The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Sometimes There Are Just No Words - We Love You Nova Scotia

Episode Date: April 20, 2020

The tragedy in Nova Scotia gives us pause for a moment before we continue our focus on the virus. Tonight, some thoughts on where the virus came from, and a feature interview on how the media has done and is doing its job.

Well, sometimes there are just no words. And, you know, I think there have been many times during this COVID-19 story that we've all found those moments during our days where there were just no words to describe how you felt, how you were reacting to the news of the day. And then something like yesterday happens. It comes along and it comes out of nowhere and you're already dealing with the coronavirus story and suddenly you're confronted happened yesterday in Nova Scotia. And there are no words. No words. To describe what we all felt in those moments when we first heard the news and throughout this day as we start to hear some of the awful details. And to think this is going on at the same time

the virus story is going on. It's tough. I'll just say this about Nova Scotia. We love you, Nova Scotia. We love you. We love you. I know that little part of northern Nova Scotia, I guess, was the best way to describe it. I kind of know it. I was Chancellor of Mount Allison University

in Sackville, New Brunswick for eight years, just up until a couple of years ago. Did my two terms there, loved every minute of it. And one of the things I loved about going to Sackville was I used to take kind of a roundabout way. Instead of flying to Sackville, I'd fly to Halifax and drive to Mount Allison, which is in Sackville. The other route was to fly to Moncton and then drive down in Sackville. The other route was to fly to Moncton and then drive down to Sackville.

Well, I took the longer route through Halifax because the drive from Halifax up to Sackville is you know, a lot of it's on divided highways, so it's pretty routine, but it's also pretty beautiful. And there are parts of it go through the very areas that were in the news the last 24 hours.

Peaceful, small, beautiful, some of it kind of cottage country. And to think how their lives were shattered over this weekend. Well, it's just too hard to comprehend. So we love you, Nova Scotia. We love you. I'm going to transition now to the COVID story, which is the whole reason that the Bridge Daily has been happening for the last, well, five weeks. On this Monday, we start off week six. But I'm going to transition from that story, Nova Scotia, to this story with, well, it's kind of a sign of spring and a sign of hope. I think we can all use it.

Cynthia recorded this in the backyard today. It's only 20 seconds. But, um, listen in. Here it goes. And there you go. A cardinal in the backyard. Preparing for a new season in our neighborhood. And bringing to us the joys of that sound.

And a sense of hope. We can all use that. All right. Moving on to two things I want to deal with today. One is the media and how the media has done covering this story so far. I got a guest, special guest for that. And secondly, I want to talk about, for a moment, a letter I got yesterday. Lots of reaction to the kind of mailbag version on Friday, and a lot of letters came in over the weekend, and I usually save them, and I will save them until Friday. But there's one that I wanted to get at.

And that's because the question is an interesting one, and it's kind of timely because there have been some, I guess some new developments, you can say, on this front. The letter's from Betty Armstrong in Victoria, British Columbia. And Betty writes, well, I won't read the letter. I'll just read the question that she's asking, which is how did the virus start? How did the coronavirus start?

How did COVID-19 start? Well, you know, the basic answer to that is we don't know. We don't know yet. It was funny because just moments after I read her letter, when it came in by email, yesterday, I was watching Deborah Bricks, one of the U.S. health officials who's awkwardly trapped with Donald Trump most days at that evening news conference. But she was asked that question on one of the Sunday morning shows. And her answer was that, you know, we actually don't know yet. There are theories. First of all, we know where it started. It did start in China. It started in Wuhan, China.

But there are, at this point, two possible explanations for how it started. One is the wet market in Wuhan, where animals are for sale, live animals, the live animal market, and in particular bats. That's a possibility. One of the other theories out there, and to some it's a conspiracy theory,

to others it's a theory that's actually worth examining, is whether or not in one of the labs in Wuhan there was an accident and somehow the virus got out. Well, here's what's interesting about the labs in Wuhan, which is a modern city. Look at any of the footage of it. This is not some sort of backwards town. This is a pretty, A, it's a big city, B, it's pretty modern,

and C, it has a lot of research facilities, some of the world's best research facilities, into the examination of various viruses. And of the four top labs in Wuhan, one is, ironically, just a couple of hundred yards, meters, from the wet market in Wuhan.

Now, the labs all say, we absolutely have not had any accidents. And there is no legitimate reason to doubt them on that. So far. Nobody can say, oh, no, you had an accident on such and such a date last fall, and this is where it all started. But those apparently are the only two possibilities.

