Journalists who cover the Ontario legislature should feel overjoyed one of their own has been named to the province’s top job of lieutenant governor, but the harsher reality is they are becoming a vanishing breed.
David Onley, a TV reporter and commentator admired by many including his peers despite being afflicted by polio and in a wheelchair or with a cane, is the first journalist named to such high office.
As the Queen’s representative, he becomes the first citizen in the official order of precedence. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has never gone out of his way to help journalists and presumably chose him mainly because he is a prime example of someone who has overcome a disability and can be a role model for others.
Fellow-journalists will take some pleasure in seeing Onley honored because of their respect for him and because he is one of their number. The highest rank their profession had achieved in recent decades was cabinet minister.
Frank Drea, who wrote an Action Line column, was a minister under Progressive Conservative premier William Davis and stereotypical heavy drinking newspaperman. After one liquid lunch, he addressed condo owners in the belief they were wine growers and wished them good luck with their current vintage, but he had real strengths that kept him on.
Evelyn Gigantes, a former TV public affairs commentator, twice lost roles in New Democrat premier Bob Rae’s cabinet through ignoring rules, which journalists by training have little respect for.
But Onley’s appointment also comes at a time when the Press Gallery of journalists who cover the legislature full time has been shrinking. A decade ago, it had 52 members, but it is now down to 33.
Part of the reason is most newspapers now are owned by chains. When the papers were independently owned, half-a-dozen in bigger cities across Ontario used to send their own reporters to cover Queen’s Park, but when they join a chain, one of its reporters at the legislature normally covers for the whole organization.
This is a loss first because reporters sent by these newspapers were among their most skilled and brought experience and insight that added to the combined gallery intelligence, particularly in the grilling of politicians that is a daily routine
.
They also brought and were fed knowledge of issues in their own circulation areas, so if a reporter from Windsor, for example, had information on a government failing in that area, it quickly became a story for the whole gallery and province.
A Queen’s Park-based reporter for a chain usually has to cover many geographical areas and lacks time to watch for them all adequately. Some but not all chains also have cut staffs to help pay the costs of their acquisitions.
The chains are growing and soon the vast majority of newspapers in Ontario will be owned by one of three or four chains.
Most Toronto newspapers also have cut staffs at Queen’s Park. A dozen private radio stations, which are noted for penny pinching, once had reporters at the legislature, but they are down to two, and the provincial government’s TVO has dropped its French-language reporter at the legislature to save money.
The fewer reporters at the legislature continue to give their employers good value for their money. Among many issues they have bought to light recently were frauds by lottery ticket retailers, abuse of children in daycare centres and barriers to patients finding if doctors had committed malpractice, which the government acted on.
They also curbed the province issuing parking permits for the disabled to many not entitled to them and grounded an expensive trip MPPs planned quietly to study voting systems around the world.
The news media covering the legislature also have faults, but to their employers and the public that provides space for them they are a bargain, this is not where they should be relaxing their watch.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen’s Park press gallery.
