness,
[f]rom the sophisticated Radio-Canada noon-
hour hotline to the private stations' inflam-
matory invitations to public comment, you
would have believed that . . . Bourassa had
just given away the shop. He had begun to
negotiate the "parameters" of future Senate
reform -- and that was proof enough that
English Canada was ganging up on him and
succeeding in breaking his spine. At worst,
many were accusing him of not even having a
spine; at best they were fed up and simply
demanding that he call off the meeting.8
The pathological suspicion, exaggeration, and
distortion exhibited towards Bourassa by much of the
Quebec media was so extreme that, at one point, Premier
David Peterson of Ontario convened a group of French-
speaking journalists to reassure them that his Quebec
counterpart had not failed to defend Quebec's interests.9
Brian Mulroney took similar steps on behalf of the
Quebec Premier vis-a-vis the Quebec press. In any
event, it seemed that whenever Bourassa appeared to so
much as smile, an outcry from much of the Quebec media
accused him of betraying his pledge to preserve the
terms of the original agreement. He had absolutely no
room to manoeuvre. The slightest flicker of accom-
modation towards the rest of the country would have
prompted a savage protest, seriously undermining his
political position in Quebec.
Second, quite a different example of the media
becoming an actor was evident in CBC radio's Cross
Country Check-up on 5 February 1990. For this occasion,
the Corporation assembled quite a large group of fran-
cophones in a Montreal studio. French-English relations
were the central theme of the discussion. A great many
anglophone callers were clearly upset about language
issues: bilingualism, Quebec's Bill 178, and Ontario's
French Language Services Act (Bill 8). Many were not
only strongly anti-French but also woefully ignorant
about the legislation and policies they were attacking.
One had the impression that many were members of anti-
French groups like the Alliance for the Preservation
of English Canada (APEC) or the Confederation of Regions
party (COR). Whenever they delivered themselves of some
misinformed statement, this was met by the derisive
laughter of the francophones gathered in the Montreal
studio. This, in turn, could not but have infuriated
the callers. While the Montreal group attempted to
counter the often bigoted views expressed, they did so
in a partisan, engage manner certain to be met with
suspicion by the other side. No moderator or otherwise
clearly "neutral" expert ever corrected the errors made
by the callers. The result was that the program deeply
exacerbated ethnic tensions, thereby influencing the
context in which the Meech Lake accord was evaluated by
the listeners. In this instance, there was almost no
intention to influence the political climate negative-
ly, but this is what the CBC did.
Third, critics of the CBC's handling of the First
Ministers' Conference -- and they were legion --
accused the CBC of having become a major player in the
Meech Lake drama by giving the impression that a seri-
ous crisis was threatening the country -- a crisis
which, they asserted, did not, in fact, exist.
Whether one agrees with these charges depends on
whether one believes that the Meech Lake chapter in
Canada's history constituted a major national crisis.
Opponents of the Accord saw the CBC's extended cover-
age, and the language of some of its journalists, as
evidence that the Corporation had been captured by the
government of the day. Whatever conclusion one reaches
on this matter (I return to it below), the fact remains
that the coverage itself given the constitutional
proposals became part of the main events and that the
CBC did more than merely report on events, either wil-
ly-nilly or by design.
This active involvement was enhanced by the fact
that many of the leading players (premiers and senior
officials) used the opportunities provided by the CBC
and the other media, for making widely disseminated
statements during the negotiations which, they hoped,
would affect not only public opinion but also the other
parties involved in the constitutional process.
THE MEDIA AND THE BROADER CONSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT
The press had an impact on the state of mind which
people brought to the constitutional debate. One of the
central features of any constitution is that it deter-
mines what will be the respective position of, and the
relationships among, the people constituting the coun-
try. The attitudes one takes to these matters depend not
only on one's views on where the individual stands
vis--vis the whole community and the state, but also
how one judges others: those of the opposite sex, a
different class, various religions, diverse parts of
the country, ethnic backgrounds and diverse cultures.
While it is difficult to specify exactly the role
played by the media in shaping these attitudes, there
is little doubt that they have some impact on them.
This is particularly the case when an important newspap-
er tends to espouse a point of view on a relevant issue
and then relentlessly flogs a particular line on it
while giving less attention to contrary views.
One of the most contentious features of the Meech
Lake Accord was the "distinct society" clause and the
position of Quebec in Canada. Language policies are
extraordinarily pertinent to these issues and were,
therefore, critical to much of what was thought and said
about the 1987 agreement. The exposure given to the
facts and viewpoints on these matters by the media
over a long period of time consequently had con-
siderable bearing on the position people took on the
Accord. To generalize about the performance of Canadian
media in this respect would be foolhardy. The record of
one, normally excellent newspaper, however, provides a
useful case study. The Kingston Whig-Standard has, at
least in the eyes of this reader, a truly sorry record
of fanning animosity between English- and French-speak-
ing Canadians. A telling instance of this paper's mal-
evolence came to my attention as I was preparing this
paper. The 12 October 1990 edition prominently carried
one story on the front page, under a sensational red
headline -- a colour used only extremely rarely by The
Whig-Standard for headlines. "Language Showdown" it
screamed, over this subtitle: "Federally imposed bilin-
gualism has northern natives upset." Under a Yellow-
knife dateline, the piece taken from The Edmonton
Journal informs the reader that a member of the North-
west Territories legislative assembly argued during the
opening day of the fall session that Ottawa had no
right to impose French on the native majority in the
Territories. Quite apart from the question of whether
Ottawa in fact had attempted to do this, one must
wonder what editorial judgement led to this item being
placed and displayed so prominently in the Kingston
newspaper, which normally pays scant attention to the
Northwest Territories and hardly ever places news about
this part of the country on the front page, let alone
under a red headline.
The seemingly bizarre major focus on a remote and
relatively minor matter makes every sense, however, in
the context of The Whig-Standard's posture towards
bilingualism and relations between Canada's two domin-
ant linguistic families. The editorial page, with a
couple of notable exceptions, was relatively balanced
in its treatment of language policy. Perhaps this is
because The Whig-Standard has a team of editorial
writers (including some citizen representatives), each
of whom signs his or her editorials, with the result
that on some issues the editorial page plays host to
diametrically opposed views. It is perhaps signi-
ficant, however, that the editor himself had published
some editorials displaying an anti-French bias. But if
the editorial page was relatively benign, in the pres-
ent context, the same cannot be said for the news
coverage and for the letters-to-the-editor.
