Living and working on the rural prairies, we often tend to get caught up in repetitive issues: low income, rural communities slipping away, stress, elevator consolidation, branch-line abandonment, to name a few.
Last week, a group of journalists from rural Saskatchewan learned that things could be much worse.
Speaking to the Saskatchewan Weekly Newspapers Association, former foreign correspondent Michael McIvor detailed his experiences in Serbia and Bosnia over the last 15 months, where he has been assessing the needs of local media.
Some newspapers have had their offices bombed, some publish with little or no advertising to pay the bills, some face newsprint shortages and publish sporadically. All face low sales: “Most people tend to prefer to buy food rather than newspapers when they haven’t much money and with unemployment estimated to be about 70 percent, there’s a lot of Bosnians without much money.”
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He told about newspapers being produced in a high-rise laundry room and in a room “that can only be described as a large closet,” of one that had three typewriters but only one desk and no chairs, and of another operating in premises with no heat.
He spoke of harassment of journalists, and about local businesses who might advertise “in publications that aren’t toeing the party line.” Many journalists work without pay, he said. International aid keeps many papers in operation, but the assistance is for equipment and training, not wages or operating costs.
Many of the journalists are very young, he said, many are untrained and most lack “good journalistic traditions.”
The consequence, McIvor said, is that “many editors and reporters are not aware of the differences between strong opinions and racism, between forceful commentary and advocating violence.”
While committed to trying to develop a democratic system, they don’t understand he said, because it’s not in their tradition, “that the strength of democratic societies is pluralism of opinion and an obligation of media outlets to reflect this diversity in order to promote public dialogue and try to instill those greatest of all tools in developing and sustaining democracies – accommodation and compromise.”
In a mature democracy such as we enjoy in Canada, McIvor said, community newspapers and the consitutency they serve (the grassroots) are bulwarks of democracy.
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