Lawrence Martin is the author of 10 books, including six national bestsellers. His most recent, Harperland, was nominated for the Shaughnessy Cohen award. His other works include two volumes on Jean Chrétien, two on Canada-U.S. relations and three books on hockey.

Journalism’s defining moment came forty years ago.

The reporting that unveiled the Watergate scandal was a towering time for the trade. It was, writes media analyst Edward Wasserman, “an episode of legendary stature in which journalism’s foundational purposes were triumphantly validated and a drift toward despotism was stopped, all thanks to a single-minded dedication to the craft of determined reporting.”

Were it not for the reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and the backbone of Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, Richard Nixon’s web of criminality and deceit would never have been exposed. He and his galaxy of wrongdoers would likely have gotten away with it all.

On this side of the border it is appropriate we recall the fourth estate’s finest hour because, while we are not faced with something on a scale of a Watergate here, our journalism is being put to a critical test by a government which uses the machinery of state to eliminate dissent and throttle the democratic system to an arguably unprecedented degree.

In its essence, Watergate was about a systematic campaign by the Nixon White House to subvert the democratic process. Our governing Conservatives are currently faced with myriad allegations of electoral fraud and vote suppression tactics. The allegations, which they deny, are being investigated by Elections Canada.

In combination with them are a multiple other documented abuses of a Nixonian character. They include, to name just a few, the electoral deception of the in and out affair; the use of a G8 spending cover to create what had all the appearances a $40-million political slush fund; the attempt to frame Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff as an Iraq war planner; the attempted bludgeoning of critics like the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

They include the dirty tricks campaigns against opposition members like Irwin Cotler; the alleged leaking of medical files to embarass critics at Veterans’ affairs; the contempt of parliament finding; the shutting down of parliament to avoid censure; the widespread campaign of censorship and paranoia-tinged information control that sees the science community and others muzzled.

Our media have helped expose some of the malfeasance, but whether the full scale of it will ever be known is another question. It was strong journalism, particularly by The Globe and Mail, that was highly instrumental in bringing to light the sponsorship scandal. What we have today may be more serious and the question is whether Canadian journalism is up to the task.

Thus far the signals are mixed. The work of Postmedia’s Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher on the electoral fraud file has been stellar. With persistent digging they have driven the story, kept it alive with enterprising work much in the spirit of Woodstein. The Ottawa Citizen, formerly weak on political coverage, is now a leader in the field.

Other news organizations show flashes of interest in getting to the bottom of the story but are often missing in action. The recent Dean Del Mastro newsbreak is a foremost example.

Del Mastro is parliamentary secretary to the prime minister, a position once held by Pierre Trudeau under Lester Pearson. Stephen Harper used Del Mastro to defend the government against charges of electoral fraud. As the purported Mr. Clean, he stood in the Commons with his PMO talking points and was cheered on lustily by colleagues as he denounced the opposition.

But the PM’s right-hand man, we learned, is being investigated for fraudulent election activities himself. They appear to be far from frivolous charges. Investigators have compiled a stack of evidence against him, all of which he denies.

Given the circumstances, this is a stunner of story, one that would have a Ben Bradlee dancing in the streets. But check the muted coverage the Del Mastro story has received. McGregor and Maher have been all over it, leading the way as usual. Other major media have given it only passing notice.

We recall that in Watergate, given the White House’s strong denials, many major media like The New York Times didn’t climb on board till later in the game. They lived to regret it.

In some instances the media have become jaded. They are so used to sleazy behaviour by politicians that they tend to under-react. Some buy into the Tories’ morally and intellectually infantile rationale that other governments have done these kinds of things, so we can do them too.

Then there’s the argument put forward by the Conservatives that these are just process stories that voters don’t care about. Watergate, you might say, was just process too, a slaying of the process.

Viewing what is going on in Canada, Donald Segretti, one of the perpetrators of Nixon’s dirty tricks, told the Globe and Mail a couple of months that what he sees here is worse. “We never tried to do something that would, at the end of the day, take away the right of somebody to vote.”

Another problem is intimidation. It’s risky for journalists to be aggressive. I found that out when I got bounced from a job for my pursuit of the Chretien Liberals on abuse of power. Journalists need access to the Prime Minister’s Office and they realize that if they are seen as too negative, they will be cut off.

The government controls the pursestrings of the CBC. Can we really expect the network’s talking heads to do interviews featuring sustained hard questioning on abuse of power with the PM or leading figures of government? In fact, given the constraints, some CBCers like Evan Solomon do exemplary work.

Our media is assertive on many individual stories, the pasting the government took on its Trojan horse budget bill being the most recent example. But in the 24-hour cycle, journalism has become too episodic, too forgetful of what happened the week or month previous.

The story isn’t the individual episode. For any government several examples of abuse of power can be found. The story is in the pattern. Is there a pattern of malfeasance, of trying to undermine the democratic process – and how deep does it run? If the media fails to connect the dots, to pull all the strands together, the public isn’t getting the real goods.

Watergate was only a break-in at Democratic party headquarters. It would have remained as such unless determined reporters kept uncovering more instances of subterfuge. They did that and they drew the linkages and the web of malice was exposed for all to see.

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