Spring & Summer 2006

Aug. 10, 2006
Re: Barry Hertz’s “Being John Ibbitson,” Summer 2006

Barry Hertz’s “Being John Ibbitson” is one of the more execrable lumps of prose I’ve read in the past decade. After leaving journalism in 1996 I forgot how easy it is to stitch a series of half-truths, unsubstantiated claims and trivial factoids into a deceptively believable “profile.” If, like me, Ibbitson can recall our first semester at the University of Western Ontario’s j-school then this article would make him wince too. Prof. Andrew MacFarlane (or it may have been Mack Laing) taught us that, “Show me, don’t tell me,” is a fundamental rule in convincing readers of the veracity of one’s journalism. Unfortunately, Hertz’s gushing hagiography approaches the trade the other way round.

For starters, Hertz must be all of five feet tall if he finds Ibbitson’s five-foot-ten-inch height “imposing.” Such adjectives used to be reserved for football players and army drill sergeants, but perhaps in today’s media everything is relative to the author and need not be qualified.

Hertz’s claim that Ibbitson was “a decade older than most of his classmates” sent me running to my files to check the Class of 1998 student directory, which although it does not list ages does give a rundown of when Ibber’s 42 classmates earned their undergraduate degrees. Unless there was an unusually high number of child geniuses he does not appear to be more than about eight years older than any of them, and was younger than at least three or four. But maybe we ought not to quibble over facts. In a year when the most memorable activity was playing card games Ibbitson and fellow alumnus Steve Northfield can be forgiven for not remembering much else.

Where were the Review‘s copy-editors (not to mention the senior staff) when this ridiculous statement got passed on to the printer: “But while it’s true [Ibbitson] trumpets fiscally conservative causes such as smaller government, lower taxes and increased military spending?”? Please explain how a fiscal conservative advocates spending more money on anything. Perhaps prominent columnists are able to do what economists and other mere mortals cannot.

Then, with barely a pause to breathe, Hertz leaps into a realm that might well be labeled Tantric Journalism. Ibbitson prefers “critical, reportage-heavy analysis.” Hertz reiterates this argument again and again: “Be it stories on the softwood lumber disputes, reports on aboriginal policies or Canadian waffling over missile defence, Ibbitson reports the news instead of merely analyzing it?.” Other than citing the opinions of fellow Globe and Mail hacks Margaret Wente and Anthony Westell, where is the evidence that Ibbitson ever broke one news story that couldn’t have been gleaned from contemporaneous published sources? Please may we have just one verifiable citation? Three thousand words later the hapless reader remains prisoner to a mystical faith in Ibbitson’s reportorial prowess. Not having the patience myself to regularly read Ibbitson’s boilerplate neocon pontificating I confess I can’t help Hertz on that score.

And could Hertz not have found someone other than a Globe reviewer to discuss the merits of Ibbitson’s books? The choice reeks of asking one member of a dysfunctional family for an unbiased comment about a sibling.

More contradictions follow. Apparently Ibbitson is in favour of same-sex marriage but says he does not understand “state interference at all”? As if same-sex marriage would thrive all by itself in the bosom of a compassionate free-market economy. Where will all those redneck homophobes and religious zealots disappear to in the absence of a civilizing state?

Hertz struggles to argue that Ibbitson exists beyond the traditional ideological distinctions of left and right, but is himself imprisoned by those worn-out labels. He describes Globe columnist Rick Salutin as an “ultra-left voice.” Really? When was the last time you saw him advocate the replacement of Parliament by communes or march in favour of nationalizing the banks? Hertz then regurgitates the popular misconception that readers actually have a “choice between the Star on the left, the Post on the right, and the Globe waffling in between.” Don’t all three titles thrive on articles extolling the virtues of consumption, which just happen to be the same virtues extolled by their advertisers: more and bigger vehicles, foreign holidays, properties. If one isn’t a reader who craves owning more “stuff” then one isn’t a reader the Star, the Globe or the Post wants. The occasional hiring of a columnist such as a Salutin, a Linda McQuaig or a Haroon Siddiqui is a sop to diversity of opinion that doesn’t measure up when compared to entire 24-page sections on new cars and condos.

What does Hertz have to say about Ibbitson’s volunteer work, his religious convictions, his commitment to teaching or the speaking fees he donates to charity? Does Hertz say anything at all about the life that makes the man? By the time the reader labours to the end of “Being John Ibbitson” s/he has learned that the subject is a middle-class, white, gay guy with an MA who moved from small-town Ontario to the city where he drives an expensive Japanese car and has a penchant for modern furniture. Now there’s a personality who stands out in a crowd! In 1966 that may have been worth a story; in 2006 it is a celebration of the mundane. Regrettably, in an age when the endless tide of hyperbole trivializes so much of political life there is no counterbalance to the law of libel. If it is an offence to damage a person’s reputation by spreading falsehoods it should be no less an offence to inflate another’s reputation at the expense of an informed electorate. Perhaps then writers would reflect more soberly before they committed words to print.

Lest you think I have a grudge against my former classmate let me affirm that I do not. What I protest is the elevation of someone who commands little more than the wisdom of the day to the status of journalist-sage. As Samuel Johnson once wrote in similar circumstances: “He was dull in a new way and that made many people think him great.”

Sincerely,
Peter Saracino

P.S. Do you really “welcome input” into the Review? Is that why your invitation to write letters to the editor appears in small print at the bottom of a very long Web page and not at all in the printed version of your magazine? When you choose a name and a format similar to titles such as the Columbia Journalism Review you not only end up on the same newsstand shelf you create an expectation that you aspire to the same standards. Shame on you!

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