Petaling Bias

Election campaigns are what partisans dream of - red meat time when ideologists can sink their teeth into issues and somehow be excused for their lack of factual basis or objectivity. With millions of dollars of ads, promotional literature galore, and candidates preferring the simple over the complex, the possibility of clarity becomes increasingly unlikely. And so we depend on the media to assist us in fact-checking and objectivity lest we get lost in the abundance of the ridiculous.Personally I thought the debate was good and that the level of conversation elevated each leader in certain respects, in the process guaranteeing no clear winner by a knockout. But what do you do when the media itself plays to the prejudicial? When it brings its own bias into what is supposed to be objective reporting? That's a tough one and the coverage following the recent leader's debate had its share of blarney.Consider just one example. One pundit well-known for his right-wing leanings just couldn't put his bias aside to assist citizens in carving their way through the various arguments put forth. "Iggy Channels Mao" was his heading. Michael Ignatieff's statement, "Let some flowers bloom here, let democracy breathe. Let it live,” somehow convinced this particular pundit that the Liberal leader was calling on the ghost of Mao Tse-Tung. He then made his conjecture worse by wondering why Ignatieff would quote someone who was one of history's great mass murderers. Some within the mainstream media and online took the reporter to task for such an implausible reach. Except it wasn't such a reach for the writer in question because he was already there; he barely had to move his mind.One has to ask: How many of the millions who watched the contest and heard Ignatieff's statement actually thought he was quoting Mao? I bet you it was hardly anyone. It takes a certain mind to think that way and Canadians, by and large, don't meander down such mental pathways. When it comes to the knowledge of history and human rights, it's likely that Ignatieff is the most versed, followed perhaps by Duceppe. Ignatieff was merely wondering why the Prime Minister was shutting down every voice of opposition that questioned his government in things as diverse as foreign aid, the professional bureaucracy, or even Parliament itself. And when he looked for a metaphor to describe the crying need for openness, he spoke of "blooming" and "flowers" and then concluded by asking the PM what he was afraid of.There were something fitting in that moment of eloquence, but not to the pundit; he suddenly got what he was looking for. And in so doing the writer attempted to mould his readers with a slanted conclusion as opposed to permitting the viewers of the debate to figure it out on their own. They had no idea it was a murderer's quote. Ignatieff certainly never attributed it that way. But it was just too good for the writer to pass up.So, just as a form of mild rebuttal, let looks again at the quote (“Let some flowers bloom here, let democracy breathe. Let it live,”) and see who else might have uttered something similar. There was the Time magazine article of July 27, 1981 for example, where the writer looked for a symbol of the emerging Solidarity movement in Poland and hit upon: "Poland: A Flower of Democracy." Or how about something as recent as a few weeks ago when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in observing the remarkable changes coursing throughout the region, described it as, "A flowering of liberty and democracy in the Arab world?" I'm sure the pundit is a fan of one of America's great conservative presidents, Ronald Reagan, so here's one that emerged straight from the Great Communicator's mouth: "Democracy is not a fragile flower; still it needs cultivating."Here's my favourite, and it should be one of the pundit's as well. It's eloquent and sage, but it's hardly Maoist:

Did you too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for politics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use there that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruit in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between people and their beliefs - in religion, literature, colleges and schools - democracy in all public and private life."

Catch the flowering of democracy in that beautiful sentiment by Walt Whitman? If every MP, leader, citizen and pundit practiced these words our nation would be in an entirely different place. Politicians are already too partisan and that must change. But when the gatekeepers of objectivity - the media - tolerate resorting to the Mao imagery, then truth is lost to ignorance, and then we all lose.