A6- Wednesday, Jaly.2, 1980 - North Sh The capacity of elected governments and_ their bureaucrats for landing in hot water through excessive secrecy seems to be limitless. One example among -many is the proposed group home at 953 Gladstone in North Vancouver for a handful of child victims of family or social problems. _ Neighbors are mad because the provincial Human Resources Ministry, they say, has been?t | for eight months to “sneak” the “home into their area without any adequate consultation with them. The Human Resources regional manager has finally admitted the entire affair has been poorly handled and that the attempt to take a “low- key” approach to the issue was wrong. -Meanwhile,: North Van District council — which must finally pass the bylaw authorizing the home — has been engaged in a classic fence-sitting exercise. The District does not presently require neighborhood approval for such homes but has had second thoughts since reportedly giving Human Resources the go-ahead last November. Now, District wants a similar “open” policy on the part of North Van City and West Van councils so that it ‘will not become a “dumping ground” for fature North. Shore group homes. Small wonder angry confusion reigns over a worthy and humane project of 4 type which, in numerous other cases, has had no adverse affects whatsoever. on the surrounding neighborhood. Most of the anger and confusion might have been avoided if local residents had been kept fully informed from the start. When will our elected temporary masters and their servants ever learn? Law vs. law B.C.’s ombudsmaii Karl Friedmann, whose job is to probe citizens’ beefs against government ministries, has run into a strange roadblock. Only one ministry’ — that of the Attorney-General — is refusing him free access to its files, without which he can't do what the law requires of him. So now the ombrdsman may take the Attorney-General to court. How odd it would be if that proved the only way of forcing B.C.'s chief law officer to cooperate in upholding the law. sunday news north shore news 1139 Lonsdale Ave North Vancouver B © V7M 2H4 (604) 985-2131 NEWS ADVERTISING CLASSIFIED CIRCULATION 985-2131 980-0511 986-6222 986-1337 Publisher Peter Speck Associate Publisher Editor-in-Chief Robert Graham Noel Wright Advertising Olrector Eric Cardwell Classified Manager & Office Administrator Bern: Hithard Production Tam Francis Faye McCrae Managing Editor Andy Fraser News Editor Photography Chis lloyd titsworth DiCkson Accounting Supervisor Barbara Keen North Shore News, founded in 1968 as an moepeEeadent ¢omImendun: ly newspaper and qualitied under Schodule Wi Pant tl Paragragat tot the ft xcise Tax Act is published each Wednesday and Sunday by North Shore Free Press Cid and disinibuted to every door on the North Shore Second Clasa Math Registrate Number sane Subs captions $20 per year Entire contents Ttse) Noort free Press Ltd All nights reserved Shore No responsibilty accepted Manuscnpie and pictures stamped addressed return eavetope Gu SX THIS PAPER IS RECYCLABLE too Vibrate chert erates ual an Wathen why Py try oa ssatet toe Me en ap easter & SF mete VERIFIED CIRCULATION 50,870 49,913 Wednesday Sunday linisters must take comman OTTAWA (SF) - Former Tory Defence Minister Allan McKinnon told me an in- —teresting story the other day. As a young junior Army officer, McKinnon was given command of a platoon of infantry that was terribly disorganized. It cost him months of work to make that platoon his own and turn it into an efficient, well run outfit, responsive to him. A friend of McKinnon's, going through the same early phases of Army life; was given a platoon in the same company which had a first class sergeant and ran like clockwork. There was little for the other young officer to do, and yet his platoon ran efficiently, without McKinnon's friend really knowing what was going on in the unit. “That,” said McKinnon, “is not a bad demonstration of the way the Tories tried to run government when they were in power, and the way the Liberals do things.” What McKinnon says is not universally true. There are ministers in the Trudeau government, like Marc LaLonde and Romeo Leblanc, who know and control their departments. Most of them, however, moved into platoons with efficient’ sergeants and certainly have not done battle to seize control. McKinnon, when he was defence Minister, knew his f- The World War Two generation still has lively memories of Josef Goebbels, genius of Nazi Germany. the propaganda Any bright Grade 10-er can tell you how Russia’s government newspaper Pravda operates. Probabl have yet heard of Profess SeTohn fewer Canadians John Meisel — and it’s good that he has now started to make himself and his ideas known. Professor Meisel, a political scientist by trade, was recently appointed chairman of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Co- mmission. This is the watchtog established by the federal government to tegulate how Canadians communicate via the air waves and cable. It is also beginning to show an increasing intcrest - in what they communicate. The good professor was in town last week to address a national convention of the Canadian Public Relations Society. In the course of hi speech