The Whig-Standard consistently and prominently
reported events occurring in its readership area and
elsewhere which either reflected anti-French sentiments
or which could be expected to arouse them. Thus, for
instance, meetings of groups like APEC received highly
visible coverage, even when the number of people in-
volved was exceedingly small. The placing of these
reports, and their size, conveyed the impression that
these gatherings attracted the same numbers and were as
important in terms of their consequences as events
organized by mainstream political formations -- a
treatment normally not accorded to fringe groups. This
kind of coverage conveyed the impression that the
anti-French sentiments were more widespread than they
in fact were and endowed them with a cloak of respec-
tability likely to have a band-wagon effect on the
readers.11
A much more blatant and less insidious means of
publicizing anti-French sentiments was evident in the
letters-to-the-editor, which are very extensive in The
Whig-Standard. A constant and massive francophobic
outpouring focused on alleged threats to English-speak-
ers because of official bilingualism, discriminatory
language legislation in Quebec, Ontario's Bill 8,
alleged excessive concessions by Ottawa to Quebec, the
perils of inserting the "distinct society" clause in
the constitution, and a wide range of topics reflecting
unfavourably on Quebec and French Canadians. Many of
these letters came from the same individuals who, while
they might not have had the mordant wit and terrifying
memory of Eugene Forsey, far exceeded even his penchant
for frequent epistolary disputation. It is almost cer-
tain that these effusions were in part orchestrated by
organizations devoted to the preservation and strength-
ening of British elements in Canadian society and/or
who opposed the equal status of French in our midst.
The result of this persistent presence in the
correspondence columns of intolerant, bigoted and, more
often than not, quite inaccurate material was to fan
inter-group hatred. It is a moot point whether the
newspaper intended to bring this about but it certainly
did nothing to prevent it from happening. It would in
no way have been inconsistent with the canons of free-
dom of the press to have taken at least two corrective
measures. To have been more selective in the accept-
ance of letter after letter, often from the same in-
dividual, repeating ad nauseam the same fulminations,
and to make some effort to set the record straight and
to correct the constantly repeated misinformation
spread by the correspondents on such things as the
provisions of Canadian and Ontario language legislation.
By failing to do this, The Whig-Standard -- and
other similarly delinquent media -- contributed to a
climate of opinion prevailing in English Canada which
encouraged some politicians to bury the Meech Lake
Accord and hence -- to my mind -- the opportunity of
building the foundation for a viable co-existence, in
one federal union, of Quebec and the rest of Canada.
Thus the media affected not only the manner in which
people perceived and responded to specific developments
along the way to a constitutional solution but also the
broader sociological and psychological context which
provided the parameters within which solutions could be
sought. The nature and frequency of the coverage by
the Quebec press of the burning of the Quebec flag in
Brockville is, of course, an equally telling example on
the other side.
THE NEED TO DISTINGUISH AMONG DIVERSE MEDIA
It would be foolhardy, in considering media ef-
fects, to assume that the media are all alike. Impor-
tant differences prevail between the daily press and
periodicals, between printed and electronic services,
between public and private broadcasters. In addition,
the styles and consequently the effects of Canadian and
foreign media vary considerably, notably in broadcast-
ing where, despite the powerful influence of the Ameri-
can television networks, Canadian programming in many
respects displays unique indigenous characteristics. And
even when one and the same medium is under scrutiny, one
must distinguish between its performance at various
periods of time. All too little is known about most of
these differences, but some intriguing straws in the
wind are worth pursuing with respect to the media cover-
age of the Meech Lake era.
First, the CBC, as we noted above, came in for a
good deal of criticism during the period under review.
Some important aspects of its television coverage are
discussed below, but first a comment on CBC radio is in
order. Some programs, with "Morningside" perhaps com-
prising the outstanding example, were thorough, eclec-
tic, deeply probing, and eminently fair. Others,
however, can only be described as tendentious. Thus an
edition of "Sunday Morning," reporting in August 1987
on evidence presented to the Parliamentary Committee on
the Accord, noted at the beginning of the broadcast that
arguments both for and against the Accord were put to
the committee and then, for the remainder of the pro-
gram, presented almost exclusively the voices of those
opposed. But overall, CBC radio was pretty close to
exemplary in its coverage of the constitutional review.
The quality was, in fact, so high, that in some respects
CBC radio can be perceived as an electronic equiv-
alent of the traditional morning newspaper -- that is,
a paper devoted to the extensive and serious coverage
of public affairs, but without the heavy coverage of
business news.
Second, public reactions to media coverage of the
Meech Lake events produced an interesting insight into
the manner in which people perceived television and the
print press insofar as news reporting is concerned. An
Angus Reid poll dated June 11, 1990, asked respondents
whether they thought that the media "have generally
provided balanced and responsible reporting on Meech
Lake" or whether the latter was considered "biased and
irresponsible." Overall, about 60 per cent gave a
favourable rating and thirty an unfavourable one. The
CBC was seen to have provided balanced coverage of
Meech Lake by almost two thirds (64 per cent) of the
respondents, newspapers by a little over half (53 per
cent), and CTV by 55 per cent. Among the many intriguing
aspects of this poll is that the electronic media, and
particularly the CBC, were seen as more trustworthy,
and that it was given very little publicity by the
print media. Furthermore, according to CBC sources,
its findings were not mentioned by Angus Reid when, on
"As It Happens," he accused the Corporation of biased
coverage of the Meech Lake situation.12 A later poll
by Reid, in which he sought to gauge opinion in the
specially "sensitive" provinces of Manitoba and New-
foundland, revealed that while only 46 per cent of
Manitobans found CBC coverage balanced, 70 per cent of
Newfoundlanders did so. Only 54 per cent of the latter
group trusted the newspapers, and CTV was seen as
having had balanced coverage by only half the New-
foundland respondents. While a high proportion of
Manitobans found CBC news lacking in balance, as we
just saw, only an infinitesimally smaller number found
the newspapers more balanced, and the "score" for CTV
was identical to that of the CBC.13
Third, many observers, as we have noted, par-
ticularly those opposed to the Accord, thought that the
CBC was biased in the agreement's favour and that it
therefore presented the pro-Meech forces in a better
light than it did its enemies. Lydia Miljan, whom we
have cited earlier, and who writes and compiles On
Balance, the Fraser Institute-linked organ which can by
no stretch of the imagination be described as pro-CBC,
examined the performance of the Corporation in this
context during the climactic week of June 4 to June 10,
when the First Ministers held their fateful meeting in
Ottawa.
