Hugh Mackenzie
Huntsville Doppler
The Media and the Message
Just how important to a democratic society is freedom of the press and what does that really mean anyway? Like him or hate him, President Donald Trump has kicked off this debate and it has captured the attention of people around the world. He has accused the media of “fake news” and called them “the enemy of the American people”. Equally alarming is the warning from Reince Priebus, the White House Chief of Staff, that “Trump should be taken seriously, when he calls the press the enemy”. What the hell does that mean? It sure sounds like a threat to me.
In Europe this week, Republican Senator John McCain, who is known to stray beyond party lines, was clearly worried about presidential attacks on the media. “Shutting down the press is how dictators get started,” he said. He also said that “the suppression of an adversarial press can lead to a dictatorial regime.” Strong words indeed.
What is the responsibility of the media when the fake news comes from the other side? Just yesterday, the President, addressing a political rally in Florida and defending his immigration policies, referred to a recent terrorist attack in Sweden to make his point. Only problem is, there wasn’t an attack in Sweden. Fake news? You betcha. One also has to ask if Kelly Anne Conway, the White House Pitbull-in-Chief, has also assumed the role of Propaganda Minister. The president of her alma mater hit the nail on the head when he said she is “facilitating the manipulation of facts”. And wasn’t she the one who coined the phrase “alternative facts”? If that is not propaganda, what is?
If the media is not going to fact check politicians and hold them accountable for what they say and do, who is? Can we stand by, in any country, and allow a political leader to effectively say that anyone who challenges him (or her) is an enemy of the state? If a leader gets away with it in one jurisdiction, is it a slippery slope for the others?
Now the news media is not lily white in all of this. In Canada, the Toronto Star practically chokes when it is compelled to say something nice about the Conservatives. The same goes for the Sun newspapers when it comes to the Liberals. And it was quite sickening to see so-called non-partisan journalists such as CBC’s Peter Mansbridge and CTV’s Craig Oliver salivate over Justin Trudeau’s victory last year. Gone, it seems, are the days when news belonged on the news pages or in news broadcasts and opinion belonged in the editorial or commentary sections. The same can be said of course for the American media, especially cable networks, where their political persuasions are less than subtle.
Donald Trump has also accused the media of being the opposition. I am not at all sure that is a bad thing. Voters can only hold governments accountable every four years or so and memories are short and easily influenced. As Trump himself has said, tell the same lie three times and people will believe it. Journalists are hard at work every day. As flawed as it may be, we have no better system than the media to hold politicians accountable on a day-to-day basis in a democratic society. To me, fact checking and holding their feet to the fire is a sacred mission.
Many will argue, with some legitimacy, that it is as important to make the media accountable as it is politicians. The problem is how to do that without oversight and how do you have oversight without censorship and once you have censorship you no longer have a free press. Someone controls it.
On balance, an open and free press trumps (pun intended) whatever flaws may exist in the fifth estate. To quote Senator McCain again, “When you look at history, the first thing dictators do is shut down the press.” In my view the second thing they do is appoint a Propaganda Minister.
In the United States, many people held their noses and voted for Donald Trump because they believed that the end justified the means. Fair enough, but where does that stop? Does it stop at calling the media an enemy of the state? Are we in danger of going beyond populism to fascism? Is attacking and suppressing a free press, as some suggest, the first step? Where do we draw the line? It is not just about America. This stuff spreads like measles. It is about where we are as a Western society. If that is not an important discussion to have, I am at a loss to know what is.
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Totally agree Hugh. I might add that the media can put out lots of good information, but too many people prefer to watch mindless TV than to pay attention to what is going on. According to the Globe and Mail, a recent survey showed that after 4 debates that were well-covered by both TV and newspapers, 21% of Canadians polled could not name any of the Conservative party leadership candidates except reality TV star Kevin O’Leary. So we may soon have our own Donald Trump in Canada.
Interesting musings Hugh. The question is, where do you find the News? News papers, tv,radio are all controlled by big business and big business also controls big government. All news outlets select only stories that don’t put their advertisers in a bad light. This is why we get fluff pieces with no fact finding done. The media is the last place that I look for facts. They constantly tell you what their analysis saw when you just watched a debate or a press conference. You can substitute their spin on things ( in place of analysis). The media always has an agenda, a point of view they wish you to adopt. They may not be our enemy but they are surely not our friends or OUR HEROES either, that is the illusion they hope we will embrace. You would think that social media has filled this void unfortunately those who speak the most on social media simply perpetuate many of the false hoods they have gotten from the so called public media. People today, are in to big of a hurry to wait for properly researched facts. Finally it has always been said that history is written by the winners, one need look no further than the Black History of Canada. There is much more we don’t know about slavery etc. In Canada than what we do know. Media is a business that keeps its customers happy that is why we get that bundle at the end of the drive every week for free, unless it gets stuck in your snow blower then we know the True cost of the free news.
Very interesting opinion piece and comments.
I think that “pre-election”, the press did not hold the incumbent to account sufficiently, for his confabulations and inaccuracies. Television viewers had no way of knowing that a candidate for President of the United States of America would say whatever seemed expedient at the moment with absolutely no regard for the facts. If every falsehood and hate-filled comment had been pointed out prominently and loudly condemned from the outset, he may never have been elected.
Employment opportunities for journalists have been declining in recent years and until the general public is once again willing to pay financially for good, dependable, impartial, fact-based news, we will continue to see the media taking the road of sensationalism and entertaining “information”. As consumers of news we have become lazy. We do not want to have to attend to anything that is serious, difficult, or lengthy. These days news has to hit the airwaves fast and it has to be eye-grabbing. If it turns out not to be true, it doesn’t seem to matter because no-one is paying attention after the fact, or lack thereof.
Are we not smothered/saturated with “news” and endless comments about Trump?
Maybe we need more focus on issues regarding Huntsville Council and District Council? What happened to consistent coverage of those council meetings? It’s like a vacant media. Egs., more has been said about the “pipe” man than the municipal budget or pertinent planning issues.
Thank you for your reasoned essay, Hugh.
Your point about the Star and the Sun is probably correct too (although I wouldn’t tar those two newspapers with the same brush as you did!).
It is even more certain that the American news channels are failing to objectively cover both sides of important issues. Fox News is a joke.
It is especially sad to witness the ethical decline (at the political level) of what was once a beacon of democratic hope for the world: the USA.
Arnold Toynbee, a highly respected British historian, sounded the alarm about America’s potential decline in “America and the World Revolution, Oxford University Press, as early as 1962.
Here is a more recent quotation from Toynbee: “Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.”
How can democracy survive without a vital and objective 5th estate?
Oh my God, Hugh, you and I are both old enough to remember Hitler et al. Is Kelly Ann the new Goebbels? Too frightening!