Rafe Mair on Muckrackers and the dilution of the 4th Estate

For those that do not know him, Rafe Mair is one of the best known political commentators in Canada. He was once a provincial MLA and Cabinet Minister. But for the past decade and-then-some he has been a fiesty even fiery voice on the local radio station in BC and often broadcast around Canada.

Rafe Mair is currently looking for work. And he has an idea why:

It’s always difficult to assess one’s own importance. I remember a wise man saying to me that no matter how important you are, when you die the world skips not a beat and keeps right on chugging. With that in mind, let me address what happens in the long term, which I clearly don’t have, to the “information” field where a Rafe Mair isn’t welcome.

Clearly, we will not have shit disturbers in the mainstream media….

… the bosses censor the media outlets they own by the editors they hire and their editors censor by not hiring shit disturbers in the first place or, if they happen along, letting them know in a hundred little ways what’s expected of them.

… The second point is that I don’t for a second blame the working journalist…. For me, it was easy because unlike those who now toil in the establishment media, my mortgage payments were never jeopardized.

Rafe speaks volumes for the state of the Media and it’s ability to hold government to account. Make no mistake. Rafe is no liberal apologist.. I’m sure he and I would disagree on plenty of issues. But what I never understood before was his unyeilding need to be, in his words, a shitdisturber.

Can you name one TV reporter, on any network, that you would classify as a shitdisturber? I mean someone who is not afraid to go against the party line no matter what his/her political leanings. Someone who regularly goes against the spin of the rest of editorial content?

If so.. who? Because people need to know.

If not… ask yourself why? Because if you can’t think of a single one… and until Rafe brought this up and I realised what he represented.. I certainly can’t think of one… then why are we accepting that?

Or are we all simply too happy listening to the news we want to hear, rather than the news we *should* be hearing.

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