Her findings are, to my mind, anything but con-
clusive and, in any event, are at least as damaging
with respect to CTV as to the CBC. The private network,
however, was never attacked by anyone for being biased.
While she found that on some dimensions the data back up
the charge of CBC bias, on others the supporting evidence
is ambiguous. Her hypotheses are supported only in
part. Furthermore, two of her four assumptions seem to
be of questionable validity. The first, which she saw
as confirmed, was that pro-Meech bias was deemed to be
present if the situation was defined as comprising a
crisis. The fourth, also supported in her view, as-
sumed that emphasis was placed in the coverage on ways
needed to ratify the Accord. Events, particularly in
Quebec after the final failure, seem to me to support
eloquently those who insisted all along that non-ratif-
ication would usher in a major constitutional crisis.
To have seen this in the summer of 1990, as the CBC
did, cannot be a valid basis for accusations of bias;
the CBC merely had insight. To have emphasized the
process required for the Accord's ratification seems to
me to have been sensible and unbiased news judgement.
After all, ratification or non-ratification was the
essential issue in the summer of 1990.
Miljan's second hypothesis, that premiers opposed
to Meech Lake would be portrayed negatively, was only
partially supported by the data. She notes that the
critical opponent, Newfoundland, received balanced
coverage. The third hypothesis, that the coverage would
stress that the Accord's failure would cause disastrous
political and economic consequences, was also supported
only partially and was, in any event, a reasonable
assumption to be made by a broadcaster. And here, as
on several other dimensions, the performance of CTV
came closer to the author's expectations than that of
the Corporation. "Only 3.6 per cent of CBC and 2.1 per
cent of CTV coverage actually addressed the consequen-
ces of the success or failure of Meech." When the
consequences of failure were discussed, "42 per cent of
CBC and 14.3 per cent of CTV coverage was neutral."14
Fourth, the fairly extensive literature on alleged
CBC bias fails to take into account the possibility
that the position of the Corporation, to the extent
that it can be said that it had one, underwent changes
over time. It was my impression that when the Accord
was first drafted and then revised in the Langevin text,
the coverage by the CBC tended to be hostile but that
this hostility dissipated as time went on. One possible
explanation of this phenomenon is discussed in the next
section.
CBC TELEVISION: GUILTY OR MALIGNED?
Because of its dominance of television coverage,
the CBC was called by one observer "the medium of
record" insofar as the Meech Lake Accord went. One
reason for its pre-eminence resulted from the fact,
noted above, that, during the June 1990 climactic days
of negotiations among the first ministers, it had
allocated to the coverage of the events an unprece-
dented and unrivalled number of operatives, drawn from
all of its services. The national news editor, John
Owen, has estimated that the overtime and other expenses
incurred by the CBC during the First Ministers' meeting
in June ran to well over $100,000.15 Other insiders
estimated that $350,000 may have been a more realistic
figure.
The CBC was also exceptionally aggressive in can-
vassing all aspects of the process and in seeking out,
and verifying, information available from the eleven
delegations which converged at the Ottawa Conference
Centre and their hotels in June. The scene, when the
sessions adjourned each day, was extremely difficult for
the electronic media. There was only one microphone for
a mass of reporters, taking up about 60 feet of the
pavement, and only those close to it had any chance of
obtaining a usable television story. Because of its
numerical strength, the CBC was able to occupy and so
"hold" a place close to the microphone and then have its
news stars, Wendy Mesley and Don Newman, step in when
something was going on. Mesley and Newman's strategic
location and powerful lungs, as well as their being
easily recognized by the emerging premiers, enabled
them to dominate the scrums. This often led to other
networks, even CTV, carrying on their news programs the
questions to the principal players in the constitution-
al drama framed by the journalists of the Crown corpora-
tion.
The CBC's high visibility and pivotal role in
reporting Meech and other public affairs were enhanced
by its collaboration with The Globe and Mail. The CBC
News-Globe and Mail poll attracted considerable atten-
tion, partly because of its quality but also because it
received dramatic and extended news coverage on "Sunday
Report", as well as on Canada's national newspaper.
Rick Salutin, a lively playwright and journalist, not
known for a deep aversion to flamboyant exaggeration,
went so far as to accuse the Corporation and The Globe
and Mail of jointly being an informal propaganda tool --
"a remarkably effective ministry of propaganda" --
serving the Mulroney government. Jeffrey Simpson's
regular presence on "Sunday Report", and his eventual
strong support for the Accord, as well as Newsworld's
use of the Globe's business reports, were seen by
Salutin as another proof of this allegedly "common law
merger" between the public broadcaster and Toronto's
morning oracle.16 I shall return to these charges
below.
Throughout this paper we have encountered numerous
critics of the CBC's handling of the Meech Lake accord.
A variety of reasons is no doubt responsible for this.
Hostility against the biggest boy on the block, who may
strike some as being a bit of a bully, was probably
part of it; traditional Canadian ambivalence about the
CBC - national icon and national whipping boy - also
played a part; genuine philosophical differences with
the Corporation over its reading of the importance and
implications of the success or failure of the Accord
undoubtedly prompted some attacks; and rivalry among
diverse media and networks also was important. One CBC
executive, whose consent for being quoted was not sought,
suggested in an archaic and anatomical metaphor
that some attacks on the corporation resulted from penis
envy.
It is somewhat surprising that the CBC should have
come under so much and so widespread attack for ap-
parently aiding and abetting the federal government's
cause in the constitutional debates since, at the
beginning of the process, according to one of the Cor-
poration's strategically placed senior officers, some
key people in the CBC tried to show that the agreement
was a fraud and tried to ferret out and use people like
Trudeau, who, they hoped, would attack and discredit
it. This one case is so important, and sheds so much
light on some of the fundamental issues involved in the
role of media in the political crisis, that I dwell on
it at some length.
