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Saint John locals win national awards on the importance of democracy in the media

On Monday it was announced that two Saint Johners won the Dalton Camp Award for essays on media and democracy.

For those of you not in the know - The Dalton Camp Awards was established by the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. The creation was meant to foster and recognize excellence in essay writing on the link between democracy and the media in Canada.

Kurt Peacock and Megan Wennberg are the two prize winners. Not only is it great for Saint John that the two recipients of the award are locals, but it's great for New Brunswick.

Peacock's essay, Dalton Camp would have never written like this: The decline of National reporting in Canada, doesn't lament the decline of smalltown Canada as he states, but protests the "way in which Canada's national media has ignored the daily news coming out of entire parts of Canada, a process which has, in effect, turned our country into one of a hollow central federation made up of many mutually suspicious solitudes." Peacock's essay is especially interesting for us New Brunswickers, and he aptly interprets the skewed portrayal of the province to the rest of the nation when, on occasion, something in NB is deemed newsworthy enough to grace the pages of the national dailies.

I'm sure few of us have forgotten the two "incidents" involving UNB that landed New Brunswick on the national press: the Seeing Eye dog fiasco (when a second-language student at UNB who faced expulsion over giving orders to his guide dog in French), and the naked rugby players.. And then, as Peacock points out, there was the Elmo incident at the Walmart in Regent Mall (the case of the years-ago holiday brawl over Elmo at a Fredericton Walmart).

He opines that editors at larger papers cry "Stop the presses! Someone in New Brunswick did something weird! Let's run it instead of that story on Iraq!" But aside from the jabs at the national papers, Peacock's essay raised the more serious issue of a flawed perception of our province on the nation stage.

He warns that the constant focus on "blighted potatoes and dying fish, parish-pump patronage and colourful premiers" ignores the "Atlantic cooperative movement, the region's anti-nuclear movement, or the fact that the Atlantic provinces are now more urban and diverse than at any time in history." Peacock also surmises that it's not just New Brunswick getting the short end of the stick in national papers, the territories and rural areas from Alberta to Quebec are equally ignored and stereotyped. To Canada's national papers, he says, these areas are little more than acres of snow.

But most importantly Peacock hypothesizes that by ignoring the lesser known, sparsely populated and less "urban" areas, the national media encourages the big guns in Ottawa to do the same.

"Important national files - like immigration - are handled through the lens of opinion-makers in Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal, where local governments are feeling the pressure of too many new settlers," writes Peacock. In the rest of Canada, meanwhile, the immigration totals of the big cities are envied, and a number of smaller communities are keen to implement ambitious settlement strategies. Their unique ideas are too often dismissed in Ottawa, in large part because immigration is considered a file that is only relevant to Canada's big three cities." And Peacock suggests the national media don't just stop with immigration. Citing that when QC aerospace plants or Ontario auto factories are given government investments (read: bail outs), it's reported triumphantly but when bureaucratic agencies are created to help farmers and fishers in the rest of Canada they receive much scrutiny. And as Peacock points out- these are often little more than table scraps when compared to industry bailouts in "vote-rich" areas.

Seeming to be the optimist at the end whose newspapers are not half-empty but half-full, Peacock suggests a glimmer of hope exists in some national (broadcast) reporting. And considering that the beat reporters at local papers and radio stations cover their territories better than national reporters cover theirs, Peacock says you can find out about the lesser-known Canadian issues and news with the help of a good dial-up modem, and a visit to local coffee shops for weeklies, dailies and local 'zines.

Megan Wennberg's essay Judging democracy by its weakest link: When [here] becomes their, deals with the Brunswick News purchase of the very magazine you're reading.

Lesser known in Fredericton and Moncton, here was an independent news weekly founded in Saint John, for Saint John and by three Saint Johners - Mark Leger, Janet Scott and Judith Mackin - five years ago.

In her essay Wennberg writes that "media concentration does not signify the end of democracy, but it limits the diversity of voices fundamental to a healthy democratic society." Wennberg chronicles the birth of the paper, the attempted expansion into Moncton, the difficult decision to sell and the angry outcry of Saint Johners at news of the sale.

"It's no wonder people were upset," she writes.

"Saint John is a small city on the Fundy Coast known for beautiful heritage buildings, fog, backwards water, the Irvings, and a doggedly unpretentious nature. It does not conjure images of vibrant cultural life, booming economic growth or outstanding intellectual achievement. And yet, for four and a half years Saint John was able to do what few contemporary cities of its size have done: sustain an independent alternative newspaper." Wennberg weaves the tale of grief in Saint John at the loss of the province's only independent weekly. When the founders started this paper, she says, it was a love letter to the city. Indeed it was so- the trio-cum-quad established a paper with a strong local following and catered to the specific needs of the city. I, possibly more than anyone, may understand the backlash in Saint John to here coming under the Brunswick News umbrella.

Wennburg's essay touches on much the same idea of Peacock's; "As a direct line into the hearts and minds of local readers across Canada, they are on the front lines of democracy," she writes of local papers in her conclusion.

Although community weeklies and local dailies seem relatively inconsequential in the grander scheme of things, they are vital to discourse and democracy in Canada. The idea is there, that journalism is a tool that perpetuates democracyregardless of the shape it takes. It must be remembered that journalism is not a democracy in and of itself. It is the pursuit of truth, as the underlying objective of journalism, which fosters democracy's growth.

There is a distinct triumph in these two New Brunswickers winning a national essay writing competition. In winning the essays accomplished exactly what the Dalton Camp Awards set out to accomplish: provoke, defend, and enhance democracy in Canada and to continue the tradition of, coincidentally, one of New Brunswick's finest sons, Dalton Camp who was an avid and respected commentator of public affairs.

And their wins are also a triumph for a province continually misunderstood and under represented in the broader Canadian scope, where big thinkers are thought only to come from big places. We've just proved that great thinkers come from small places too.

The essays are available online at www.friends.ca/DCA/.

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