Aristotle said that the most important science in society is the science of politics. Politics orders and arranges everything. Laws and by-laws are distillations of politics. Judicial appointments are political acts. Funding of everything stems from political concerns.
 
The priest, rabbi, Imam, judge and doctor before whom you appear for your religious, legal and medical needs and care is a political animal. He or she voted in the last election for a candidate and political party. Your neighbor, your child's school principal, the teachers, the lawyers, and the bus driver, among others, are all political animals. When push comes to a shove, people's political allegiances come to the fore.
 
Newspapers do not even hide it anymore. They endorse political parties close to the election date. And the media is the subject of today's column. It is my submission that the most important transmission of politics in the modern era is the media and the most dangerous aspect of this reality is that the media is totally unaccountable. The media accuses everything under the sun of being unaccountable, except itself. And the second dangerous aspect of media unaccountability is that it is usually allied with political interests, for example the political party in power or the opposition. Media and politics are a couple, each fueling the other endlessly and in a deadly fashion to democracy.
 
For the sake of argument, let’s use Canada as a case study of what I am speaking of. In fact any country can be substituted. This schema applies to many countries.

While the chattering classes in Canada for example (and elsewhere including the USA) accuse the judges as having hijacked the politics of the country, it is actually the media that has hijacked the politics of the country, any country. Take the example of the Mulroney regime. For information on how the media completely hijacked Mulroney's agenda, do not take my word for it, just read Peter C. Newman's book, THE SECRET MULRONEY TAPES (2005) or watch any question period of any provincial legislature in Canada or the House of Commons of Canada or England or Congress and Senate of the United States.

In the Mulroney book, there is no reference whatsoever to Mulroney's reaction to any decision from the Supreme Court of Canada at all. His government never changed course because of a judicial decision. Mulroney does not seem to even have read any decision from any court. But there are hundreds and hundreds of references to Mulroney reacting and behaving one way or another in reference to a media article. In fact he was so media- driven that he hired  well-known TV journalist Bruce Phillips to be his media man. Mulroney's governance at the behest of the media and those who control the politics disseminated by the media was pathetic. In the end Mulroney's obsession with the media destroyed him. During the Mulroney government, we were ruled by an unaccountable media interests to the detriment of the country.
 
And this has continued to today when we are governed by the Conservative Party that was created by the National Post starting in 1998. The National Post applied political pressure to de-link the Canadian Alliance from the Reform Party of Preston Manning (which was going nowhere). The Alliance evolved into the present day Conservative Party. Read the National Post and read the platform of the Conservative Party and see whether you can tell the difference.
 
The question periods in the legislatures, House of Commons, Congress and Senate include mainly information gleaned from the morning pipers’ headlines and nothing more. The agenda is set by the media. We are more governed by the media than ever before. And who feeds the media: politicians, media owners, lobbyists, police, corporate executives and those with hidden agendas.
 
And what effect does the media have on democracy? Plenty. And that will be the subject of another column in the future. The self-appointed most important barometer of democracy, the media, is found to be highly wanting. 
 
By Dr. Munyonzwe Hamalengwa
The author mhamalengwa@sympatico.ca is a Toronto lawyer.