Nuanced. - 130. Tara Henley: The Polarization of Media & The Affordability Crisis

Episode Date: October 30, 2023

Acclaimed journalist Tara Henley dives into heated discussions on Canadian journalism, scrutinizing the Online News Act, media polarization, Big Tech's influence, and the future of journalistic integrity, all while exploring solutions for restoring public trust and fostering a more equitable and accountable media landscape in Canada.Tara Henley, an acclaimed Canadian journalist and author of the bestseller "Lean Out: A Meditation on the Madness of Modern Life," boasts a versatile 20-year career across various media platforms, including TV, radio, and print. With experience as a producer at CBC Radio and contributions to renowned publications like The Guardian and The Los Angeles Times, she is a respected voice in journalism, currently contributing to the Globe and Mail and hosting a popular Substack newsletter and podcast on heterodox thought.Follow her on Substack: https://tarahenley.substack.com/Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger Than Me podcast. Here is your host, Aaron P. Folks, these are strange times. We've got an online news act. We've got challenges with our Canadian government and the directions we're going, disagreements politically. And it's always a pleasure to sit down with somebody who's so thoughtful, who thinks about issues from different perspectives. She's an inspiration to me. She let me guest host her podcast.

My guest today is Tara Henley. Tara, round two, it's such a privilege to be sitting down with you. I'm wondering if you could briefly reintroduce yourself for people who might not be acquainted. Absolutely. It's such a pleasure to be here. My name is Tara Henley, and I'm a current affairs journalist in Toronto and the host of the lean-out podcast. We've had the pleasure of working together recently on a project involving DEI. Would you mind summarizing kind of that journey that we had together recently? Yeah, absolutely. So I came on your podcast. I believe it was last year.

And we had a great conversation. And I came away from that conversation really struck by your talent, by your thoughtfulness and these sort of insightful questions that you asked and your interviewing style. And I wanted to work with you. And so I invited you this summer to host, to guest host an episode of the Lean Out podcast. And you and I worked on that episode from start to finish. This was, as you say, a news episode. It was on recent lawsuit filed in the States. over DEI policies, and we worked together on that episode, and I'm really proud of the work

that we did, and I definitely look forward to working with you again in the future. It was a fascinating experience because diversity, equity, inclusion, they sound like really great ideas, and often they are, their values that we should aspire to in our personal lives, but context-depending, definition-depending, and so it was an opportunity for me to think about more of how do you develop good arguments, articulate yourself, clearly. You don't pick sides on these current affair issues. You let the guests speak. And it's a different kind of conversational style that I'm used to. And switching into this, it was an opportunity to really put myself in these shoes and start to approach it in a professional way, making sure

that I'm just delivering information and making sure it's an informative conversation. Well, it was super rewarding for me to get to do it as well. One of the things I do miss about being in the newsroom is working with younger talent. And so, yeah, it was a real pleasure. And as I say, I'm proud of the work we did, and the episode has done very well. Well, it was humbling also to work with you because it's clear that in this field, there are rules, there are professional standards that you follow that I just haven't been exposed to. And you've done such a great job of highlighting those for me. So I started to understand how to do this in a professional way, how to book people in a professional way,

how to communicate appropriately and make sure that the guest knows what's going on. And so that's all helped hone my skills in a deeper way. And I just, I can't thank you enough for that. Well, I'm so glad. I'm so glad. And thank you. We've got a lot going on in the world, Tara. There's so many issues going on. The Online News Act is one I'd like to start with you about because it's about journalism. It's having a direct impact. And we're being told that it's for our best. It's going to make everything better for us.

What were your thoughts before it became law and how do you feel the kind of outcomes are impacting Canadians? Yeah, I had concerns from the very beginning about these, about the assessment. legislation and those concerns have really been borne out. I covered this issue, as you know, a lot this summer on the podcast. I did a series this summer on the collapse of the Canadian media. I don't think it is hyperbolic to use that word. Unfortunately, we're in a very extreme crisis in the Canadian media right now. And looking at this legislation, I had a number of different guests on. And there are a number of ways to sort of look at this legislation. One of the views that I think is important to think about as the role that lobbying from big media played in the sort of journey

towards this legislation. So Mark Edge, a BC media historian, recently published a book about this, the post-media effect. And he really goes into great detail about the evolution of the thinking on how to approach the crisis in the media. And the specific role that the big media played. in lobbying for a certain outcome. So, of course, in the beginning, the liberal government's official stance was that they would not be propping up failed business models. But that has changed very dramatically that stance.

