Is it me, or have Canadian politics gone crazy?
The Mike Duffy Senate expenses fraud trial is on and already the entire national media has gone nuts with their nonstop coverage. This trial is a media circus, which is some achievement since TV cameras aren’t even allowed in the courtroom.
This ought to disprove once and for all the theories about how media circuses are the sole result of cameras in the courtroom. There are no cameras, and yet the circus still showed up.
Before I go into my thoughts on this trial so far, I have a few thoughts about the whole issue of video cameras in the courtroom, which has reignited in Canada with the Duffy trial coverage.
The National Post recently came out with an editorial in favour of cameras in the courtroom. Their general reasoning: Twitter is being allowed in the courtroom, so cameras ought to be as well.
Personally, I’ve never understood why cameras shouldn’t be allowed in the courtroom to cover live proceedings.
They do it in the United States regularly, and they even allowed it in South Africa for the Oscar Pistorius murder trial. The sky did not fall, the world did not end and life went on.
As for the verdicts, you can’t blame TV for that, because TV cameras aren’t in the jury room anyway.
What makes no sense is why we insist on keeping the cameras out of the courtroom when they’re just about everywhere else.
Parliamentary debates are shown live, on TV. Committee hearings are shown on TV, same for the legislature. We have TV cameras at council meetings all the time in the Battlefords and it’s pretty much accepted.
Heck, we even have video security cameras everywhere on the streets and shopping malls. Yet we don’t have TV cameras in our courts, even though there is tremendous interest in the activities of the criminal justice system.
The common argument is that cameras are a distraction in court and witnesses might be intimidated by them, impacting a fair trial.
But that doesn’t hold up in this case. This is a trial of a guy who not only was in the Senate, but used to be on TV every day on CTV. He wouldn’t be intimidated in the least.
For an issue like the Senate scandal, it would really help matters if we were able to tune in directly to a live feed from the courtroom, rather than rely on the thumbs of these reporters who are Tweeting and live-blogging the testimony.
I’m thinking if people actually tuned in a live feed, people might get a better appreciation of what the legal arguments are and come to their own informed conclusions. Moreover, it would be better anyway, because Twitter is absolutely terrible.
Here is what trial coverage is like on Twitter using the #duffy hashtag. You get a Tweet from CBC about what’s said on the stand, followed by a post by CTV that repeats the exact same testimony, followed by some other news post that repeats something else a few minutes earlier that you already read. But mixed in as well are the “junk” posts from people who have nothing to add, such as the opinions posted by idiots, or the partisan posts from political people.
Just give us something we can watch so we can follow the court proceedings in a semi-comprehensible fashion in peace, away from these fools.
Here’s a thought. Maybe if there was a live TV feed, members of the general public might be more engaged and interested in the details of this important case. Which, I should add, they are not at the moment.
It’s odd. I’ve seen other trials that captured the public imagination for whatever reason — the Jodi Arias case in Arizona is a really good example — where the interest from the public really drove the coverage that followed, because the media circus wouldn’t have shown up otherwise.
The opposite is happening here. News people and political people can’t get enough of the Duffy trial, but interest drops sharply beyond that group.
I think I know why, and it’s not just because this trial is not on TV.
The reality is ordinary people’s minds are made up not only about Duffy, but about the entire Canadian Senate, everyone in Ottawa and everyone in politics. They’re all crooks, all feeding from the public trough, according to the general sentiment.
Their reaction to the final verdict will be the same no matter what happens. If Duffy is found guilty, people will say “this proves the Senate is corrupt.” But if he’s acquitted, they’ll still say “this proves the Senate is corrupt.”
That looks like Duffy’s main argument. The defence we seem to be getting from Duffy is that he was “following the rules” and it’s not Duffy’s fault that the rules are so lax and vague, and that it’s unfair he’s the one being singled out when everyone lived by these rules.
Even so, the reality is he was still spending all this money from taxpayers. Even if his spending is technically legal according to the Senate rules, it doesn’t make it right.
It’s early, but already the overriding vibe we are getting from Duffy and his defence team is of a guy “entitled to his entitlements.”
In a nutshell, this attitude exemplifies why so many Canadians are so cynical about the Senate, and is the reason why so many of them are frustrated at the lack of progress made towards cleaning that chamber up.
So people are frustrated. Regardless of whether Duffy goes to jail or not, the rest of the Senate will still be there, the same as usual, with no prospect of real change in sight. No matter what happens, the one sure-fire loser in this case is already known. It’s everyone at home.
You cannot blame people for saying “wake me up when this is over.” Based on the length of defence lawyer Donald Bayne’s cross-examination this week, it looks like this trial is going to take a looooong time.