First, the dramatis persona. Our witness is Mr.
Elly Alboim, at the time (and still, while I write)
national political editor of CBC Television and the
Ottawa Bureau Chief. He is also an Adjunct Professor
in the Carleton School of Journalism. Douglas Fisher
portrayed him as "the reigning guru of our self-describ-
ed `investigative' journalists and the `hands-on' boss
in CBC-TV's presentation of big ticket politics. Al-
boim, not Mansbridge or Newman, supervised Meech cover-
age."17
At a conference whose proceedings have been publish-
ed, Mr. Alboim shed some startling and extraordinarily
useful light on how he and his colleagues saw the Meech
Lake Accord and how they approached the task of report-
ing it during its early formative phase in 1987. His
comments were made against the backdrop of criticisms
that the media failed to prevent what he called "the
public's illiteracy" on the Meech Lake issue because
they stressed the process used in fashioning an agree-
ment, rather than its substance. Insofar as the CBC was
concerned, at least according to its Ottawa Bureau
Chief, this was done intentionally because Mr. Alboim,
apparently knowing a great deal more than anyone else,
was dead certain that the constitutional exercise was
merely a personal ploy by Mulroney to make himself look
better than Trudeau. The welfare of the country, in this
view, was irrelevant and absent from the governments'
minds. "This was a highly political and highly cynical
exercise," said Alboim,
that had very, very little to do with the
re-constitutionalizing of Canada. It had
very, very little to do with the final content
of the document. The motivations were clear
from the outset. Brian Mulroney needed, for
his own purposes, to establish that he could
do in Quebec what Pierre Trudeau could not.
That was, to my mind, the sole motivation for
the federal initiative. I have no illusion
that there was any vision of Canada, or any
deeply felt sense of loss about Quebec not
signing the constitutional agreement in '82.
I think we were engaged in a highly political
and partisan exercise by the Prime Minister.
I think the motivations of many of the anglo-
premiers were equally clear. They were
dragged into a process that they did not want
to participate in. They were blackmailed into
a process they had difficulty staying out of
and they were determined to capture as much
as they could in exchange for their accep-
tance. There was no selflessness, the premi-
ers walked in with an agenda, a very clear
one and they knew what they could get and they
got it. This wasn't a nation-building exer-
cise.18
Having thus identified the situation, Alboim noted
that "we . . . were watching a naked exercise of power
and were attracted to the reportage of the exercise of
power more than we were attracted to covering some of
the substance of the accord."19 (p. 236) All this was
going on, according to Alboim's perception of events,
while the federal government "was in free fall" (p.
237), having sunk to the lowest rating in the polls of
any Canadian government so far, and having suffered a
number of other set-backs. "Media organizations in this
country smelled blood in a way that we have never
smelled blood before. Some thought that we were in a
situation similar to the American press in the early
days of Watergate. We were focused on the extraordinary
story of what appeared to be the collapse of the gover-
nment with [arguably] the largest mandate in Canadian
history. Meanwhile, what was going on was a fairly
quiet and arcane discussion about constitutional renewal
that, in our view, had no focus." (p. 237)
Among the reasons which drove the media, in the
view of our participant observer, to the strong em-
phasis on process and to less stress on the ongoing
"arcane discussion" about the constitution was, curious-
sly, the conclusion that Brian Mulroney had, through
Meech Lake, brought about a fundamental change in
Canada's system of government -- a change that was not
noticed by the public. The old hands in the gallery, he
observed, "suspected that we had a new national cabinet
made up of First Ministers that had as much clout as the
current cabinet . . . the Prime Minister had created an
alternate level of government." (p. 240)
The aforementioned aspects of the arrangement of
1987, and some others, clearly struck Mr. Alboim as
extremely troublesome and threatening to the well-being
of the body politic. And although he, and according to
him, other media folk, recognized the extreme danger,
he believed that most people during the early stages of
the agreement, were hoodwinked by the common front of
the federal and provincial government leaders.
When confronted with that sort of reality plus
a clear understanding of the fragility of the
deal and the rush to text and passage, we
began a search for dissent . . . you look for
someone who will question the deal . . . . We
went to Chretien, we went to Romanow. We
looked for constitutional experts. I looked
around the country, searching for people who
were going to say in that first week or two,
boy, there's something wrong here. But what I
got was, `got to wait for the text, not quite
sure.'. . . The Trudeau watch started. Every
day we sent a reporter down to Trudeau's
office. Will he do it today? (p. 241)
Elly Alboim's account furnishes a number of germane
insights into media, and, specifically, CBC behaviour
during the Meech Lake era. It also cries out for criti-
cal reactions.
In the first place, they make it patently obvious
that, whatever may have occurred in the summer of 1990,
at first, when the accord was being negotiated and
refined, the CBC was bitterly hostile and was vigorous-
ly trying to drum up commentators who would attack it.
The line between arranging for a balanced coverage and
engaging in partisan journalism is not always easy to
draw and one must therefore be careful before condemn-
ing the position taken by the Corporation. Alboim's
account, however, certainly explained my impression that
the accord was persistently presented in a negative
light.
More important, I was aghast and shocked by what
struck me as the appallingly arrogant and facile stance
of one of the most senior CBC journalists. To have
assumed that the government was driven solely by one
motive and one man ("That was . . . the sole motivation
for the federal initiative"), to have been implacably
convinced that the motives of Brian Mulroney were
merely petty, peevish rivalry with Pierre Trudeau
(flying in the face of substantial contrary evidence),
to have convinced himself that the search for a new
constitutional arrangement "wasn't a nationbuilding
exercise," and then to have devised a strategy report-
ing the ongoing events accordingly ("the cynicism
behind the politics of the deal...had to be dealt with"
- p. 240) revealed, to my mind, not only extremely
questionable judgement but also constituted a quite
inexcusable attempt by a key media player to engage in
the political process. Convinced that the party opposi-
tion to what he saw as a cynical and dangerous govern-
ment initiative was inadequate, Alboim proceeded to do
what he could to provide an alternative("we began a
search for dissent").