And there's been, you know, a lot of work looking at that lobbying. Blacklock's reporter revealed the role that Isabel Metcalf, a lobbyist who was previously a liberal candidate actually played. And she had, I believe it was someone, more in the neighborhood of 70 meetings with senior officials on this topic. This is before the media bailouts, which was somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 million for the Canadian media. And so lobbying is a concern here. I think it's something we need to think

about and think critically about. Also, there's a faulty premise of the heart of this legislation and that premise is that big tech is stealing news content from us, providers. I don't believe that is the case. I think the value actually flows in the other direction that, you know, big tech like Facebook, like Google, searching, you know, our content and linking to our content actually benefits us and benefits us greatly. So I think that's a faulty premise. And one that actually, some people would argue, sort of endangers the proper functioning of the internet. So that's something else to think about here. And then you have the fact that the money from C-18 should it slow into government coffers, which there is some debate about whether this

will happen because meta and Facebook have said they're out. They're not going to link to news content at all and have stopped thinking. And Google is reserving judgment. But there's a possibility that Google will also not index our work and in search engines, which would be a huge detriment to journalism in this country and to news consumers in this country. But if that money does flow into coffers, it does look like it will go to the incumbents, that it will flow to the big telecommunications companies like Bell, which are already quite profitable enterprises, even if their news divisions may not be. to post media, which is effectively owned by a U.S. hedge fund.

Some financial wizardry has allowed them to get past the foreign ownership requirement, but it is effectively owned by hedge funds in the U.S. and is carrying significant debt and spending a lot of money servicing that debt. So do we want money to go to prop up an enterprise that is, you know, servicing debt for a U.S. hedge fund. That's, I think, an important question to ask. And then there's also the issue of the CBC, which would be a large beneficiary,

if not the largest beneficiary from this legislation. CBC is, of course, already funded by the Canadian taxpayer. I believe it should continue to be funded. I think it's questionable if it should be funded twice. So, and then, and I know this is a very long answer, so I'll stop talking in a minute. But the next question, I think, is whether or not this legislation will stifle innovation. And certainly from the independence that I've heard from,

that is the consensus view among independence, because independents really rely on social media and on the big tech platforms to create an audience. So that's not an insignificant concern. And then just lastly, I think we have to think about trust, and trust in the media is incredibly low in this country right now and there are some good reasons for that

but is introducing a business model in which the majority of the funding that flows into the media is coming from either government or from big tech. Is that going to increase public trust in the media in us as an independent free press corps?

I think there's a very strong argument to make that that is not going to be the case. So those are my five areas of concern. I love it. I really think that we need to hear more from you because I think your perspective is so thoughtful, so well-rounded. It's not just one thing at the heart of all of this.

Starting with the hedge fund, I watched a great piece by Hassan Minhaj on his show that's no longer continuing, but he broke down basically how hedge funds have been buying up news organizations, gutting them from the inside, squeezing out any leftover profitability, and then basically shutting them down over time. And there's a tragedy to that because it didn't need to be that way.

And in his piece, he does a great job of showing the detriments and how a lot of the most important stories are often broke by small newsrooms. His example was the Jeffrey Epstein case and showing that it was a small newsroom in Florida that was working on this that ended up bringing this story to light, that ended up going national and international and impact, having large ramifications, but that we don't always know where the route is going to start. We don't always know who's going to break this news, who's doing the best work. And so we have to trust these newsrooms to be able to develop this.

How do you feel about this head fund being involved in this and the impacts? Well, I think, I mean, I think there's a lot of considerations with it. But in Canada, what you have seen is like a consolidation of newsrooms. So the main newsroom is in Hamilton. and what you have is a lot of repurposing of stories across the country and just changing the headlines, you know, for for whichever particular market that they are serving. And I just, I don't think that's a healthy model for journalism at all. I think there are huge amounts of nuance to every community. I think the best people to do reporting are people who are in the community. I just, you know, I think there's also been studies shown and data that shows that when you starve local news, there is an update. and corruption because nobody is holding local officials to account.

But I also think we suffer in another way that doesn't get talked about enough. And this is something Holly Donne from Blacklock's reporter talks about and talked about on my podcast. And I've thought about a lot since. And this is circling back to where we started, which is how do you train the next generation to do journalism? And it used to be that you started at these small newspapers. And I know I did.

I was a freelancer for the Georgia Strait in Vancouver for five, six years. This is how you, you know, start to learn the craft. And you learn it alongside people who have been doing it a long time. And you go from, you know, local to regional to national. You know, you, and along the way, you pick up those hard skills and the best practices, as you pointed out. And if all of our media is consolidated and there is, is no path for young journalists to learn that trade. I don't know what happens to the next generation of journalists.

I don't know how people get those hard scales. My big fear on this note is it feels like journalists are also, I don't know if it's for good reason or for bad, but it seems like they're picking teams more in Canada. Maybe it's because I'm paying more attention and I'm looking closer at who these individuals are and what they're saying and whether or not I agree with them. But it feels like there's lanes and you start to go to this newspaper for this opinion. And certainly there's always like a little bit of a side or a lean, but more and more, it seems like

journalists are picking which team they're going to be on, who they're supporting and which positions they're going to be supporting. Have you noticed an uptick from your perspective? Is this something that's also leading because of all of these things going on with journalism? Yes. I do think that the media is polarized right now. Absolutely it is. And in this country, I think the majority of the media is left leaning.

