The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMOKE MIRRORS AND THE TRUTH - THE TEN YEAR ITCH

Episode Date: September 7, 2022

Why do people rarely last more than ten years with any government?  Bruce Anderson has his take on today's season opening SMT.  And more from Liz Truss to how television networks are reacting to change.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Wednesday. Wonderful Wednesday. You know what that means. Smoke, mirrors, and the truth. With Bruce Anderson. You know, I love the Wednesday music. I so love the Wednesday music. I'm thinking of, let's make the Wednesday music the everyday music. I haven't made a final decision on that, but I like it. There's something about it, really. It's good. Anyway, welcome back, my friend. It's so good to be back. I've been saving up all of the truths, and I've been looking forward to the music, and can't wait to have our conversation. Well, we're going to start with an admission on my part. And this, as you well know, this doesn't happen often. But it's going to happen today, right out of the gate.

Get it over with so we don't have to dwell on it anymore bojo he is in fact gone it's official now absolutely official after yesterday liz trust meeting the queen at belmoral in scotland and today you didn't see it coming you just didn't see it coming. I really thought he was going to do something to hang on. Now he may still come back. I mean, Churchill came back. Others have come back. He says he's going to double down on him. I mean, you just had a big loss. You're just declaring your loss that you're going to bet on him again. I'm declaring my loss. I'm declaring that you called it right. And you called it right a long time ago you said he wasn't gonna he wasn't

gonna be able to survive and and he didn't now today i don't know about you but i was up early this morning i was watching the bbc i was watching the first Prime Minister's question period, which we talked about before, which are great. I mean, it's the real deal. The Prime Minister stands there and is grilled for an hour, sometimes more than that, by anybody who wants to grill her in the British House of Commons. And so this was day one, first day as Prime Minister, and it was you know relatively rock'em sock'em but she was ready the bbc described her as brimming with overconfidence and she did seem to be very confident now mind you you could kind of predict what it was going to be they're heading towards the estimate say maybe 20 inflation in the uk next year so they're all the questions were about the economy

what are you going to do how are you going to help people through the winter what are you doing about energy prices etc etc etc but she bought herself another 24 hours saying tomorrow is the day i will show you the plan that people are going to be able to survive this winter because we're taking their concerns into account and we're going to do something about energy costs and inflation so we'll see but as an out of the gate thing because she's had mixed reviews as you know i don't know about mixed i've seen a lot of bad reviews. I haven't seen a lot of good reviews. I was trying to be kind. But there have been a lot of bad reviews. A lot.

Yeah. But she's there. She has the confidence of her party in terms of the people in her party, not necessarily the caucus, the members of the British House of Commons. Well, this seems like a story that keeps playing itself out in parties and maybe more particularly parties of the right. I don't know that that's – I want to think about that a little bit more. But when the base of parties pick leaders, it seems that maybe the polarization that's been going on in recent years

causes parties to pick people who don't have broader appeal and don't really know how to go out and get it and often don't want to go out and get it. And Liz Trust, to me, does look pretty squarely in that category. But anyway, I interrupted you, Peter. Carry on. Well, no, I was just going to say it's interesting to watch that process. It's the British process. It's interesting to know that she's the third woman in the last 30, 35 years to be prime minister of the UK. Now, she wasn't elected by the people at large yet.

There'll be a general election at some point and if she wins that then you can legitimately say she's you know being elected as prime minister of of the united kingdom but she is pm now um theresa may was prime minister not that long ago just before boris johnson she was in the house of commons today she asked a question it was all very nice and of course then margaret thatcher and i find it fascinating in a way and i don't know depressing in a way that the united kingdom a country of you know staunch conservative values and remembering the you know the the old ways of doing things, has broken through. There's been as many female prime ministers in the last 35 years

as there have been male prime ministers in Britain. In Canada, we're still waiting for our first elected one. Kim Campbell, of course, was prime minister in the 1993 for a few months, elected by her party, rejected by the people overwhelmingly. I can't blame her totally for that, but it was, you know, they had two seats when it was all over that 93 election. But there's something about in Canada and clearly in the States too, when you're looking at the top job, there's an issue about women in that position.