Two features of Mr. Alboim's account are, no doubt,
responsible for my reaction being so very negative: I
find it frightening that anyone could feel so sure of
himself in his reading of a government's and prime
minister's motives -- never mind that I find the reading
to be ludicrous -- that he would feel confident enough
to plunge the medium for which he is responsible into
the political process with the aim of offsetting the
perceived cynicism and irresponsibility of the govern-
ment. Secondly, I am deeply troubled by any journalist
in possession, so to speak, of an immensely powerful
instrument of opinion formation arrogating so critical
a role to himself or herself, without being in any way
accountable to anyone. My anxiety is all the more
acute when the instrument is the public broadcaster.
Without diminishing the force of the foregoing
comment, it is nevertheless only fair to add one or two
qualifying observations. Mr. Alboim's remarks were made
at a conference -- his piece in the book cited reads
very much like the transcript of an oral presentation
based on notes rather than on a written text. Under such
circumstances it is easy to be carried away by the
excitement of the moment and to overstate one's case.
It is possible that, had he edited his comments, the
overall impression might have been slightly different.
Secondly, Mr.Alboim never refers specifically to actual
CBC policies or decisions. I am assuming that what he
says about the media generally applies to his own news
service. And while the views he expresses indubitably
represent the positions he took during discussions
within the Corporation on how to deal with the evolving
Meech saga, others must have been involved in the
decisions, whose views were almost certainly not always
identical to his. It is, therefore, risky to tar the
whole of CBC news with the Alboim brush.
Evidence is in fact available, albeit for the
coverage of the last stages of the Meech episode, not
its beginning, indicating that the CBC went to quite
extraordinary lengths in its efforts to provide com-
petent and balanced accounts of the developments. The
corporation's TV News and Current Affairs director
reported (unwittingly putting some of Mr.Alboim's
comments into a broader context) that because most
government people, who usually have easy access to the
media, supported the Accord, those who opposed it
received extra time. "Between January and June," she
reports, "Clyde Wells appeared on The National and The
Journal 69 times; well ahead of the second most inter-
viewed leader, Robert Bourassa, who was on 45 times."20
These attempts at correcting for certain "structural"
biases in the situation are also documented by Lydia
Miljan's studies.21 The CBC created a formidable
information depository on the Accord, to which repor-
ters from across the country contributed regional and
national views for months. "The CBC's Meech file is
probably the most extensive intelligence dossier exist-
ing on the national public debate over Meech."22 At the
time of the First Ministers' Conference, quite extraor-
dinary measures were taken, as was noted above, to
ensure full coverage.
In all, 25 journalists were assigned to the
first ministers conference. Most of them did
not appear on camera. But they fed back to
the anchors a constant stream of information
about the closed door sessions from dozens of
sources in the delegations -- senior people
at both the bureaucratic and political levels.
Any information that went on air was triple
checked. In addition, our rule was that
nothing could be said that had not been con-
firmed by at least one pro- and one an-
ti-Meech delegation.23
What can we conclude from the above about the
performance of the CBC during the Meech Lake episode,
other than that the Corporation played a dominant role
in its coverage, setting the tone of much that was
reported, and being perceived by the public as the most
balanced medium informing it about the ongoing develop-
ments? Had the CBC really earned the confidence ac-
corded it or was its fairness illusory? The question
can best be answered by dividing the Meech era into two
phases: the early period, starting in April 1987, and
the concluding one, culminating on June 23, 1990, the
day on which, according to the Constitution Act, all
the legislatures had to ratify the Accord. It is dif-
ficult and unnecessary to pinpoint the end of one phase
and the beginning of the other, except to link it to
the time, in late 1988 or early 1989, when a turnaround
in opinion led to more Canadians being opposed to the
accord than favoured it.24 Taras has shown that the CBC,
and Miljan that both English national television net-
works, failed to provide adequate coverage during the
early period because they emphasized the process, the
politics of the Accord too much, and the substance of
it too little. Television's character as, above all, an
entertainment medium and its practitioners' penchant for
abetting this aspect have also encouraged broadcasters
to present the controversies and their discussions in
a dialectic format in which those who subscribe to
extreme views, on either side, receive much more air
time than middle of the road moderates.
Another element in part explaining the CBC's rather
hostile manner of reporting the first phase relates to
the tendency of all media, from which television is not
immune, to give greater scope to those opposing the
government than to the government itself. It is assumed
that livelier "copy" emerges from those who attack
governments than from those who defend them and so more
time or space is usually devoted to critics than to
proponents. It is this which is deemed to make news.
Elly Alboim's and Trina McQueen's articles cited
earlier have also indicated that the CBC's attempts to
present both sides of the argument (given the fact that
during the first phase, only very few political figures
opposed the agreement), led the Corporation to seek far
and wide for opponents, thereby creating the impression
that it was going out of its way to oppose it. This
policy may have been strengthened and made more vigor-
ous by views like Mr. Alboim's which, as we noted ear-
lier, saw the whole Meech episode as a total sham
launched by the Prime Minister for reasons related to
his vanity. At any rate, it is possible, although by no
means established, that early in the game, in the
spring of 1987, the CBC, possibly like other media,
contributed to the process which ultimately scuppered
constitutional reform by seeking out and encouraging
attacks against the Meech project by people who could
be expected to attract a lot of public attention.
Richard Simeon, in an essay exploring why Meech Lake
failed, notes that in the few weeks after the break-
through agreement of April 30, 1987, opposition to the
Accord started to mount.
Much of it was crystallized by former Prime
Minister Trudeau, who attacked the Accord
root and branch. It was a betrayal of all he
had fought for: "Those Canadians who fought
for a single Canada, bilingual and multicul-
tural, can say goodbye to their dream."25
Although Trudeau's first salvo against the Accord
was launched in the pages of Le Devoir and The Toronto
Star, and not on the CBC as Elly Alboim no doubt hoped,
the CBC gave the former Prime Minister every conceiv-
able encouragement and opportunity to air his views
subsequently, including an extensive interview on The
Journal. It is impossible to estimate the effect of
Trudeau's interventions but they likely had considerable
impact on the ultimate position adopted towards the
Accord by a great many English-speaking Canadians, at
least those following the issue.
On the basis of the present review, it is reason-
able to conclude that, overall, the CBC handled the
Meech Lake events competently. Radio coverage succeeded
better than television in finding an appropriate balance
between focusing on the substance of the Accord and
on the political processes involved in negotiating and
ratifying it. In the early phase, both CBC radio and
television appeared to me to have been rather more
negative than positive, possibly because of the in-
fluence of Mr. Alboim or because his views were shared
by colleagues in the Corporation. But the one-sided
approach was not displayed uniformly by all public
affairs programs, some of which went to considerable
lengths in seeking balance.