We do not have a very strong conservative press as a counterweight to that. But I also think this is a super complicated conversation, right? That has to do with, so Yasha Monk was on my podcast this week. And he's just written a book called The Identity Trap. And I think he does one of the best jobs of explaining why we're seeing this in the media. and this rise of this particular ideology, particular set of ideas, he calls it the identity synthesis,

which is like a nice neutral term for it. Other people have called it woke in the past, but this cluster of views that really did originate in elite universities in the United States proliferated really rapidly between 2010 and 2020 through social media, particularly through Tumblr in the beginning. But through social media and has really come to dominate a certain class of people. And it's a tricky thing to talk about because it's not necessarily identified as a political ideology

because the way it is presented is, you know, just being a decent human being. But there are very contested viewpoints within this ideology. And there is in particular very jargony language that's quite easily identifiable to the public. terms like microaggressions that, you know, come from an academic setting are not necessarily easily understandable to the broad public, but are a bit of a signaling within sort of specific classes that these are the right views to have. And I think we've seen a huge amount of that in Canada. And I think there has been not enough critical work to unpack to understand that this is a specific political ideology, that that is exactly what we're dealing with here,

and that it's a specific approach to things like DEI, and that there are reasonable viewpoints to disagree with all of the points that are being laid out in that ideology, and that the public, these views are not particularly popular in the public at all. That's another piece that I think gets overlooked all the time. And so I do think it's really contributed to a lack of trust in the media and that I think there's a role for opinion journalism. Absolutely there is. But in terms of news coverage, I really do think there should be more of an approach

of objectivity. And this is something the public asks me for all the time. They say to me directly, we would like the news media to be more objective. we would like the news media to treat us like adults to give us all the different views on an issue and to let us decide for ourselves. Now, the news media itself is less and less interested in and invested in that idea of objectivity. There's a big debate going on in the media right now on whether that should even be a goal or an aspiration. And the thinking with many is that um that the objectivity ideal is impossible because everyone has their own biases i agree with that

um and that instead we should just be up front about our biases and that we should um as christian christian ambor said it recently in the last couple weeks we should be truthful not neutral um or as wesley lowry put it we should have moral clarity but the problem with that of course is who gets to decide what's truthful. Who gets to decide what's moral? And that's where you run into difficulties. I subscribe more to a Matt Taibi view on all of this, the journalist and investigative reporter and the author of Hate Inc. that doing the actual job is hard enough. It's hard enough to establish what the facts are without going and trying to influence the public or trying to make moral determinations or even prescriptions for where to go.

I think that the diagnosis is difficult enough. So that's sort of the environment that this is all happening in right now. And I do think there's a big disconnect between the media conversations about all of this and what the public is very, very clearly over and over again asking us for. It makes me very uncomfortable because it seems like the conversations are reducing in quality. And as a person who doesn't feel like I know anything 100%, And I like being able to bring what I think is the case, what might be the case forward and have somebody say, actually, did you consider this?

Did you think that through? Oh, you don't even know about this section of research on it. And then it's like, oh, well, yeah, I don't know everything about everything. So it's good to be able to sit down with experts and have them break things down. And it seems like the algorithms and the style weren't supporting this process for some time now. It seems like on the right, there's so much of an incentive to be as bold and as loud and as angry and as frustrated as possible, it's hard to sympathize with maybe the claims that they're having because things are so extreme. I saw one post from a conservative journalist basically saying

since we don't have the skeletons of children and I can't see them, I'm not sold on whether or not there are bodies and graves on Indian residential school property. And that just doesn't seem like the best approach. If you're saying we need more evidence and more research, that doesn't seem like the lens or the argument to approach that through. So immediately it puts me off and it's hard to get on the same page when it seems like you have to be more and more bold in order to garner a voice on at least the conservative side. I think on the left, it's probably a little bit different than that, though. Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think overall, my experience is someone who is kind of in the middle. You know, I'm critical of both sides.

I'm supportive of some policies at both sides. I come from the left, and so I still consider myself to be on the left very much, but I very much reserve the right to be wrong. That I really, I think, like, my approach to every story is like, what if I'm wrong about this? What if I'm wrong? And to try to seek out as many viewpoints as I can

and to try to look at as much information as I can. And you're right that the environment that we're in right now does not incentivize that at all. And so I see a lot of extreme rhetoric on both sides of most debates. And I would really like to see, I know exactly what you're talking about, the sort of bold claims and the hyperbolic rhetoric and the upping the stakes all the time and the lack of sort of a quiet, calm, thoughtful, reasonable. and in terms of the issue, you just raise empathetic way of thinking through these difficult pieces of our past, these difficult public policy issues.

