The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Is the Media in Crisis?

Episode Date: April 26, 2022

At a time when a lot of people are wondering about the changing nature of the media landscape, The Bridge raises some questions.  What and who do people trust to get their information? What is truth and who gives it? Author, former journalist and former political advisor Bill Fox is our guest. 

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Is journalism in crisis? That's a question I know many of you have been asking, and today we're going to take a shot at finding the answer. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge once again in Scotland for a couple more days on this nice little break. But we're sticking with the bridge, even from Scotland, and we're dealing with some pretty interesting topics. Yesterday, I was still getting emails from many of you who were fascinated once again by what we called

Moore-Butts number two, the second conversation we've had between two adversaries on the political front, James Moore, a conservative, Gerald Butts, a liberal, but who have agreed to occasionally drop by the bridge and talk in a non-partisan fashion, which is not as hard as you might think for them, on major topics. And yesterday we talked about Canada's position on the world stage and what each has learned from the other and how the different parties approach that topic.

And there's been a lot of good reaction to it. So if you didn't hear yesterday's The Bridge, you should probably dial it back or make note to listen to it later on. It's a really good discussion. But today we're moving on. Let me ask you a question. First of all, before we get to the main topic, when you do a Zoom call, and it may be, you know,

it may be for business, it may be for study, do you ever kind of switch your camera off? Do you ever turn your audio off? Mute your volume? Because there's an interesting new study that's out I'm going to tell you about later on the bridge today about employers who are actually monitoring their employees and their use of Zoom. And it's having an impact on how those employees do within the company. So you might be interested in listening to that. But that's not the main topic for today. The main topic for today is, as billed, journalism, is it in crisis?

I first met Bill Fox in the mid-1970s when I was moved by the CBC from where I'd been for about 10 years in Western Canada, in Manitoba first, and then in Saskatchewan, to Ottawa as a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. Well, Bill was a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery as well. He was with the Toronto Star, fluently bilingual. He was well-respected by not only the politicians he covered, but by other journalists. And we struck up a friendship. we covered a couple of campaigns together,

and we're still friends all these years later. But Bill has taken a different route. I stayed in journalism, as most of you know. Bill, in the early to mid-1980s, decided, you know what, I'm going to go over to the dark side, or at least that's the way we used to describe it. When you were on the journalistic side, if you went to the political side, you were really going, you were jumping over the fence.

Well, that's what Bill did. He ended up working in senior communications roles for Brian Mulroney, who became prime minister, as you know, in 1984 and served two terms. Bill had a different kind of relationship with the journalists of that day, who's still well respected, but those roles clash at times. And so there were difficult moments, as there were not so difficult moments. After Bill left politics, he took up a number of senior executive roles at three different companies,

three of Canada's largest companies. He was a consultant to CEOs at many more. He's an author, university lecturer, student at Columbia University and Harvard University. Got his MA and his PhD. And in 2020, he was appointed to the Order of Canada. Bill's just got a new book. It's called Trump Trudeau Tweets Truth, A Conversation. And it deals with a lot of the issues that we often talk about on the bridge in terms of the changing landscape of the media and the different platforms within media who are trying to find their way

in a very different world than it was just a few years ago. Certainly a very different world than the world that Bill and I started off in in the mid-1970s. So I want to talk to Bill not only about his book, but about where we are. And so that's the root of today's The Bridge. Conversation with Bill Fox. And without further ado, let's get right at it. All right, Bill, let's start on the book because, you know, the title itself is engaging. Trump, Trudeau tweets truth. How'd you come up with that well um i came up with it for two reasons one uh it was the outcome in effect of uh a course i was teaching to the political management students at carlton university and the genesis of it was that i was busy explaining in encyclopedic detail how Donald John Trump could never be president of the United States.

And the students were giving me that look that, you know, you're, you know, that kind of twisted head. Gee, I'm not sure. Look. But but the substantive point that came out of those exchanges was first of all you know i was struck by the fact that trump was of interest to students of very different political persuasions you know as progressives conservatives it didn't seem to matter where they were on the political spectrum for Trump to be of interest and a Trump candidacy to be of interest. And the second thing that struck me was they would often make a reference to a social media voice or a social media outlet that wasn't sort of part of my daily mix.

