Hugh Mackenzie
Huntsville Doppler
These days, when it comes to politics and the media, it is difficult to know what is normal any more. What is fake news? What is ethical reporting and who is controlling whom? It’s like a fast game of tennis, and my neck gets sore watching the ball whiz back and forth.
There were two instances of media suppression last week that got little attention given everything else that was going on in Washington. The first was a meeting between President Trump, the Russian Ambassador to the United States and Russia’s Foreign Minister. This took place in the wake of the firing of FBI Director James Comey and in the face of a Congressional and FBI investigation into ties between the Russians and Trump associates. Astonishingly, the American media were banned from this meeting but the Russian media was welcomed by Trump with open arms. (The Russians embarrassed Trump after the meeting, by releasing information directly to the U.S. media when their own President would not.)
The second instance is a threat by President Trump to ban the daily White House Briefings that have been an institution for decades. The President does not like to be held accountable. He is unhappy with aides who, try as they do, cannot adequately defend the lies, contradictions and flip flops that come so frequently from the White House.
Both of these issues were an attempt to control the media, and the question that arises for me from that is, does it really matter? Do we still value freedom of the Press? Do we really care?
For most of my adult life I have viewed the media as an important tool to force transparency and accountability. Freedom of the Press has always been synonymous with a free society. The media can be a giant pain in the ass, especially if you hold public office, but never the less, at their worst, the are a necessary evil.
There are those however, who see the media, especially national media, as a large part of the problem. They are seen by some, to take sides, to slant the news toward a particular partisan point of view and indeed, to create fake news. News networks appear to see themselves as part of the political process and they attempt to influence public opinion. They seek power and they thrive on it.
Consequently, recent polling has shown that much of the public has lost confidence in the media. Who then can they trust, to hold elected officials accountable, to dig deeper, to get the facts and to uncover genuine wrong doing? Is it any wonder we shake our heads at what is going on and question who is telling the truth?
We live in a topsy turvy world. In my view, there has seldom been a time when the integrity of the fifth estate has been more important. Journalism was once an honourable profession. I am not sure it is any more. And that to me, is a shame.
Don’t miss out on Doppler! Sign up for our free, twice-weekly newsletter here.
I have never seen such a totally dishonest level of reporting than we see today. They have devolved into a biased media that withhold the truth to shape opinions as they desire. This, in my view, is the ultimate treason against the sovereignty of the people in Canada and America, in particular. In Canada the CBC, The Toronto Star, even The Globe and Mail support our corrupt federal and Ontario provincial governments. They comply with government issued gag orders related to illegal immigrants and simply do not report government actions that threaten our freedom of speech and restricted legislative processes in parliament. No mention of dictatorial actions of Trudeau, never mention his globalist agenda to have Canada become the first post national world state in the process eliminating Canadian patriotism and Canada as an independent nation. The biased, left wing media heavily influenced the outcome of the election by doing an unjustified hatchet job on Stephen Harper and the Conservative team. And in America, President Trump is relentlessly attacked and blocked from carrying out an agenda to benefit the American people that chose him. Witch hunt after witch hunt with never a comment on his positive actions.
Partisanship, basically. Americans, especially Republicans, have it to a pathological degree. The Republicans have majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and they want to get as much of their agenda accomplished with the help of Trump before totally alienating his base by impeaching him. They are also testing to see how much Americans will tolerate. A third possibility is that some of them were involved or complicit in Russia’s tampering with the election; there is certainly evidence that they knew.
Things were going along okay, from their point of view, until Trump made the huge mistake of firing Comey — the flood of massively-damaging leaks started then, and Trump went even more off the rails himself in dealing with them, pointing out to everyone his incompetence.
It’s a very bad situation down there.
This is totally off topic; but how can the President fire the FBI director, who was investigating him (indirectly or not)? Why has there been no move to impeach?
If I were a writer I would want to write like Karen. Truth and honesty. Thank you.
The media, being comprised of human beings, is by necessity imperfect, and I think people understand that, and forgive reporters for errors. Still, caveat emptor. One should remember (and I’ll address points that commenters have already touched upon):
1) There is no such thing as objectivity. There is the pretense of it, but it is never pure. The thing to insist upon is accuracy.
2) The viewpoint of a journalistic outlet is expressed to some degree in how stories are angled, i.e. which viewpoints are emphasized within them. (Always look for both sides being covered.) What it is most expressed, however, is in how stories are *selected* — what a given outlet deems worthy of being “news” and therefore will publish, as opposed to what it will not publish.
Case in point: in the early 80s I did a very short internship with a major Canadian news outlet which will remain nameless. One of my tasks was to pull stories from the eight wire service machines we had — in other words, to select news. But I knew I had to go by what the boss (the line-up editor) wanted.
There was a story about the World Health Organization predicting famine in Africa due to a drought, so I asked him whether we were interested in it. The reason I wasn’t sure was that it was a predictive story, and I had been taught in journalism school to be careful of predictive stories in case things don’t happen as predicted, and then your employer has egg on its face.
