Altered States - Why MPs Don't Blog

When I first came to Parliament over two years ago, I knew a number of MPs who used personal blogs as a means for getting their message out. I recall reading some of them and most were partisan ruminations that followed the standard political line. You don't see nearly as much of it any more. I talked to a number of them and learned that at some point or other they got burned or suffered embarrassment with their blogs. Though they all blamed the media for a "gotcha" kind of journalism, I discovered that much of the fuss occurred because they wrote in a controversial manner, or that an opposition party took a "screenshot" of an racey posting and used it for political purposes.It's fair to say that the moment a politician posts anything it's fair game in the public arena. And if they are going to write about something partisan and controversial, they should expect what's surely going to come. Yet there are those times when MPs attempt to put out some serious stuff, only to find themselves in the headlines the next day because media outlets didn't give such postings the seriousness they deserved. I must have been warned dozens of times in Parliament against blogging, lest I too become another casualty of the blogging wars. Yet I have to acknowledge that, overall, the media has treated my own postings with fairness.Nevertheless, MPs not communicating anymore through such venues is a troubling development. We continue to overlook the reality that journalists themselves have contributed to some serious political discussions. At the original Charlottetown Conference in 1864, which led to Confederation, 23 of the 98 delegates were journalists. Serious media thinkers were often friends of political leaders and helped to formulate their thinking. Sometimes such journalistic influence provided needed pause in times of heated national debate. At a time when the French-language media proved to be a support structure for Quebec nationalism, and the English Canadian media became too closely tied to American influence, clear-thinking journalists often helped us to wade through some pretty controversial waters. The 1988 debate on Free Trade was one prime example.Things are different today. To be sure, such seriousness in journalism continues to raise its head occasionally, but by and large the "gotcha" age is fully upon us and has cheapened good public debate in the process. In most cases now, a communion wafer, a funding decision for a gay pride parade, an opposition leader ruminating on taxes, or a PM arriving late for a G8 photo shoot leads in the new cycle.When MPs enter the blogosphere with their demonizing rants, they often get what they deserve. And when media types attempt to sell the public on shallow controversy, they too suffer as a result. Unfortunately, such practices have, more frequently than not, put a saddening distance between the serious thinkers of both camps who would like to have meaningful discussions over the national state. So, we have arrived at the place where reflective MPs don't blog and serious journalists won't write on serious issues that just won't sell. The historical healthy tension between politicians and the media has now become a debilitating arena of national distraction. Things have clearly changed and only serious dialogue, thinking and writing within these two camps can bring us back to a serious national mood. It would be interesting to see what the journalists/delegates at Charlottetown would make of all this.