The cardinal rule of investigative journalism - follow the money - is a powerful tool to figure out what's happening to our neighbourhoods and region. It leads to explanations where there were none before for bulldozing of a green space or even the high school drop-out rate. "Follow the money" is the tool for explaining almost everything around us.

If following the money is difficult for journalists-and for detectives, auditors, historians, and investors - it's all the harder for citizens who don't have the time and resources for investigation. Fortunately, the best tool is common sense.

"Who profits from this?" seems simple - until we try to sketch it out. There are false explanations to throw us off, cover-ups, diversions, lies, red herrings, and distractions, some deliberate, some not. There are layers of bureaucratic barriers to information about ownership, profits, spending, partnerships, contracts, tenders and bids, exemptions, and exotic interpretations of the law. If anyone wonders why there is not more investigative journalism (or at least a little) on the evening news or daily papers, this list is part of the explanation.

We cannot depend only on the media. Despite the myth of the Fourth Estate, where the press is an independent force in society, the media is limited in what it can uncover and is constrained in what it can report. We should follow the news, but not rely upon it or upon one source. Ignoring the news creates blindness, but being satisfied with what we are served in three-minute reports on TV, in wordy puff in our newspapers, or in the rumours on the internet create smug blindness.

"Who profits?" is the best single rule in our search to understand what's shaping our lives and to avoid getting sucked in and turned around by the subterfuges and distractions of our complex society. The skills of spinning news have been developed and tested for years - but our abilities to identify these false roads are just developing.

It is the very media which is supposed to be our ally which has become the source of these diversions: entertainment, sports, contests, dramas and psycho-dramas, crime reports, feel-good features, blood-fire-and-destruction - all flooding us with time-wasting, with phony explanations, emotional hooks, and diversionary events. Ever wonder why the national news focuses on a funeral of a single child? Is the grief of parents news? Or is it an emotional diversion? The same for lengthy reports on funerals of a slain policeman or soldier or on the successes of a rock star or of a new movie - why is this news?

We should really call the media "the conduit". It's a waste of precious time to stay fixed on the media's failure. It is our lives and the lives of our neighbourhoods, kids and parents, our environment, our jobs, economy, and our culture which are constantly manhandled - without us understanding much at all. Unless we ourselves make a real effort to follow the news. And that starts by following the money.

Fred Ryan is publisher of Quebec's Aylmer Bulletin, West Quebec Post, and the Pontiac Journal. He is also a director of the Quebec Community Newspapers Association.

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Copyright © 2006 Fred Ryan/Log Cabin Chronicles/10.06