Since I thought at the time, and still do, as I
indicated above, that failure to reach a constitutional
accord undoing the flaws of 1982 would threaten the
survival of Canada as we know it, I did believe that
not to ratify the Accord would plunge the country into
a serious crisis. In the light of this reading of
events, the "crisis atmosphere" with which the Corpora-
tion endowed the events of June 1990 seemed to me
appropriate and did not constitute the misuse of the
services of the public broadcaster. The coverage itself
struck me as eminently fair and even-handed, particu-
larly on radio and such major television programs as
The National and The Journal.
As for the charge that the CBC and the Globe and
Mail were in cahoots in selling the federal government
line, this struck me as laughable. The two media did,
in some areas, collaborate, as we noted, but there is
simply no evidence for the suggestion that they were in
pursuit of a shared media agenda. The idea also lacks
any plausibility in the context of the modus operandi
of the Corporation and the government, and the rela-
tions which prevail between them. It is nevertheless
the case that Jeffrey Simpson's shared presence, News-
world's use of The Globe and Mail's business reports,
and the CBC News/Globe and Mail poll do reinforce the
reach and appeal of both media and hence enhance the
quality of available news coverage in Canada. The
combination may also strengthen the impression of some
that the CBC is a medium catering to elites. This view
is, however, flawed for two reasons. It overlooks the
very wide range of CBC programming and it presupposes
that a serious approach to covering public affairs, a
determined effort to show Canadian programs, including
drama, and striving for high quality, are elitist. They
are anything but, assuming as they do, that large audi-
ences will opt for excellence if they have an oppor-
tunity to find it.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The session of the "After Meech Lake" Conference at
which this, the Taras and Raboy papers in this issue
were presented, was entitled "The Media and Constitu-
tional Reform in Canada." This theme invited considera-
tion not only of how the Meech Lake episode was covered
but also imposed the task of looking at how the media
are likely to deal with future constitutional negotia-
tions. In addressing this question, it is unavoidable
that one should both draw some lessons from the past
and consider recommendations for the future. The latter
will, alas, for the most part here fall into the "mother-
hood" category and relate to the improvement of media
performance of any sort, whether related to consti-
tutionmaking or any other subject. But they are rel-
evant nevertheless. Because the manner in which the
media serve the political community depends not only on
themselves but also on government policies and some
general societal factors, the observations which follow
apply to a number of possible actors.
1) Despite the immense importance of information
about public matters in a democratic society, and
despite the notorious narcissism of the media, very
little attention is paid to the performance of the
press in relation to political events. The situation
is, however, improving; the notes underpinning some of
the observations made in this paper indicate that a
number of probes were undertaken during and after the
Meech Lake debates, but there is still a woeful lack of
hard information about how the media affected the
politics of constitution-making. The critical examina-
tion of how politics are covered requires two strat-
egies applied by two sets of distinct actors.
In the first place, the media themselves ought to
be much more self-critical, not only internally but
also with respect to the performance of other newsgath-
ering and opinion-dispensing organizations. The con-
centrated attack by the Southam papers on the CBC in
June, 1990, serves as an example of what is needed,
despite the fact that I think that this particular
onslaught was ill-founded. An exemplary model of what
can and should be done on a larger scale is CBC radio's
Media File, which regularly subjects some of the infor-
mation industry to critical analysis. More such pro-
grams, and in a variety of media, including television,
would act not only as a corrective in the event that
weaknesses develop but would also likely prevent flaws
developing by keeping everyone on their toes in fear of
having their knuckles rapped in the future. It is
interesting to recall, in this context, that the Reid
study showing that the electronic media were generally
thought to have provided more balanced coverage than
newspapers was largely ignored by the latter and so
unnoticed by the public.
A seemingly effective and decidedly promising
strategy ensuring balanced coverage was described to
the "After Meech Lake" conference by Graham Fraser of
The Globe and Mail. He and Susan Delacourt were the
principal people on the Meech beat and they held oppos-
ing views towards the Accord. They were in constant
touch and frequently checked one another's perceptions
and reactions, thereby acting as mutual correctives.
This no doubt greatly enhanced the balance of their
reports.
At any rate, a high degree of self-awareness, and
self-criticism by media personnel would enhance the
quality of reporting and commenting upon developments.
Such introspection should take the form of regularly
scheduled programs reviewing press coverage and also,
particularly on television, the equivalent of the print-
ed media's "Correction" notices which would alert
viewers to past sins of commission and omission. News
and public affairs programs have loyal audiences, most
of whom would "catch" the corrections.
Secondly, the work by Taras and by Miljan, cited
above, and other such research, illustrates how useful
academic or otherwise analytical media studies can be.
But we need more of them, undertaken within diverse
disciplines and by a variety of scholars and research
institutions, and addressing, inter alia, some of the
aspects identified in the opening paragraph of the
section above, entitled "The Need to Distinguish Be-
tween Diverse Media." One useful framework for the
study of media effects which has so far not been tried
is an adaptation of "the Funnel of Causality" as ap-
plied to the voting decision many years ago by scholars
at the University of Michigan. This metaphor directs
researchers towards distinguishing between events
affecting the voting decision on the basis of how close
they are in time to the final act, and how directly
relevant they are to it.26
2) One of the lessons the CBC learned from the
Meech experience is related to a suggestion noted
above. It is that live political television would
henceforth be closely scrutinized "by journalists
outside the process." That scrutiny, according to Trina
McQueen, is important to public broadcasting and calls
for openness and candour on its part. "Just as we
reveal the methodology behind public opinion polls we
report, the CBC must now also report the methodology
behind our journalism."27 In doing so, it will be
desirable to specify not only the "mechanics" of cover-
ing a major political event, as was done by Ms. McQueen,
but also to indicate what assumptions led the news
and public affairs crews to deploy their resources in
a particular manner. Viewers would have been much
better able to evaluate CBC coverage of the early Meech
Lake phase had they known something of the thinking
Elly Alboim revealed in his contribution to Meech Lake
and Canada 28 and had they known how others making key
decisions reacted to it. In the future, the audiences
of the public broadcaster in particular, but of others
as well, should know by what particular mission the
major media are animated, and how they intend to guide
the public in interpreting the news, if, like Mr.