And so, you know, it helped me understand that there were very different conversations going on out there. There were very different ways that people were connecting. And it's not that that was sort of a shock to me or a revealed truth to me because, you know, V.O. Key was writing about echo chambers back in the 1950s. But what, what really kind of resonated with me was that there were all of these voices that weren't being reflected in the mainstream media.

And so that led me to two conclusions, Peter. The first was that we were in the midst of a pivot. And by pivot, I don't mean the, you know, ask me about fish and I'll tell you about wheat that we see in the House of Commons every day. But more the pivot of an athlete, you know, about motion, about power, about execution, about momentum. And that caused me to kind of come to two conclusions one that that there was a a distribution shift brought on by technology and then the second part of it was and as a consequence there was a discourse shift made possible by the distribution chain. I mean, I'm an old print person, as you know well. And I came up, I watched the transition from print being the primary voice of political conversation.

I watched television take over that. And then I watched these new social platforms in turn take over that and so and so i i came to the view that you know the public was was demanding a different conversation and it was important enough that we needed to have it so that's the last line being about a conversation i don't pretend to have all the answers by any stretch. And in fact, it won't be people of my generation that come up with the answers. But I think we do need to have a conversation about it. Yeah, I agree with you.

Absolutely. We need a conversation. What I like about that title is it touches on all the key words, really the last i don't know half dozen years in in in politics um north american politics you know when you got trump and trudeau tweets and the truth i mean you've hit them all and forget about where they're where you're hearing the the stories coming from whether it's television print or most likely social media those are the four key words about what this era is being about right and and and you know to kind of parse it a little bit so let's take trump um and and you know people can say a lot of different things about Trump, for sure.

And they do. And they do. But one of the things that Trump understood about this new kind of media landscape or media ecosystem is that he understood that by using Twitter, he could set a media agenda and then and that that would force the mainstream media to echo or amplify those messages to to publics that weren't necessarily following social media outlets he knew how to change the channel he knew how to create a storyline because he understood news and he understood our fixation with breaking news and he understood how he could break the news and one of the examples i like to use is you know there was trump he's in trouble about something and then all of a sudden in the middle of the night, out comes a tweet saying, you know, he's going to buy Greenland.

Everybody says, what? Crystal, Greenland, like, you know, and then all of a sudden it's, you know, the Danish prime minister saying that Greenland's not for sale. That's day two. And day three, it's Trump saying, well, if she's not going to sell me Greenland, I'm going to refuse to make an official business agreement. Now we're into day four of a non-story that he created. In Mr. Trudeau's case, he and his team, they've shown themselves to be highly skilled

at social media engagement, particularly with Facebook, etc. And the reason I settled on Twitter and tweets rather than maybe some of the other platforms is I absolutely acknowledge Twitter is a relatively small universe. I absolutely acknowledge most people actually aren't on it. But it has become a bit of a water cooler for political discourse and for political journalism. And so Twitter is almost often a kind of a first stop. And so that's why Twitter as opposed to, you know, TikTok, say, which frankly, if you were starting the project today, you might actually focus on TikTok. Right. So, so that's how we, and then truth, you know, it just goes to the, this sort of obsession that we all have for, you know,

what is in fact the truth. And, and part of what I'm kind of arguing in this book is that I think the media needs to change fundamentally. And as crazy as it sounds, I think they need to start that change by basically getting out of the news business and getting in the journalism business. And what do I mean by that? I mean, they need to move up the journalism business. And what do I mean by that? I mean, they need to move up the value chain. You know, they need to tell me more than something, you know, a paragraph,

lead paragraph in a news story that ends with the words said yesterday. You know, I know what Donald Trump said yesterday. I follow him on Twitter. I know what, you know, Justin Trudeau said yesterday you know i know what donald trump said yesterday i follow much work i know what you know justin trudeau said yesterday i know what jason kenney said yesterday so you know in an earlier time that would have been the end of the exercise from a journalistic perspective my point is that's now got to be the start and so how do i see you know journalists moving up that value chain think of it as a little bit of a grit so first obligation to the truth first loyalty to citizens its essence verification so so instead of letting trump say something that we all know not to be true and then repeating it and amplifying it for him we need to say actually this is what