It started in the wet market, or it started in the form of an accident in one of the labs in Wuhan. So, Betty, that's the best I can do for you. You know and I know that there's a lot of concern about how open China has been on everything to do with COVID-19. Most people will tell you that on a doctor-to-doctor basis, the doctors, some of whom who risked

and lost their lives fighting this disease in Wuhan, have been terrific in relationships with doctors in other parts of the world and giving them advice and background to what they've dealt with. But government officials from China, how open and transparent they've been right down to up to and including today, look at the numbers. They're showing what, 83,000 cases. That's ridiculous. It's a country of 1.4 billion people. 83,000 would represent, you know, off the top of my head, less than one tenth of one percent of their population. Most people figure it's much higher than that. And so that's just cases, let alone their death total. In any event, Betty, that's the best I can do for an answer for you on this day on how did the virus start.

Okay, now we're going to transition to this issue of the media, because a lot of you have, you know, you've raised questions with me about the media, how it's, what kind of a job it's done generally in terms of covering this story. What kind of a job it does in challenging the leaders, whether they're political or healthcare leaders. And so I thought, okay, let's examine that. Let's get a view on that. So I'm sure a lot of journalism professors in different parts of the country and journalism watchers have been doing various examinations

of how the media is doing on this story. And I determined that my friends at Carleton University and the journalism department there, the School of Journalism at Carleton in Ottawa, have been doing a lot of examination on that front. They're still in the early stages, and it's going to take a while before you see their definitive thoughts. But I thought if I talked to one of them, I'd get a sense at least from one of them of what they're thinking at this point, based on just what they've witnessed, what they're seeing.

So yesterday I reached out to Sarah Everts. She is the CTV chair in digital science journalism. She's an associate professor at the School of Journalism at Carleton in Ottawa. So that's what I wanted to talk to Sarah about. So let's listen to that conversation right now. So, Sarah, why don't we start off generally in terms of the media and how it's done covering what for most journalists is the biggest story of their careers. How generally has the media done in covering this story? So I think in generally in Canada, we've done a pretty good job. I mean, there's this tension, right? Journalists have to do their jobs. They have to hold powerful leaders accountable for their decisions. They have to hold truth to power. But of course, in a crisis like this,

you also worry that, you know, unreasonable criticism will undermine public health measures, which, you know, you worry about just public health in general. But, of course, journalists, you know, need to be holding truth to power. And I think they've done a pretty good job striking this balance. But, yes, not always. It's a fine balance, right? Between those two trying to, you know, hold accountability yet at the same time be concerned about how this is impacting on the public health situation. Right, because you don't want to stem public panic. You want to encourage people to trust public health so they don't go off and do crazy pseudoscience alternative things, right? You do need there to be some trust in the public health response.

But, of course, you don't want to be a PR agent for those same institutions, right? You know, we're seeing this, you know, rather remarkable, certainly unique situation where all the different leaders, whether it's the prime minister or the premiers, in some cases opposition leaders, holding daily briefings. And as part of that briefing, there is a Q&A session. And yet, you know, I'm finding it's an interesting split in terms of the audience of this podcast, in terms of people saying, you know, they're asking all these questions about what happened a month ago. I want to know what's happening right now.

What about that? Yeah, absolutely. So there's a way in which asking questions, I think, at this point in time about what happened a month ago is a little bit of armchair nitpicking. And I think it's a bit rich and sometimes a little bit lazy and short-sighted from journalists. I mean, yes, we absolutely have to hold truth to power. We absolutely have to hold truth to power. We absolutely have to hold decision makers accountable. And certainly, I think when all of this is said and done, we're going to need to have, and I'm sure there will be, a lot of hindsight evaluation of how we handle this crisis. this. But, you know, it's a little bit rich. You know, journalists often criticize the government for operating on geological timescales, you know, that they're not nimble, that they're slow to,

you know, change in the face of new data, you know, like a massive barge that I can't turn around. But, you know, if our leaders get new data that suggests an adjustment of the COVID response strategy, then I would certainly hope that they would be making adjustments. And I feel like nitpicking a decision that was made, you know, a month ago, I really don't see how that serves the present response. Like, I often like to think of it as an ER room, like an emergency room. So we are in the thick of this COVID crisis. It's an evolving crisis. And it's like, you know, what happens when, you know, the paramedics bring in, you know, a patient from a terrible accident, right? You get the ER medical team working on it. They're intent on stemming the blood flow. They're making sure the lungs are getting oxygen. But, you know, if an intervention isn't working or a new problem arises, say the patient goes into cardiac arrest, you want them to change their approach. You want them to go and run and get a defibrillator. You want them to be nimble and to be responsive. And I just, there's a way in which