So I would really like to see overall the temperature of the conversation really be brought down a lot. And I don't know how we do that. I really don't because with every sort of social media spat that takes place, the stakes are raised, The ante is constantly being upped, and people are constantly being put off by the kind of nastiness of the discourse. And I just think we as a country can do so much better than this. And I don't know, again, I'm a, I'm a journalist, so I diagnose, I don't prescribe. I don't know, I don't know how we get out of this. I really don't, but I would like to see us get out of it because I don't think it's healthy for us as a society.

And I think, as you know, you probably have friends that have some, radically different views than you do. I certainly do. They're not bad people. And, you know, they might be right on some issues. And like, I just don't, I just don't think that it's helpful the point that we've gotten to in this country. And I, you know, just taking the temperature, you can see in the polls right now that people are very dissatisfied. Just one in four Canadians thinks and feels like the country is moving in the right direction. People, are expressing a lot of unhappiness with where we're at. The big thing that I experience regularly is the silent majority.

And people saying, I couldn't say that. I always go back because it's the easiest one, but it's land acknowledgments. Behind closed doors, I admit that, or even here, I admit I don't agree with their approach. I don't think that they add value. And then people will go, well, you can say that. I can't say that. I'm not going to be able to say that. And so it's like, well, how many issues are we just not having the conversation because we don't want to get into it?

And there's this weird challenge where I feel like if we were able to do a poll on a room and ask them, hey, do you want a land acknowledgement? We get a pretty good understanding on whether or not people want that or not. But because it's the loudest in the room saying, hey, I'd like to say we haven't done one yet, that that almost sucks all the oxygen out of the room. And everybody goes, I just want to get along. I'm just here to do my job. like I don't want to argue and I don't want to seem unempathetic and that's what's the challenge I think right now is to say that you don't agree with some approach is to seem like you're unempathetic when that's not always the case yeah I mean a lot of these things come in as you know presented in one way but there's a deep layer of complexity underneath all of it and we're not getting to that level of complexity I think you're right that there's also a lot of preference falsification going on that people saying in public that they support certain things.

things which in private they will admit that they do not or that they're you know more critical of or so I think there's a lot of that going on and I think that's deeply unhealthy for a society as well I also think that there's a real pathologization on both sides of these debates of the other viewpoint that you know that that instead of talking about public policy positions we're talking about moral character we're talking about whether someone is evil whether they have malevolent intentions, whether they are, you know, this is like, again, the rhetoric is so overheated that it, the other thing I would say always, which I always come back to all the time is like, can we please talk about material conditions? Like, can we please talk about

material conditions? We are in an affordability crisis right now. A lot of people are having a really hard time paying rent. Most people in your generation and frankly, in mine as well, we'll never be able to own a home. I've never owned property. I think that, you know, we are in a material conditions crisis and that some of the ways the debates are being framed encourage us to talk about kind of theoretical ideas instead of talking about what we need to do to make sure that all of our citizens have a healthy and safe and stable and affordable accommodation that people can afford groceries, that, you know, that people are not dying in the opioid crisis. I mean, these are really, really big issues. And I think so much of what we argue about is a

distraction from those issues. And I think we need to ask ourselves why. You know, why are we talking about all the identity politics stuff when we're not talking about housing? I know that's a gross oversimplification, but at the same time, I just think that the focus of the conversation has been on issues that are not what most people talk about the exhausted majority, but what people are dealing with on the ground every day. And that a lot of this sort of free-floating rage in our society has more to do with those material conditions than it does with microaggressions or pronouns or anything else that's going on. And that if we could solve some of these material conditions, that it would solve a lot of the stress and tension in our society.

But of course, who does it serve for us not to solve these problems for the economic status quo to be maintained? And I think that's why this ideology is very popular in elite circles, because it does not attack the underlying economic conditions that we're dealing with, and the status quo is maintained. And there's a lot of people that are doing very well in the status quo. So I think, you know, I think these things are very complicated, but I think overall the level of the conversation is not healthy. And it's, I do really worry about where we're at as a country right now.

Putting on your left-leaning hat, putting on any values that you might have on that side, what is the argument for meta pulling out of this and the liberal government right now holding strong? to this idea that they need to start paying. Is there a good argument? I haven't heard one as to why we would do this, as to what the benefits we're going to see are. When META pulls out, is there any arguments that this is the right path that we should continue down this journey

and have Google potentially pull out and just not have access to news unless these organizations are willing to pay for it? Well, look, I think big tech has a lot of power in our culture right now. And so the idea of challenging big tech, I think, is a good one. I think that big tech should be held to account. So that's the first thing.

The other thing is that it really is true that the internet broke the business model for the media. I mean, it wasn't just Facebook and the likes. It was also Craigslist and Kijiji decimating the advertising, the local kind of granular advertising model of a lot of publications. You know, the garage sale that was advertised in the newspaper and the personal ads and someone's selling their couch and all that kind of stuff. All of that has moved online. So it is true that the internet broke the business model for the media.

That's very much true. It's also very true that big tech has taken the lion's share of advertising. That's also very true. The sort of specificity of advertising that Facebook can do is just so much. They have way more data. It's so targeted. And people are just going to choose that over what the media can provide. It's just a better, more advanced advertising model.