Now. Well, I think that, yeah, look, I mean, I think that men have had what I joked about as a pretty good run. I mean, basically, men have kind of dominated positions of leadership and politics forever. So the question is, is that changing? And obviously, is it changing quickly enough? And is it changing in a consistent pattern? I think it's changing. I don't think it's changing enough. I think it is directionally going in a fairly consistent fashion. And I think when I look at the

choice that Prime Minister Trudeau made to make his cabinet gender balanced, I think that that was the kind of decision that helps propel that forward, that equality, helps send a signal to women who are thinking about entering politics that they should consider entering politics. I think the fact that there has not really been any public pushback to that idea. Remember when it first happened, Peter, there was some criticism in some corners in the punditocracy, but the public never really flinched at the idea. Now, it's surprising to me still that the last time we polled about this, only one in four Canadians knew that the federal cabinet was gender balanced. It was just a reminder for me of the

fact that people in politics make decisions and tell people about them, but a lot of people don't pay that much attention and don't know some of those basic realities. And the last thing I would say is I do find it encouraging, but I don't want to overstate it, especially being a man, a white man of a certain age. I don't want to overstate it, especially being a man, a white man of a certain age. I don't want to overstate any of this. But the fact that our finance minister and deputy prime chosen for these jobs because they're qualified and skilled. I think that's a good sign, too. You realize, of course, that if Pierre Polyev becomes leader of the Conservative Party, it'll be interesting to see when he does his shadow cabinet,

whether there's what the balance is between men and women and that. But that's not the point I'm going to make. If he becomes leader of the Conservative Party and eventually becomes Prime Minister of Canada, you will not be able to use words like punditocracy, whatever that was. Punditocracy? Punditocracy. Punditocracy.

You have to simplify, you will have to simplify your language. That was a promise made last week. One of his final promises in the campaign for the leadership is we're going to make language simpler. Pass a law. Pass a law.

We're going to be gatekeepers of the language. At least for the hundreds of thousands of people who work for the federal government, that's this plan. It seems kind of silly to me. But in keeping with the idea of kind of waving colorful objects at people who, you know, might find them interesting and attractive and they become water cooler talk if there was still water coolers um as opposed to people carrying their own don't touch that water can't go to that water other people have drank from that water um in defense of the simpler language legislation, Canada's not the first.

I mean, there are a number of other countries and countries we respect. They do it down under. Elsewhere, there's language. Well, we already do have guidelines. We do have guidelines for this. So you broke the guidelines by the use of that word? Oh, no. We do have guidelines for this. And so I saw this to be guidelines. You broke the guidelines by the use of that word. I don't know.

I mean, I think part of the conversation that I've been interested to watch is people saying, well, sometimes you need to describe a complex piece of public policy. And the nature of the complexity means you can't use simple, simple, simple words. You have to use words that have a precise meaning so that people can't be confused. And when you're writing a law, you definitely have to use precise language because sometimes the law is going to be challenged and you need to be sure that those in the judicial system who are considering the challenges to a law know exactly what it is that you intended with the law, which means choosing your words carefully. So choosing words carefully can mean choosing complex terms. Honestly, it was kind of a fitting end to a sloganeering campaign. We'll see how it ends.

But it wasn't a masterstroke of public policy. Let me just leave it at that. I'm trying to be kind and gentle as conservatives decide who their next leader is going to be. Which they will do this Saturday. So obviously we'll talk about that at length, I'm sure, on Friday when Chantel joins us for Good Talk. Now, speaking of choosing your words carefully, you did just that for a piece that I think, I believe comes out today in The Observer. It's out this morning, yeah, National Observer. The National Observer, which is based in Vancouver, right?

