Thread by @Norlaine

This seems timely to repost. Remember Maher Arar? He was the man who was so unfortunate as to fall within the sights of one Bob Fife. Fife's writing, among others, resulted in Mr. Arar being detained and tortured. What the journos wrote ... 1/12 #cdnpoli
thewalrus.ca/hear-no-evil-w…

was completely wrong. They took something they had been told and caused an innocent man to be imprisoned and tortured. That they have never shown any contrition for this speaks volumes about them. If I had written something that caused such grievous wrong, I don't think I
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would ever write again. I am sure they don't feel they are to blame. They just reported what they were told. But should they have? The most charitable way of looking at it is, they were given "exclusive" info that would make a huge story, and they ran with it...
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Without due diligence, fact checking, reasonable confirmation of the story. A less charitable view is that maybe they were in on it. In on the political game where poor Mr. Arar was merely an unfortunate pawn.
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If it was the former, simply journalistic exuberance, reporters being caught up in the headiness of a really good scoop, one would expect them, given the fallout of that, to be extremely circumspect when vetting anonymous tips, knowing as they now do,
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how powerful their words are. Journalists have a weighty responsibility. What they write can change a society, start a revolution, or cause innocent people to suffer and maybe die. They have a responsibility to report, accurately and fairly, unimpeachable truths.
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Journalists should not be willing participants in the machinations of political intrigues. That is not their role. Parties have public relations departments for that. Nevertheless, there are some journalists that one party or another know they can go to when they
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want a rumour started, or a "scandal" launched. It doesn't have to be even remotely true, as we saw in Maher Arar's case. It just has to get out there. Some people will believe, and no amount of retractions or evidence to the contrary will shake their belief.
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That's the game. Even if the government is eventually shown to have done nothing wrong, some people will not believe the truth and others will just have had their perceptions of the government changed, just a bit, That's the game. The CPC doesn't really expect...
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any one of these "scandals" to topple the government. They hope it does, but that's not the main goal. No. What they are doing is whittling away at the public's confidence in the Liberals so that, when eventually there is an election, they might win. And the funny
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thing is, the CPC don't actually care about any of the issues. They had plenty of dark dealing while in power. And they aren't "sticking up for Canadians" in any way. They want to be in power again. And anything they can cook up to pin on the government furthers that goal.
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Journalists should not be complicit in this. That is not their role. They are not supposed to steer the country one way or the other. They are supposed to educate and inform the public of the truth, so that we may make up our own minds.
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