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Attacks on the Media Are a Threat To Democracy, Justin Trudeau Says (www.cbc.ca)
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a press freedom event in Paris Sunday that one of the bulwarks protecting democratic governments from being undermined is also an institution under stress -- a free-thinking, robust media. From a report: "If a democracy is to function you need an educated populace, and you need to have an informed populace, ready to make judicious decisions about who to grant power to and when to take it away," Trudeau said. "When citizens cannot have rigorous analysis of the exercise of the power that is in their name and they have granted, the rest of the foundation of our democracies start to erode at the same time as cynicism arises." The press freedom advocacy organization Reporters Without Borders has developed a six-page international declaration on information and democracy to establish basic principles for the "common good of mankind." The organization hosted a small event on the sidelines of the Paris Peace Forum late Sunday afternoon where five presidents and prime ministers, including Trudeau, offered endorsements for this declaration. The Paris Peace Forum, intended to be an annual gathering of political, business and civil society leaders to explore peaceful solutions to the world's problems, was hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron to coincide with this weekend's events marking the centenary of the armistice agreement that ended the First World War.
Trudeau, addressing the audience at the press freedom event without a prepared text, also talked about the risk if too many citizens become too cynical about public institutions. "Attacks on the media are not just about getting your preferred political candidate elected," he said. "They're about increasing the level of cynicism that citizens have toward all authorities, toward all of the institutions that are there to protect us as citizens." Citizens are feeling "very real anxiety," Trudeau said, because their jobs are transforming as globalization increases competition around the world. When that anxiety is exacerbated, it undermines trust in institutions and increases cynicism. "One of the bulwarks against that, and one of the institutions that is most under stress right now, is a free-thinking, independent, rigorous, robust, respected media," the prime minister said.
Trudeau, addressing the audience at the press freedom event without a prepared text, also talked about the risk if too many citizens become too cynical about public institutions. "Attacks on the media are not just about getting your preferred political candidate elected," he said. "They're about increasing the level of cynicism that citizens have toward all authorities, toward all of the institutions that are there to protect us as citizens." Citizens are feeling "very real anxiety," Trudeau said, because their jobs are transforming as globalization increases competition around the world. When that anxiety is exacerbated, it undermines trust in institutions and increases cynicism. "One of the bulwarks against that, and one of the institutions that is most under stress right now, is a free-thinking, independent, rigorous, robust, respected media," the prime minister said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
People have a low opinion of them because of the way so many of them have repeatedly been shown to behave when they're held accountable.
"One of the bulwarks against that, and one of the institutions that is most under stress right now, is a free-thinking, independent, rigorous, robust, respected media," the prime minister said.
Interesting how he left out "honest," yet threw in "respected" like it's some obligation on the public.
Wait.. your above comment makes it sound like you *approve* of the media being throttled, controlled, and lacking a robustness? Like, you're on board with reducing the ability for the media to provide strong advice to voters, etc?
Because, you say "we're even then", as if you're on the side of "the media sucks, it should be silenced" or some such.
Or is it just that, like many people today, you see "THREAT!! NOT MY TEAM! ATTACK LEADER!", regardless of what the story says?
Realistically, you're the problem.
Here's how to fix your broken brain. Never, ever decide an issue is right or wrong, based upon the party, politics of the person saying it, etc. No party gets it right all the time, and no party gets it wrong all the time.
EG, pretty much every party out there says "murder is bad". Using your method of response, if party $x or representative $x said "Murder is bad!", you'd say "No, you suck, it's good!"
Because that's what you did right here.
One problem here is that governments in general cannot be trusted. Their own actions are slowly starting to backfire.
Governments mostly care about bookkeeping and economic growth. They - mine included - don't give a d*mn about the the civilian. Instead of the gov serving the public, we only appear to exist to serve the nation and enrich the few % wealthy.
It has little to nothing to do with internet (as Tim Berners-Lee suggest) itself, it has little but maybe something to do with information and disinformation but any mass media is guilty of that, it's not limited to internet. It has directly to do with the attitude and the actions of governments and officials who treat people as crap. It's no wonder that people get upset.
Add in some propaganda machine's, ranging from populists to anti-populists, and more and more people realizing this is all propaganda. Why is it so hard to deal with fake news? Because the line between fake news and propaganda is blurring. And the civilian? Can choose between getting brainwashed or become cynical.
The future comes by either evolution or revolution. If gov's actually would start listening and acting in favor of their on population. But i doubt they do, as most gov's are steered by a few multinationals and other wealthy influences than can afford dozens of lobbyists. The independent parliamentarian is something from last century.
Huh... it's good to know about the sources people cite.
