A Note from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper
I almost can’t stand to hear the sound of their names any more. It is largely their fault that I made one of the dumbest decisions of my life – to get in to journalism.
Watergate investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during their investigative days at the Washington Post
It was because of the heroics of Woodward and Bernstein, and the all-too-rare support they received from a managing editor at the Washington Post named Ben Bradley, that the newspaper had the guts to produce reporting that ultimately brought down a president of the United States for acts that violated much of what a free democracy in a country like the U.S. or Canada is supposed to be about.
The work of Woodward and Bernstein had many fools like me believing that journalism, unlike picking a career in public relations or marketing, could be a great calling. We could be good and brave watchdogs for democracy and the common good to.
How wrong and how foolish we were. Within a matter of decades, corporate chains took over the newspaper industry and the focus was more on producing a profit through advertising than on reporting the news – so much so that news rooms have been hollowed out to a point where there is hardly the opportunity for reporters to spend days or weeks on end, investigating stories. When you are working in a newsroom gutted to far less than half the compliment of reporters and editors that was there even 15 or 20 years ago, where are you going to find to the time to investigate a possible act of wrong-doing on the part of those we’ve entrusted to represent us in public office?
A young Doug Draper in the St. Catharines Standard newsroom, still naive enough to beleive that journalism might be a t calling for the common good.
How can you possibly find the time to do that sort of investigative work when you are now required to crank out six or seven stories a day, which I can tell you is not possible to do unless you are willing to crank out six or seven pieces of crap with no real depth to them.
I found it disturbing to read in the St. Catharines Standard, a paper that was once a vital information source for the community under the Burgoyne family that founded it and supported investigative work, that Niagara College’s president Dan Patterson has supported the crap that now passes as news in that paper by bestowing upon its publisher Judy Bullis an honorary diploma.
Bullis had the unmitigated gall to say during her convocation address that students going into news media now are “brave to be part of an industry that will continue to evolve at a rapic pace, but ill, I believe continue to defend and protect democracy, our freedoms of speech and will present the heart of the story.”
What a bunch of B.S. … Bullis must know, only too well, that the only thing that will keep her corporate masters and their shareholders happy is placing profits through advertising above anything that has to do with the news and protecting democracy. If she doesn’t know that, she wouldn’t have her job in a Sun Media chain that is notorious for gutting newsrooms to the bone marrow to please the bottom line.
So the Woodward/Bernstein anniversary around Watergate and all the investigative reporting that happened there isn’t one I find worth celebrating any more. It is a thing from the past, when for a few years, newspapers and there owners cared to invest the resources and time to do this kind of reporting on behalf of the people at large.
Unfortunately, that time is all but gone.
(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this post in the comment area below, remembering that we only post comments by those who are also willing to share their first and last names.)
Niagara At Large 
Although many journalists (at least print journalists) look down on broadcast journalists, I used to be proud of my background in broadcast journalism. I worked in radio from 1964 to 1987 and enjoyed it almost to the end. Journalism standards began to decline rapidly in the `disco` era of the late 1970s. When I finally got out of journalism, I explained that I felt that `who or what Madonna did was not news.`
So I must say, I have to agree with Doug in his lament about the state of journalism today. It is too much about the bottom line … be damned with the by-line.
Radio has declined even more than television or newspapers. Nowadays, very few radio stations actually have a news staff.
When I was news director at a station in the Okanagan Valley in BC, we were the only radio station in town. There was a daily Thompson newspaper as our competition. I had a staff of seven, including myself. Today, most stations in cities the size of Toronto have a smaller newsroom staff!
So, yes Doug, I agree, journalism has gone to hell in a handbasket – but not just because of penny-pinching profit-sucking ownership. Part of the problem is the audience! Those of us who read and follow Niagara This Week do so because we are extremely interested in what is going on in our communities, our country and our world. There are many who think that what Brad Pitt and whats-her-name are doing is more important that what is happening in Ottawa, Washington or anything else.
It is a sad commentary on our society today.
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Hi Doug,
Some of the greatest work done in todays world is that done by those akin to Mother Theresa. This altruistic view on life which intrinsically motivates people to do what they believe in is the fundamental difference between success and gamesmanship of success.
Rather than write a diatribe against others I chose to praise Niagara At Large. Good because you know it is good.
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Well said Doug.