I mean, it's available everywhere, but are they not based in Vancouver? It's a digital. I mean, they have journalists, I suppose, in different places, but yes, it started there, yeah. Okay. You've written a really interesting piece. I direct people to go to it to read it. It's about the overall state of

things in the country and your interpretation and analysis of some of the polling data that's been out there. But you include in there a couple of sentences that I find really interesting, because it's kind of an accepted thing about politics in Canada and elsewhere, that whoever the government is, forget about which party it is, but just kind of whoever is the government of the day, that once they get to the two or three term mark, usually in the kind of eight to 10 year period, that people go, I've had enough of that gang. Time to get them out. And we've never really kind of defined that.

Why do we feel that way? And that's what I find interesting in your piece. And I want you to expand on it if you could. Let me just read the couple of sentences here that I found so fascinating. This is Bruce in The Observer today. Any government that grows longer in the tooth starts to sound self-absorbed, self-important, and disconnected. Ministers' lives can look like a series of pleasant meetings

with important people cutting checks, smiling, and traveling. Incumbency starts to look like entitlement unless there is very deliberate effort to counter that drift. Talk to me about that. Well, you know, I'm glad you pointed that to that particular paragraph, Peter, because it was probably the paragraph that felt awkward to write, but necessary to put down because the data really say, and let me step back here. First of all, what I tried to focus on is that, you know, liberals and conservatives

are tied nationally. An election today would, if those numbers played out, would probably produce about exactly the same result as we have, maybe a little bit better for the Conservatives, but not a win for the Conservatives. But the big question for the Liberals as they meet in retreats, the Cabinet this week and caucus next week, I believe, is are there voters out there who would consider voting for us but aren't willing to do that today? And the truth is there are 7 million of them, and 7 million is a huge number in terms of our system. More than enough to give the Liberals a chance at a majority if they can find what it is that these voters are looking for that they don't see right now. So I wrote some questions that really posited criticisms of the government, of the liberals, and asked people whether they agreed with them. And then

I focused on the 25%, the 7 million who would consider voting liberal but aren't doing it now, and I looked at which ones they agreed with the most. And what I found there is kind of a mixture of things. Certainly, at the top of the list is probably wanting the government to have more of an economic focus. Alongside that, kind of wanting to feel that the prime minister is attentive to the economy in the same way that he's been attentive to other issues over the first several years of his time in office. But not very far below that is this sense of the government talking down to people, of being kind of elitist, of being out of touch, of being disconnected. And I think that these are often errors of omission rather than commission, in the sense that

the way that governments talk about themselves and the way that ministers, for example, use social media to describe their daily work can feel to people like it isn't as grinding or as disconcerting some days as regular people's lives. And in the best of times, maybe that doesn't really matter. Maybe it doesn't create much distance between people and those who are leading government. But we haven't really seen the best of times, and we're not likely they need to be cognizant of the fact that there's that gap that will always exist, but can be exacerbated if they do some things from a communication standpoint that allow people to say, well, they're not living the life that I live.

They're not talking about things the way that I talk about. So we were just joking a little bit about plain language thing, but plain language is one of those things. I mean, I think the real reason why Pierre-Paul Liev talks about plain language is that he knows that this government and maybe governments generally find it quite difficult to use terms that people can relate to, that the structure of communications starts to become encumbered with all of these protocols and all of these concepts that are

popular in the punditocracy. And politicians need to be really careful about that because if you're incumbents and you're using these terms that maybe a lot of people don't relate to, but your opponents are using terms that people really do relate to, you're going to find yourself bleeding support. So I think language is one of those things. I think there are little idiosyncratic things like the Trudeau government often talks about our government as though it is the government of the Liberal Party, as opposed to your government or the government of the people of Canada. It seems like a little thing, but do it day in, day out, across all cabinet, across all caucus, and it contributes a sense of distance. It is your government, politician, not my government. And so why am

