By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
If you’ve ever wondered why the corporate mass media in the U.S. and Canada has become so deplorable, diabolical and dumbed-down in recent years, you need look no further than the sordid tale of the rise of Michael Cooke, the executive editor of Canada’s largest and allegedly most “progressive” daily newspaper, the Toronto Star, and also former executive editor of the Vancouver Province, the Chicago Sun-Times and the New York Daily News.
Unable to make his journalistic mark in his native U.K., Cooke arrived on the shores of North America in the mid-Seventies — initially as a copy editor at the Toronto Star — and immediately began boasting that he was here to “teach the colonials how to do journalism.”
While he was no great shakes even as a lowly copy editor, Cooke had brought with him the only real skills he would ever need: a knack for unabashed self-promotion and the innate ability to select the right asses to kiss and the right backs to stab.
Mere months into his initial employment at the Star, Cooke intuited that his limited journalistic skills would never carry him as far as his insatiable ambition would like to go. His solution? Quickly identify and begin to eliminate legitimate competitors for the lofty positions he craved even in his journalistic infancy, and worm his way into the affections of the powerful. His strategy: afflict his most competent competitors and cozy up to those who had already risen past their own levels of journalistic competence. read more »