| By Randall
McCauley, Special to PoliticsWatch.com (September 7, 2001)
NBC
national news recently ran a story headlined "Summer of the
Shark", about deadly shark attacks on the US east coast.
This
headline was misleading because, as NBC eventually reported, shark
attacks were actually down by about 20 per cent this summer.
Furthermore, official US government fishing statistics show the
shark catch is also down. So there are fewer sharks and,
naturally, fewer attacks.
Television viewers would be forgiven for thinking the opposite.
So
what’s the point? This example draws a tidy parallel to the National
Post's coverage of Conrad Black's decision to sell his
remaining shares in the paper to the Asper family.
Let's
recap...
Conrad
Black launched the National Post in October 1998. By the
time he sold it last week, it had lost $190 million. Yet the National
Post itself declared the venture a great success, going so far
as to take credit for the biggest tax cut in Canadian history,
announced by the Prime Minister last fall.
One
Post columnist hilariously declared Black successful
because, as she put it, he "… promised to build a better
paper. Then he did it."
Canadians
know Conrad Black as a gazillionaire businessman who lives in
England. In fact, he is renowned for his business acumen. He’s
the wheeler-dealer who bought and sold newspapers to make money,
often gutting newsrooms in the process. Black has never been
known, however, for journalistic altruism.
Of
course, in business, the standard by which you are always judged
is whether you make money and not whether you are a good guy.
Now,
to his credit, for a while, Black did prove naysayers in the
business community wrong by actually making money from his
newspaper empire.
However,
by the same standard, the National Post is really a
colossal failure. Remember, it did loose $190 million!
This
whole episode brings to mind American media coverage of the
100-metre race at the 1996 Olympics. Until Canadian Donovan Bailey
set a new world record and won the gold medal, the fastest man in
the world had always been the winner of the 100-metre race.
But
the winner of the 100-metre race had also usually been an
American.
After
Bailey's victory, some American commentators began introducing
Michael Johnson, the American who won the 200-metre race, as the
fastest man in the world.
Likewise,
Conrad Black had always been judged as a businessman until the Post
turned into a financial failure. Apparently, standards at the Post
change if you can't meet them. I guess if you set the bar low
enough everyone is a success.
Imagine
if the National Post had been a fancy new federal
government program or initiative. Imagine if, instead of
journalists, the best policy minds were recruited from business
and academe. Imagine if, instead of editors, the best bureaucrats
in the country were cobbled together from federal and provincial
governments. Imagine if, after three years, the program didn't do
much except pay its own staff really well while spending $190
million taxpayer dollars.
I
wonder which newspaper would be calling for the cancellation of
the program, and the heads of all its employees and supporters,
and likely the Prime Minister to boot.
Why,
the National Post, of course!
You
have to admire the Post for its gumption and ability to
look reality in the face and ignore what it sees. In addition to
succeeding to the tune of minus $190 million it invented tax cuts
too, don't you know, the editorial tells me so.
Remember
the Russian officer, Chekov, from the original Star Trek series.
Whenever someone did something like turn on the lights Chekov
would say something like "electricity, great Russian
invention." To Chekov’s way of thinking, Russians invented
everything good in the world and we all laughed out loud at the
play on Russian propaganda.
Well,
thanks to the National Post, those good old days are back.
To wit: "Without
it [the National Post] ... taxes would not have been
cut," blared the editorial the day after Black sold his 50
per cent stake in the paper.
General
hilarity might have ensued, but not at the Post, Chekovs all.
The
fact is the Post had nothing to do with the last round of
federal tax cuts. The cuts were the next logical step for the
government that eliminated the deficit, reduced the debt and
invested in priorities like healthcare, education and R&D. It
did all this before 1998, before the National Post graced
us with its brilliance.
So,
is the Post a success?
As
a business, no. As a newspaper, well, maybe. Only time will tell.
It
does have lots of good writers and while some of the columnists
are wildly out of touch, others are brilliant at cutting through
the crud.
The
best papers only become known as the best because they stick
around for a while. Being a success is a distinction earned over
time.
Whether
or not the Post will be a good paper depends on where the
Aspers take it from here and whether they can stem the flow of red
ink. If they do, it will be an unquestioned success, even if
Liberals only get to write the odd column or two.
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