I supposed to feel some ownership of the choices that you make? So those stylistic issues are important in allowing distance to grow, but they're not more important than what are you doing about the economy and the cost of living and inflation and rising interest rates and the prospect of a recession. And also, climate change is still coming at us. Are we doing enough? Do we need to do more? And I've been struck in the data in the piece that I wrote, and I hope people have a chance to read it, by the fact that this isn't really about people saying to the government, move to the right. It's actually people kind of in the center and the center right and the center left all saying we want a little bit more focus on the economy and everyday life. We want a

government that doesn't feel so kind of distant and living a different existence than us. We want action on climate change. And those are the keys for theals to pull more of those voters and create the circumstances where they could win again. You know, what puzzles me still after having watched this process, you know, like you for many decades now, is that there is, you know, this repeats itself. And as you said, it doesn't matter which party doesn't matter um the size of their majority or minority it just there seems to be this thing that kicks in every eight or ten years it's you know it always reminds me of that i don't know whether it was true or not but they said caesar when he was riding around rome in his chariot or whatever he was in, always had a guy behind him who would whisper in his ear or yell in his ear because the crowds were big Caesar fans, Caesar mania.

And he'd whisper in his ear, you're only human. Trying to keep it realistic about what was happening. And it seems to me that that's what happens. Because you're quite right, as you listed in those couple of sentences. They suddenly don't look like they're one of us anymore. They travel around in their chauffeur-driven limos and they, you know, smile and shake hands and this and that and the other thing. And it doesn't feel, it increasingly doesn't feel real. Looks at it at the beginning, because there's kind of like

part of us. We put them there. It's impossible also not to look at this and say, if we didn't have the kind of polarization and if the Internet didn't exist, would we feel, would we have these thoughts to the same degree? before TV, in politicians' form of communication, was speeches typically covered by print journalism. And occasionally there would be pictures, and sometimes there might be radio too. But you get the point, right? Back then, there wasn't the ability to kind of see every moment of the life of a politician, including the moments when they're

at their weakest or their worst or they're making foibles. So, I think that's a factor, plus the polarization, so that politicians who are kind of caught up in the moment of representing their party or their ideas or reacting to things that they really disagree with and they want people to kind of be aware of can take to social media and do things which feel good in the moment but create more sense of distance. I referenced one in the column that I wrote, which is about this idea of if I saw something that you did, Peter, that I didn't like, and I said to you, Peter, do better, you'd want to come through the screen and punch me in the nose. You would be offended by that. Now, I'm not saying there aren't people doing things in society that don't make me really upset. There are.

And I feel like I want them to do better. But my point is really when a politician, elected official uses language that implies that they're in the position to judge everybody else, they're walking on thin ice. They're asking for trouble as opposed to take a breath, make an argument, make a point. Don't use language and terminology that implies you're a superior and others might be subordinate to you, or that you're in a position to make moral judgments about everybody, even if you feel those moral judgments completely. And sometimes, obviously, people want to, and it's legitimate to express a strongly held point of view in a very strong way. I'm just saying I think that social media and polarization are like fertilizer for this

phenomena of politicians finding themselves saying and doing things that make it look as though they are removed and maybe feel superior to everybody else. And they need to be really careful about that. You know, I think in our interview with Anita Anand yesterday, she seemed to be heading in that direction because she was talking about empathy and that real leadership involves showing empathy, showing a respect for, you know, other opinions and trying to understand where people are coming from.

And I think what she was saying by saying that is that there's been a lack of empathy on the part of political leadership at times across the board. And politicians need to consider that more than they have done in the past. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. I want to come back and talk about the media for a moment. But that was a good discussion. Glad we did it. Back with Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth right here on The Bridge, right after this.

And welcome back. Peter Mansbridge here in Toronto today. Bruce is in Ottawa. This is Smoke, Mir Mirrors and the Truth. You're listening on SiriusXM Channel 167 Canada Talks or on your favorite podcast platform. A quick reminder of what's to come this week on our first week back from our summer hiatus. Tomorrow it's kind of your turn mailbag edition with a new twist coming in tomorrow.

