From the Calgary Herald – Jan 14, 2010

While it is my great privilege to write on this page every couple of weeks, I’m not a real journalist. I do research from my desk and make a bunch of phone calls for each column, sure, but I then get to add my own opinion to the facts and try to make a line of argument.

I never met Michelle Lang. Yet, when I heard the radio announce her tragic death, and the newscaster herself cried, I have to admit that I cried too.

While I didn’t know her, I certainly knew her writing. I remember reading her piece on doctors being recruited to Alberta from South Africa and thinking “wow!”

It was a sensitive story about a difficult situation with no pat answers, but written in an engaging style, even when the details were harrowing. Not for nothing did she win the highest accolade in Canada — the National Newspaper Award — for this work.

But it wasn’t just for this shining talent lost that I cried. I also cried because of the work that she did, and for my great fortune in living in a country that has a free press, that values the skill of brave journalists who want to do nothing else but bring us the true story, to give us the information we need to formulate our own opinions and make our own decisions.

This is probably why I was so annoyed when I read the work of one blogger who, blinded by his own opposition to the war in Afghanistan, suggested that reporters are somehow instruments of propaganda, sent to further the pro-war cause.

This is not only offensive in the extreme, it’s absurd. The whole basis of our media system, corporate-owned or independent, is to question collective wisdom and common assumptions.

To be crass about it, it’s dissent and new ways of thinking that make reputations, build brand, and yes, win awards.

Did the Washington Post become known as one of the great papers because it defended Nixon?

Did the New York Times refuse to publish the Pentagon Papers for fear of undermining the war effort in Vietnam? Indeed, did any of the National Newspaper Award winners last year comfort the comfortable or parrot the “approved” point of view?

I’m not suggesting that Canadian media is perfect. Far from it. We need more diversity of voices, more questioning, and more speaking truth to power. Editorial pages like this one should be even better at being homes for voices that dissent from the mainstream.

We haven’t solved the question of how to better engage citizen bloggers and new technology. Television and radio broadcasters need to pander less to who they think their audiences are, and engage more.

(Both sides are equally bad for this — on CBC Radio One Wednesday, an interview with an anti-gay evangelist was greeted with no less than three disclaimers that listeners might find his views offensive. I did find them offensive, but really, can’t listeners be trusted to make that determination themselves? On the other hand, every time I find myself on right-wing radio, I wonder why the hosts are always so angry about everything all the time.)

To honour Michelle Lang, then, I will rededicate myself to the task of asking hard questions, of not accepting what I am told. I hope that real journalists will follow suit and do even more of what they’ve always done — from covering city hall to the Saddledome, from gilded boardrooms to the halls of Parliament, their bringing of light into dusty corners is a cornerstone of our society, and one for which I am deeply grateful.

Naheed Nenshi teaches at Mount Royal University’s Bissett School of Business.

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