A collection of encore Lean Out conversations on the media - to coincide with the publication of the 2024 Massey Essay in the Literary Review of Canada
Most things are too complicated for moral clarity. Most issues are hard to make up your mind about, and to be morally clear you need to put aside the facts.
Wow, this is a statement of truth. When you follow this through, you see that narratives are dangerous. As the war in Ukraine & the events in Gaza proceed those who had moral clarity are ending up with egg on their faces. The reason for this, is that they were morally clear, with out examining the whole picture. Denial that there are Nazi's in Ukraine & Nakba denialism are driven by a sense of righteousness that makes the adherence to the Moral Clarity a problem.
It would be far better for our media to let the Story be the Boss. If they had let the Story be the Boss in Ukraine in 2014 perhaps we could have avoided a war. If the media had let the story be the Boss (in 1948, 1967, 1973, 2005, 2011) with respect to Israel perhaps justice in Palestine would be possible.
Indeed. A reporter is a remote sensor like a thermometer. A reporter gets into places we can't reach, and tells us WHAT IS HAPPENING THERE. Just the facts, not the words. A reporter who adds emotions and narratives is perfectly useless, just like an emotional thermometer or an emotional yardstick.
Probably the best essay I have read in 2024. I have not lived in Canada for several years but I guess things have changed for here in the US I have come to despise the legacy media for many of the things that the essay covered to the point that I use the internet to get news sources that just reported the facts.....I knew things had changed in Canada when I was following the trucker protest....especially with Global Media. Growing up in western Canada, I too questioned the media when the likes of Tommy Hunter, Pamela Wallen and Mike Duffy were appointed senators. In western Canada, the senate as a tool for rewarding patronage is a thorny issue....and so I have always been skeptical of the domestic news coverage. I was never a fan of the Sun or National Review either as they were the early precursors of the concentrated bias the essay talked about....the thing that shocked me about the coverage of trucker protest was the blatant skewing of the facts to support one point of view, and only one point of view by what I thought were once the so called main stream legacy sources....the ones that used to report just the facts.....that's when I knew what I was witnessing in the US was rooted in something much broader than national borders.
The longer I live in the US, the more I have come to understand the many and often pernicious face of elitism of the so called left. I still see as essential to a healthy society the need for vertical mobility which I believe that Canada had gotten right with its equality of opportunity mantra, and as a consequence would be considered someone on the left side of political spectrum, but the elitism of the left in the US is blinding especially in a federal system with only two political parties, and that reality is for sure reflected in their legacy media.
Shortly after I moved to the US, I ran into a Canadian who said the way that Canada reported the news was boring, and by inference Canada was thus inferior. Back then the in vogue word was infotainment as a way to describe the cable news networks. I did not argue the point, but as I write, I look back to the days when my parents and I would sit on the couch and watch Barbara Frum and the journal as the good-ole-days.
Today, there are english version of European news channels on the Internet and I find that they are a better job of reporting without bias, in particular France 24 and DW (not Sky).
Most things are too complicated for moral clarity. Most issues are hard to make up your mind about, and to be morally clear you need to put aside the facts.
Wow, this is a statement of truth. When you follow this through, you see that narratives are dangerous. As the war in Ukraine & the events in Gaza proceed those who had moral clarity are ending up with egg on their faces. The reason for this, is that they were morally clear, with out examining the whole picture. Denial that there are Nazi's in Ukraine & Nakba denialism are driven by a sense of righteousness that makes the adherence to the Moral Clarity a problem.
It would be far better for our media to let the Story be the Boss. If they had let the Story be the Boss in Ukraine in 2014 perhaps we could have avoided a war. If the media had let the story be the Boss (in 1948, 1967, 1973, 2005, 2011) with respect to Israel perhaps justice in Palestine would be possible.
Indeed. A reporter is a remote sensor like a thermometer. A reporter gets into places we can't reach, and tells us WHAT IS HAPPENING THERE. Just the facts, not the words. A reporter who adds emotions and narratives is perfectly useless, just like an emotional thermometer or an emotional yardstick.
Probably the best essay I have read in 2024. I have not lived in Canada for several years but I guess things have changed for here in the US I have come to despise the legacy media for many of the things that the essay covered to the point that I use the internet to get news sources that just reported the facts.....I knew things had changed in Canada when I was following the trucker protest....especially with Global Media. Growing up in western Canada, I too questioned the media when the likes of Tommy Hunter, Pamela Wallen and Mike Duffy were appointed senators. In western Canada, the senate as a tool for rewarding patronage is a thorny issue....and so I have always been skeptical of the domestic news coverage. I was never a fan of the Sun or National Review either as they were the early precursors of the concentrated bias the essay talked about....the thing that shocked me about the coverage of trucker protest was the blatant skewing of the facts to support one point of view, and only one point of view by what I thought were once the so called main stream legacy sources....the ones that used to report just the facts.....that's when I knew what I was witnessing in the US was rooted in something much broader than national borders.
The longer I live in the US, the more I have come to understand the many and often pernicious face of elitism of the so called left. I still see as essential to a healthy society the need for vertical mobility which I believe that Canada had gotten right with its equality of opportunity mantra, and as a consequence would be considered someone on the left side of political spectrum, but the elitism of the left in the US is blinding especially in a federal system with only two political parties, and that reality is for sure reflected in their legacy media.
Shortly after I moved to the US, I ran into a Canadian who said the way that Canada reported the news was boring, and by inference Canada was thus inferior. Back then the in vogue word was infotainment as a way to describe the cable news networks. I did not argue the point, but as I write, I look back to the days when my parents and I would sit on the couch and watch Barbara Frum and the journal as the good-ole-days.
Today, there are english version of European news channels on the Internet and I find that they are a better job of reporting without bias, in particular France 24 and DW (not Sky).