The Rebel Media (officially The Rebel News Network Ltd.,[1] stylized as THEREBEL.media, and shortened to The Rebel) is a Canadian far-right[2][3][4][5][6] online political and social commentary media website. It was founded in February 2015 by former Sun News Network personalities Ezra Levant and Brian Lilley. It has been described as a "global platform" for the anti-Muslim ideology, also known as counter-jihad.[7][8][9]
Former Sun News reporter Faith Goldy later joined the outlet.[10] Gavin McInnes, founder of the far-right men's organization Proud Boys, was also a contributor. Lilley, Goldy, and McInnes have all since left the project.[11]
Many of The Rebel's contributors announced their departure – or were fired – in the second half of August 2017, following Goldy's prominent coverage of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and her interview with The Daily Stormer.
The Rebel Media broadcasts its content on the Rebel Media website and its YouTube channel, which previously peaked on August 16, 2017, at 873,800 subscribers, however with the August departures, it had fallen to a minimum of 842,200 as of August 31. In September–October 2017 the channel resumed its growth. On August 15, 2018, it had over one million subscribers.[12]
The Rebel Media has been described as part of the alt-right movement,[13] although it rejected the term after the Charlottesville rally.[14]
It seems to be a one-stop-shop for racism and Islamophobia.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Media has been devolving into internet clickbait for some time. There is little trust left.
I think it's tough. Trudeau is a typical politician.
He says journalism is important to democracy yet he doesn't mention how media outlets being concentrated in the hands of a few large corporations isn't.
He also was against stopping all arms sales to Saudi Arabia after their government assassinated a journalist.
So I remain confused.... I personally don't consider 90% of journalists real journalist.
Most are just reporters who take popular stories off the wire and repackage it or get a bit more (in fact checked ) information off the internet and social media and use it as sources.
Wait.. your above comment makes it sound like you *approve* of the media being throttled, controlled, and lacking a robustness?
While I'm not the GP, I believe he was implying (badly) that people should feel free to attack (i.e. strongly criticize) the media if they feel that the media deserves it. If a media outlet is mostly objective and honest then it will probably survive such a trial by fire, but if not, well, good riddance. As Trudeau is saying that the media should deserve respect because they're the media, I call bs and counter by saying that he's a shitty PM defending a shitty media (or at least, the shitty elements of it) because it's on his side, and now they're both reaping what they've sown.
There is a difference between saying that x and y statements are inaccurate (and here is evidence that they are inaccurate) or relevant information z has been left out which gives an unbalanced impression and saying [media organisation] is an enemy of the people/country/whatever.
The former is valid criticism which gives the media organisation the chance to defend their assertions and editorial choices or correct the record and generally doesn't put anything beyond reputations at risk. The latter is straight out of the playbook of personality cults and tinpot despots. Rather than being an attempt to bring the facts to the fore, it is a vulgar use of raw power to attempt to crush perceived opponents. As it is leveraged power rather than facts in dispute it is very difficult to defend against and does put people in real danger - as we have seen very real examples of. Notable users of this tactic to to destroy opposition include Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and the Nazis Rather than encouraging a robust public debate it holds a gun to the head of any free speech that does not conform to the views of power.
Trial by facts and evidence should what the media has to deal with. Anything beyond that is straying into very dicey territory.
The article didn't provide any support for the claim made therein. It links to a previous story about a man returning from the middle-east to Canada and then throws out the following claims:
Not only is the number itself not sourced anywhere in the article, neither is the claim that these men are all 'battle hardened terrorists'. People travel to conflict areas to for numerous reasons (remember, people do have family and friends still in there) and to work in numerous capacities, including as aid-workers and the people who do end up fighting fight on both sides of the conflict. There are volunteers from the west who've been fighting against the terrorists in Syria for example.
The idiocy then continues:
Well that settles it then doesn't it. If the author of the article doesn't believe it, then clearly it must not be the case right? Utter BS.
The unfounded claims then continue, with the author throwing in this:
Yet again no factual support for either of the claims made, they're simply thrown in there and the reader is expected to believe that they're true.
Yet another repetition of an unfounded claim.
Because in a nation with laws, you need evidence of a crime to prosecute someone. The author seems to be suggesting that simply visiting a conflict area is enough to serve as a basis for prosecution, which it isn't.
Because I'm guessing most if not all of them are Canadian citizens and a country cannot deport its own citizens and again even if they're foreign nationals deporting them means there has to be evidence that they're guilty of something other than just travelling to the middle-east and back.
