Canada’s current crop of journalists appears allergic to the art of a well-crafted question

“I’ve watched an infinitely expanding failure of those in my chosen trade to simply ask the fundamental questions”

It turns out gravity might not be all it’s cracked up to be. What goes up must still come down. But a new theory publicized this week argues gravity itself is more like male-female relationships.

In typical male fashion, gravity gets all the glory. But the real heavy lifting of relativity is apparently done by a true fundamental force (hello, ladies!) more like the one that keeps the cosmos from forgetting the anniversary of the Big Bang or compels it to go to Costco instead of spending entire Sundays watching woefully bad NFL teams play each other.

Physicists Ruth Kastner and Andreas Schlatter posit that the electromagnetic push me-pull you between atoms, molecules and other “charged systems … (makes) gravity not a force intrinsic to space time but a consequence of quantum-level behaviors of ordinary matter,” according to ChatGPT’s Super Advanced Physics for Dummies AI bot. ​

I have no clue what that means, much less whether it’s true, although I admit to frequently finding myself mysteriously forced to drop 4L jars of Cheese Balls into the infinite space of a Costco shopping cart when I’d rather be watching my once-beloved New York Giants play my once-beloved New England Patriots to a 3-3 tie.

True, untrue, madly imaginative in the best hallucinogenic way, the new theory of gravity comprises one compelling feature split in two.

1. It questions something taken for granted in every moment of existence.

2. It offers the Costco Bonus Pak version: “What is gravity? Why do we have it?”

It’s an instance where the sheer act of questioning is as crucial as the answer arising. It’s also a model of how we can shift the centre of gravity for many human concerns, including journalism and political life.

From my days as an eager pup covering rural district councils to my current state of codgerhood grousing about journalism these days, one particular development has troubled me most. Appalled, I’ve watched an infinitely expanding failure of those in my chosen trade to simply ask the fundamental questions.

Not all, of course. There remain sharp interrogators out there. Nor are they all so old that they learned the craft, as I did, from nicotine-fingered, devil’s breath desk editors emitting the apostolic screed of journalism: “Why the *&$!@ didn’t you ask….?”

As an editor and text addict, I do find consolation in questions well-asked, especially by younger journalists hewing to the basics. Alas, they are vastly outnumbered by journalists failing to understand their job is asking for adequate explanations from people who publicly proclaim the truth of the day.

A straightforward example is Liberal leader Mark Carney’s release of his party’s platform. (I choose Carney not for partisan purpose but because he’s the polling front runner who appears bound to be elected PM.)

As Steve Ambler noted in a recent Rewrite post, our prospective PM justified doubling Canada’s annual deficit because, “as an economist,” he knows public investment will drive private investment.

“I know, I’m an economist, and with an investment of $500 billion the economic growth rate will rise,” is the salient quote.

Agree/disagree with the premise, it appears from all the reading I’ve scoured that no one thought to ask the very obvious question: How does “being an economist” guarantee knowledge you are right when other economists profoundly disagree with you?

The purpose of such a question would not be to slyly trap the Liberal leader into saying something foolish or pompous or otherwise pejorative. Its metaphorically mangled goal should not be playing silly buggers to camouflage ideological crossed swords. It should be to get Carney to explain explicitly, for the benefit of Canadian voters, why he said what he said, how he thinks it is true, and how he resolves its contradictions.

Carney, after all, is making a truth claim. In fact, he is making what the squeamish might find to be a gnostic sort of truth claim: that what he says must be true because he is part of an enlightened sect of special knowledge holders. Like all knowing (or even accidental) Gnostics, he presents himself in the quote as floating above the ignorant mob in the Costco aisles of imperfect and impure market knowledge.

So, it’s incumbent on journalists to politely raise the counter example of, say, a Peter Navarro, to get Mr. Carney to explain how it is that not all economists appear to have achieved perfect illumination either.

Navarro is a Harvard educated economist like Carney but – what ho! – has pressed President Donald Trump to do what he claims is the economically prudent thing of imposing the very tariffs that Mark Carney now says imprudently require $500 billion to save the Canadian economy.

Is Navarro right purely because he’s an economist as Carney is right purely because he is an economist? If they are saying contradictory things, how can both be right? Surely, whatever gravity is, it can’t be up and down simultaneously?

Asked the telling question, Carney might, indeed, welcome the opening to answer: “Look, Peter Navarro is an economic delusional crackpot leading the world’s most powerful superannuated Richie Rich the Poor Little Rich Kid around by the nose.”

Possibly true. But also demanding, diplomatically and charitably, the follow up question: “We know he is but what are you?” And more pointedly, “Since you and he are both economists, how can Canadians be certain you, too, aren’t an economic delusional crackpot leading us around by the nose?”

Again, neither should be a purely rhetorical question. Neither should smuggle prejudicial opinion into a purported request for truth. Both are the sine qua non of the journalistic gambit: asking fair, albeit tough-minded, honest, necessary questions to benefit the public good.

There are at least two other fundamental questions Mr. Carney should be asked. One is where we will borrow all the billions needed for his “investment” plan when world money markets are on the run from the Yankee dollar as a reserve currency. A second is whether any electoral/governing platform should be reacting to the impossibly unpredictable Donald Trump, whose administration seems to be unravelling, if not yet headed for supernova.

Those are for another day. The solid ground here is that journalism exists to help satisfy, within the limit of human imperfection, the need of citizens for full, fair, accurate, balanced information from which they freely work out for themselves the course of their votes, their lives, and shared society. The journalistic job is to ask fundamental questions. Would that journalists come back to earth and start doing it.

(Peter Stockland is a former Editor-in-Chief of the Montreal Gazette)