George W. Bush has been reading Noam Chomsky. Well, maybe talking to him. When president Jed Bartlett on The West Wing wants to know what the pope thinks, he says, “Get me the pope.” I know because he (W., not Noam or Jedediah Bartlett) told an interviewer: “I’m mindful of the filter through which some news travels, and sometimes you just have to go over the heads of the filter, and speak directly to the people.”

The term filter is pure Chomsky. It suggests that news media function to determine which versions of reality make it through to the public, or fail to. Freedom of the press as a way not just to ensure the public is informed, but informed in particular ways only.

I have been troubled by the thought of media filters since I heard that CBC Newsworld has cancelled its show Counterspin. I think it is — er, was — a unique example of unfiltered news coverage. In every show, it put those actually involved in contentious issues on air and let them go at it. The host mostly directed traffic. It ran for an hour, so there was back and forth, then more back and forth, which is the only way to really explore issues when serious differences exist.

What about CNN’s Crossfire? I rest my case. On Crossfire, the hosts (“for the right . . . for the left . . .”) dominate. They pepper the guests with challenges; the guests, who are more directly involved in issues, never get to batter each other or pick up steam. A topic passes quickly, then on to the next. You get the appearance of confrontation rather than confrontation itself.

Here’s an example of what I will miss. Counterspin did a show on Haiti during the recent crisis. There were four guests, all Haitian. Stop. Did you see any other cases of four Haitians discussing Haiti? No foreign academics. No outside journalists or ex-diplomats. The panelists seemed surprised, too. They looked like they had not been on TV before unmediated by interviewers, and rushed to get their message out before some network exec noticed and pulled the plug.

They sputtered, insulted, interrupted — even the accents were hard to make out. Host Carol Off more or less gave up on controlling them. Viewers had to decide for themselves what to make of it, since there were no authorities or pundits to explain what it meant. Ah, democracy.

What is a pundit anyway? I have wondered for years. Take University of Toronto Professor Janice Stein, who appears often on CBC’s The National (the main network, not marginal Newsworld) or TVO’s Studio Two. She frequently starts with something like, “This is extremely serious, Peter.” Or, “They have a very grave problem,” said in a grave way.

My problem is, I can’t remember anything she ever says after those grave starts, though I have seen her hundreds, maybe thousands, of times. The gravitas is all. Any specifics would only detract from the sense of authority; it’s probably best not to recall them. Counterspin absolutely lacked gravitas. Even the pundits on it quickly lost theirs.

Earlier this week, I went to The 7th Wave, a pub in Toronto’s the Beaches, for a debate with the Globe‘s Marcus Gee, on whether Canada should welcome deserters and resisters from the U.S. military. We perched beside each other on two bar stools, the way our columns sometimes appear side by side. But we could banter, interrupt, reconsider, rephrase, while the patrons/audience made statements of their own. Isn’t that what everyone would really like to know? Not: What does this guy think? But: What would he or she say in reply to this question?

The audience at the pub debate made great points. They brought up differences between refugees, conscientious objectors, immigrants and so forth. Two young guys said poor people sometimes enter the military to get an education, then they learn a bit, grow more sophisticated, decide it’s an immoral institution and want out. An older man said that’s like losing at a casino and demanding your money back because, “I came here expecting to win!” The event was hosted by NDPers, and I thought the mood would be lopsided, but it wasn’t. There were right-wing NDPers (know them by their tanning salons) and conservative lawyers (know them by their haircuts). The final division on the motion was close.

The illusion of real debate (Crossfire, pundit panels) may be more dangerous than its suppression. It leaves you fightless, since you don’t know what’s missing. This week columnist Rick Mercier of the Fredericksburg, Virginia, Free Lance-Star wrote that the U.S. media forgot one thing as they marked a year since the invasion of Iraq: an apology. (For swallowing the bilge about Saddam’s weapons etc.) Many readers said he was partly French, so what do you expect. (I don’t know if any thought he was that CBC pest from Newfoundland.) Then you get a news show that doesn’t bother to lament the absence of debate; it simply remedies it. Of course it was doomed. No argument there.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.