The Club Strikes Back!

Conflicts?

WeDon'tHaveNoStinkin'Conflicts!Ville

In case you missed it, there is a very exclusive Club in Lotusland.

And, as Ian Reid explained some time ago, you and I are not in it:

..The ties between BC’s media and the BC Liberals make the Murdochs look like pikers.

In England right now it’s a story that PM David Cameron employed the editor of the News of the World as his press secretary. In BC, half of the local CTV news broadcast work as political appointees for Christy Clark.

In England, Parliamentary committee members were shocked to hear how often Murdoch and his chief aides met or spoke with the Prime Minister. Bill Good, Rick Cluff and others share personal relationships with BC Liberal premiers, Cabinet members and MLAs. They hang out. They golf together. They are personal friends.

There are many buddy/buddy relationships that get in the way of real reporting.

Dennis Skulsky – the former publisher of the Sun, Board of Trade activist and intense networker – consulted regularly with Premier Campbell. I don’t believe it’s any accident that the stadium roof was a Campbell priority given his relationship with Skulsky, the Lions biggest booster and now head of the club.

Every major outlet has some conflict… Editors are married to key BC Liberal strategists and PAB employees, former reporters staff government communications jobs using their connections to move government stories… The CBC’s bureau chief in Victoria is married to the Premier’s communications strategist…"

It all works one way. The club at the top is a club that doesn’t admit New Democrats. That’s not to say there aren’t some exceptions, mostly to be found amongst the reporters, but it’s very true that the higher you go in the decision making pile, the rarer it is to find someone from the centre let alone the centre left.

That’s a problem because the club works towards one end, one vision – it’s not interested in a world of conflicting ideas and difficult truths. It’s not interested in the things that are usually considered the role of the media to deliver.

In BC – from the Sun to Global TV – the stories, the editorials, the views that are expressed tend to support one end of the ideological spectrum. It doesn’t serve BC well...

So.

Should we be surprised that 'The Club' is ignoring the heart of Kirk Lapointe's ruling that there is the potential for a conflict of interest when the Legislative Bureau Chief for CBC and the Premier's Chief Legislative Bureau Deflector Spinner are life partners as they circle their wagons.

Of course not.

The Exile has a whole lot more, including a tweet from, gasp!, Rod Mickleburgh.

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