OTTAWA—Some 25 years ago this summer, CBC launched its all-news cable channel, then called Newsworld.

The network has been marking the anniversary with periodic glimpses of its coverage of large and small events in Canada and abroad.

Many of the current denizens of Ottawa never knew or can barely remember a life before all-news TV.

But all-news TV — there are now several such channels, including one reportedly to be launched by Global — have not only reported on politics, but changed the political culture too.

In 1989, just as Newsworld was launched, the country was teetering toward the collapse of the Meech Lake constitutional accord, with dissent building among the public and, crucially, among a few provincial governments.

A big first ministers’ meeting was convened in Ottawa that fall, featuring a testy, televised exchange between Newfoundland premier Clyde Wells, a Meech opponent, and prime minister Brian Mulroney.

That event is seared in my mind as the first big Canadian political event brought to us by Newsworld. More national-unity drama would unfold over the months, all of it played out for hours and entire days on the all-news channel.

Constitutional negotiations may not sound like the most riveting drama, and live coverage of a dead agreement may seem like an oxymoron, but the demise of Meech was a full-fledged spectacle for Newsworld.

And it ushered in a new era — not just of Canadian politics, but of Canadian political reporting and commentary as well.

Much of the modern aversion to big first ministers’ conferences, for instance, was sealed by the fate of Mulroney and the old Progressive Conservatives after all that televised tension. Jean Chrétien came to office in 1993 promising to dial down the volume of federal-provincial relations; the current prime minister, Stephen Harper, has faded the picture to zero visibility.

Why don’t we have big first ministers’ meetings these days? Blame the all-news channels.

Meanwhile, Newsworld created a huge demand for commentators and political panels to fill the hours in between outbreaks of actual news.

It broadcast political scrums in their entirety, so that the public could see the full interaction between politicians and reporters — both answers and questions. In turn, the scrums became less about answering questions and more about performance, for all participants. The goal of most politicians now is to studiously avoid making news when they’re dealing with reporters and stick to the talking-point script issued by top-down command.

How did leaders’ offices get so powerful in centralizing and controlling the message? Blame the all-news networks — well, partly blame them; social media and the fragmented communications universe play a part too.

Broadcasting news in its raw form allows viewers to feel that they’re in a front-row seat to political events, even when they’re hundreds or thousands of kilometres away. In fact, they may have better seats than the people actually present, as any print reporter trapped behind the wall of cameras can attest.

During one of the Meech dramas, I remember a Star reporter joking at the spectacle of all of us crowded around a tiny TV set to watch events that were happening in the next room. He said he was going to credit the facts in his story to “sources close to Sony.”

Thanks largely to the all-news channels, and then the Internet that rose up in the decades since their launch, it is entirely possible for pundits to comment on affairs in the capital without actually setting foot in Ottawa. This has given rise to the oft-heard criticism that journalists working here are actually “too close” to the politicians and the Ottawa “village,” as if proximity to real people somehow interferes with fair reporting.

Being able to watch political events in real time also strengthens the hand of the newsroom editors, most based outside Ottawa, who used to have to rely on reporters on the scene to decide on the major development of the day. Now everyone is an expert on what happened in Ottawa — they saw it on TV.

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I’ve often wondered whether public aversion to politics has risen in direct proportion to the amount of it they can now see in real time — it brings to mind that old saying about how if you saw how sausages were made you’d become a vegetarian.

But in sum, and for all the ways in which they’ve changed the world of politicians and political reporters, I think the public has been well-served by a quarter-century of all-news TV in Canada. No news may be good news, but all-news has opened up our politics to a wider view. Anything founded on the principle of more, not less, information has to be good for the country.

Susan Delacourt is a member of the Star’s parliamentary bureau.

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