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The son of a dear friend (in the US) had the same ideals and graduated with honors from journalism only to find there were no jobs. Thus he recently took a job in Chicago but not in journalism. I was scoffed at when I questioned his decision to go into this field but since then I think they realize that there is no real journalism anymore just hacks pushing out garbage for people like the Murdocks in the USA and and QMI here in Canada.
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Keep on Keeping On, Doug!
Doug there are still many people like you out “there” who value truth above all. They tell it and let the chips fall where they may. They are not just journalists, they are people from all walks of life: teachers, businessmen/women, military personnel, politicians (really there are some), and the like. They may suffer for their honesty but they share the truth anyway. They are some of the unsung heroes. Theirs is a special kind of bravery called integrity! You are one of them, as are so many of your contributors. I hope I am one myself. Certainly I have been “beaten up” for speaking the truth and challenging the Status Quo. Yet, I would do it all over again–stand up for what I believe–and hope to have the courage to even be wrong and admit it.
Doug is right, however, integrity in the media is on the decline–even though there are still many brave, honest, journalists out there. Even the most powerful of our networks in Canada, however, are falling down on the job. Consider the recent report on CBC about the deal with the Devil that Bell negotiated with China thus putting our privacy and our nation’s communications at risk–despite warnings from the U.S. and Australia. CBC covered the story and reported on the threat the deal posed to Canadians and our allies. CTV, which is owned by Bell, did not breathe a hint of it. Corporate interests over public good? I think so.
Let’s just pray–or hope, if you are not a prayerful person–that people like Doug and, fortunately, some other courageous journalists, will continue to share the real stories that affect our lives. I, too am tired of what too often passes for news but is little more than gossip, titillation of weak minds and shallow senses, or pandering to mass groupthink that is so prevalent in the media today.
Hang in Doug! You may be a voice in the wilderness but your voice matters. I hope your other contributors will keep on, too. Whether I agree or disagree with their remarks, they do get me thinking. And there is far too little thinking going on these days.
That we care more about the size of the ring Will gave Kate, more about Brad Pitt and Justin Bieber—fine boy that he is—than we do about the oil spills and oil sands, water and air pollution, the unholy influence the drug companies have over our health care, and the soul-destroying greed of big banks, heavy industry, and third-world exploiters that destroy our environment and humanity, is more a reflection on us than perhaps “them”.
Cassius was right, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141).
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You were one of the best, Doug, and reaped many deserved accolades, in The Day. Our son followed you into Journalism, first with a Canadian magazine, then an online dotcom that exploded in the late 1990’s. He’s finished with all that and has a job he really enjoys –but not in journalism. I share with you a despair in the levels to which journalism has dropped. What I can barely stand is the sucking up to only advertisers and those whose political platform they share.
Nothing objective about journalism any more.
A note from Doug Draper – Thanks for the kind words Gail. Just a few thoughts.
Your son’s story is, unfortunately, hardly unique. Many very good journalists have left a field they once loved and the corporatists who own the “products” which were once – first and foremost – news organizations don’t care. They will simply go on and hire kids right out of college for a fraction of the cost and grind them into the grouund cranking out six to eight items to fill the space between the ads each day, until they can’t stand it any more, and it goes on and on. This is what bothers me so much about the kind of rhetoric coming out of corporate managers like the publisher at the Standard …. The agenda places very little attention to doing excellent journalism, without fear or favour, for “democracy” and the public at large, and she knows it. It is fraudulent, to say the least, to paint a picture that today’s corporate media owners put readers and democracy first in front of a group of graduating college students and it is sad that Niagara College would allow someone to spin such untruths during graduation ceremonies.
Finally, if you don’t mind me challenging one point, I don’t know whether there has ever been anything all that “objective” about journalism. I certainly am one who has had a long track record of mixing hard news stories with editorials or commentaries that take one position or another on what is going on. I think what has really been lost today is a real senxe of fairness and balance, that is overlaid by a sense of justice and at least trying to reacer for the greater, common good. I am talking about reporting and editorializing by journalists in newsrooms that are free from control by those who are in the pockets with a particular business, advertiser or political party. When that has been lost, journalists are no longer able to perform their function in a demoncracy as an honest, unfettered watchdog.
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I don’t mind your editorial comments at all, Doug. Well considered.
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Doug, I suspect that “demoncracy” in the last line of your comment above is a typo; nevertheless, I take my cue from Freud and thank you for inadvertently coining a useful new noun. A demoncracy is what we’ve been left with…
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