Reporting on two acts of terrorism in the space of a week, the Canadian media’s restrained coverage of events, and the general absence of provocative speculations – most noticeably in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s live coverage – has shown how profoundly a country’s media culture can shape its response to a crisis.
Political rhetoric in the wake of the attacks has also been impressively moderate. Prime Minister Harper said the violence showed that “Canada is not immune to the types of terror attacks that we have seen elsewhere around the world,” but it would not to be “intimidated.” He promised to increase national security efforts “to identify and counter threats and keep Canada safe” but save for a single reference to “the terrorist organizations who brutalize those in other countries with the hope of bringing their savagery to our shores” he avoided the rhetorical overreach so common in the aftermath of comparable violence in the United States.
Canadian opposition parties were equally judicious in their statements. New Democratic Party leader Thomas Mulcair said the Ottawa attack had failed “to make us more fearful of our neighbours and less confident in ourselves” and “instead only succeeded in drawing us closer, in making us stronger.” Liberal leader Justin Trudeau went further, saying that Canada’s “dedication to democracy and to the institutions we have built is the foundation of our society and a continued belief in both will guide us correctly into the future. Staying true to our values in a time of crisis will make us an example to the world.”
Trudeau also swept aside the cliché that the attacks represented a “loss of innocence in Canada” and said that what distinguished the country was that “we have never let those threats shape us, and we have never bowed to those who mean to undermine our values and our way of life. We have remained Canadians, and this is how we will carry on.” True to this spirit, the leaders of the parties even embraced each other in a public show of solidarity.
Canada’s mature, moderate response to violence is a refreshing change from how acts of terrorism have usually been covered in recent years. Not long ago, professional journalists had a near monopoly on the flow of information that was released to the public during a crisis. The rapid growth of social media networks and alternative news sources has made it much harder for public broadcasters to sift through the inevitable rumours, misinformation and errors that surface during a crisis. And yet, despite budget cuts and job losses the CBC has managed to retain much of its authority during its transition to digital. Its coverage of the Ottawa attack showed why.
Throughout an extended live broadcast of the attack in Ottawa, the CBC maintained a level tone and avoided publishing unconfirmed facts or rumours. One US observer described the broadcast as “deliberative and deferential to the facts even when they were sparse” and praised the CBC anchor Peter Mansbridge for “weigh[ing] the credibility of every detail, constantly framing and reframing what we knew and, most crucially, how we knew it.”
As Canadians continue to try and make sense of the attacks, the media has not shied away from engaging with unpopular or contrarian points of view. Shortly after the first attack – in which a Canadian solider was killed in Quebec after being run over by a car – the American journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote that “it is always stunning when a country that has brought violence and military force to numerous countries acts shocked…when someone brings a tiny fraction of that violence back to that country.” Rather than simply dismissing this provocative opinion, Greenwald was allowed to defend his point of view on one of the CBC’s radio’s flagship current affairs programmes, As It Happens. On the same show the hosts spoke with an analyst who suggested that the mental health of both attackers had arguably contributed to the violence as much as their religious and ideological convictions.
It is hard to observe Canada’s collective restraint in the face of violent attacks without wondering what Guyana, and the Caribbean, would look like if we had managed to maintain a similar level of “dedication to democracy” and its institutions, and to nurture a society that could process difficult political, religious and cultural issues with such enviable moderation. Mr Trudeau is right about Canada, and we take note of his words and hope that the growing strength of civil society and the public sphere in this region will also help to guide us correctly into the future.
