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Page THE WEEKEND OUTLOOK Friday March 1991 Slamdunked by Welcome to the club Georgetown and indeed all of Helton Hills Now you know what it feels like to be slamdunked by the media And we certainly were slam- dunked by the CBC last Tuesday In the first instalment of its documentary series on pro test groups in Ontario com munities I fed very much a part of our community and I thought the CBC report was extremely negative in every sense of the word It was noted in the report there were at least 17 groups in Helton Hills actively Involved in making their concerns public about issues that impacted on their lives What the CBC showed for the most part however were the more outspoken elements in some of these groups whose anger at perceived inaction for their cause led to temper tan trums One wonders as well whether these supposed angry citizens were not just playing up to the camera In the same vein the CBC only covered one Town of Hills council meeting and this reporter was told by an informed source that the television network had been contacted and urged to at tend the council meeting because the fur was going to fly Talk about a setup According to Hills Herald senior reporter Ben who covers council meetings on average only members of the public attend council meetings and again on average only two delegations directly address council with their concerns at the regular weekly council meetings So much for rampant rebellion The CBC also portrayed town council and Halton Hills Mayor Russ Miller in an unfair and negative fashion The council and indeed the mayor have been heeding citizens concerns as far as this reporter is concerned A person just has to read the stories that come out of council meetings to verify this fact On a more personal level I feel that I was used by the Much like the youngster who befriends a bedraggledlooking stray dog only to have the mangy mutt turn on him Two weeks ago I was contacted by Bob Field Producer for the CBC who said that he had been reading copies of the Herald which had been forward ed to him and that he was very impressed by our local coverage of events and issues He asked for my impressions of our community in general and our homegrown protest groups in particular Being the naive sort that I am I waxed enthusiastically about our community but suggested that rather than protest groups these organizations be viewed as activist groups who care about their community and that for the most part the people involved had taken the time to get to know the system and were working from within the system to initiate desired changes Mr Weiers asked if I would be willing to go before the camera to express my opinion and I agreed The showed up here a week ago last Thursday and I spent a good halfhour going over recent editions of the Herald with the interviewer Gould pointing out just what an active community we had with residents willing to get involved for the good of the community as a whole I pointed out how active our service clubs were how the Georgetown Legion recently donated to Georgetown and District Memorial Hospital how we had a very active seniors association how the community supported so many charities etc etc My point being that we had a thriving community that cared with people willing to roll up their sleeves to make their community a better place in which to live Then we got down to the televis ed Interview and somehow the situation changed One of the questions Gould asked was whether I would consider our protest groups to be comprised of radicals I recall answering along the lines that if he was attempting to compare our organizations to the protest groups of the 60s I didnt think so There might be a few GOs hip pies still involved but for the most part I said these groups were working within the system and making politicians and bureaucrats become more ac countable for their actions or in actions I also said that with our tough economic times people were becoming more concerned about where their money was being spent and demanding answers My interview with Gould continued along these lines with me attempting to put a positive slant on the stands local residents were taking and Gould attempting to put his or own slant on things Given the tone of the report on our community Im not surprised that my interview didnt air Not radical enough I suppose It likely wouldnt fit in with the obviously preconceived story idea that the was going to run with This runs against all the tenets of basic honest journalism You go where the story takes you you dont make the story follow you Granted there are leads you follow and if an issue is present within the story this is the angle you follow However you dont the story with bias you let the story write itself I dont feel the followed proper journalistic standards But who am I In the eyes of the CBC probably just the Managing Editor of a medium- sized community newspaper who cant see the forest for the trees Wrong again To all the guys and girls at there is this parrot I know As I see it anyway Editorial Write us a letter The Herald wants to hear from you If you have an opinion you want to express or a com ment to make send us a letter or drop by the office Our address is Guelph Street Georgetown Ontario All letters must be signed Please include your address and telephone number for verification The Herald reserves the right to edit letters due to space limitations The Halton Hills HERALD Home Newspaper of Hills Established A Division of Canadian Newspaper Company Limited 45 Guelph Street Georgetown Ontario L7G 3Z6 K ROBERT MALCOLMSON Publisher and General Manager 8772201 Ban CLASSIFIED Joan Mart Foreign tU0Q0ra I all month I ttMMIHRth and tola Tan a if Ontario Tho th not bo flabU lot arUIng of In paid lor apoco claat occupied partial ad In Men ihaorror occurred arm It lo Ha or and lor any atfrerttaomffil bayond tha amount for men peer IfliSUNGlfieWiW off Dew The wicked old media And so the wicked old media is under fire again You already know this of course Youve heard all about it in the wicked old media The most recent and spirited attack comes from beleagured BC Premier Bill Vander Zalm who maintains that his current problems stem from the fact that journalists being a cabal of left- wingers are waging an organiz ed campaign to discredit him Well I havent actually been a working newspaper reporter for more than a decade And some of my old editors were never sure that working reporter was the operative term in the first place But something needs to be said about this And since this is my column Im the guy who gets to say it So let me start by confessing that Mr Vander like numerous centreright before him is utterly correct in stating that newspaper reporters are a bunch of flaming leftists This is always true except when a centreleft government is in power in which case newspaper reporters suddenly become a bunch of rockribbed rightwingers Just ask the No one has ever managed to ex- plain this remarkable phenomenon but apparently it exists Reporters lead lives of agonizing confusion veering wildly between adoring Karl Marx and revering the Sheriff of Nottingham I came across a classic exam ple of this ideological bewilder ment in my own reporting days when a terrible controversy erupted over the newsrooms fee machine This enterprise was overseen by the City Editor a devout fiscal conservative who paid for the rental and the coffee out of his own pocket and then charged 25 cents a cup to cover operating ex penses Unfortunately he made the bad mistake of relying on the honor system Each morning the moneytin was full of little notes saying pay you the cents next week or Dear Mark were going to the pub so I bor rowed 10 bucks He eventually went bankrupt and retreated into a profound sulk while the rest of us tried to figure out who to blame Most of us concluded that the collapse of the coffee corporation reflected Marks woeful short comings as a businessman A few wondered whether this was ac tually a sign that the capitalist system was collapsing in which case we might consider establishing The Peoples Coffee Cooperative instead Eventually we just gave up and coffee from the machine in the advertising department In any case lets accept the basic premise that Canadas journalists constitute depending on the day and the party in power either a socialists horde or a rightwing brigade But this still leaves Mr Vander Zalms contention that there is an organized campaign to discredit him Ive been thinking back on all the reporters I worked with try ing to identify those who might be able to organize a provincewide media conspiracy So far cant think of anyone whod have been able to organize an Easter Egg hunt Granted media conspiracy theories presume that the organizational work is done by publishers And indeed publishers are good organizers But in my years as a reporter I never had a publisher try to tell me what to write No publisher ever asked to read my copy before it went to press and a cou ple of them didnt even seem to read it afterward think it just depressed them By and large they preferred to avoid being reminded that theyd hired me in the first place As such Id like to offer some reassurance to Mr Zalm Dear Sir Try not to worry about organized media con spiracies In my experience most reporters consider themselves wellorganized if they remember to keep their house key and their car key on the same ring And try not to think of reporters as a fanatical cell trying to pave the way to Revolution either Just dont sell them coffee on the honor system