In the last two weeks, thanks to significantly increased direct and arranged government supports, we have taken another large step towards an information dystopia. We have done little to anything to address the implications of declining public trust in the news.
Much has been made about the news industry’s shrinking revenues in the digital age. But the chief problem with news isn’t financing—it is trust. A key source of the trust deficit can be found in the Faustian choices that it has made in the social media environment.
What Canada desperately needs instead is a multi-pronged, coordinated national strategy based on current economic and market realities that will allow journalism to flourish again.
After more than two-and-a-half years at The Hub, we’re optimistic that the short-term challenges facing journalism are ones that entrepreneurs and innovators are actively working to solve.
The CRTC’s idea of “modernizing” broadcasting appears heavily weighted in favour of applying its 1990s way of doing things to the online world of 2023.
During political conversation, resorting to “experts say” is bound to elicit groans and eye-rolling; it often signifies poor argumentation and uncritical, directionally motivated reasoning. There is no shortage of experts who can back up almost any opinion.
CBC president and CEO Catherine Tait sparred with Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman about the broadcaster’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas War, including refusal to retract disproven headlines about the October 17 hospital explosion .
If we in the media want the public to listen to us, we must first listen to them. And if we expect the public to trust us, we’re going to have to start by trusting them.
These media failures are highly problematic especially in a context of heightened tensions in the region and elsewhere around the world. There is an onus on the news media to ensure that its coverage its reliable and trustworthy.
Western diplomats, journalists, and B-level scholars got their wish. They helped to defeat a flawed and perhaps hapless leader in the Shah of Iran, and they inadvertently aided a greater evil.
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