Like every other journalist in the country, Mitrovica was free to apply his talents to the Arar case after it broke in 2002. Given his billing as one of the country’s leading investigative reporters, surely he stood a better-than-average chance of uncovering the political and bureaucratic chicanery that cost Arar his freedom.
But he didn’t do that. Instead, Mitrovica waited until an official inquiry put the facts in the public domain, then appointed himself chief inquisitor of his fellow journalists. Where I come from, this is called coming down from the hills to shoot the wounded.
Peter Cheney
My former Globe and Mail colleague Andrew Mitrovica raises important questions about the relationship between sources and reporters. The Arar case has triggered a lot of overdue discussion in Ottawa news-media circles. Why do we so often allow sources to remain anonymous? We can’t retroactively “out” anonymous sources who led us astray through honest error on their part, but we need to be clearer with sources that their part of the contract is to be truthful with us. If we subsequently learn they have deliberately deceived us, the deal’s off. Our credibility is on the line.
Jeff Sallot
Ottawa, Ontario
Andrew Mitrovica responds:
Peter Cheney and Jeff Sallot offer limp rationales to absolve the media’s complicity in the smearing of an innocent Canadian. For his part, Cheney plucks the “Faustian bargain” canard from the ready and predictable bag of excuses. Stripped of its embroidery, his argument is: the devil made me do it.
Cheney betrays a misunderstanding of even the most rudimentary meaning of Faust’s pact. Faust’s odyssey is, in part, a tragedy about the disastrous consequences not of making a deal, but of acquiescing to the soul-draining terms of the bargain. It is also a story about deriving knowledge through experience.
It becomes evident that these lessons have eluded Cheney when he submits that the “real villains” of the Arar affair are the powerful government officials who tried to destroy a lone citizen and not their equally powerful media conduits. I suppose Cheney and other reporters who share his evasions find comfort in their blindness.
As for Cheney’s suggestion that I waited for the imprimatur of Justice O’Connor’s report before pointing an accusatory finger, he ought to have done his homework. In early 2004, I wrote a piece dissecting the smear campaign (up to that point) for Media magazine, a publication put out by the Canadian Association of Journalists.
Jeff Sallot offers a more nuanced response. Having shared many bylines with him, I know that he is a thoughtful journalist. This accounts for his struggle to fashion a less accommodating relationship with his sources. However, I’m unfamiliar with any code that prevents reporters from retroactively outing sources who, as Justice O’Connor concluded, labelled Arar a terrorist and liar to shield themselves from scrutiny and sanction. It’s unlikely that Sallot and I will bridge that divide soon. In the meantime, the fourth estate would be wise to heed Professor Whitaker’s admonition: beware Greeks bearing gifts.
Designer Shades
I am sympathetic to Bruce Mau’s essay in praise of optimism (“Imagining the Future,” January)). There are problems in this world that need solving, and optimism—faith that solutions exist—is the requisite frame of mind for anyone seeking solutions. And Mau is right: the media pushes terrifying stories relentlessly, leaving hopeful stories as token interest pieces, flush with nostalgia and stripped of any seriousness. Ugly is honest, beauty is superficial.
However, I take issue with Mau’s use of a rhetorical device that permits casual dismissal of inconvenient criticism on the grounds that it is merely cynical, even if such criticism has emerged from a genuine desire to engage and debate. The result is less an honestly structured argument for optimism than an oddly didactic framework—you’re either with us in optimism or against us in cynicism.
Comments