So all of those arguments are true. It's just that the premise that this legislation rests on, this idea of essentially a link tax, and the idea that the media is stealing content from the news, which must then be compensated, I think is mistaken. And so like most things, there is some true ideas wrapped up in all of this. And I think that's why we have to be so careful to be specific. I couldn't agree more.

I'm thinking of those small news organizations. I don't know if you've heard of them, but Overstory Media Group, they've developed email newsletters. I'm sure you have something similar in your area, where they kind of give you the Cole's notes on what's going on in society, some positive information, the tough stuff that you need to swallow. And they're trying to grow. And speaking with Farhan Muhammad, he talked about how they're this.

big in compared to the CBC and compared to big news organizations and they're not being listened to and then speaking to people like Michael Geist he was being very critical and he's like I'm not being listened to and I'm not being taken seriously in these regards is there a concern that the voices that should matter aren't being heard or paid attention to and that this could be fixed relatively simply if we started listening to some of the experts in the field and more of the moderate individuals and we're just not for whatever reason. Yeah, I mean, I do think that there is that concern out there for sure. I know that during the C-18 Senate hearings, you saw an open letter from a ton of independent news outlets, talking about just this, about the stifling of innovation through this legislation. You know, the outlets that I follow have talked about this, the line, for example, Jen Gerson, excuse me, testified before the Senate. I think making very compelling arguments on this front.

Jeff Elgy from Village Media has talked about this a lot. I do think there's a real concern about stifling innovation. And I also think it's a concern about a sort of misrepresentation about what's actually going on in Canadian media, particularly in local news and digital media startups. You know, Black Lox reporter, again, broke a story. Some time back saying that, you know, the government had documents that showed that jurors,

the pandemic while 78 news outlets had closed, I think it was something like 58 or 57 news outlets, local news outlets had started up. So you are seeing a ton of local news digital startups. I think local news is so, so important. And there is a lot of innovation going on. There's people that are experimenting with different models of funding. There's the subscription newsletter model, which I have at Substack. And there's also, you know, the charitable organization model. I recently had Richard Griffiths from the Hub and from the month debates on my podcast. And he talked about the Hub's model, which is donations. It's funded by donors and by foundations. And that way they can do this kind of big public policy kind of discussions that might not be financially viable out

out in the market. So there's a lot of different models out there, and there is a lot of innovation out there. And I do think there's a real concern that that innovation wasn't necessarily reflected very well in the legislative process and isn't going to serve those groups in terms of when the legislation fully takes effect. There continues to be a discussion around the role of the CBC, how we think about these big news organizations.

and we have one politician that's been very clear on his position on this. And it's my understanding that you don't agree, but I just, I wonder if you can put yourself in his shoes and we're talking about Pierre Polyev. And if we're agreeing that a lot of the news organizations are more left-leaning, what is someone in that position to do when all of that funding is not benefiting him? How do we think about this issue? Because we may support the ideals and the philosophy of public news,

But if it is serving one political organization that's benefiting from it, how do we process this? How are you processing this information? I think it's a really difficult question. It's one I've obviously thought about a lot. I think at this stage, what would be useful, and Jen Gerson talked about this when she was on my podcast, and I think she's right. I think it's time for a mandate review for the CBC. I do think the CBC lacks viewpoint diversity and that it's a structural problem within the organization.

I don't think it's unsolvable. And so I think the way forward at this point is probably a mandate review. I do not want to see the CBC defunded, particularly if you think about the environment that we're in right now, in terms of, you know, the media being in collapse. And a lot of these models that people are experimenting with are pay models, pay for use models. And we do need still a legacy media. We need a shared common square.

We need free and available. news as well. And so, I mean, again, it's very tricky, but I do think, I think that a good compromise right now in terms of acknowledging that there is a lack of viewpoint diversity in the CDC, but also acknowledging it has a really important role to play would be to do a mandate review. I think that would be really helpful at this stage of the game. You've talked about how one of the things you're thinking a lot about is this idea around young journalists coming up. And I've gotten to speak to a few who are in some of these news. as other people are getting laid off as the size of the environment is getting smaller.

And they're not getting that support. They're not being taught the basics. They're not being honed their skills together in a group where they're able to go back and get feedback and start to improve. And so it reduces the overall quality that we're able to pull from on important issues. And I think of like great writers and your ability to see both sides and impart the knowledge that you have and not becoming more of a challenge. Are you seeing this become a bigger gap between the people who have done this for years

and people who are starting out, not being able to pull from those resources the same way? Yeah, I really am. And I think there needs to be a concerted effort to train the next generation. And I've thought about this a lot, too. I think there needs to be a way for working class journalists to get in the game. We really need this not to be an elite profession. And journalism schools are expensive and they're long. And I just don't think they're necessary.