That, however, wasn’t the question in *his* mind. “No, don’t bother,” he told me. “The lives of ten of those people are worth one white person’s, at least that’s how our audience looks at it.” I was so shocked, and so young (early 20s) that I didn’t say a word, just kind of staggered away. The famine did eventually happen, causing the deaths of more than a million people.
Second case in point: yesterday, while CNN and MSNBC and every major newspaper in America were covering Donald Trump telling then-FBI Director James Comey to stop the investigation on Michael Flynn, Fox News was covering suspicions of Hillary Clinton being involved in a murder which is still being investigated, based on supposed facts the victim’s family has disavowed, and supposed suspicious activity by the Clinton Foundation, which has never been charged with a crime. (For details see here: https://www.axios.com/fox-continues-to-defend-wh-bash-fake-media-reports-2410710526.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=twsocialshare&utm_campaign=organic — and here: https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexcampbell/seth-rich-family-refutes-report?utm_term=.qfNoLx1Za#.kyYB15X9a ) The result of the rise of Fox and other right-wing media in the USA is that two segments of the American population have not only two opinions, but two sets of what they think are *facts*. The public discourse, the people’s unity as a people and the health of the nation’s democracy have, in my opinion, been seriously compromised by this.
If you want to understand what a particular outlet’s viewpoint is, compare it to others to determine what it thinks is “news.” Due to concentration of ownership that has only grown more extreme since my aforementioned internship, there is something of a single viewpoint of *all* mainstream mass media. You can only ferret out what it is by reading/viewing other sources still — which with the Internet, now, is easy. Moral of the story: explore. You’ll find the “other sides” of many stories, and other news still, that you never knew existed. See who gets to talk and how much; if you have a show with one expert arguing climate change is human-caused and another arguing that it isn’t, you will get the impression that the experts are 50/50 on it. They aren’t (Google it).
3) A journalistic rendition of anything deep or complex is a) written by someone who knows nothing about it except what they learned from a few interviews and therefore b) probably wrong several ways and definitely not the whole picture. It’s a quick snapshot and that is all. (Confession time: I know this in part from writing them.)
4) To know who to trust for accuracy: a) don’t trust anything unsourced to a person or organization (a total no-no in journalism) ; b) learn about the sources given to know whether they are trustworthy; c) learn to recognize the tricks, such as lack of logic, circular reasoning, straw-man arguments, unsubstantiated claims, supposed substantiations that don’t actually substantiate, and so forth. In other words, as Derek says, use your brain.
5) Ignore TV news that is short on fact and loud on opinions and shouting matches. It’s entertaining, but won’t actually give you anything useful. (See Debi’s comment.)
6) Look for diversity of viewpoints within the outlet, if it’s a big one. The more there are, the more you can trust it.
7) The smaller the outlet and the smaller the population it serves, the more fair and complete its coverage will be.
I could go on (say, about the Overton Window — Google it if you’re interested) but I’ll stop here. I may seem cynical, but I 100% agree with Hugh that a free press is crucial to a functioning democracy, and for all its warts, we’re better off with it than without it.
The so-called media (used by mostly newspapers) has always been partisan – different media ownes would support various candidates – now that we have more media sources what really has changed?
It has always been up to the individual to use his or her brain and make appropriate decisions.
Even though it is seldom mentioned there is also a lot of bullying that happens. Rather than disagreeing respectfully there is a lot of name calling and shaming that occurs.
Hugh, when the media only writes what they are told to write by government officials, be they Mayors, Premieres, Prime Ministers or even Presidents they give up their credibility. When they believe that they and they alone speak the truth and have all the facts, many so called facts created by them. Even though they create slanted surveys to collect only answers they wish to create, they still arrogantly expect people to put their Trust in them. The American media has refused to accept the will of the electorate and continue to follow their own socialist predetermined agenda. People look to the media for information, statistics and the raw truth, what we get is fake news, manipulated statistics, slanted information and bias editorialization of what is happening. In a nation of Lemmings is there any hope for real change?
One of the problems with modern media news reporting and editorial writing is fragmentation. Perhaps Doppler readers can help me define and describe this problem: I am short of specific examples but believe my thesis to be true: namely, that media, (especially including internet sources), are merely reinforcing pre-existing biases in their readers/viewers/ users.
When there were three main stream news channels, ABC, NBC, CBS, there was a far greater chance that viewers would learn about both sides (or several aspects), of an issue.
Now, for example, Republicans expose themselves (!) only to Republican news. Consequently, Republicans who voted for Trump too often remain loyal despite his lies because they are never exposed to alternative opinions.
Could this be so ?? Am I onto something significant here???????
If so, then it would help explain the polarization of American politics in which “compromise” apparently is a non-event.
Is it the news or is it opinion? Interesting question.
We have often sat in this house to watch “the news”. More often than not, what we see are round table discussions, out and out opinion messages and a lot of fun events that happened today with a little free advertising thrown in.
Rarely do we see just good old every day news stories. What happened, who said or did what, when and where did it happen and how did it happen?
When I look to see the news, I am not looking for CNN’s opinion on the President’s behaviour nor do I care what the CBC or CTV think about the Prime Minister. I just want the unvarnished news.
I can form my own opinions. Just ask my husband. 🙂