the reality is you know and and a lot of people who've looked at this very carefully, you know, admonish all of us with the line, you know, don't let liars turn the mainstream media into loudspeakers. And that's a good point. It's a very good point. And it's what's actually happened. Yeah. For the most part, for a number of years now. How much trouble is the media in right now in its relationship with the public well with a lot and i would say for two reasons first of all and i don't minimize this in any way the media

is part of what is under attack in the disinformation world both as an institution and individually. I mean, you know, I don't need to, you know, that better than I ever would, but you know, the, the, the, the, the media is subject to absolute direct attack. And so because social media tends to favor, you know, emotion over, over, over reason and anger in particular, it sort of gets amplified that kind of the negativity and the attack. So that's one reason why, why it's in some trouble.

But the second reason is that they, frankly, they've been, they've been, there's been too much stenography and not enough journalism. So if you, as a media outlet, repeat the lie, you're going to get tarnished by that. You know, you can't think that somehow that's not going to impact on you and on your credibility and on the credibility of your news organization. It is, you know, and, and when you think about, you know, the, all of the issues that media wrestle with, you know false equivalency, you know, you know, all those kinds of things, they're all, they're, they're all kind of expressions that in the end will undermine the authority of the media. And particularly as we move away from a media model of kind of top-down authority informing people and to a model of a place for conversation and a place for public discussion you know the media likes and i

you know use this word you know you're over generalized when you when you use the word media because not everybody's the same and many operate differently but as a general thing journalists demand transparency from those who they cover but are they transparent enough themselves about the way they cover stories no no uh and and part of that is you know a media sociologist by the name of leon seagal once famously said news isn't what happened. News is what somebody said happened or will happen. And the genius of that observation is that it underscores the absolute significance of the source in journalistic coverage. And nowhere is that more true than in political coverage. I mean, you and I both worked on the Hill, right? And as members of the parliamentary press gallery,

we did not have access to cabinet. We did not have access to caucus. We didn't get to swan around the prime minister's office. We weren't invited to the meetings of the national campaign committees. We didn't sit in on the opposition party's question period strategy sessions right so so our job to find out what was happening in all of those things was was fundamentally dependent on somebody telling us what happened

and that somebody always has an agenda always and sometimes it can be an agenda for positive reasons, but it also can be an agenda for less positive reasons. And so, you know, the analogy that people like to use is, you know, it's like a dance, but the source leads. And if the source doesn't like what you and I did with the material that they fed to us, they will find another ear to whisper it. So there's only so much we can do. And in fairness to media, you know, they've tried to be quite forthcoming about, you know, the whole notion of unidentified sources. And they've tried to help us understand the rigor of the processes internally to make sure that these sources are reliable. But the fact of the matter is we are dependent in the main for our news coverage on people who have an agenda. That's just a fact. Talk to me about the landscape and where you see things heading, because no matter which platform you look at in the media,

whether it's print, and we all know the problems print has had for some time, radio in some fashion has been replaced in in some areas by podcasts and producing them themselves in radio television is in this real kind of scramble land where they're not sure what the future is is is the future in in conventional television doesn't appear that way they're all they're all losing numbers some losing them very fast um and they're exploring ideas with streaming and we saw what happened with cnn plus last week there are a number of reasons for that but still there doesn't seem some easy answer where you go okay this is the future you know especially in in the case of television which you know through most of our lifetimes or

our careers anyway uh yours and mine television was the primary source of news for most people it's no longer that now it's you know it's social media and its various forms um but if there was some button that somebody could push saying okay here's the future they'd have pushed it by now because they can't find that button i mean no but i think i emphatically agree with that i mean you know the internet the latest date anybody's going to give you for the internet becoming a significant force is the early 90s right so if you put a business person's hat on and you think about the year and quarters well you know that means that the media companies have had over a hundred quarters to figure out this thing and they have

