David Frum on Parliament's media critcism

DAVID FRUM WRITES: Well that was a real service to Canada. Parliament worried that Canadians could not make up their own minds about Maclean’s’ reporting on corruption in the province of Quebec. So Parliament helpfully undertook the job itself, unanimously expressing “profound sadness” at the Sept. 24 article that supposedly “denigrated the Quebec nation, its history and its institutions.”
As Maclean’s itself notes, this recent vote is not Parliament’s first entry into media criticism. In 2006, Parliament condemned another piece about Quebec, that one in The Globe and Mail by Jan Wong.
What’s helpful about these double precedents is the clarifying message they send when taken together. Parliament does not purport to assess every single article about every imaginable subject. That would obviously be impossibly time-consuming. It’s only articles about Quebec that require comment from the national authorities.

But there’s a real risk of unfairness here. Will Parliament only blame, but never praise?


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