Independent media speaks truth about power

“My whole reason for devoting more than ten years to rabble.ca was the belief that the only way we could turn politics around was through independent media. There is no other way.” -- Duncan Cameron.

“We have a serious, serious illness and it comes from this dominant perspective of we report the world from the point of view of the investor. Then, we have the government perspective which is American. They are basically aligning themselves with the Americans on every issue.” – Duncan Cameron, President Emeritus rabble.ca.

After graduating from the University of Alberta, Cameron joined the Department of Finance in 1966 working there until 1969. During that time, he dealt with international programs including a stint as financial advisor to the Canadian Delegation at the United Nations General Assembly in 1967.

Being a man with diverse interests, views and ideas, he wanted to share them in the public domain.

When he returned to Canada (1975) armed with a PhD from Sorbonne Universite, Cameron started to do just that as a political science lecturer, and later professor, at the University of Ottawa from 1975 to 2007.

He also sent an article to the Globe and Mail with the headline, Do Lower Wages Lead to Economic Prosperity? The opinion page editor initially accepted the piece, but called the following day to say the article had been killed.

“Because it didn’t fit with their mandate, as they saw it, which was to deliver an audience to advertisers. The advertisers were employers, not employees,” Cameron shared during an interview with Small Change.

He added, “They were not going to make an argument from the perspective of an employee. I considered it to be a perspective of the whole economy.”

Cameron maintains that employee-employer relations are central to the economy, but that we only get the perspective of the investor -- the neoliberal perspective -- that prefers policies promoting free-market capitalism, deregulation, and reduced government spending.

Cameron likened that experience to when the Macdonald Commission (1982 – 1984) was asked why they hadn’t included the feminist perspective in their groundbreaking neoconservative report recommending the free trade agreement, welfare reform, and moving to an elected Senate.

Donald Macdonald’s response was simply, “Well, we have a section on family policy.”

“Well, I’m sorry, the feminist perspective is the whole economy It’s not about family policy,’ maintains Cameron.

Cameron attended the first meeting for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) – a productive, progressive think-tank. Unfortunately, that went nowhere.

Instead, he co-authored a book with Catholic theologian Gregory Baum called Ethics and Economics: Canada’s Catholic Bishops on the Economics Crisis (1984). That was the first of 11 books he either co-authored or edited.

At that time, writing a book got you interviews. Cameron had many interviews on FM radio stations who were mandated to do more than just play music.

In addition to the radio interviews, the Globe and Mail and Carleton newspapers covered the book launch.

When Cameron went on book tours, he typically did ten interviews a day. That schedule might include a live television interview, another for the CBC, and the rest would be for local university newspapers or FM radio stations.

Unfortunately, those Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) regulations were changed the FM station interviews dried up.

Then, the newspapers stopped publishing book reviews. And, writing books, as Cameron sees it, became useless.

For 11 years, Cameron was editor of the left leaning political, cultural and literary magazine, Canadian Forum. The longest running Canadian political magazine was active from 1920 to 2000.

 He also spent 12 years as president for the CCPA using press releases to get their material out.

“Largely we [CCPA] were censored. They [Canadian media] wouldn’t cover it for the first ten or 15 years that I was involved in it,” shared Cameron.

He went on to say, “Now, it’s ok, but there was a period there where they just wouldn’t cover anything. So, there is strong censorship in the media and CBC was involved in that.”

Despite extensively researching and writing about the impacts of free trade on Canada’s economy as well as its undermining of the political, social, and cultural fabric of the country, Cameron was never invited to speak about it on English CBC.

That censorship, however, didn’t extend to Radio-Canada the French branch of the CBC where Cameron still has a regular spot on Phar-Quest.  

“They were open to the left and always thought the left was a normal part of a public discussion. But in English Canada, starting with Barbara Frum and her friends, we adopted this attitude that the right-wing perspective is the only perspective worth paying attention to. In that world, the market decides government is no good, Ronald Reagan is right, and the media is full of Reaganites,” stated Cameron.

Media knows what they’re doing is wrong, but do it anyway. Cameron says they’re afraid to go against the dominant perspective that media believes drives their profession.

Take the Globe and Mail for example, they got rid of their beat reporters along with the food, architecture, and books sections. Climate change hasn’t been covered in a any meaningful way to help Canadians understand the real significance of it. And, according to Cameron, their Ottawa bureau has one mandate and that’s to lynch Justin Trudeau.

When Judy Rebick founded rabble.ca in 2001, Cameron became a founder and urged the CCPA to sponsor it.

He also began writing a column for rabble.ca, then became the associate publisher, and finally the president.

“My whole reason for devoting more than ten years to rabble.ca was the belief that the only way we could turn politics around was through independent media. There is no other way,” said Cameron.

He maintains critical thinkers need to have access to material so they can engage in meaningful discussion about these ideas with others.

For Cameron that authentic media looks like the Financial Times of London which he believes is the best English language newspaper. Le Monde, Le Figaro, and Liberation – independently owned French language papers – are also worth reading.

The Wallstreet Journal is a very good paper with the exception of the weekend edition.

Radio-Canada, of course is a great choice for listeners and they do a good job publishing news as well.

X – formerly Twitter -- with its links was a good place to find articles worthy of critical discussion, but it’s quickly dissolving under Elon Musk.

Cameron has also found good material posted on Facebook.

Filling in the gaps are online sites like Substack where you’ll find the writings of great minds like Chris Hedges, Seymour Hersh, Nora Loretto, Robert Reich, and Margaret Shkimba.

Still, Cameron believes there’s a place for intelligent newspapers. He even tried to get the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) to purchase the Globe and Mail when it was for sale so they could turn it into a real newspaper.

Instead, Bell purchased it and eviscerated CTV news by letting 1,200 journalists, including their best people, go.

The CBC website is still strong competition because they have journalists across the country. However, Cameron says their personnel are weak and their on-camera programming is awful.

English CBC Radio with their American focus is rubbish. The dearth of full-time local producers has impacted local coverage. The CBC no longer has experienced people with extensive contacts able to give expert interviews in any given situation.

How did Canadian media devolve into such a sorry state?

Well, Cameron harkens back to the 1960’s and the air of public affairs when historians, lawyers, political scientists, and economists would hold discussions and invite the public to join in.

By the mid-1960’s, that open forum was replaced by public policy where a group of ‘experts’ used quantitative measures to identify problems.

That evolved into the Rational Choice Theory -- people making choices based on self-interest and benefits – which Cameron maintains is basically garbage and results in poor outcomes.

That has morphed into the current Age of Public Relations and spin doctors. What really happened in any given situation is of no significance at all. The only thing that really matters is what people think happened.

What a politician does really doesn’t matter. What people think that politician did matters.

That’s why politicians use well chosen sound bites devoid of meaningful content that really don’t say a thing.

This is the way politicians ensure that what they say today doesn’t cost them votes down the line.

Real problems are treated as public relations problems and most times, Cameron says, that comes back to bite them.

“There is an attack on knowledge. Deny the experts any access so there’s no expert opinion to contradict, or inform anybody, or to unsettle the audience, or to show the weakness of the powers that be.”

That’s why mainstream news is full of spin doctors instead of informed experts or left-leaning politicians willing to speak truth about power.