We'll see how that plays out. Uh, but it depends on your letters and, uh, and your submissions to the mailbag. So if you have something to say about anything we've talked about here or about the interview with Anita Anon yesterday or anything at all, including the question of this week, which I've asked and there have already been some interesting answers on this, is what did you learn about your country this summer? What was something you learned about Canada this summer? So let me know. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com.

Friday, of course, is Good Talk. Chantelle Hebert joins us from Montreal. And along with Bruce, we'll analyze a number of things. But I imagine what we'll be looking at most is the conservative leadership vote, which will be announced on Saturday. All right, Bruce, you know, a lot of focus in especially the last few weeks in Canada surrounding a move made in the Canadian media that caused a lot of controversy. I'm not going to say anything more than I've said in the past on that because, quite frankly,

I'm still not convinced I know exactly what happened and why it happened. And the more people I talk to who are closely aligned with that story have a similar situation. They're not sure exactly what happened. I've made my feelings clear about the person in question, who's a, you know, I've known for a long time, have a lot of respect for her journalism, and I believe that you can't keep somebody like that down, and with any, if she wants, I am sure she's going to be back at the front lines of journalism in Canada. However, what I want to talk about and get your thoughts on, Bruce, as well, is this is not an isolated incident.

When you look at the big picture of North American journalism, especially as it relates to television, there is change going on. And some of that change isn't just what's going on behind the scenes in the landscape of television journalism in North America because of a variety of different things, but also the face of journalism as different networks and executives try to come to grips with a changing dynamic in terms of its audiences and i think that any discussion about what's happening in the media has to include an understanding of that and of late in the last especially the last week or two there have been quite a few things written especially in the american media they get away from the personalities and deal more with the fundamental changes that are going on

within the landscape and why they're going on and what's happening to the way we watch television especially. What are you learning from all that? I think it's a really interesting time from the standpoint of, you know, people may or may not be paying enough attention to public affairs and news to be well-informed, to shape their democracies in the way that makes the most sense on the balance of the evidence. I think we need people to pay more attention.

And I think one of the important changes is that news organizations need to embrace the digital reality, need to stop over-investing in the platform that people are using less and less, television, linear television, and do more to reach people using digital techniques. I have absolutely no doubt that in the case of the journalist who was let go from CTV News, that there is in the world discrimination against women as they age. I don't have any idea really whether or not that's what was responsible for this choice. I don't think we have enough information, as you put it. It wouldn't shock me, but it would dismay me if that was part of it. But I think that it's also

reasonable, as you suggested, to take a step back and not only look at that and say, what is happening in the world of television news that's interesting, that implies that there's turmoil, and that people who own these television news properties are struggling to figure out what to do with them, how to make money with them, how to keep them sustainable and profitable over time. And that's not easy at all. And partly it's not easy because you and I were sharing a read of a piece about Meet the Press, which I found to be quite an interesting piece. And maybe we can find a way to post it so that listeners can read it as well. The point of the piece was you've got this kind of

legacy program, Meet the Press, that's been around for decades, that was a marquee property in the world of news and public affairs, and that you and I probably watched religiously every Sunday morning. Now, I don't know about you, but I haven't watched it in 20 years, 15 years. But I know that people still feel an attachment to the idea of these programs. And that's true, whether it's kind of nightly news appointment TV at 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock, or the Sunday talk shows. But you know, if I'm going to watch anything from those programs now, any of them, I'm more likely to watch short excerpts on YouTube. Why? Because it's an easy way for me to grab the essence of a story because there's no commercials. And the research that I've done over

the years shows me that people want the news when they want it, not to have to show up at an appointment hour set by somebody else, and they really love content with no commercials. So, I'm watching the reinvention of news with some optimism, some trepidation. The other thing that's in that story was the reference to CNN looking to reposition itself more towards the center as a news organization. And I found that interesting, and I found myself thinking, well, that's a good idea, but how do you execute on that idea in a time when there's such shocking news from the Trumpists and the MAGA Republicans? And how do you navigate your way through a day like yesterday? And this would be a good question for you, Peter.

