"Canada's Democratic Malaise: Are the Media to Blame?" is the latest Choices paper to be released in IRPP's trengthening Canadian Democracy series. It is now available free of charge in Adobe (.pdf) format on the IRPP Web site www.irpp.org Conditions and practices of journalism must change if confidence in the system is to be restored, says IRPP study.

For Immediate Distribution

Thursday, February 13, 2003

NEWS RELEASE

Montreal - According to a new study released today by the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP), we cannot hold political journalists responsible for the declining level of trust in politicians and political institutions. There is, however, a widening gap between what constitutes the ideal way to cover politics and the forms of political journalism that currently exist in Canada.

Richard Nadeau and Thierry Giasson, the authors of the study, entitled "Canada's Democratic Malaise: Are the Media to Blame?" say that the lack of resources and pressure from employers concerned about profitability may lead journalists to produce stereotyped, superficial and sensationalistic political coverage. According to them, such trends have even worsened over the past few years, due to increased media concentration and the weakening
of public television in several countries, including Canada.

For the media's contribution to Canadian democracy to be improved, Nadeau and Giasson make the following recommendations:

1. Journalists must promote more meaningful contact between elected officials and voters. They must become less omnipresent and revive the tradition of investigative journalism. Indeed, "they would play a less visible but more useful role by allowing citizens to listen to their
elected politicians in a more direct and sustained manner, offering them more detailed information on the issues and dispensing with the continual references to the actors' motives and strategies."

2. According to Nadeau and Giasson, the concentration of Canadian media ownership makes it increasingly difficult to air in-depth, varied political perspectives. That being said, the current state of tension between the imperative of press freedom and the reality of press concentration leads them to think "the interests of Canadian democracy would be well served by a wide debate over the issue of press ownership concentration in Canada."

3. Lastly, they deplore the fact that the public service news tradition in Canada is being eroded. Increased, stable funding of this public service, with no political strings attached, would result in a more profound and rigorous coverage of politics. "This accentuated return to the
tradition of public service in news reporting would well serve the requirements of democracy in Canada," conclude the authors.

Founded in 1972, the IRPP is an independent, national, nonprofit organization whose mission is to improve public policy in Canada by generating research, providing insight and sparking debate that will contribute to the public policy decision-making process and strengthen the
quality of the public policy decisions made by Canadian governments, citizens, institutions and organizations.

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Contact:

Sáng Tran-Quang
Agente de liaisons médias
Media Relations Officer
Institut de recherche en politiques publiques
Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP)
1470, rue Peel, Suite 200
Montréal (Québec) H3A 1T1
(514) 985-2461 ext. 324
Fax (514) 985-2559
stra...@irpp.org
www.irpp.org