A Pertinent Media Response
Interesting responses to the blog yesterday about the present government's move out of Africa and my own concern that not enough critique is being done in the media by either the opposition parties or the media itself.The producer of the "Politics" program with Don Newman emailed me yesterday feeling I had perhaps misrepresented the actual account of the program itself. I had been informed it was a four-minute segment but he corrected me by saying it was six minutes. Furthermore, he assessed the time allotted to Mr. Abbott and myself and determined it was roughly equal. I think this is surely the correct view, and I thank him for the correction. I wrote back and immediately apologized, stating that since I had expressed some misinformation on my blog publicly yesterday, I would apologize publicly on it today. It was a fair point and he provided a good rejoinder to my comments. And my apologies to Mr. Newman. I have fought hard in Ottawa and London against the cuts for CBC and I should have done better for it in this case.Nevertheless, I'm still troubled by how the pulling out of Africa gets by without much notice. Two days previous, the CIDA minister held a press conference on the shift and only the government's position was carried in the media. Given that my response to it was approximately three minutes long on the "Politics" show, that means the government line got the vast majority of the time over all allotted to the story through all the media.What is an opposition to do? One thing's for sure: we shouldn't misrepresent the media, even unintentionally, as I did yesterday. But we're talking about real development dollars, real people and now real loss in Africa. That continent has occupied the minds of average Canadians for almost four decades now and has been a primary policy directive for all the opposition parties and not a few Conservative members. That the shift of long-term aid to Africa is going "quietly into the night" with little fanfare is not only troubling but also just another example of how the present government is getting something of a free ride when it comes to major policy shifts subtly handled.My thanks to the producer for the kind rebuttal, but my sadness for the people of Rwanda and my condolences to Romeo Dallaire remain.
The greatest gift we can give one another is rapt attention to one another’s existence”
Sue Atchley Ebaugh