So let's say you're in an organization that's saying, we need to make a more deliberate effort to be on the center of the spectrum, to not look like we have a point of view that's more often than not on one side or against one side of the political operations that are out there. Yesterday, breaking news in the evening was that some of the documents that Donald Trump had at Mar-a-Lago contain nuclear secrets about other countries. That's a pretty shocking piece of news. How do you report that in a way that feels as though you're not taking sides to an audience that thinks everything feels like taking sides right now? I don't know how to do that. So CNN's voyage towards some sort of centrism, I think, is going to be more challenging in the execution than in the idea. What do you think? I agree with that. And I think you have to

keep peeling back the onion to understand why they're doing that. They seem to be doing that because of the age factor. They've determined, apparently, through their analysis and their research, that their audience has been fragmenting because younger viewers who may have that take on the world, this kind of left-of-center take, are looking at other ways. They've gone digital as opposed to the traditional way we've watched television since it came on the air. So in other words, they're cord cutters.

They're moving away from the various cable companies. They're just going to streaming specialty services. They're getting their television the way, as you put it, the way they want it, not the way somebody else wants it, to give it to them. And because of that, because they've lost audience, the audience that remains is older. And CNN seems to have determined that the older audience wants right-of-center journalism, and that's why the Fox channel does so well. I mean, it kind of owns the news channel business in the States.

Not quite the same in Canada, not quite the same in the UK as we've discussed before, but that's what's happening in the States. And as a result of it, they're going through a degree of turmoil that's suddenly become evident only in the last couple of weeks. They're moving out, they're cutting, they're dropping, they're dismissing people who they feel are pushing a left of center and and not not just left of center but left left of center agenda on their programming and they're replacing them with people who are more in the middle now that's caused turmoil and that's caused resignations and that's caused a lot of rumors about who may be next and uh you, some of the same kind of stuff is going on at the other networks as well.

But I think that is an element, the changing demographics of television news viewers and the impact that has on the commercial operation of networks. Yeah, that makes sense to me. I think it's probably also true that the people who are left consuming TV news have maybe in part as a function of having observed politics for a long period of time, they have very developed and kind of deeply held views. And so they're looking for journalism that reinforces those views, perhaps.

I don't want to overstate that because I think that it's entirely possible that people, older people, people my age, for example, can have open minds about different things and want a more balanced representation. But how to unpack those things so that kind of advertisers know who they're reaching and what products they should be trying to sell is at the heart of the issue that these TV executives are trying to start out. And that generally does kind of propel you to a place where it looks like you're selling to people of a certain demographic with a certain worldview.

And that's different from the idea of establishing a news enterprise that is intended to serve everyone. I think that's the biggest change as I see it from the way TV was kind of conceived and developed, which was as a medium that would serve everyone and therefore needed to be able to be embraced by everyone to now something that if it's going to make a buck, is going to need to find a version of the relationship

between the MyPillow guy and the Fox News TV viewer. And it's impossible not to know that and to think that these TV networks are going to end up either failing somewhat if they don't do that or becoming more of an echo chamber if they do go in that direction for the views of their audience. I don't think it's healthy. I think we're headed towards a period of significant disruption, but it's going to be a 10 or a 15-year period. In the meantime, we need to look for content that not only does what we sometimes want it to do, which is to kind of remind us of the things that we already agree with and reinforce the positions

that we have and criticize the people that we like to see criticized, but opens our minds up to different arguments. And I think that's the art of journalism right now that hasn't yet found, or at least hasn't regularly and across multiple platforms found a business model, but it's what we need. We need less polarizing content about issues that are already polarizing. We need content and journalism that doesn't start out just with the agenda of making everybody agree on everything, but starts with the agenda of informing the conversation in a rational and maybe a little bit more calm way sometimes. I hate to have to do this, but I've got to make my second admission of

