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At least, they will until the Tories are elected. At that point, the new government will be presented with a familiar choice: keep on the Liberal appointees, and be congratulated for their statesmanlike impartiality, or replace them with others of a more right-wing hue, and suddenly arouse those hitherto-dormant fears about the freedom of the press.

Either way, the effect will be to inevitably and irrevocably politicize the press. It’s already starting: the Tories have denounced the plan as a partisan Liberal “slush fund.” So we will cover the next election as one of the central issues in it, with one party promising to “save” us and the other opposed. Even if we think this knowledge will not affect our coverage, not even one little bit, do we really think the public will?

Photo by Aaron Lynett/National Post

Until now, politicians have had to suffer journalists’ lectures to the effect that taking campaign donations from corporations and other vested interests might influence their judgment, or that their ownership of shares in a company they regulate might place them in a conflict of interest. We will have to shut up about that now, as we will have to shut up about bailouts of other industries, and handouts to interest groups. We will simply have no standing to object to any of it.

In time, it will no longer occur to us. The money the government is giving us is not going to solve our problems. It is only going to ensure we put off confronting them. Before long we will be back for more — after the same mutual dance of veiled threat and implicit promise.