Monitoring the establishment

Through his submissions to the Gomery inquiry, Rafe Mair points out that there's reason to wonder whether either the media or Parliament has both the ability and the will to confront wrongful government action:

"The sponsorship scandals and all your work, with respect, will just be matters to airbrush from the scene too, once enough time passes, if this commission doesn't recognize that the scandal itself is secondary to the public cynicism it fuels and doesn't see clearly that for all the sins committed, the greater sins may be the system itself and the passiveness of the national media."

"You can have, Mr. Commissioner, the best access to information laws and procedures in the world, but if neither our elected members nor the national media have both the means and the motive to use that access vigorously and often, we might just as well not have it."

"If we the people cannot have a constant bright light looking into the goings on of the government, there is no democracy."

Of course, in the context of Gomery it should be pointed out that media involvement played a meaningful role in allowing the story to be publicly known. But Mair is right to point out that access to information is fairly useless if it's not put to good effect - and media amalgamation seems very likely to have reduced the amount of attention directed toward trying to find new stories, rather than making use of press releases and public statements.

Granted, there are some countervailing forces which have at times put meanstream media coverage to shame in sorting out the details of an issue. But such examples may only highlight the fact that the traditional sources aren't doing their job. And that means there's all the more need for ongoing attention to issues which aren't yet in the public eye...in hopes that the truth about the next equivalent to the sponsorship scandal won't be discovered only several years and a new administration after the fact.