Election 2010: The Big Three and Mainstream Media

Mahesh Butani was a mayoral candidate in the 2010 election.

He's a contemporary, a regular conversation-mate, an 'influencer' on this journey of mine...about as close to a 'mentor' as I may ever have had, regardless of what aspect of Life we're talking about.

He's a friend. (Please check out the 'Solutions' portion of his candidacy website; there's some truly innovative, ingenious, inspirational material there.)

In a recent blog post, I referenced him thusly:

"Was I angry at the way MSM covered 'The Big Three' to the exclusion of others? Not so much*."

This then, is the post to address that asterisk.

The way MSM covered 'The Big Three' candidates (Bratina, Eisenberger and DiIanni), specifically The Spec, was contentious. To some more than others. Mahesh fell into the former camp.

In fact, he experienced some skirmishes with The Spec, specifically over some of Andrew Dreschel's columns. And wasn't timid about launching quite-pointed 'rebuttals'. In standalone articles, in the Comments sections of The Hamiltonian and Raise the Hammer as well as to letters to The Spec and to its publisher Howard Elliott.

I don't have the particulars at my fingertips, and to be frank, I'm not here to pick apart the verité of the situation, to take sides, or to hold forth on whether there was any validity to Mahesh's belief that he in particular was treated shabbily.

And to be honest, I believe that Mahesh and I agreed to disagree about the appropriateness of MSM training their focus on (admittedly often to the utter exclusion of) 'The Big Three'. In fact, I addressed this issue here, last October, three weeks before the election.

What I am here to yammer-on about is how taking MSM to task over their reportage is entirely the wrong way of addressing the issue.

To wit: if someone is overweight (and we're going to play nice and offer up the disclaimer that this situation is not a 'medical' one, nor attributable to 'genetics'...) the 'Reasons Behind the Reasons' approach to this dilemma isn't to examine the person's diet. Nor is it even to examine their activity levels. To me, the proper approach is to examine their life, take an honest look at what it is that's prompting them to be taking in the calories they are. ('Emotional eating' being a much, much more prevalent contributor to obesity than people are prepared to acknowledge...and very much influences the kinds of food people ingest.)

In this situation, regarding MSM's coverage of 'The Big Three', or even pushing out the boundaries of the discussion, local governance in general, to me the solution isn't an examination of MSM's inner workings, taking a look at the editorial mandates as handed down by The Powers That Be, then, if there are questionable practices in play, taking whatever actions seem 'reasonable' to correct this bad choice in course-plotting.

To me, the solution involves addressing a part of the formula that's labeled 'victim' in this apparent transgression of the use of newspapers, radio and television: the public.

I believe the argument about how 'The Big Three' were covered comes down to 'the public were denied opportunities of choice.'

My problem with this is that it paints 'the public' as vulnerable. It paints them as lemmings. As sheeple. And while this may in fact be true to a great extent, especially regarding Hamilton politics, to me the solution isn't to prevent the public from being directed like so many addle-pated simpletons by some kind of watchdog or Promise of Fair Coverage by MSM...

...the solution involves empowering 'the public' to an extent that in fact, it's calling the shots as to what gets covered, not Howard Elliott and his contemporaries.

Think about it: were what I'm proposing actually come to be, a genuine and sustained 'increase in the relationship of engagement between residents and their Councillors in local governance', then the landscape would shift dramatically. It would be a 'sea change'.

An engaged citizenry wouldn't stand for being manhandled by The Spec, CHCH, CHML, whomever. And quite frankly, MSM would know it. They'd know it, and further, they wouldn't throw a snit-fit over it...they'd actually cater to it. After all, MSM doesn't want enemies. It wants a profitable degree of compliance. (Yes, this can be confused with being 'complicit'.) Because it all comes down to ad dollars, and if people aren't buyin'...then Houston, we've got a problem.

An engaged citizenry would already have certain expectations going into an election. It would be pro-active in its assessment of candidates. It would be organizing 'meet-and-greets', town halls, etc...it would be pro-active from start to finish, so really, there wouldn't be any opportunity for MSM to 'manipulate' the election process...because the residents wouldn't have taken on a 'pliant' role, a vulnerable role, the guise of sheeple.

So in this 'sea change' dynamic, Mahesh Butani wouldn't have been subject to anywhere near the 'abandonment' he felt himself subject to last year. He would have had opportunities that our current paradigm simply couldn't have provided, given its current mandate.

In a very real sense, all of this comes down to the people taking back what's theirs: the power to determine their own future.

And to think: all it takes is a little initiative and everything begins to change.