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

Episode Date: July 11, 2022

An encore presentation of an episode that originally aired on April 26th. 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. 

The following is an encore presentation of The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge, first aired on April 26th. 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 No. 2, 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 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 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, I came up with it for two reasons. One, it was the outcome in effect of a course I was teaching to the political management students at Carleton 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 know, 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 there were all of these voices that weren't being reflected in the mainstream media. And that we so so that led me to two conclusions, Peter. The first was that, that we had, 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 of 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 there was 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 check being you know i mean i i'm an old print person as you know well and i came up uh i watched the transition from you know print being the primary voice of political conversation. I watched television take over that. And then I watched, you know, these new social platforms in turn take over that.

And so I came to the view that, you know, the public 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, of the last, I don't know, half dozen years in politics, North American politics.

You know, when you got Trump and Trudeau, tweets and the truth. I mean, you've hit them all. Forget about where you're hearing 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, you know, to kind of parse it a little bit. So let's take Trump. And, and, you know, people can say a lot of different things about, about Trump for sure. And they do.

But one of the, but one of the, and they do, but one of the things that Trump understood about this new, this new kind of media landscape or media ecosystem, is that he understood that by using Twitter, he could set a media agenda. And that that would force the mainstream media to echo or amplify those messages to publics that weren't necessarily following social media outlets he knew how to change the channel he knew how to create a 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 gonna buy greenland everybody says what so christopher greenland like what you know and then all of a sudden it's 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, et cetera. 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. Twitter and tweets rather than maybe some of the other platforms is I absolutely acknowledge, you know, 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, and, and so Twitter is almost often a kind of a first stop. And so that's why Twitter as opposed to, you know, TikTok, which frankly, if you were starting the project today, you might actually focus on TikTok. Right. So that's how we, and then truth, you know, it just goes to the 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 main street 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 i don't need to you know that better than i ever would but you know the the the media is subject to absolute direct attack. And so because social media tends to favor, you know, emotion over reason and anger in particular, it sort of gets amplified, kind of the negativity and the attack. So that's one reason 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 they if if 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 when you think about, you know, all of the issues that media wrestle with, you know, false equivalency, you know, all those kinds of things. 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. 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, you know, 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. 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 for positive reasons but it also can be an agenda for for less positive reasons and so you know the the analogy that people like to use is you know it's a 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 in so there's only so much we can do

and and 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 some areas by podcasts and producing themselves in radio. Television is in this real kind of scramble land where they're not sure what the future 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 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 data 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 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. I just it will not work and it cannot work. And I'd make two points very quickly. You know, the irony. Let me start 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 advertising as midwife to a free press kind of idea, right? Well, guess what? Along comes Kijiji and other thing. 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 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 now you're going to say to me, well, paywalls have been, you know, less than successful. And I would agree with that. But I would argue 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 uh 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 put out by a social media platform company that knows I got off the QEW at Jameson Avenue and 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, so you never going to be able to compete with that. So, 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, 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 take 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 and and helping people

come to an understanding of what it means you know and and and like 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 journalists. Or I once did. You know, that's how that's the self-description. 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, you know, there's lots of examples of that.

You know, and look, all you got to do is go to the weekend announcements of the nominees for Michener Awards and public service journalism. 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. Let me wrap it up with this. Would you say that journalism is at a crisis point and 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. And journalism is one of those institutions.

And so I don't, you know, I think that that and I think the threat's real. You know, I'm of that school that says an attack on an institution 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 the bob muller report uh 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 a 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, as 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 to Trump, Trudeau tweets and the truth by Bill Fox. So you should, you should get a copy and you should read it and, uh, 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 think about. Thank you, sir. It's always good to talk to you. Thank you, Peter. Great to see you. Bill Fox, talk 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. 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? Erica Pandy, that hybrid and remote employees have expressed about the post-pandemic world that those who choose to work from home, some, 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. Pandey'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 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. But for young people who use Zoom as part of their work mode and employers are watching and listening, you might want to keep that in mind. Okay, that wraps it up for this day. I hope you've enjoyed The Bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. You've been listening to an encore presentation of The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge.

First aired on April 26th.