Amen. Brilliant and right on the mark from this Canadian who stopped watching and listening to main stream news for the reasons you articulated. Thank you for the work you do.
As a Canadian who has now lived in the US for three decades, it is always surprising to me when I go back to Canada how relatively homogeneous Canadians are in their expressed politics and world views.
There just seems to be a much narrower range of socially acceptable perspectives in Canada. Even amongst people I know very well, there is much more caution about expressing non-consensus views on any even mildly controversial topics little own the issues of the day. This seems to reflect the much narrower range of views expressed in Canadian media, both because of CBC dominance and the concentration of corporate media.
There just doesn't seem to be a source of substantially contrarian voices in the media. Indeed, I see a lot more engagement with substantive divergence on Canadian contraversies by Canadian expats, etc.
This makes "the consensus" seem solid but, I expect, makes it far more brittle.
On issues like residential schools, the trucker covid protests, plastic straws, housing costs vs immigration rates, etc., there just seems to be a wilful blindness to broader perspectives and alternative interpretations. However, as these topics break out from their media bubbles the media itself is tarnished.
Spot on. I worked for a Toronto based firm for a dozen years and made some great lifelong friends…..and have lost all but one. They changed. I didn’t. They canceled me from their lives. I was an apostate. Never expected this.
I do also think it’s mostly a Toronto problem, since it dominates.
I might be only a couple of decades away from residing in Canada but tend to agree with you on the narrow perspective of the commentary and reportage in the Canadian media. Tara's essay, which is so well meaning, but so misguided in that she focused mostly on the symptoms of the problem: thin skinned writers/journalists focused on journalism and current affairs, interviewing other journalists and media experts will produce the a narrow perspective every time. Tara, your audience is global. The platform is the message, to bastardize the brilliant McLuhan. None of the problems Canadians and their media are grappling with is unique to Canada. Here on Substack, writers have the means to scale ideas and opinions to a larger audience, the majority of which will willingly pay for content that rises above mediocrity.
That the Munck debate on trust in media was won by a US and a British journalist/authors, both of whom create content here on Substack, and many other platforms, is a fairly good reminder that the Canadian media has failed to rise to the occasion. The only Canadian on that stage, though he has worked in the US for many years, was the weakest performer. Gladwell showed no grasp of nuance and resorted to identity politics versus any arguments.
I hope Tara's attempt to deliver a swift kick to journalists and journalism in Canada includes a real mea culpa in the future. The summer series of commentary on the federal communication legislation could have been better. It was all noise and lacking a signal, framed entirely in parochial terms. While Tara's guests were the main actors, she curated it.
Listening to a YouTube program that is narrated narratives from German soldiers that had been captured and sent to the US as prisoners of war during WWII. The American prison guards allowed the German prisoners access to newspapers. The fact that the news was reporting everything... even stories critical of the US, like the treatment of blacks in the South, etc., had a significant impact on their mindset related to democracy and freedom. They trusted the news as it reported on the war because of this.
That shining light of US liberal democracy that valued truth and facts in reporting... it is gone. It is gone in the Western world. And I am not alone in thinking that the perpetrators for destroying that shining light should be rounded up and put in a prisoner of war camp where maybe they too can have the same epiphanies as those German soldiers.
The CBC is a grift. The bonuses you refer to just put that very visibly on display. You have the right perspective on all this TH. Well done and have a great holiday!
The last paragraph of the essay makes the strongest point. The legacy media , sadly, has undermined it’s own importance in democracy because it no longer includes viewpoint diversity. The wide range of views held by Canadians are simply not represented. Often differing perspectives, if they are shared, are disparaged and discounted outright. It is as if the legacy news media thinks the public is immature and stupid , which we are not. If the Canadian legacy media continues to disrespect Canadians they will continue to fail(while receiving millions of our tax dollars.) It will be their own fault.
This article assumes that the problem is within the control of local newsroom. This problem is initiated well above this pay grade. Another approach would be to legislate news agency liability. What I mean is when it can be proven that news agencies have proliferated propaganda that had the potential to effect or support any decision making process then anyone affected be the propaganda can sue. A simple example would be C19 vaccine, safe and effective. The injured ought to be able to sue propaganda perpetrators, not the company, the individuals.
The media is the harbinger of all institutions in Canada.
When a government decides that tampons in men’s washrooms are more important than dealing with the two biggest problems in the country, housing and inflation, then Canada is no doubt moving towards a lower trust society.
When the government and media consistently lie to me regarding forestry cuts and practices in BC and the pandemic why should I believe anything they say.
And with that negativity out of the way happy holidays Tara and everyone else.
