http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/penney-kome/2017/02/shattered-mirror
[links in on-line article]
The shattered mirror
By Penney Kome | February 7, 2017
This article is part two of "Media literacy in a post-fact age."
Fans of democracy argue that, as a society, we need the whole news media
ecology, including funding for major investigations as well as
independent journalism sites like rabble.ca. One major difference
between Canada and the U.S. is that Canada's CRTC rejected core-cable
status for Sun News Network, a kissing cousin to far right-wing Fox News
in the U.S. Canadians have shown that much media savvy already.
In the U.S., a mere six companies control all the news media, outside of
PBS -- as Gemini Fox points out. She lists some independent outlets she
finds reliable, such as Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! and Glenn
Greenwald's The Intercept. On YouTube, I like The Young Turks --
youthful, insightful, insouciant, and literally Turks of Turkish
descent. Bill Moyers also listed his top 10 investigative sites on his blog.
Among mainstream media, Reuters News Service stands out for
editor-in-chief Steve Adler's instruction to newsroom staff to cover the
White House the way they cover governments such as, "Turkey, the
Philippines, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Thailand, China, Zimbabwe, and Russia,
nations in which we sometimes encounter some combination of censorship,
legal prosecution, visa denials, and even physical threats to our
journalists."
For what it's worth, in my opinion most Americans would be amazed at the
even-handed and thorough approach CBC takes to news gathering. Business
Insider found that Americans place most trust in British news sources,
but rely on the likes of Fox and CNN for domestic news.
Pew Research Center approaches the question another way, asking instead
which news outlets are the more trusted. The Center found differences
between liberals (who trusted 28 out of 36 news outlets) and
conservatives, who trusted only 12 out of the 36 news organizations named.
Like anything else we see, what we observe depends largely on where
we're standing. Social media tend to reinforce our own attitudes, in
that we see more of what we indicate we like. We need to treat our media
diet like our food diet, aiming for variety as well as flavour and
sustenance. We need to teach our children how to assess what they see
onscreen, looking at source, content and context. As individuals, we
need to follow a few trusted news sources like rabble.ca and CBC.ca, and
keep a list of wildly inaccurate or politically unpalatable ones, like
breitbart.com. And we can't take high quality news gathering for granted.
News used to be the most important programming that local or national
broadcasters could offer. These days, newspapers are thinner than thin
mints. TV network websites promote entertainment or reality shows, and
conceal news programming under the "more" button. In 2013, Jan Wong
reported that Canada's newsrooms had shed 10,000 jobs in the previous
five years.
Last December, Canada's Public Policy Forum des politiques publique du
Canada issued a report that warns Canada's news media cannot survive
their steeply dropping revenue. The report found that 225 weekly and 27
daily newspapers have merged or closed shop since 2010, in more than 210
federal ridings. Small market TV stations have closed. Newsrooms
everywhere whittle away at staff and services. The Public Policy Forum
cites an estimated 30 per cent reduction in journalism jobs since 2010.
In response, Public Policy Forum President Ed Greenspon convened a panel
of experts including pollster Allan Gregg to recommend ways to save the
industry. "The Shattered Mirror" calls on the federal government to
support Canadian news media in a dozen ways such as adjusting tax breaks
for online advertising; allowing non-profit media to register as
charities and thus be eligible for philanthropic funding; strengthening
the Copyright Act; strengthening and expanding Canadian Press;
establishing Indigenous journalism as a discipline; creating a legal
advice service for investigative journalists, and establishing a Future
of Journalism and Democracy Fund, with an immediate endowment of $100
million and annual deposits of taxes from Canadian advertisements placed
in foreign online media.
There's a reason the 45th U.S. president is furiously trying to control
the news media, to the extent that Washington D.C. police have laid
felony charges against six journalists who covered Inauguration Day
protests. And it's the flip side of the reason that the U.S. and
Canadian constitutions protect freedom of speech.
As former Globe and Mail editor-in-chief Edward Greenspon put it:
"Canada's news media is in the midst of an existential crisis. So,
therefore, is our democracy."