and they are so they're not and i think in part because they're trying to keep an old model of what they think their product is in a new world and that's never going to work that just it will not work and it cannot work and And I'd make two points very quickly. You know, the irony, let me start with newspapers, because that was my first thought. You know, the great Canadian communications scholar Marshall McLuhan predicted in the 1960s that as soon as somebody came up with an option that was more attractive than a classified

ad that newspapers were going to be in big trouble because classified ads were the kind of financial backbone of newspapers and and and and advertising as midwife to a free press kind of idea right well guess what along comes kajiji and other thing now that not now there isn't a classified ad that is paper you know you go to any one of them toronto star there's no more classified ads so that revenue stream is gone and that revenue stream is what subsidized news in the same way that advertising subsidizes news on private broadcast. Well, it's gone to the, to the Facebooks and the Twitters of the world, but it's never coming back. Like it's gone forever.

So, so my point is, so you need to create a product that is of more value to people so that they will be prepared to pay for it. Now, you're going to say to me, well, paywall part of the reason that it's less than successful is that the product isn't different enough to make it worth your while and my while to pay the money. So the only way I see it forward is a model that has a financial or a revenue stream that is not dependent on advertising because a known news organization no newspaper my old paper the toronto star for instance you can't compete with the precision of an ad uh put out by a social media platform company uh that can that knows I got off, you know, the QEW at Jameson Avenue and, you know, puts up an ad for a coffee shop on the first intersection that I come to after I get off the QEW here in Toronto. Right.

So you're never going to be able to compete with that. So you need to move to something else and that's why you know when people scholars have written about this for a long time i mean this is not none of what i'm saying is particularly new but you know you you can't be in the business of being hostage to an event because the likelihood of a news organization being the first eyes or set of eyes on that event is somewhere between zero and now let's let's take the a recent example george floyd right those images were not captured by a network camera person those images were not captured by a photojournalist.

So those images were captured by a member of the community on her cell phone. So you can't be in the business of, you know, capturing that image. You have to be in the business of taking that image and building on it and moving up and helping people come to an understanding of what it means. You know, and I read one line that really resonated with me when it said, you know, you can make news on Twitter. You can't do journalism on Twitter. So my argument is let's get in the journal. We say we're journals. Or I once did, you know, like that's how that's the self description. So, so the irony is all I'm saying is why don't you get into the business you

say you're in anyway? And don't mishear me, Peter, that, you know, people would be able to say to me instantly, oh, Bill, there's lots of examples of that. And look, all you got to do is go to the weekend announcements of the nominees for Michener Awards and public service journalism. And there's great examples of journalists. But what I'm saying is you got to shift the balance and you got to move you got to have less stenography and more journalism perhaps fewer journalists on twitter and more journalists working the stories trying to understand the stories instead of commenting on the stories um let me wrap it up with this um would you would you say

that journalism is at a crisis point and at this at this moment the pathway forward is unclear well i would say it's at a crisis point because i think a number of our institutions are at crisis point journalistic organizations or institutions? Political organizations, you know, societal organizations. I mean, there's a lot about us as people in Western liberal democracies that's under siege. Right. And journalism is one of those institutions. And so I don't I you know, I think that that and I think the threat's real. such as an attack on journalism that is internet-based is no less serious than a physical attack on a territory, if you will.

And they have to be treated accordingly. And again, a good example of that in the U.S., you know, the Bob Mueller report, it didn't have the headlines that people wanted in the news business but it it pointed out the systemic and repeated campaign on the part of the russians to undermine the electoral process so we got to take that seriously and that's the role for journalism i mean think about here in canada we're just coming we're coming through a pandemic, right? There's all kinds of conversation around confusing messages. Who are you supposed to listen to, right?