he delivered himself of some rather disturbing new thoughts. Disturbing and new, at any ratc, in our own country. He launched his’ theme with a motherhood statement that already had a sting in its tail “We do not,” he said, “want to see the electronic media, of their contents, become the creatures of forces, public or private, which would = distort tn formation “This possibality saggested by the current performance of the media In many cases service ts only partial, the information provided ts not complete or mgorous, and the options presented are biased ~ Then came the crunch is CENSORSHIP A few safeguards against such distortion already c1tst, the CRTC chief continued, but “other and more ap- propriate safeguards” are essential “because certain biases and distortions are almost unavoidable and reside in our very social and economic structures.” The bold type is mine. If Professor Meisel meant what he said about “other and more appropriate safeguards” being essential, it's difficult to escape the conclusion that he was talking, quite simply, about censorship of news and information regarded by the CRTC as being “biased” or “distorted”. And censorship by the CRTC, of course, would actually mean censormp by the federal government It was interesting in this context that Meisel chose what he calied “the. cx ploitation of Margaret Trudeau” as one cxample of “irresponsible” news reporting “It's mot misleading maybe. of the public” he conceded, “but itis. | think emphasizing the wrong thing The tig thing about the Trudecaus is aot her htthe capers all overcthe place ” This was great stuff. of course fora gathenng of PR types who cam their keep by concentrating exclusively on “the mght thing” as thew bosses and chents conceive wt And an theory Professor Meisel is correct about one aspect of the news process With the best will tn the world editors and reporter partly department well, and in- sisted on having the final decision, after cabinet discussion, on Defence policy. The present minister Gilles Lamontagne, is a fine man, but he neither knows nor controls. his department. Control has reverted to the senior officers and bureaucrats, who are being “lo Ors el PUGGESTION focus Noel Wright \ in all the news media have to work at high pressure against constant limitations of time and space. There are only so many hours in which to pull any single news story together while it is stall fresh After that there are only so many minutes in the broadcast sO many column inches ain the Newspaper to allocate to it alongside the rest of the day's torrent of news Asa resull, some clements of the story frequently have to be cul or compressed doing this. In conscicntious editors and reporters strive hard to maintain the basic balance But its inevitable that the process sometimes invites accusations of cW “Dias” Mistortion” from involved individuals slory who view the only from subjective a ngle thet own The nearest approach wholly obyective reporting is Hansard nobody tas Unfortunately MP s cacepl - tell Lamontagne. very ‘selective in what they to be’ built after the six new ones new planned. He o: the feasibility of sma ships. For three months th s. order and began work: reluctantly late in -he- election campaign. Ap-. parently that study has now. stopped and the Departmen has not told Lamontagne: about it. Yet Lamontagn represents Defence i cabinet, presumably selling. the view of his senior office: and bureaucrats to his: political colleagues. It's the same in many other departments, like Transport, External Affairs, and Finance. That is not the way governments are supposed to operate in a democracy. Policy decisions ~ must be made by the elected politicians, who must then bear the political res, on- sibility for those decisions. Cabinet ministers must take command of their platoons. Professor turned policeman MLA’s, editors and political science professors has time Or patience to wade through Hansard. Happily, however, any alleged ‘‘bias"’ and “distortion in specific news stories is self-correcting -- so long as the freedom of the media is upheld. Every competing radio or TV station presents a news story in its own way, as does every competing newspaper and commentator. Moreover, important news are never one-shot efforts. There are constant follow- ups and analyses, cach adding new angles and further depth to tho original. “THOUGHT-POLICE” Over a period of time, thercfore -- given the wide diversity of independent news media available — any intelligent and probing listener, viewer or reader can normally get as close to the truth of the matter as is humanly possible in an imperfect world. He can certainly get & great deal closer to the truth | than would be the case - under the system Professor | Meiscl would apparently - prefer: firm control over the ~ daily content of the vital clectronic news media by the - CRTC thought-police, acting with =the | wishes of its masters in the : With next in) accordance federal cabinet newspapers, no doubt, in line for “disciplining”. if that is the best might have served Canada better by campus and confining his strange = theories political sctence room to the. professor can contnbute to. the democratic process, he remaining on. the. lecture: