Juno News - Irresponsible residential school reporting major cause of distrust in media

00:00:00.000 I wanted to begin by delving into the media.

00:00:12.020 So last week, and we talked about this on Off the Record,

00:00:15.200 William Macbeth, Harrison Faulkner and I,

00:00:17.840 City News Vancouver, you may have seen,

00:00:19.500 had posted this rather distorted anniversary post on X

00:00:24.680 about the announcement of unmarked graves

00:00:27.380 at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.

00:00:30.080 It was a post that they ended up walking back.

00:00:33.280 They made some changes to the story.

00:00:34.820 They stripped the reporter's byline off

00:00:36.500 because they had very much distorted

00:00:39.720 and torqued what had been announced and what had happened.

00:00:43.380 They claimed that bodies had been discovered.

00:00:45.460 No such bodies have been found.

00:00:47.080 And even the band itself, the Kamloops band,

00:00:50.000 has walked back its initial claim

00:00:51.800 that there were bodies there by saying now

00:00:53.980 that the ground penetrating radar actually discovered anomalies,

00:00:57.640 which could be unmarked graves.

00:01:00.360 And I don't want to rehash all of this.

00:01:02.080 You can watch that episode of Off the Record if you're so inclined.

00:01:04.860 My colleague, Candace Malcolm, has also done a lot on this.

00:01:07.920 And True North published a book called Grave Error

00:01:10.740 that was edited by CP Champion and Tom Flanagan

00:01:13.860 that has essays on this very subject.

00:01:16.720 But if we bring this back to basics here,

00:01:19.740 there was a profound media malfeasance

00:01:22.500 that took place in 2021 around this issue.

00:01:26.540 It was the media adopting a narrative without question,

00:01:29.400 without inquiry, that then led to the political class

00:01:32.380 and the political establishment doing the same.

00:01:34.780 And if you say that truth is the first casualty of war,

00:01:37.380 in this case, we didn't even need war

00:01:39.080 to consequently sacrifice truth.

00:01:43.120 There was an agenda that was put front and center.

00:01:45.940 And by the way, I am not putting any ill will at all

00:01:50.640 onto the indigenous people in Kamloops.

00:01:54.160 I am not defending residential schools.

00:01:56.100 I'm saying that if we're going to have an honest and fair discussion

00:01:58.500 about the legacy, about how we go from where we go from there

00:02:02.120 and how we do that, we need to be grounded in facts.

00:02:05.780 And there was a lot of sensationalist reporting.

00:02:07.660 And then media turns around and wonders

00:02:09.960 why it has such a chronic lack of trust among its consumers.

00:02:15.740 Could there perhaps be a little bit of a secret there

00:02:18.080 to how media can save itself

00:02:20.020 that doesn't rely on government bailouts?

00:02:22.780 Well, I wanted to delve into that with Peter Menzies.

00:02:25.360 He's been on the show a number of times,

00:02:26.640 a former vice chair of the Canadian Radio

00:02:29.120 and Telecommunications Commission,

00:02:30.680 but also the author of a fantastic substack

00:02:33.020 called The Rewrite, which had a great piece there,

00:02:35.740 Shockingly Irresponsible Reporting on Residential School Cemeteries

00:02:39.920 will Drive the Nation's News Industry into Oblivion.

00:02:43.820 It's a very important piece for you to read.

00:02:46.060 I think you should subscribe to the rewrite anyway

00:02:47.660 and heed the words of Peter Menzies, who joins me now.

00:02:51.220 Peter, always good to talk to you.

00:02:52.460 Thanks for coming back on the show here.

00:02:54.120 Thanks for pumping my tires, and thanks for having me on your show.

00:02:57.200 Well, they are well-deserving of the pumping.

00:03:00.300 This piece you had the other day I found quite powerful.

00:03:04.000 Shockingly Irresponsible Reporting on Residential School Cemeteries

00:03:07.440 will Drive the Nation's News Industry into Oblivion.

00:03:11.500 You and I have spoken on a number of occasions

00:03:13.720 about the regulatory environment right now we see for the media

00:03:17.500 and basically increasingly news companies looking at the government

00:03:20.760 and seeing subsidies as their way through.

00:03:22.960 But you go right back to basics here, really, and say,

00:03:25.760 well, hang on, your coverage itself is hardly the stuff of legend right now.

00:03:32.460 Yeah, there's some fundamentals of journalism that get ignored,

00:03:35.440 and they got terribly ignored in the initial reporting of these events

00:03:39.400 regarding the Kamloops Residential School

00:03:41.880 and the incorrect release that was sent out by the band at the time

00:03:46.220 that has since been corrected, but nobody wants to do it.

00:03:49.280 And one of those is assumptions.

00:03:50.880 It's right at the basis of good journalism is don't allow yourself

00:03:56.480 to be ruled by assumptions.

00:03:58.000 Don't make any assumptions.

00:04:00.160 And the other one that I didn't mention too much in here,

00:04:02.980 but I will be getting to eventually with the rewrite

00:04:06.560 because it's about journalism principles, is check things out.

00:04:11.060 Like the old Chicago City Bureau phrase that I was taught

00:04:15.420 as a young aspiring journalist is like, check it out, check everything out.

00:04:21.640 Like if your mother says she loves you, check it out.

00:04:25.340 And none of that was done.

00:04:26.680 And then the prime minister behaved incredibly irresponsibly

00:04:30.280 and blew the whole thing up.

00:04:31.760 And now we've got, you know, this history

00:04:36.060 based on unproven news sources.

00:04:40.640 Yeah, and I think therein lies the issue here.

00:04:44.940 The original claim made by, to go back to the beginning here,

00:04:48.360 made by the Kamloops band was one that they did eventually soften,

00:04:53.200 but it was not what the media reported it to be.

00:04:56.180 I mean, the New York Times was one of the most exceedingly irresponsible

00:04:59.880 when they took this and reported on mass grave,

00:05:02.440 which is a very specific meaning.

00:05:04.440 But Canadian media as well, they took a lot of these claims at face value.

00:05:07.860 None of the rigor and inquiry that would go to a claim made

00:05:12.800 by anyone else of that nature occurred there.

00:05:16.040 And I must say, as someone who's observed this for a while,

00:05:18.220 how much did that surprise you or did it not?

00:05:20.740 Sadly, it didn't surprise me.

00:05:22.560 I mean, there's no question that there's issues about unmarked graves.

00:05:26.400 Like in my piece that you mentioned, I was there in just outside Regina

00:05:31.140 when, you know, the old cemetery of the Regina Indian Industrial School

00:05:36.440 was basically reclaimed and honoured and markers put on the graves

00:05:43.520 of children who died there.

00:05:45.880 You know, children died at residential schools.

00:05:49.160 There is no proof.

00:05:51.400 There are many allegations that have been thrown around,

00:05:54.040 some very wild about priests decapitating babies

00:05:57.400 and all kinds of things that got reported without being checked.

00:06:02.580 And those are very, very serious allegations, right?

00:06:06.320 You know, people, you know, may remember certain things

00:06:09.840 in certain ways and that sort of stuff.

00:06:11.720 And, you know, you don't want to get in.

00:06:13.580 And that's probably where the reporters fell down there. 0.84

00:06:15.860 They're afraid to challenge it.

00:06:17.600 But you have to at least ask, do you have any proof for that?

00:06:22.160 Right?

00:06:22.620 No, no, no.

00:06:23.240 This is just my part of my memory.

00:06:25.080 Well, that's not good enough for reporting.

00:06:26.680 So if you really want to get into it,

00:06:29.440 if there really were priests decapitating babies,

00:06:32.560 then you get into that story, get to work on it.

00:06:35.540 If there weren't, then don't get into printing unfounded allegations.

00:06:41.040 Like I said, if your mother says she loves you, check it out.

00:06:44.980 Find other people who believe that.

00:06:47.360 You have a comment in the piece I wanted to quote

00:06:50.500 because I found it quite, I actually found it quite meaningful.

00:06:53.760 You said, there is no room here for allyship other than to the truth, unquote.

00:06:59.560 And why that stood out to me is because increasingly you have voices saying

00:07:03.760 that the media needs to start doing all of these things

00:07:07.020 that look a lot more like taking a side in a particular culture war.

00:07:10.840 You know, media needs to commit itself to the principles of reconciliation, say.

00:07:14.900 Media needs to commit itself to the principle of social justice.

00:07:18.420 Media needs to be anti-racist.

00:07:20.100 Media needs to be anti-oppressive.

00:07:21.520 And a lot of these things, they sound nice on the surface.

00:07:24.620 But at its core, you have a fundamental inversion here

00:07:27.900 of what was supposed to be the guiding principle of journalism

00:07:31.000 and was for a great many years, don't you?

00:07:33.980 Yeah, well, that's the truth part of that truth and reconciliation, right?

00:07:37.620 You can't reconcile until you've understood the truth, right?

00:07:42.460 That everybody has to.

00:07:43.480 And like I said, there's some terribly sad stories.

00:07:46.980 No, absolutely.

00:07:47.740 And it's such an important issue that that's what I'm sort of crying out for.

00:07:55.920 We need grown-up journalism.

00:07:58.200 We need people who will search for the truth, give us information we can trust.

00:08:04.160 You know, people don't lead people to conclusions.

00:08:06.720 Don't begin with assumptions.

00:08:08.680 Don't begin with allyship or for any side.

00:08:11.780 Don't begin as a defender of the Catholic Church or the Presbyterian Church

00:08:16.540 or the Anglican Church or any of the others that were involved or the government.

00:08:20.240 Don't begin as a defender from the other perspectives.

00:08:26.720 Be a defender of the reader.

00:08:28.740 Be a defender of the reader's right to be informed fully and properly from the truth.

00:08:34.560 Like, do your job.

00:08:36.180 And the jobs that many, many journalists did in this were shabby and quite disgraceful, really.

00:08:44.120 And we're three years later and everybody's still pretending that they didn't do such a bad job that they did.

00:08:51.320 And you also touch on another unrelated issue, but related in the overarching sense, in the weaponization of fact checks.

00:09:00.140 And, you know, on one hand, media asserting itself as being the authority on truth,

00:09:04.520 but still taking, still doing what we used to learn in, you know, first-year philosophy as the appeal to authority of taking,

00:09:12.260 oh, this person that I've designated as an official source says this, therefore, that's the truth.

00:09:17.100 You raised one example here of a so-called fact check on Bill C-63.

00:09:22.160 This is the online harms bill, the bill that reintroduces hate speech to the Canadian Human Rights Act.

00:09:27.780 And this bill has been subject to a lot of misinformation, I think, from the government.

00:09:33.100 The government has tried to downplay what the bill itself says.

00:09:37.080 But you note here that Canadian press just took a Justice Department official at face value

00:09:41.560 to declare someone else guilty of misinformation.

00:09:44.120 Yeah, that's really, really surprising, right?

00:09:47.460 I mean, that reporter generally does some fairly good stuff.

00:09:51.360 And to see, but to see CP doing a fact check on a government bill and just going to the government official to clarify

00:09:59.820 is, like you said, it's this sort of deference to authority, which you see all too often in journalism.

00:10:05.860 I mean, the whole point of having a robust journalistic sector is that it challenges people in authority in terms of that.

00:10:15.720 So in an issue like this, where you're trying to understand a piece of legislation,

00:10:19.480 the Department of Justice will, of course, have its point of view on what it says, and they need to be included.

00:10:25.740 But there are other experts, like I pointed out, David Fraser, Michael Geist, Philip Palmer,

00:10:32.320 who somebody should check with in terms of what the bill actually says.

00:10:37.420 Because there have been instances in the past with Bill C-11, for instance,

00:10:41.840 when the minister at the time was Pablo Rodriguez,

00:10:44.980 was insisting that user-generated content isn't covered in the Act,

00:10:50.620 and you could read the Act, and it was like right there, right?

00:10:55.040 So that's just fair to say that government officials don't always give you the straight goods.

00:11:01.800 So it's an odd place to go to get the straight goods.

00:11:05.160 Yeah, fair enough.

00:11:06.060 So to bring this back to the fundamental problem facing journalism,

00:11:09.920 I agree there are market realities that have nothing to do with how good or bad an outlet is,

00:11:15.040 that are forcing newspapers to change the way they do things, TV and radio.

00:11:18.880 There is a profound trust deficit in the media.

00:11:22.740 If the media were to deal with all of this,

00:11:26.280 and they were regaining the trust of their readers, their viewers, their listeners,

00:11:30.780 whatever the case may be,

00:11:31.860 how much of the business problem does that solve, in your view?

00:11:35.000 Is it 10%? Is it 50%? Is it more?

00:11:38.300 Oh, that's a really, I mean, that's a tough question in terms of, you know, if you regain trust.

00:11:42.800 I'm not even sure you can regain trust once you lose it.

00:11:45.400 Like trust is one of the, you know, a piece of social capital.

00:11:48.880 Like we all know, and from our personal lives, if you lose somebody's trust, how do you get it back?

00:11:54.140 It takes a long time.

00:11:55.600 It takes a very long time.

00:11:56.780 And it can be, I think it can be rebuilt.

00:12:01.060 But for our news business, I think we're going to need some very good supervision.

00:12:07.260 I think we need to get back to the attempt to conduct objective work,

00:12:13.940 not working from assumptions, not being an ally of any side except for the reader in terms of that and the truth.

00:12:26.560 And once you do that, then you have to do it over and over and over again for a considerable period of time before you regain trust.

00:12:37.580 You can probably get it back up to 50%.

00:12:40.640 Trust in media has never been super high for that matter.

00:12:46.920 But it's because everybody has their own, everybody comes out, everybody reads through their own biased lens.

00:12:54.400 So, but 50% would be sustainable for the industry.

00:13:00.240 Yeah.

00:13:00.700 And I guess therein lies the problem is that you have, I think, a fair bit of ignorance from many media companies about the fact that they need a desperate reinvention of their business model.

00:13:11.460 I mean, not to say that True North is the way to go, but True North has found a way that works and we're growing.

00:13:17.140 Rebel News has found a way that works and is growing.

00:13:19.380 The Hub, the Western Standard.

00:13:20.700 I mean, these are all relatively young organizations, but they're doing something right that doesn't involve finding some massive, massive legislative incursion that's going to transfer money from government or force the transfer of money from companies like Facebook and Google and these big players.

00:13:36.840 And again, I'm sympathetic to the reporters that set out to work for the town newspaper, which has a very, very precarious future.

00:13:45.620 But there is no reinvention if the government is just keeping this thing strung along.

00:13:52.400 And I mean, at the very least, these companies could show that they're looking in the mirror and sort of realizing what you've been saying for the last few moments, what you said in the piece here, that, okay, maybe we at least need to look at what we're doing first.

00:14:04.580 Yes, well, I mean, in that instance, like the Canadian press one, I just, I found it really kind of shocking because it's kind of like, guys, read the room.

00:14:13.960 You know, like people are mistrusting you because of all this government funding, right?

00:14:19.840 And they're going to be looking for examples that look like you're being a government mouthpiece.

00:14:27.160 So for heaven's sake, don't be a government mouthpiece.

00:14:30.380 And that's exactly what that did in terms of that.

00:14:36.340 It's really a challenge right now, I think, because journalism schools are graduating a lot of students that have been kind of indoctrinated in this.

00:14:44.860 Well, you know, we don't need to seek objectivity.

00:14:47.640 I hear it all the time.

00:14:49.180 Objectivity is impossible, right?

00:14:50.860 And sort of the thing like that.

00:14:52.580 So we're going to give up on it.

00:14:54.120 That's a terrible approach, right?

00:14:56.740 There's all kinds of things that are very, very hard to do.

00:15:00.020 Can you imagine if somebody sitting on the bench, a judge or a justice sort of said, I don't think it's possible to be fair minded.

00:15:09.500 So I'm just going to give up.

00:15:11.300 Right?

00:15:12.200 I mean, society would collapse.

00:15:14.000 Right.

00:15:14.860 If people lost faith in the judiciary, that that person sitting there, that woman or man behind the bench isn't doing their utmost, to be fair.

00:15:25.360 And if journalists sort of run around and say, we're abandoning objectivity, I mean, you can have your commentary slant however you want.

00:15:35.040 If you want to be the Toronto Star and as they have always been proudly, you know, left of centre, or if you want to be the National Post, which is proudly right of centre, or True North or Rebel or Rabble or wherever you want to be.

00:15:50.660 I think people don't mind that, but when you do the news, you better get it straight, because people need to trust that, that they are getting all of the information they need to organise their lives properly.

00:16:06.740 And when they express their knowledge of an event, that they're expressing full knowledge of an event.

00:16:13.480 Yeah, I think you're very right there.

00:16:16.420 And I would actually go one step further on the objectivity thing, because you have some people that say objectivity itself.

00:16:22.420 It's not that it's a great idea that's hard to do.

00:16:24.580 Some people say objectivity itself is this old passé antiquated concept.

00:16:29.240 I mean, we've seen that on Israel reporting, for example, there's a subset of activist journalists that say, oh, no, you can't be objective when genocide is occurring or something like that, not realising that that is not a neutral, objective fact, that they believe journalists should, to go back to what you said about allyship to the truth, pick a side and things.

00:16:48.860 Yeah, you can't be, you can't use the term, you know, when I see the term activist journalist, I think you can't call yourself a journalist if you're an activist.

00:16:57.060 Yeah, which one are you?

00:16:59.400 Yeah, yeah, I mean, you can be a good writer, and you can be a good, you know, keeping a good journal of events through your eyes, in terms of media.

00:17:10.520 I mean, that goes back years and years.

00:17:12.640 Jack Reed did that with the Russian Revolution.

00:17:16.140 You probably may have seen the movie Reds in terms of that.

00:17:19.860 I mean, he was writing for all kinds of newspapers in the States, but he wasn't objective.

00:17:25.080 He was really part of the revolution.

00:17:27.620 In terms of that, and, you know, some stories that should have been told weren't told.

00:17:33.100 So that's not new, but I don't consider that journalism.

00:17:36.140 I consider it writing, recording of events and that sort of stuff.

00:17:40.740 But I don't think you can use activist and journalist in the same term unless your activism is being a journalist.

00:17:50.760 Yeah, I think that's a good distinction.

00:17:52.120 Not all writers are journalists.

00:17:54.500 That's true.

00:17:55.220 I mean, I deliberately take a broad view of what journalism is, if only because I don't want government deciding what journalists are.

00:18:02.100 Because, well, I wound up in federal court to make that case, and I won.

00:18:05.380 So, anyway, it was a fascinating piece you wrote over at The Rewrite by Peter Menzies.

00:18:12.940 Peter, always good to talk to you.

00:18:14.060 Thanks for coming on today and for your wisdom and insights on this.

00:18:17.720 Yeah, thanks so much.

00:18:18.720 Thanks so much for your interest, and thanks for having me on your show again.

00:18:21.220 Much appreciated.

00:18:22.280 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:18:24.880 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:18:30.340 www.tnc.new.ca

Juno News - June 10, 2024

Irresponsible residential school reporting major cause of distrust in media

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