The lobbying industry is the true fourth branch of government

In the current issue of Vanity Fair, in an article entitled "Washington, We Have a Problem"Todd Purdum writes: “The press claims the title of fourth estate, but the lobbying industry is the true fourth branch of government”.

This poignant observation is as true in Canada as it is in the US.

Furthermore, in Canada we don’t simply have the press being displaced by the new fourth estate of lobbyists, we have the press being subsumed by it, in which the press (owned by the same interests that employ lobbyists) are the sycophant cheerleaders for policies that often have no basis in facts. Facts don’t matter to the press, nor does research. Spin is what today’s Canadian press is all about, on behalf of those who employ them. Just look how many of the Canadians press who repeated Harper’s lies about tax leakage and how very few had the professionalism and journalistic integrity to do some research on the matter. I can only think of one such member of the Canadian press who can hold their head high on the matter of Harper’s income trust fraud: Diane Francis.

The rest of the Canadian press are hacks that have been subsumed by the lobbyists that now occupy the fourth branch of government.