EDITORIAL: The Globe and Mail's clumsy dance of divisiveness (01/31/99)

EDITORIAL

The Globe and Mail's clumsy dance of divisiveness

With all the grace of a rampaging rhinoceros, The Globe and Mail's editors and its parliamentary correspondent, Jeff Sallot, put a divisive sheen on the diplomatic tasks facing Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien on his trip to Ukraine and Poland. The Toronto-based daily's January 22 edition carried an item titled "PM must dance carefully in Europe," subtitled "Itinerary in Ukraine and Auschwitz designed to defer to ethnic sensibilities," and illustrated with a photo of the Mr. Chrétien captioned: "Prime minister heads today for a region of Europe rife with possibilities for missteps."

In this case, the headline writer beat the PM to the punch It is nothing short of an egregious insult to refer to decisions to commemorate victims of the Holocaust and the Famine of 1932-1933 as "defer[ence] to ethnic sensibilities."

It got outrageously worse.

In the article's first column, Mr. Sallot wrote: "In Kiev [sic], [Mr. Chrétien] will lay a wreath at a new memorial to victims of what Ukrainians call their own genocide, the Soviet-engineered famine during the winter [sic] of 1932-1933." Since one can only speculate about what Mr. Sallot meant, perhaps he should be asked the following: 1) Did he mean that because the erstwhile Soviet regime and its apologists denied the famine was genocidal (engineered purely for "class purposes," one assumes) that the jury is still out? 2) Did he mean that Ukrainians "call it their own genocide" because they're locked into a grotesque game of one-upmanship with Jews? 3) Did he mean that Ukrainians "call it their own genocide" because genocide seems to be a macabre determinant of minority "ethnic" status for "others" such as Jews, the Irish, Armenians, Cambodians, Kurds, Bosnians, Rwandans, etc., etc.?

Perhaps it needs to be spelled out for the correspondent, and The Globe and Mail: genocides don't belong to the people on whom they were inflicted. They are history's burden of responsibility placed on humanity's shoulders, which asks: Why wasn't it stopped? What have you done to ensure that it never happens again?

Mr. Sallot chose to ignore the record of cooperation between the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) and the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) on Canadian unity issues. To be sure, the reporter allowed the country's Ukrainians and Jews one, soured, note of agreement. In an odd choice of words, he averred that "both [Jewish and Ukrainian] communities ... are equally delighted that [Mr. Chrétien] will solemnly commemorate heart-breaking tragedies in their history." The rest of Mr. Sallot's article seems to have been written in the key of "divide and cackle."

"Perhaps it's only coincidental," The Globe report reads, "but [the PM's] itinerary has been arranged in such a way as to keep the representatives of the two groups largely apart." Readers are regaled with ill-conceived descriptions of "the tensions between the Jewish and Ukrainian communities" over the war crimes issue. Although the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) has consistently expressed its support for the prosecution of war criminals, Mr. Sallot chose to write that "many in the Ukrainian community see this as the needless hounding of a small handful of very old men." Mr. Sallot also slips into group libel, reviving the category of "Ukrainian war criminals," of whom he asserts "a number ... slipped into Canada in the refugee stream."

The article's insidious carelessness (one can only hope) also suggests that the tribe at The Globe should take another hard look at the concept so frequently disparaged on the newspaper's pages - multiculturalism. Multiculturalism seeks to harmonize the civic playing field, in part by urging people to restrain themselves from applying tags such as "ethnic" to members of society not part of the dominant group. Sheila Finestone, a parliamentarian accompanying Mr. Chrétien to Poland, in part to attend ceremonies at the site of the Auschwitz extermination camp, was identified as "a prominent figure in the Montreal Jewish community." Had Mr. Sallot also noted that Ms. Finestone once served as secretary of state for multiculturalism, perhaps he would have trammelled his urge to spice up a news story with "ethnic conflict."

Mr. Chrétien has recently proven to be prone to gaffes (he made "pepper spray" a household word in the aftermath of the Asia-Pacific summit in Vancouver and was criticized for statements at the outset of the recent provincial elections in Québec). It seems the folks at the Globe were so keen to make the East European dance floor slippery for him they decided to use any means necessary. In the item's third paragraph, Mr. Sallot wrote "Mr. Chrétien will not only have to be mindful of the sensitivities of these two [Jewish and Ukrainian] pieces in the Canadian mosaic, but also of the enmities between the groups."

The reporter should have followed his own advice before riding roughshod over the sensitivities he mentions. In the meantime, the CJC and the UCC should issue a joint condemnation of The Globe and Mail's irresponsible journalism.

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