To the Editor,
Re: Free publicity helped U.S. president-elect win in ‘post-truth’ era, Letters, Nov. 29.
Journalism isn’t about being ‘fair and balanced,’ it’s about being focused, uncompromisingly so, on the quest for truth.
Sworn to secrecy at all levels (federal, provincial and municipal), obfuscation and dissemble are the only means by which those in government might dare communicate with those they are empowered to govern.
Obfuscation and dissemble are not new to politics. Mendacity was not invented by Donald Trump for the sake of the latest presidential election campaign. The existence of secrecy makes lying an inherent part of all ‘liberal/representative/parliamentary’ ‘democratic’ processes. It’s what imbues those who endure the charade of Question Period with anger and dyspepsia.
‘Fair and balanced’ is a disingenuous platitude, a rationalization, a job description to excuse those of the fourth estate who would fancy themselves neutral in the babble machinery’s propaganda wars. Neutrality should be seen as the bane of truth because neutrality is the lie’s great enabler. The neutrality of ‘fair and balanced’ is willing deference to the spectacle of the reeling and writhing born of conflicting political ambition, distraction, uglification and derision – the kind of myth-making that would distract us into laying the blame on the personality of Donald Trump rather than the flawed structures of government that enable he and other such parasites a stranglehold on near-absolute power.
David S. DunawaySouth Wellington