Western Producer staff
To news consumers, news reporting sometimes must seem like the process of taking a broad axe to cut down a sapling. Messages that seemed gentle or obvious when uttered may seem distorted and over-blown when published.
For reasons of space, time or the interest of their audience, reporters often reduce complex arguments to short, blunt messages that run roughshod over nuance or subtlety. The source of the information often cries foul, claiming misquote or more commonly, lack of context.
This leads us to James Blanchard, American ambassador to Canada, close friend of President Bill Clinton and latest self-proclaimed victim of Canadian media sensationalist reporting.
Read Also
Late season rainfall creates concern about Prairie crop quality
Praying for rain is being replaced with the hope that rain can stop for harvest. Rainfall in July and early August has been much greater than normal.
In late May, after U.S. agriculture secretary Mike Espy went to South America to try to recruit allies in his fight against Canadian Wheat Board selling practices, Blanchard called CBC Newsworld to offer an interview on the issue.
In the course of the interview, the ambassador repeated the American argument that Canada is more protectionist than the U.S. in supply managed areas of poultry, eggs and dairy products.
And he said Canadians should not feel persecuted by the U.S. and should not over-emphasize the trade dispute when most cross-border trade is friction-free.
But he also said Espy did not have the president’s approval to attack Canada from abroad and that there is no evidence to support Espy’s claim of wheat board “predatory pricing” in Brazilian markets. “I don’t agree with it.”
The Canadian government and Canadian news media played up his criticisms of Espy. A group of anti-wheat board American Senators protested to the White House and within days, Blanchard issued a statement affirming his support of Espy and complaining that his criticisms of Canadian practices had not been reported and his comments about Espy had been taken out of context.
So what are news consumers on the Prairies to think? Was the intent of Blanchard’s comment distorted to serve a Canadian government agenda? Was the reporting of a split in the U.S. administration unfounded?
A reading of the full text of Blanchard’s interview does show that criticism of Canada was omitted from Canadian government transcripts of the interview, but so what? To have a U.S. ambassador take the administration line is hardly new.
His criticism of a senior official of his own government was new and became news. A call to the embassy for clarification and further comment drew a response that the ambassador had nothing to add.
As a former U.S. governor, Blanchard would know that media reporting is not meant to offer a full transcript of remarks. It is meant to indicate what is new or different in a story.
A professional politician like him would know that. A professional politician also would know enough to shoot the messenger when the message proved to be controversial. There are many times when news media reporting can be properly criticized for reducing the political debate to its lowest common denominator.
This is not one of them.