Well said, within the narrow confines of media. But, the real problem is the explosion of woke authoritarian totalitarianism a few years ago. They now control every institution in the US and Canada. It must be ripped out, root and branch.
It is the antithesis of classical liberalism. The two cannot coexist.
This has been a fascinating topic to follow through 2023 and this synopsis hits the mark in my opinion. At the root of it I think ‘legacy media’ are becoming legacy because of (1) new competition to their monopoly from digital technology and far lower barriers to entry for new actors and (2) the crescendo of the Critical Theory and applied postmodernist movement that have pressured society (and journalists did not resist and in many cases promoted the goals of the movement) to pick a side as the problems of society (and there are many) are recast as political warfare. There also seems to be an unhealthy dose of self-promotion and celebrity-itis affecting the younger generation of journalists.
I view journalism as providing society with a service that lowers the level of uncertainty associated with events happening in the world. I don’t have to spend all day piecing together bits of data to understand the world around me because journalists have lowered the entropy of the system by packaging those events in to information that is ideally balanced and as complete as can be expected. But to fulfill that type of role a key attribute of a journalist would be humility and the nagging sense that something has been overlooked or there is a ‘smarter’ person in the room that has not been interviewed yet.
Instead we get journalists who are motivated by social engineering and reshaping public opinion. Masquerading as unbiased while also pushing biased opinion and socio-political goals is incredibly obvious to the public and damages credibility almost immediately. It’s like trying to hide behind the curtain but I can still see your feet sticking out!
In a sign of what may be around the corner for newsrooms, I came across www.channel1.ai who use realistic AI generated human avatars to present news from reports by on-the-ground journalists. Just the facts, no snide insinuations, refreshing almost! Mainstream media should try to improve their culture if they want to be respected again but if they don’t other options will emerge and they will be replaced by technology. AI is not infallible either but innovation moves in the direction of lower costs and/or more convenience. Not trying to parse the contrivances from the information would certainly be more convenient for me.
Amen. Brilliant and right on the mark from this Canadian who stopped watching and listening to main stream news for the reasons you articulated. Thank you for the work you do.
Rodney Palmer has exposed the gross negligence of the CBC in these two sworn testimonies at the National Citizens Inquiry
CBC Newsgathering versus Propaganda during covid https://rumble.com/v2fs7u2-rodney-palmer-full-interview-day-1-toronto-national-citizens-inquiry.html
CBC Use of Liberal experts during covid https://rumble.com/v2oqgha-veteran-journalist-rodney-palmer-exposes-the-cbcs-lies-and-propaganda-ottaw.html
As a Canadian who has now lived in the US for three decades, it is always surprising to me when I go back to Canada how relatively homogeneous Canadians are in their expressed politics and world views.
There just seems to be a much narrower range of socially acceptable perspectives in Canada. Even amongst people I know very well, there is much more caution about expressing non-consensus views on any even mildly controversial topics little own the issues of the day. This seems to reflect the much narrower range of views expressed in Canadian media, both because of CBC dominance and the concentration of corporate media.
There just doesn't seem to be a source of substantially contrarian voices in the media. Indeed, I see a lot more engagement with substantive divergence on Canadian contraversies by Canadian expats, etc.
This makes "the consensus" seem solid but, I expect, makes it far more brittle.
On issues like residential schools, the trucker covid protests, plastic straws, housing costs vs immigration rates, etc., there just seems to be a wilful blindness to broader perspectives and alternative interpretations. However, as these topics break out from their media bubbles the media itself is tarnished.
Spot on. I worked for a Toronto based firm for a dozen years and made some great lifelong friends…..and have lost all but one. They changed. I didn’t. They canceled me from their lives. I was an apostate. Never expected this.
I do also think it’s mostly a Toronto problem, since it dominates.
I might be only a couple of decades away from residing in Canada but tend to agree with you on the narrow perspective of the commentary and reportage in the Canadian media. Tara's essay, which is so well meaning, but so misguided in that she focused mostly on the symptoms of the problem: thin skinned writers/journalists focused on journalism and current affairs, interviewing other journalists and media experts will produce the a narrow perspective every time. Tara, your audience is global. The platform is the message, to bastardize the brilliant McLuhan. None of the problems Canadians and their media are grappling with is unique to Canada. Here on Substack, writers have the means to scale ideas and opinions to a larger audience, the majority of which will willingly pay for content that rises above mediocrity.
That the Munck debate on trust in media was won by a US and a British journalist/authors, both of whom create content here on Substack, and many other platforms, is a fairly good reminder that the Canadian media has failed to rise to the occasion. The only Canadian on that stage, though he has worked in the US for many years, was the weakest performer. Gladwell showed no grasp of nuance and resorted to identity politics versus any arguments.
