Joe Warmington: Canada's newsrooms used to scrutinize power — what happened?
'The Prime Minister's office puts out a tweet or an email... to the people that work out of Parliament Hill,' Warmington said. 'And that's the end of it. And they don't question it.'
On Tuesday's episode of The Ezra Levant Show, Ezra welcomed Toronto Sun columnist Joe Warmington into the studio for a wide-ranging conversation about the collapse of accountability journalism in Canada, and how the people who are supposed to scrutinize power have largely stopped trying.
Warmington, a reporter since 1984 and a Sun News Network alumnus, argued that traditional newsrooms have gutted the resources and the will needed to actually chase a story, leaving citizen journalists like those at Rebel News to do the job the legacy press abandoned.
He gave the example of Prime Minister Mark Carney's recent trip to Tuscany, which Warmington said would have drawn a full-scale hunt from Toronto Sun reporters in the paper's better-funded years. Instead, he said, the press gallery took whatever Ottawa handed it and stopped there.
"The Prime Minister's office puts out a tweet or an email, actually, to the people that work out of Parliament Hill," Warmington said. "And that's the end of it. And they don't question it."
He drew a direct line to a previous case: Justin Trudeau's stay on the Aga Khan's private island, a story independent reporters were chasing years before it became a national conflict-of-interest scandal. Warmington said he was personally involved in tracking down Trudeau in the Bahamas early in that story's development.
"It's not sinister. It's not even some sort of a partisan thing," Warmington said. "It's our job. Our job is to tell the public what they need to know, what they don't know."
Warmington also pointed out how the "press conference approach" to journalism doesn't cut it when all you're doing is repeating the government's narrative.
"Press conferences are still in the control of these governments. That's not journalism," said Warmington. "It can be a good chance to ask a question, but they love to have control of it."
The alternative, used more and more by independent journalists rather than legacy media contributors, is scrumming politicians on the street, such as what Rebel News has done at the World Economic Forum. However, this approach has also become increasingly risky, even inviting physical danger. Warmington warned that some of the people protecting politicians from questions don't play by the rules.
"They've got a lot of people that will get really physical with people like yourself, where the rules don't apply to them," he said. "They'll actually assault people."
Both men agreed that today's television panels have replaced reporting with commentary from people with undisclosed interests.
"They are lobbyists with clients they don't disclose, just bitching about politics all day with their hidden agendas," Ezra said. "They're not reporters. They're not even opinion reporters. They are paid lobbyists who have these shows."
Warmington closed by lamenting that the mentorship culture that once trained young reporters, built around figures like Peter Worthington and Christie Blatchford, has largely vanished along with the newsroom jobs that supported it.
"There's really no reporters anymore. I can't think of anybody sort of my junior," he said. "No one's interested in talking to a guy like me... It's all online now."
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