This is not a news article of any sort, it's a blog/opinion piece by an outlet that clearly has an agenda and doesn't provide basic facts about the situation but simply throws out assertions. That's not a 'messenger', that's a propaganda-outlet, and they're quite upfront about it. Similar rhetoric is always used when defending unfounded claims. The net is full of conspiratorial blog-sites masquerading as news outlets posting all kinds of wild unfounded BS and the counter-argument from fans is always 'why are you attacking the source and not the claims' when the real question should be 'why is anyone believing such claims to begin with with little to no evidence?' On top of that, these sites themselves don't dispute claims with facts, but hand-waive them with statements like 'I don't believe this', so they themselves are simply choosing to attack the messenger instead of using facts to even try and support their arguments.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
the last global survey found that the clear majority of muslims in non-muslim countries want to replace current law with sharia law.
Really. And what global survey was that? It took me about one minute to find a respectable survey that says even in most muslim countries most muslims don't want sharia law.
Cite your sources. (I'm not holding out much hope that you will or can)
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
It's disreputable because left-leaning people say it's disreputable.
No, it's disreputable because reputable sources who have investigated formed a consensus that it's disreputable. In the face of that, you would need a pretty powerful argument to show that it wasn't the case.
You're not allowed to criticize them; they're media!
He means attacking reputable media organizations, claiming they are part of some leftist conspiracy, calling them fake news and banning their staff from the White House for trying to get answers to difficult questions.
Just calling yourself a journalist, setting up a glorified blog and publishing complete rubbish does not elevate you to the same level as an established news organization with editorial standards and a reputable history. The alt-right knows that, which is why they try to drag such organizations down to their level by denigrating them.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
No-one is entitled to a platform.
There was a Supreme Court case about a company town (I think it was called Straton) trying to prevent Jehovah's Witnesses from entering as the entire town as its roads were privately owned. The SC ruled that if for all other intents and purposes the streets can be used by everyone else (delivery people, etc.), then they must allow the JWs on as well. If it is effectively a public place for all other uses then it must always be treated as public.
Between Facebook, Google, Twitter and Instagram you cover 95% of how people communicate with strangers on the internet. They have become the de facto public square with a monopoly on information sharing. When monopolies come into existence, anti trust laws also take effect. If the 3 phone companies that service your area all say that they don't want to do business with you even if you pay your bills on time, that's both illegal and collusion.
For offline examples, there are also venues that receive threats of protests (which as Berkeley showed last year can easily turn violent and cause millions in damage), and even anonymous bomb threats when they announce that they'll host a conservative speaker, and the venues back out in fear. This is racketeering and is illegal, but our laws aren't being enforced to punish the people responsible.
You are free to disagree. You are also wrong and a hypocrite.
You would be the first to whine and DEMAND government intervention if FB google twitter etc were banning your favorite socialist candidates and manipulating search result against your team.
Just because you treat our politics like a team sport, doens't mean the rest of us do. There should be no "sides", just citizens trying to best govern their society.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Nope. The worst offenders — the ones that distort the truth most severely — actually tend to be the ones with right-leaning ideology.
But even if you were correct on that point, you would still be missing the bigger picture. The biggest problem has nothing to do with ideology, and everything to do with the fact that nobody taught today's journalists that giving equal time to both sides of a story is inherently biased.
You see, most issues aren't purely a matter of opinion. There are actual, objective facts involved in supporting those opinions. And although we can argue about which facts are more important, or over how to interpret those facts, it does no one any good if we allow pundits on either side to substitute "alternative facts" that are provably incorrect.
Giving equal time to inaccurate or downright incorrect information is not serving the public good. Unfortunately, that sort of insanity is exactly what we see on TV every day. We see pundits on one side arguing with pundits on the other side, and nobody with a deep knowledge of the issue doing fact checking until afterwards. So instead of steering the discussion towards a correct, unbiased discussion of the actual facts in which people argue about how to interpret those facts and which ones are more important, we instead have a derailed discussion muddled with disinformation and people arguing over which facts are true.
For example, suppose someone wants to do a story on the shape of the world. The unbiased version of such a story cannot give equal time to people who think the world is flat, because doing so would lead people to incorrectly believe that it is just as likely to be true as the world being round. Real journalism involves reporting facts, not just taking two people who disagree with each other and putting them on screen at the same time, leaving the audience to sort it all out.
Unfortunately, gone are the days when reporters would point out the inaccuracies and lies of politicians (on both sides of the aisle) immediately and unreservedly, mainly because they're too afraid that if they do so, they won't get future interviews. And that's terrifying, because it means that most of the public has no idea what the objective facts surrounding any issue are, and only know that their guy/gal says one thing, and those bad people on the other side say the other.
This is not journalism. News today is not journalism. It is a pale shadow of journalism. And in the rare instances where it starts to approach journalism, calling politicians on their lying, they start shouting "Fake News! Fake News!" and we're back to the pairs of talking heads who can't agree on objective truth, much less subjective truth.
I cry for the future of humanity.
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