Alboim, they believe that such guidance is necessary.
Some media organizations -- the CBC is among them
-- have an internal procedure (in which outsiders may
participate), designed to review, from time to time,
the quality of their work. Reports of these periodic
checks should be made public and the practice should be
adopted by all major broadcasters and newspapers.
3) The superior quality of the CBC's radio service
during the Meech days provides a reminder that public
radio may have a special role to perform in informing
the interested citizenry of current issues and develop-
ments. It is well to remember this in times of ever
more menacing budget cuts. Many critically important
local television news services have already been elimi-
nated. To tamper with the capacity of CBC radio to
cover public affairs at all times of the day -- a pros-
pect that cannot be ruled out, given the attitudes
towards the CBC by successive Canadian governments, and
internal CBC moves to "popularize" the radio service --
would seriously diminish the responsible and concerned
public's ability to keep abreast of constitutional and
other developments. Governments and CBC management must
always bear in mind that measures seemingly remote from
the constitutional game may have implications for it
and that services which may be considered elitist by
some nevertheless may perform a critical function in
the political process.
4) Few dispute that a competent and lively press is
a sine qua non of democracy. And widespread trends
towards increasing concentration of ownership not-
withstanding, it is equally beyond doubt that the press
is most effective when it consists of a multiplicity of
competing performers, compensating for one another's
biases and collectively providing information to every
stratum and cranny of society. Domination by one
medium is possible, even when there is competition, as
we saw. But while this is not an ideal situation it
still offers a variety of different perspectives on
current developments, making it possible to choose from
among available news sources.
Canadians have on several occasions become con-
cerned about the monopolistic tendencies in the media
and have sought to counter them. The last effort,
headed by Tom Kent, recommended legislation that would
have prohibited further concentration of ownership and
control of daily newspapers.29 Nothing came of the Kent
report, partly because of the implacable opposition of
the press and because of its political clout, and
partly because of the lack of will on the part of
governments to deal with the situation. But if future
constitution-making is to benefit from appropriate
media coverage, the country would do well to return to
the recommendations of previous inquiries probing the
media, notably those headed by Kent, Davey and Caplan
and Sauvageau.30 Independent newspapers and locally
owned television stations continue to be gobbled up by
the biggies and serious thought should be given to what
measures might be taken to protect media diversity. The
inquiries cited offer numerous useful suggestions.
5) This is not the place to discuss the quality of
Canadian journalists. But the foregoing discussion of
Meech Lake coverage makes it abundantly clear that not
only is journalistic competence essential, particularly
when such complex matters as constitutional review are
reported upon, but that the ethics, integrity, and sense
of responsibility (and humility?) of journalists and
their bosses are also essential. We saw above that
these qualities were not always in evidence during the
Meech era. They should have been. Schools of jour-
nalism should take particular care to impart them to
their students.
6) Media effects depend on the manner in which
information is received by the public as much as they
do on what the media do. It is valid to ask to what
extent the limited knowledge of the content of the
Accord by the public reflects negatively on the media
and how much the public itself is to blame. In this
context it its well to consider whether the Canadian
educational system is doing enough to teach our chil-
dren how to "read" the media. It is my guess that, with
some exceptions, the answer is negative and that this
too is an area crying for remedies.
7) The earlier discussion of the media in the
broader constitutional context (Section 4) concluded
with an admonition to newspapers to prevent the con-
stant repetition of factual error by zealots invading
the letters-to-the-editor section of their paper. This
too is an area of possible action calling for considera-
tion. It is obviously a matter of considerable delicacy
but it is nevertheless incumbent on the media somehow
to prevent being hijacked by malevolent forces wishing
to foment social hatred and discord.
CONCLUSIONS
The title of this piece asks whether, in the period
under discussion, the media reflected events, illumined
them, or invaded the arena and themselves became act-
ors. The answer, as we saw, is that they did all
three. There were differences among them, in this
respect, and the same service or paper varied its ap-
proach over time. But overall one can conclude that
though there were shortcomings, and criticism on the
part of various observers -- some of it clearly jus-
tified -- any Canadian seeking to discover both the
content of, and the politics surrounding the Meech Lake
Accord, could succeed without too much trouble. That a
high proportion of Canadians failed to be better in-
formed must be ascribed in part to general social
conditions and in part to media performance. Like most
people everywhere, Canadians are not highly politi-
cized; they are not voracious readers of elite news-
papers or serious periodicals, and they tend to expect
from their primary leisure time activity - watching
television - mostly to be entertained, not informed.
Even news and public affairs programming increasingly
packages its content as much as possible as entertain-
ment. It is widely assumed in the industry that if it
did otherwise, it would lose audiences. The media could
have done better in some respects, as we noted, but it
is doubtful whether this would have led to substantially
different results insofar as knowledge and comp-
rehension of the Accord were concerned. In this view,
media impact could only have been improved if other
societal conditions had been different: had politicians
and officials been held in higher regard, had non-polit-
ical opinion leaders played a more active part;31 had
the schools considered it important to involve the
students in informed discussion of the issues; if the
business community had acted earlier and more vigorous-
ly, and so on. There were shortcomings on both sides --
the media and their audiences. During the next round of
constitution-making (or un-making), greater efforts may
be made to avoid some of the failings of the past. But,
while the media themselves could fairly quickly adopt
more effective ways of covering the constitutional
debates, the equally important societal context can
change only exceedingly slowly. It is doubtful whether
there will be enough time to allow for the necessary
changes and adaptations. We are therefore compelled to
conclude that when Canada confronts the next phase of
its national re-definition, the citizenry will likely
not be much better informed than it was in the late
nineteen-eighties. If this is to be minimized, inter-
ested opinion leaders, in a wide range of sectors of
society, including those not normally active in poli-
tics, will have to become expositors of the proposed
arrangements.
Notes
* I am grateful for assistance in the preparation of this
paper to: Margaret Day, Joan Harcourt, and Patrick
McCartney.
(1) Trina McQueen, "How the CBC covered Meech Lake," The
Toronto Star, July 25,1990,p.C3.
