It has been a tough year for journalism. The mighty White House press corps was caught covering up the age-addled state of U.S. President Joe Biden. The conspiracy necessarily involved the vice-president and first lady, but neither of them were expected to tell the truth. Journalists are supposed to do that.
Some don’t try. There were those who bestrode the world of new journalism like veritable colossi, but it was not clear that they were aiming at journalism. Pandering to Vladimir Putin and castigating Winston Churchill is something, and a rather popular something at that, but is it journalism?
We ought not be too fussy about policing our company, though — already in 1938, Evelyn Waugh exposed the seamy underbelly of Fleet Street. “Scoop” was written as a novel, but it was a kind of reporting about the kind of reporting that reporters don’t report on. Feeding the “Daily Beast” was the onerous, omnipresent, overwhelming obligation of all concerned, and the Beast was not too fussy about what it consumed. The digital beast today is more voracious still, and even less fussy about what it consumes — or what it vomits forth.
Thus it was something of a banner day when former finance minister Chrystia Freeland rained down a resignation letter upon Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s sunny ways. Not simply because there was plenty of news for the news business, but because it was Freeland the journalist who rescued Freeland the loyal cabinet minister.
When last summer the Prime Minister’s Office began publicly undermining Freeland, the leaking was that she was not a good communicator. And there seemed to be some agreement on that: “vibe-cession.” But when she resigned, she torpedoed the government below the water line. There was no suggesting that she could not communicate. She did it so well that she left the glib and garrulous prime minister stunned speechless.
As Mitch Heimpel recalled, even when photos of him wearing blackface surfaced, Trudeau faced the press. Yet Freeland rendered him mute for two weeks and counting. Globe and Mail columnist John Ibbitson wrote that, after her shabby treatment by Trudeau, “as a former journalist, she knew exactly how to maximize the damage.”
Paul Wells noted that Canadians may have been surprised by Freeland’s heat-seeking missile, but “millions of people have seen dozens of resignation letters like it, because you see them every few weeks in the United Kingdom. And Chrystia Freeland was an editor in London for the Financial Times for years.”
The Post’s John Ivison gave his gangster version of the pen being mightier than the sword: “Who saw Chrystia Freeland pulling a gun, after Justin Trudeau unsheathed a knife?” A new biography was rushed out that highlighted that Freeland was a journalist and a non-fiction author.
It was a genuine chorus of praise from the press gallery. A woman of letters did the deed. It was an unusual feeling for journalists — a public figure’s courage, honesty and deft touch was being attributed to, in part, her being one of us.
There was a historical coincidence, both political and journalistic.
The day after Freeland’s resignation was the 150th anniversary of the birth of the longest-serving prime minister in the British Empire or Commonwealth, William Lyon Mackenzie King. While he studied law and political economy, he began his professional life as a journalist in Toronto for the Globe, as well as the Mail and Empire.
At the latter title, he wrote a celebrated four-part series on the “sweating” system (sweatshops in today’s parlance) used to make uniforms for the post office. His skills as an investigative reporter led to him being engaged by the postmaster general to report on labour conditions, and from there being hired by the Department of Labour. His political career had begun as a young, idealistic reporter. He went from drawing attention to what needed fixing to attempting to fix it.
In 1944, the wartime premier was, in recognition of his early life as a reporter, made an honorary lifetime member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. King confessed that he had received “no greater honour.”
King’s career represents how both journalism and political office can serve the common good. A democracy can only be healthy if its free press is healthy. Indeed, given that elections are only periodic and limited in choice, journalism can be more important. And journalism addresses so much more than public policy; its remit includes all that makes for a flourishing life.
No journalist ever addressed the full measure of the good life better than Gilbert Keith Chesterton, also born in 1874, and so sharing a sesquicentennial with King. Chesterton wrote articles, essays, reviews and books in such volume, and with such brilliance, that he defied the newspaperman’s disdain for yesterday’s news. He wrote of eternal verities in the passing media — and early 20th-century newspapering in London was a cacophonous cataract of the substantial, the salacious and the pure silly.
Chesterton was humble, his most famous quip about his trade being that, “Journalism largely consists in saying ‘Lord Jones is dead’ to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.” The journalism we need explains why it is good to know that Lord Jones both lived and died, and why it matters.
Journalism has done a lot of dying in recent years. It was good to see it live again these past weeks. And a wish for 2025: may today’s Chestertons (are there any?), Kings and Freelands find an appreciative readership. Happy New Year!
National Post