I just really don't. I think that you can learn these skills on the ground. You can learn them by doing and that really this is the way to go is not to keep, you know, making sure that there's internships that, you know, people have to live in expensive cities. And it just, it further narrows the pool. And if we really want true diversity, we need to include all of the talent across the country who may not be able to afford to live in Toronto and take it two-year program or three-year your program or whatever, I just really think there needs to be some way of training the next

generation that is much more hands-on and much easier to get in the game. So having said that, I also think that the layoffs are having a huge chilling effect on what people are willing to fight for in the newsrooms. Again, this comes back to a viewpoint diversity. And I think the other thing we have to address is precarious work. And unfortunately, my former employer, CBC, is not doing well on this. There was a very long and extensive piece in the Journalism Review at Toronto Metropolitan University in the spring

that looked at precarious employment at the CBC and on any given day, according to this article, more than 2,000 temporary or contract people are employed across the CBC. So if you don't know when your next shift is going to be or whether your contract will be renewed and you're living in a big expensive city where rents keep going up and up and up.

I think Toronto average one bedroom is somewhere around $2,600 a month right now. Again, back to material conditions. I mean, this breeds a lot of fear and economic instability, and it breeds a lot of conformity because you're just not going to rock the boat if you don't know

if you're going to be able to get food on the table the next day. And so this is a really, really bad state of affairs for journalism, you know, TVO for, example, is just on strike right now. This is CMG. This is my former union. They are on strike right now. And one of the key issues in that strike, which I support very much is this need to fight back against a trend of making journalism a precarious work. It is not healthy for journalism. It really isn't. And that issue just doesn't get talked about enough. This leads into censorship, because it seems like there's a huge mixture right now between

self-censorship and regular censorship and our fears to touch certain issues when i've said that i've listened to jordan peterson on the podcast i have people reach out and go you listen to that guy like how how could you do that and then it seems like we have to develop these certain things that we always say i don't agree with them a hundred percent i don't like i don't agree with anybody i like i don't know why i would ever need to say that and it seems like there's a fear of now having heroes because the people that we might look up to and say that person is a great person next week they're not a good person anymore and right now there's arguments being made that that's happening to Russell Brand that he's this person who is willing to look the camera in the eye and basically say our whole system is messed up and needs work and now there's reports coming out so maybe don't trust that guy maybe don't trust this person like it seems like we're so hesitant to kind of get on board with somebody because inevitably they're going to make mistakes inevitably they're going to show that they're not some superhero they're just a person with flaws just like the rest of us and that they're not perfect. And so we're censoring ourselves and our ability to really believe in something because each time we start to have a hero,

there's hesitation on whether or not that that's going to maintain or stabilize or they're going to be a villain next week. It is a really disturbing set of circumstances for sure. And the Russell Brand case, I have no information on that, just like everyone else, waiting to see what that story actually is and what that story is about. I do think there is a mood in our culture, in Canadian culture, of censoriousness that is growing. And this is separate from the Russell Brand story, because as I say, I don't know anything about that story. I think there is a censorious mood that has overtaken the country, and I really worry about it a lot. But the latest example of this is the Peel District School Board recently purged thousands of books that were deemed

not inclusive enough or were published before 2008 and those books all disappeared from school library shelves and this is books like Harry Potter but also books like the Diary of Van Frank. There is a mood that has overtaken the country and part of that I think links back to this idea of the identity synthesis if we want to call it that this particular set of political ideas and this very un-liberal way of basically forcing those ideas on everybody else. We, you know, we live in a liberal democracy. We live in a pluralistic society. And the deal with that is you don't get to impose your particular views on anybody else. We have to take a live-and-let-live approach. Now, that is very, very complicated in the digital age. And it is

very complicated in the age of online trolling and some of the abuse that happens online. I have a lot of compassion for people who are subjected to that. It's an awful experience. And I think that the way forward is very, very tricky. And I'm certainly not an expert in what we do about it. But I do think that we have to hang on to some very basic principles in order to maintain our ability to be a liberal, pluralistic democracy. And another value that I think we really need to maintain, and this goes back to your point that you started with, is this sort of demonization of people that disagree with us,

this patholization of different viewpoints. And that is a really, that is a really sort of creeping thing that has happening in our society. And unfortunately, I really hold our prime minister, to account for that. I find his rhetoric very overheated, very simplistic, and has created real divisions in our society. And in particular, I think one of the big turning points in our political culture,

again, something that does not get talked about enough is the vaccine mandates. And there was a real specific decision made within the liberal government to make vaccine mandates a wedge issue. we know that the backbencher joel lightbound came out and held a press conference and criticized that decision and that had real consequences for families and communities all across the country i've got an enormous amount of mail on this issue and the letters i get are heartbreaking and the idea that we that the best way to deal with people who do not agree with public policy or have questions about health policy is to demonize them and call them racist and misogynists and

wonder aloud whether or not we should tolerate them. Like, this is really awful rhetoric to be encouraging. And it does have consequences throughout society. And so, you know, and you see those in the polls right now. The liberals are are polling the worst that they've ever pulled since 2015. I think the public is very fed up with that approach. And again, I, you know, ordinary people have all kinds of people in their lives that have different views than that. They have relatives who don't agree with them. They have co-workers who do not agree with them.