(2) Peter Mansbridge, CBC's Sunday Report, February 11,
1990. CBC Transcript, p.4.
(3) Lydia Miljan, "A Year in Review: CBC and CTV Nation-
al News coverage," On Balance, III:1, 1990.
(4) Idem, "Network Coverage of the Meech Lake Accord,"
A Paper presented to the annual meeting of the Canadian
Political Science Association, Victoria, B.C., May
1990, pp.3-4.
(5) David Taras, "Television and Public Policy: The
CBC's Coverage of the Meech Lake Accord," Canadian
Public Policy - Analyse de Politiques, XV:3, pp.322,
324. For the author's recent thoughts on this subject,
see his article in the present volume.
(6) Miljan, "Network Coverage," pp. 5, 6. The reference
she gives for the Mansbridge statement is The Globe and
Mail of January 26, 1990.
(7) For a brief overview, see idem, The Newsmakers: The
Media's Influence on Canadian Politics, Scarborough:
Nelson Canada, Ch.1.
(8) Lise Bissonnette, "Coverage of Meech illustrates
divisions," The Globe and Mail, June 9, 1990, p. 02.
(9) Richard Mackie, "Peterson makes pitch to Quebec
journalists," The Globe and Mail, June 8,1990, p.A5.
(10) A whole string of writers in Southam-owned news-
papers unleashed a barrage of attacks on the CBC. See,
for example, Jamie Portman, "The CBC: How the network
set the tone for coverage of constitutional crisis,"
The Ottawa Citizen, June 12, 1990, Op.Ed page; the same
piece in the Montreal Gazette bore the subtitle:
"Network helped set conference agenda;" idem, "CBC's
gloom over Meech compromises its impartiality," Kitch-
ener-Waterloo Record, June 7, 1990, p.A7. Don McGilliv-
ray, a Southam stable mate of Portman's, wrote similar
stories lambasting the national broadcaster. John
Dafoe, the editor of the editorial page of the Winnipeg
Free Press, Ramsay Cook, the strongly centralist
historian, and Tom Kent, former editor of the Winnipeg
Free Press, and of Policy Options, and former Liberal
honcho and government official were among those who
also criticised the CBC for creating a crisis.
(11) For a discussion of this phenomenon, albeit in
quite a different context and sense, see Elisabeth
Noelle-Neumann, The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion
- Our Social Skin, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1984.
(12) Arnold Amber, Interview, Toronto, October 13, 1990.
See also Antonia Zerbisias, "Seems 64 per cent of you
didn't see CBC bias either," The Toronto Star, June 15,
1990, p. D18; Tony Atherton, "Meech bias or Meech
overkill?", The Ottawa Citizen, June 16, 1990, p.C6;
Trina McQueen, op.cit..
(13) Zorbisias, Ibid. More attention is given to the
CBC in this paper than to CTV. The imbalance results
from the pre-eminent and sometimes controversial role
of the CBC. CTV aroused less comment but did provide
an important alternative to the coverage provided by the
Corporation.
(14) Miljan, "Key Journalists Accuse Networks of Meech
Lake Coverage Bias," On Balance, III:7 (July/August
1990),pp. 1-7. The percentages given here are presented
on p.4.
(15) Julia Nunes, "TV news tightens its belt," The Globe
and Mail, June 13, 1990, p.C1.
(16) Rick Salutin, "Brian and the Boys," Saturday Night,
CV:9 (November 1990), pp. 15-17, 85-87. See also Morris
Wolfe, "The Globe and CBC as Mulroney apologists? Not
on your dice," The Globe and Mail, November 11, 1990,
p.C1.
(17) Douglas Fisher, "Massaging the Meech `crisis',
Ottawa Sun, June 15, 1990.
(18) Elly Alboim, "Inside the News Story: Meech Lake As
Viewed By An Ottawa Bureau Chief," Roger Gibbon (ed.),
Meech Lake and Canada: Perspectives from the West,
Edmonton: Academic printing and Publishing, 1988, p.
236.
(19) Throughout this piece, Alboim does not speak for
the CBC alone but for "political journalists," the
Parliamentary "press gallery", "reporters" in general.
Although he notes that "the gallery" was divided gener-
ationally and linguistically on how it perceived the
Accord (p.240) one must assume that the views he ex-
pounded in his conference contribution governed his own
actions as the CBC News Ottawa Bureau Chief.
(20) Trina McQueen, "How the CBC covered Meech Lake."
(21) "Key Journalists Accuse Networks," pp.3-4.
(22) McQueen, op.cit.
(23) Ibid. This rare insider account was prompted by Ms.
McQueen's awareness that since the CBC had played so
important a role in the coverage of Meech, it was
incumbent on her to describe its methods. She likened
this responsibility to that the Corporation assumes with
respect to the publication of the details of its opinion
polls. This is a notion to which we shall return.
(24) For a graph tracing the shifts in opinion from 1987
to 1990 see Figure 5.6 in Michael Adams and Mary-Jane
Lennon, "The Public's View of the Canadian Federation,"
in R.L. Watts and D.M. Brown (eds.), Canada: The State
of the Federation 1990, Kingston: Queen's University,
Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, 1990, p. 107.
(25) Richard Simeon, "Why Did the Meech Lake Accord
Fail?" in R.L. Watts and D.M. Brown (eds.), Canada:The
State of the Federation 1990, Kingston: Queen's Univer-
sity, Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, 1990,
p.21.
(26) A. Campbell, P.E. Converse, W.E. Miller, and D.E.
Stokes, The American Voter, New York: John Wiley & Sons,
1960, pp. 24-32 and passim.
(27) McQueen, op. cit.
(28) Alboim, op. cit.
(29) Royal Commission on Newspapers, Report, Ottawa:
Minister of Supply and Services, 1981, p.237.
(30) Ibid.; (Gerald Caplan and Florian Sauvageau, Chair-
men) Report, Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services,
1986. Special Senate Committee on Mass Media, (Hon.
Keith Davey, Chairman) Report; Ottawa: 1970.
(31) The cultural community, for instance, which had
been extremely active in the free trade debate, was
rarely heard from.
------------------------------------------------------------
John Meisel is a professor of Political Studies at
Queen's University, Kingston Ont., and past chairman of
the CRTC.
Copyright 1991
Communication Institute for Online Scholarship, Inc.
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