I hope Tara's attempt to deliver a swift kick to journalists and journalism in Canada includes a real mea culpa in the future. The summer series of commentary on the federal communication legislation could have been better. It was all noise and lacking a signal, framed entirely in parochial terms. While Tara's guests were the main actors, she curated it.
Listening to a YouTube program that is narrated narratives from German soldiers that had been captured and sent to the US as prisoners of war during WWII. The American prison guards allowed the German prisoners access to newspapers. The fact that the news was reporting everything... even stories critical of the US, like the treatment of blacks in the South, etc., had a significant impact on their mindset related to democracy and freedom. They trusted the news as it reported on the war because of this.
That shining light of US liberal democracy that valued truth and facts in reporting... it is gone. It is gone in the Western world. And I am not alone in thinking that the perpetrators for destroying that shining light should be rounded up and put in a prisoner of war camp where maybe they too can have the same epiphanies as those German soldiers.
The CBC is a grift. The bonuses you refer to just put that very visibly on display. You have the right perspective on all this TH. Well done and have a great holiday!
The last paragraph of the essay makes the strongest point. The legacy media , sadly, has undermined it’s own importance in democracy because it no longer includes viewpoint diversity. The wide range of views held by Canadians are simply not represented. Often differing perspectives, if they are shared, are disparaged and discounted outright. It is as if the legacy news media thinks the public is immature and stupid , which we are not. If the Canadian legacy media continues to disrespect Canadians they will continue to fail(while receiving millions of our tax dollars.) It will be their own fault.
This article assumes that the problem is within the control of local newsroom. This problem is initiated well above this pay grade. Another approach would be to legislate news agency liability. What I mean is when it can be proven that news agencies have proliferated propaganda that had the potential to effect or support any decision making process then anyone affected be the propaganda can sue. A simple example would be C19 vaccine, safe and effective. The injured ought to be able to sue propaganda perpetrators, not the company, the individuals.
The media is the harbinger of all institutions in Canada.
When a government decides that tampons in men’s washrooms are more important than dealing with the two biggest problems in the country, housing and inflation, then Canada is no doubt moving towards a lower trust society.
When the government and media consistently lie to me regarding forestry cuts and practices in BC and the pandemic why should I believe anything they say.
And with that negativity out of the way happy holidays Tara and everyone else.
Short answer is, further downhill fast.
Excellent summary of the problem. Now, who's gonna take the lead?
Well said, within the narrow confines of media. But, the real problem is the explosion of woke authoritarian totalitarianism a few years ago. They now control every institution in the US and Canada. It must be ripped out, root and branch.
It is the antithesis of classical liberalism. The two cannot coexist.
This has been a fascinating topic to follow through 2023 and this synopsis hits the mark in my opinion. At the root of it I think ‘legacy media’ are becoming legacy because of (1) new competition to their monopoly from digital technology and far lower barriers to entry for new actors and (2) the crescendo of the Critical Theory and applied postmodernist movement that have pressured society (and journalists did not resist and in many cases promoted the goals of the movement) to pick a side as the problems of society (and there are many) are recast as political warfare. There also seems to be an unhealthy dose of self-promotion and celebrity-itis affecting the younger generation of journalists.
I view journalism as providing society with a service that lowers the level of uncertainty associated with events happening in the world. I don’t have to spend all day piecing together bits of data to understand the world around me because journalists have lowered the entropy of the system by packaging those events in to information that is ideally balanced and as complete as can be expected. But to fulfill that type of role a key attribute of a journalist would be humility and the nagging sense that something has been overlooked or there is a ‘smarter’ person in the room that has not been interviewed yet.
Instead we get journalists who are motivated by social engineering and reshaping public opinion. Masquerading as unbiased while also pushing biased opinion and socio-political goals is incredibly obvious to the public and damages credibility almost immediately. It’s like trying to hide behind the curtain but I can still see your feet sticking out!
In a sign of what may be around the corner for newsrooms, I came across www.channel1.ai who use realistic AI generated human avatars to present news from reports by on-the-ground journalists. Just the facts, no snide insinuations, refreshing almost! Mainstream media should try to improve their culture if they want to be respected again but if they don’t other options will emerge and they will be replaced by technology. AI is not infallible either but innovation moves in the direction of lower costs and/or more convenience. Not trying to parse the contrivances from the information would certainly be more convenient for me.
An exceptionally thoughtful and creative piece of analysis
I have been waiting for someone to describe our msm with such pin point accuracy
And prescribe a way to fix the rot