Some people are in marriages where some person does not agree with them. I mean, this is, this is normal for a pluralistic democracy. This is what diversity means. We have different viewpoints. And we have to find a. way to not demonize each other over them and to hear other people out and to um again to represent a broader range of views in the public square um yeah i i'm very concerned about about the rhetoric and i don't know if pierre pollyev who it certainly looks like will be our next leader

i don't know if he will be any better on this issue will he once he gets into office turn the temperature down? Will he or will he just demonize the views he disagrees with? I certainly hope that he won't, but I'm not sure. On the vaccine issue,

it seems so clear that we had a comment from the Prime Minister saying if we were to impose this, it would be a divisive issue. And then it was a divisive issue. And I know people still today that are angry that we still allow these people to get

medical treatment that they still receive supports because it shaped your mindset if those people were bad they could kill you or your family member and so they are therefore the enemy and i think that that has pushed us into silos and teams and adopted certain mindsets we we might not have had previous to that and i think that there's there's something about embracing the unknown and accepting that you don't know everything and that that's actually okay and that that actually opens up the world to all these possibilities because you get to learn from other individuals. You get to be mentored and learn and expose yourself to ideas that might challenge what you thought and then you start to see that you weren't solid on what your

understanding was and you were kind of parroting something that your parents taught you 20 years ago and you didn't really understand the issue. There's something about embracing the world as is and saying like I don't know everything but I'm ready to learn and where I'm wrong I'm willing to let that go and continue forward and do my best and it just doesn't seem like that's what I'm hearing anymore. I imagine the prime minister or the president looking in the camera and saying I made a mistake. I failed you, Canada, the U.S. I've made a mistake and I have to sit in front of you and take your criticisms because I haven't done right by you. But now we live in a world where it's better to deflect. It's better to post blame over there. And we've lost this

sense that people could be admirable in their failings, that they could take accountability for the things they didn't do right rather than pointing fingers saying it's, that's not my area of expertise, it's not my job, housing's not my job, like these things just inflame us, because when you don't take that full accountability, hey, things weren't going well, but we are 100% focused on that now. We just don't have that culture of belief that somebody could admit their failing and then improve from there. I agree with you. And I agree with you. And I think it would be helpful if institutions adopted that position again as well. There were some big mistakes made in the pandemic.

I would really like to see a pandemic inquiry in this country. I know other journalists who would do. I mean, I think Paul Wells, for example, recently talked about this. And I think it would be really helpful for us as a country to understand what went wrong during the pandemic. In the same way as the Emergencies Act inquiry was helpful. and that it showed us that there was no smoking gun. There was no far-right extremist, Nazi sort of threat from the convoy. There was a lot going on there.

We can debate a lot about how it was handled, but the caricature of it, the way that it was portrayed, was just fundamentally not accurate. And so I think that it's really important. for us to go back and to look at what's happened in the last couple of years and for there to be some accountability from public health and for there to be some accountability from the media and the things that we got wrong you know um i've said this before i initially thought that the lab leak there was a conspiracy theory i was wrong i was wrong i we don't know

what the origin of the virus was that but it is not a reasonable or unreasonable thing to talk about The lab leak as, you know, is evidenced now by the U.S. government investigating it on numerous levels. So I think we as journalists have to do a better job of just coming out and saying when we got things wrong. I think the government and public health needs to do that. And I think that we as individuals need to not be afraid to say when we get things wrong. These are extremely, extremely complicated issues that we're dealing with as a society right now. No one person is going to have all the answers on this. no one political party is going to have the answers on it. And I think we all need to try to

aim for a little bit more humility and a little bit more of understanding that these are really difficult times. Can you tell me about hosting the Lean Out podcast? What is it meant to you to be able to go through such trialing times, such challenging issues, and be able to get feedback from individuals with diverse viewpoints. It seems like that's becoming more and more important. And in a time where if you were just going to one news organization, you might be very confused on what the world is. You're able to speak to people who have one opinion

and then speak with someone on the other side of the issue. What is it meant to you personally to be able to host that podcast? It's been so rewarding. It's just been so incredible to get to follow my journalistic instincts. I really felt like there was an audience for that kind of work. And it turns out that there is, and I'm so, so glad for that. I also find that I just learned so much. There's so many assumptions that I have that I see kind of fall apart

when you start really, really diving into these issues, and I think that's incredibly rewarding. And I also think that it's really, renewed my faith in Canadians because there really does seem to be an appetite throughout the country. And really, like I should say, there's listeners now in 3,800 cities around the world. And so this is people who are tuning in really wanting to understand Canadian issues, which I think is really interesting in the way that those issues overlap with issues in their own countries. A lot of these issues are issues that a lot of countries are dealing with right now.