I just find it very short-sighted to be focusing on changes or short-sighted mistakes from, you know, perhaps a month ago. I feel like those same journalists could be doing an incredible job of holding leaders accountable by holding them accountable for the decisions being made today. Right? You want. Yeah, go ahead. Well, let me go at that particular point because last week I ran the full scrum that took place 50 years ago now. But it's a famous one. It's the scrum between Tim Rafe

and Pierre Trudeau on the steps of Parliament about the War Measures Act and the movement of the army into the streets in both Quebec and parts of Ontario during the October crisis. Now, this was an intense scrum. It went for, I don't know, six or seven minutes, and it was real back and forth between Rafe the reporter, Trudeau the prime minister. It was controversial at the time because Rafe in a way was baiting him with his own opinion, but it resulted in some of the most classic lines that Trudeau ever uttered, which actually defined in a real way what was going through his mind at that time. And the Just Watch Me was just one of the lines that came out of that scrum. And when I played it, the reaction from members of the audience,

or some of them anyway, was we're not seeing that kind of a situation playing out on a day-to-day basis on today's news. So there is no accountability at that level. The questions seem, you know, almost scripted. The answers certainly at times seem scripted. You're not getting the back and forth. Now that's, you know, whether it's in Ottawa or at some of the provincial levels. Yeah. Well, what's interesting is what you said. You said it showed what was going through Trudeau's mind at the time. And I do think that journalists should

be pushing our leaders to be transparent about what is going through their mind right now as they are looking at the data that they're seeing right now and the decisions that they're making right now. This is really where journalists can affect change. We need to know, are the decisions that are being made right now evidence-based? What is that new data? And I think that pushing on that, pushing for that kind of transparency and to actually hear what's going through the minds of these leaders would be incredibly helpful. Asking them to explain what they did a month ago, I kind of feel like that is not super useful in the midst of the crisis. Certainly, I really hope that we will have retroactive deep debriefs looking at, you know, nitpicking at all those decisions. But right now, I don't think anybody can really do a good hindsight evaluation when we are like in the middle of the battle.

Last point, and it's what we're seeing, not always, but in quite a few of these situations, where there is this mix of both the politician and the health care officials and authorities. How do you feel about that? Is that a good mix or is that working to somebody's advantage or disadvantage by coupling the two together? Right. You know, in a way, it makes the politicians look more informed to have somebody who knows actually what they're talking about standing next to them. I, you know, I have found in general the public health folks to be, you know, they're doing a decent job at communicating.

Obviously, Bonnie Henry is out at NBC, is the star of the show at being able to communicate very well. Angela Merkel, who is a scientist herself, is doing a great job in Germany. I don't know if you've watched any of the speeches she's given. But I think the point is you bring out the two because the idea is you have the credible public health person and then, you know, the person executing plans and, you know, who presumably can communicate what's going on in a, you know, more lay language. Ideally, you would have public health officers, you know, who could really be great communicators that can explain all the thinking. And then you have the politicians to be transparent about, you know, all the different things that they're juggling, right? Public health are definitely focused on keeping the public safe.

Obviously politicians have other things that they're juggling, you know, the economy, for example. So yeah, I, you know, I see why they bring out both. I'm not sure there isn't sometimes too many people on stage occasionally. You wonder if everybody's just trying to get their time in the limelight or to show face. But what do you think about everybody being up on stage together? Well, that's why I get to ask the questions. I will tell you where I...

Certainly you have some opinions. Yeah, no, I'll tell you exactly where I agree with you. Certainly about Bonnie Henry, I think that's a slam dunk for most people. There are a few others, but she has been amazing. And I always have been a big fan of Angela Merkel, and through this I have as well. The world is going to miss her when she steps off the stage.

But she's been quite something in that news conference she gave the other night where she explained in detail, given her research and mathematical and physics background, how things work in terms of modeling and numbers. It was quite something. Listen, Sarah, really appreciate your time on this, and we thank you very much. Yeah, my pleasure. Stay healthy, stay safe. And you too. All right, Sarah Everts from the School of Journalism at Carleton University in

Ottawa with some interesting thoughts that may provoke some interesting thoughts from you. So don't be shy about sharing them. And you can always write to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. That's themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. Don't be shy. We're going to do a couple more interviews this week. I've got some ideas about different things we can kind of explore

that are impacting our world and the way we live now, the way we're going to live in the future. I know we talked a little bit about this last week, the dangers of forecasting. I get it. But some things actually are already happening. And so I want to get at that. I want to talk a little bit about that.

And we may have a special guest to do that with tomorrow. And some other areas too that I want to explore as well. So, it's been a difficult day, as we all know on a lot of fronts. But you know, we're going to stay positive and hopeful about the future.

There were some things about this day, in terms of numbers, that looked hopeful. But we're still in the stay at home, wash your hands, respect those essential workers who are out there for us on so many fronts every day. And if you can, get out and thank them, even if it's just on your porch on the evening, whatever time they do it in your community. We do it at 7.30.

Some people do it at 7. Others do it later. But you know what? Do it. It'll make you feel good. All right. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge Daily.

And we'll be back in 24 hours. Thank you.