the program. I'm already enjoying it. I don't know what it is. Oh, you'll love this one. And I know that I'll pay the price for this for days, weeks, months, years probably to come. I bought a pillow from the MyPillow guy. Wow. Wow. I thought I knew you. This was probably 10 years ago. And I got sucked in by the ads thinking, wow, you know, like maybe I'm finally can get a pillow that works for me.

Jesus. Do you walk into your shower too? Or your bathtub, I should say. I walk in bathtub. Anyway, the pillow sucked. It was useless. It was like it didn't work. and I gave up on it almost immediately. It's hilarious.

But I have to admit, I bought from the MyPillow guy. Maybe you should auction it off on the website. The Peter Mansbridge game used pillow from MyPillow guy. It's long gone it's in this you know the bottom of the stratford dump uh landfill um here's my last point on this because we're going to wrap this up this has been great a great uh first uh first show back for the season um Here's what bothers me about this, what we're going through here right now in different media circles. Now, you know, I'm out of it now for the most part.

It's been five years, more than five years, five and a half years since I anchored the National, and everything's changed. Everything's changed about the business on so many different levels. But one thing we always used to pride ourselves in for the longest time, through the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, started to disintegrate around the 90s, but the big decisions were made on journalism by journalists or by those who'd come through journalism

into the management level. That started to change in the 90s when the bean counters took control. And we saw the results of that. Some awful decisions made in the network I used to work for and in other networks. And that seems to be what's going on now. And I worry about that, and I worry about what that's going to do to journalism. Listen, I appreciate that the journalists aren't, you know,

in the heyday of journalism, which was, I guess, sort of, and I'm not talking about the golden era i'm sort of talking about the heyday when we traveled everywhere we did all kinds of things we we had large crews because that was the the the state of the business at that time but the last thing we ever talked about was money you know if we were going to go to you know central america or africa or or the Middle East, the discussion was about the story, not about what it was going to cost us.

Now it's the reverse. It's all about money. And when those decisions try to take hold, what's going to suffer is the quality of the journalism and the amount of the journalism and your understanding of the world around you. And so that worries me about this time we're going through. And we are certainly going through a moment here in the history,

especially of television journalism. And how we come out of it is not clear to me. Final word from you, Bruce, before we wrap it up for this week? Yeah, I hear you on that. I think that the inclination has to be now to find the ways to do great journalism that can be supported financially for the long term. And maybe one of the things that is an uncomfortable reality there is that, you know, and I don't know if you're, when you were making that point,

you were thinking about the, some of the choices that have kind of come to the fore in the conversation about Lisa Laflamme and CTV, but, you know, they happen in other networks as well, is that where does it make sense? What stories does it make sense to say, we need to send a crew halfway around the world in order to produce a two-minute segment on a news program every night? Or are there other ways that you can invest those funds to create quality journalism? I think those are hard choices.

But I do feel like media organizations have a job to do to say, what are the things that only we can add value to in terms of journalism? And what are the things that are going to be adequately covered in terms of the basic information that audiences are going to want? So you're not always trying to use your resources to create something that's pretty similar to something else that's out there because the market won't reward all of those participants equally. I think that's a very hard choice. part of it is is about making sure that there are that the dollars that are spent on more expensive forms of journalism um don't suck up all of the money that's available for less expensive but equally important and interesting forms of journalism too all right we're gonna leave it at that for this week smoke mirrors and the truth with bruce in Ottawa and Peter Mansbridge in Toronto.

Join us tomorrow. It'll be the kind of your turn mailbag edition with a new little twist that's going into that. So we don't want you to miss that. Friday, of course, Good Talk with Bruce and Chantelle Hebert who joins us from Montreal. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.