And so, but in terms of their readership, I find myself just so heartened a lot by the response from readers, from listeners. And there really does seem to be this kind of groundswell of people who really do just want to hear these complicated discussions who understand that people hold very different views, that they're not bad people, and that there's a lot to learn from, you know, I was going to say both sides of the debate, If it's not both sides, it's like 10 sides sometimes. Is there any voices that you can think of where people should go tune in to your conversation with them that stand out to you amongst the rest that have really shaped or reformed some of your understanding? You've mentioned a bunch throughout our conversation, but I'm just curious as to people who you turn to during difficult issues or that you get excited to hear from. I think the Yasha Monk podcast on his book, The Identity Trap, was just really, really helpful to the me in particular because it really is an even-handed, dispassionate, you know, attempt to understand

the rise of this new ideology and to critique it in a fair manner. You know, one of the things he stresses over and over and over again is that this ideology is very well-intentioned, that people are trying to do the right thing, that people are trying very hard to make our society a more inclusive place. And that is a really noble and important goal. It's just that we should be able to disagree on how we get there and that the sort of a liberal

overreach of it and the specific ideas that it's advancing. This is another thing that Yasha Monk did a really good job of doing in the book is just to say that these are particular ideas and some of these ideas he thinks and I happen to agree are very counterproductive

for society. And so that was a really important one. I also I also think Michael Lind, the political scientist, came on and he talked about his book, Held to Pay, in which he traces back a lot of the big societal problems that we're having back to wage suppression. So again, back to material conditions. I found that really, really helpful in understanding where we're at. And then also, Connor Friedersdorf from the Atlantic did a really good piece about DEI, and he came on the podcast to talk about it. And, again, just a really even-handed, very fair critique of where DEI has gone wrong. So I found that really helpful.

So, yeah, I find the process incredibly rewarding, and I'm very, very happy to get the privilege of doing it. And also, I do think it's interesting that in the moment that we're in where media is in such a big collapse, that there is an audience out there for this kind of work. and I'm very heartened by the fact that there are people that are just really trying to understand what's going on. Do you have any breaking news? Do you have any stories coming up that you're able to tell us about any goals for 2024 that are coming up that you hope to achieve over the next year? Well, I'm working on an essay right now about what's gone wrong in Canada. So I'm really thinking quite deeply about that at this point and trying to really unpack what.

what we've been through as a country in the last three, four years. And so that's taken a lot of my focus. And then also looking forward, I'm excited to be working with more journalists. I want to expand, lean out. Had you guest host a podcast, I want to work with you again and with more young kind of talent. And I also want to bring in more journalists to the project.

And so have been lucky enough to have a producer on the podcast this last couple of weeks. And I just want to expand. And I do really miss the conversations that I had in the newsroom. I think it's really important to hash these issues out in conversation with other journalists. And so that's kind of be my focus for the next little while going forward. Well, I cannot thank you enough for allowing me to guest host for sharing your knowledge. I definitely took a lot away from that and have improved how I ask questions, how I formulate a narrative, how I develop the flow of a conversation in new ways.

And that's in large part because of the information you, shared with me and your willingness to open those doors and teach me and share that time. So I can't thank you enough. I think with all of the things that are going on right now, I think it's really important that we have people with independent platforms that aren't waiting for funding from government or from some other source to be able to hear from develop an understanding with and start to be able to believe in people again and their mission. They may fall down.

They may make mistakes, but being on that journey and being willing to learn from others I think it's so inspirational and important during this very, very strange time. So thank you for being willing to share your time. I highly recommend people go check out your substack and follow your journey. And I can't wait for that essay to draw. Thank you so much, Aaron. Thank you so much for the conversation. It's always such a great pleasure to speak to you on the podcast and offline as well.

So thank you. I was looking back and actually your interview. in about a year ago was the first one that I helped Aaron do a remote one with. Really? Oh my gosh. It's close to 50 since then. But yeah, that was a huge milestone for him because he was primarily doing it all himself in his home and couldn't spread his wings beyond Chilliwack. I shouldn't say that.

He did get some folks who could drive out from Vancouver and so forth. But it's been wonderful to be. be a fly on the wall as he's expanded and I mean it's yeah it's just tremendous and I see the same talent that you see I think it is so well Aaron I'm just so impressed with you and I just think the sky's the limit from here so well it all started yes with BC but then I read your article about what was going on with the CBC and the challenge it was facing and I was like oh like I want to have this person on like I want to interview and I reached out thinking like oh this person's too big, like I don't know if anything's going to happen. And thus began the Zoom interview style

conversations. And that's in large part because of you as well. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. And like today was super interesting because 10 minutes before you came on, Aaron just wrapped up an interview with Brett Butt, which I thought was amazing. Oh my gosh. And in that case, I've got to work through a PR firm and, you know, kind of shift. I've got something here that maybe you want to promote his new book on and it was just again wonderful to be a fly in the wall and he was everything you would think he would be so that one was fantastic yeah so great