Optics: The power of image over substance

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MEDIUM RARE

They say one picture is worth a thousand words. In public relations, it's called optics.

It's that one picture that can convey the will of an entire people or the pettiness of an individual politician. It can capture the hearts and minds of a nation and change the course of governments. Or it can cloak a dictator in the mantle of a holy man. It's about images and impressions, symbols and myths. It's the power of the superficial over substance.

Optics can dominate if we uncritically consume the images conveyed by the news media.

Consider how the national news media last month portrayed the Governor General's travels to various Arctic countries. Much of the Canadian media portrayed Adrienne Clarkson's trips as too lavish, too expensive and a waste of money. In the midst of various scandals calling into question the former finance minister's ability to control spending now that he is prime minister, Paul Martin pulled the plug on Clarkson's northern initiative. Few journalists, however, examined what Clarkson was doing or why.

Think back to past governors general and it's difficult to find one that tried to do as much as Clarkson. Most got the job because they were loyal henchmen or bagwomen, a fat plum before retirement. Others got the keys to Rideau Hall because they could be trusted to be as decorative and as useful as lawn ornaments. Some deluded themselves with regal notions; one closed the grounds of Rideau Hall to keep the peasants off the lawn.

Clarkson, though, is different. She treats the office as a job. She's not a political hack. She's the first non-white in the job. Maybe she got the job because former PM Jean Chretien needed someone intelligent and hard-working as window-dressing to hide the sleaze going on in the background. What's certain is that Clarkson recognized the peoples of the North as important and their issues in need of her attention.

Clarkson focused on the circumpolar nations and, in particular, upon the 150,000 Indigenous peoples that share the coast along the Arctic Ocean from Canada, Alaska and Greenland to Russia, Finland, Sweden and Norway. In many ways, the Inuit cultures and languages are similar. In other ways, in particular the way their host countries treat them, their experiences are vastly different. But all of these peoples are under tremendous pressure from the south in terms of human rights, land claims, resource development and pollution.

But the media wasn't interested in these stories. Instead, it focused on the cost of conferences, travel and accommodation incurred by Clarkson in her attempt to educate people from the south about northern peoples. She took them North, to meet the people, to see how they lived and survived, to hear their concerns. The costs? They had to be submitted beforehand, evaluated and approved by the federal government, with various federal departments with northern interests involved. Instead of examining whether those costs were justifiable, or worthwhile, the news media chose to be the unthinking, unblinking conveyor of criticism by the government's opposition.

The opposition wasn't interested in northern issues. It wanted the prime minister's head. It used the costs of Clarkson's northern initiative to imply another scandal, another example that the PM couldn't control spending. With a federal election on the horizon, optics are everything. The opposition knew it. As we saw, the media played along, Martin pulled the plug, and Clarkson's attempt to improve the lives of northerners through international co-operation was cut short.

Here's another example of how optics can shape our perceptions, also from last month.

There they were, the Huey, Dewey and Louie of Canadian Aboriginal politics on Parliament Hill. They had big news to share so they booked the National Press Gallery. Unfortunately, they had a couple of teeny, tiny little problems. First, they had nothing to say. Second, what they said didn' jive with what we knew. Third, they had no clue about the optics of the situation.

Who are the Three Amigos? Clem Chartier of the Metis National Council, Phil Fontaine of the Assembly of First Nations, and Jose Kusugak of the Inuit Tapirit Kanatami.

They'd prepared for months to sit down with the Prime Minister. When the time came, did they articulate a common vision so Paul Martin might understand what lies in the hearts and souls of Aboriginal peoples? How they might better articulate Aboriginal and treaty rights in the Constitution? How addressing these might improve lives?

No.

Instead, the Three Amigos delivered a three-point program to Prime Minister Paul Martin that, they said, would usher in a new era of engagement and co-operation with the federal government. What does that mean? It's bafflegab for talk, more talk, and even more talk; committee meetings, First Ministers' meetings, regularly scheduled meetings with the Prime Minister's Office. But they never explained why or to what end. They excluded other Aboriginal groups. Worst, all they could claim was that they met with and shook the hand of the PM.

Well, anyone could do that.

The news media saw through it all. These weren't statesmen. There was no meaningful symbolism, no inspiring notions, no expression of hopes and aspirations. What the media saw, what we all saw, were three brown-skinned bureaucrats jangling empty cans, hoping for handouts, snarling at others wanting to share the same corner. All they wanted was money, money and more money.

It wasn't going to happen-not with Martin worried about his image, not with scandals in everyone's mind, not with an election looming and the polls showing the Liberals in decline. They certainly weren't going to be successful when the image portrayed by the Three Amigos was of beggars, bowing on bended knee, looking for scraps.

In politics, optics matter.