Well, why wouldn't we want to have a conversation as to whether or not the delivery of health care services in this country is designed in a way that can meet a crisis such as a world pandemic, which we're going to see more of, not less. Why wouldn't we want to have that conversation? Why wouldn't media want to lead that conversation? And why wouldn't the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, SRC, as a public broadcaster, not want to be front and center not want to be the agency for that conversation so that's where i think we've got to go well all that makes sense and if you were running the cbc and if i was still at the cbc of course we would make that happen listen bill is always you know having a discussion with you about anything

always informs the mind and creates more questions in one's mind about the future forward. I wish you luck on the book. I'm sure it's going to get a lot of interest out there. Trump, Trudeau, Tweets and the Truth by Bill Fox.

You should get a copy. You should read it and think about some of the things that Bill is encouraging us to think about. Thank you, sir. It's always good to talk to you. Thank you, Peter. Great to see you. Bill Fox talked to us from Toronto. And if you have thoughts on what Bill had to say or anything else, including yesterday's conversation about Canada's role on the world stage

with Butts and Moore, drop me a line. The Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. Always read your mail. Some of it makes it into the show on Thursdays when we at least have a portion of your turn, kind of a mailbag edition of the podcast. Okay, I promised earlier something about Zoom, and I'm going to tell you all about it right after this. And welcome back. Peter Mansbridge in Dornick, Scotland.

For a couple more days, as I said, before heading back across the Atlantic to home in Canada later this week. You're listening on Sirius XM channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Now, as mentioned earlier, do you use Zoom a lot for, not for like casual conversations, but for business conversations, board meetings, study programs?

And if you do, do you ever turn your camera off? Do you ever mute your volume? There's an interesting new study reported by Erica Pandy, who kind of works the work beat at Axios. Here's the stunning statistic, at least I found it stunning, in her column. 92% of executives at medium to large firms think workers who turn cameras off during meetings don't have long-term futures at the company. Excuse me, I got the hiccups.

According to a new survey from Viopta, a software company, 92% of executives think workers who turn their cameras off don't have a long-term future now why does this matter well the data adds grist to the worry says erica pandy that hybrid and remote employees have expressed about the post-pandemic world that those who choose to work from home, most or all of the time, will be out of sight, out of mind for bosses. In a separate finding, 93% of execs said that people who frequently turn off their cameras probably are not paying attention. Those employees are perceived as less engaged with their work overall. Now, this comes at a time when most companies around the world, certainly many companies in Canada, are moving to a hybrid working model.

And that means there are going to be more meetings like Zoom meetings or one of the other platforms in the future. A hybrid model, obviously, is some at work, some at home. Splitting the week may be three days and two days, or four days and one day. But the casual camera-off, microphone-muted way of taking a meeting might be harming employees' career prospects. Now, listen, I've been in meetings where I've switched off the camera for any number of different reasons, especially long board meetings.

You want to take a meal break or a coffee break, and you don't want to be slurping on camera or on sound. But, you know, people deal with Zoom fatigue. It's actually tiring to sit there staring at a camera, staring at the screen and looking at yourself all day, critiquing your appearance in real time. We're working at home, which means family members or roommates may be around. I'm reading from Ms. Pandy's piece in Axios. We're working at home, which means family members or roommates may be around.

We may have to care for children or elderly parents during a call, or we may not feel comfortable showing our bedroom or a messy kitchen. Our schedules are flexible, so we might be joining a meeting in our comfies or after a workout. I mean, I think I went through the first year of the pandemic, at least a year, maybe a year and a half, of only ever wearing my kind of workout clothes. Never wearing traditional clothes that you'd wear to the office.

So that's what we're looking at. And, you know, I think those are really interesting statistics and things that we should keep in mind for those of us who join meetings by Zoom and don't have any problems kind of switching the cameras off at some times. Now, it's not a problem for me. I'm an aging pensioner. use Zoom as part of their work mode and employers are watching and listening, you might want to keep that in mind. Okay, we're going to take a break tomorrow. We're going to take a break. We're going to close it out for this day. Tomorrow, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth, Bruce Anderson will be here.

And I think we'll probably take a run at doing something on our friend Elon Musk and his apparent purchase of Twitter. What will that mean? Okay, that wraps it up for this day. I hope you've enjoyed the bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge.

Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.