The media (i.e., newspapers, TV electronic sources, etc.) is supposed to report the news. Unfortunately, these days it tends to drive it and it's pretty appalling to see it happen.
If you do a search for Canada news on the Internet, you'd think that everyone here was waiting to kick our Prime Minister out, that the country is in an uproar over LGBTQ issues (either for or against) and racism is running rampant. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's just what is being (and not being) reported, and the way in which news items are being written. Blatant opinion and speculation is presented as fact. Other facts are being left out and/or ignored.
In truth, people's attitudes have changed very little. There have always been yahoos from every walk of life and thought; unfortunately, now they're being given more of a voice.
The same is happening south of the border with the runup to the 2024 election.
I'm not even going to talk about the blatant misinformation coming out of social media.
This is not take any particular side on the issues of the day, but rather to decry the way that the media is presenting what is now laughingly called the news.
In response to all this, I will be pulling news coverage from Artisan Radio. VOA News certainly isn't the worst of the lot - in fact, it's a lot better than most - but I think I feel most comfortable taking the radio station off the grid as far as news is concerned.
It may not have an effect elsewhere, but it'll make me feel better.
The news media whether a newspaper or TV station like CP 24, a 24 hour news TV station in Toronto decide what kind of news they will broadcast and zero in on and it's all bad things. It paints a picture that everything is bad as crimes is the focal point. If you want to know about the latest shooting, car jacking, robbery, house invasion, murder, whatever and have to get all the details of how it happened you watch this station. Good things that happen, the good things that people did today, which outnumbers the other by 1000s of times isn't news. This kind of news is just painting a wrong picture of the way the overall picture really is. It gives the criminals the fame they like. And a friend once told me that the people that watch this news and have to hear all the details and "need" this information are nearly as bad as the ones doing the crime.
The media also takes an issue and dramatizes it to blow it out of proportion to the real truth.
Remember the acid rain environmental "crisis" in the eighties?....Well, this was mainly in Ontario, and there were articles in magazines with a picture of poison coming from the sky and everything is all dying, and this was coming from Ohio and the Midwest. Well, not to get my info from newspaper articles I actually, in Muskoka and Haliburton, when I was going up to the cottage every weekend went to a study site with scientists that was going on in the area and talked to the people involved in the study and I was told these reporters come here, misquote us, take what we say out of context, paint a picture in the article slanted the way they want to make a story and those articles are not accurate of the real situation. I learned then to not get my information about anything from articles written by reporters looking to slant something a certain way and paint an inaccurate picture of the real truth.
I don't listen to news. I don't need to hear about the latest shooting, and all the details.
My station is all about remembering the good old days and the music of the baby boomers.
You want news go to a newstalk station. John Lennon said the Beatles are more popular than Jesus... a best example of the media taking something totally out of context of intentionally stripping the phrase from the rest of what he was saying. Trudeau saying the budget will balance itself but we don't hear the whole of what he was saying. A snippet is taken out of what he was saying and that's how the media works. If you get your info from magazine articles you are not getting the truth. You are getting a biased and slanted take on something as the writer wants, to make a story to sell magazines.
As for the racism being rampant in Canada, again it's the media taking one incident that happened in a city of two and a half million and again zeroing in on this kind of stuff and making it seem like that. The talk stations then talk about this for days further painting a wrong picture.
The concern is that, by focusing on all this bad news and indeed, effectively making it, the media is creating a self fulfilling prophecy.
Some people believe this stuff. It emboldens some, depresses others and ends up feeding into itself, moving attitudes even further away from the facts.
Just for a lark, on the digital media side, I went to a few search engines other than Google (Duck Duck Go, Bing), searched for news and got substantially different results. Although still not impartial (the individual articles themselves don't change), the overall results were not nearly as negative towards Canada and its government (some different articles from more neutral sources appeared).
Remember that Google is currently embroiled in a dispute with the Canadian government over paying for news rights. Also remember that Google uses various algorithms to control the order of the results of any given search. And finally, remember that most people only look at the first page of results. A perfect backdrop for any search engine to slant anything in the direction it wants.
We're in 1984, only 50ish years later.
As a 'newstalk' station KDX, my own radio service, experiences the same over or under emphasized content described by Artisan Radio and Mark. What I am mainly after is the life altering news that ruffles people's lives, like the earthquakes, floods, fires, transportation accidents, wars and such. But I get the scrambled news along with it, like all of the conflicting stories about COVID and vaccines. And I will admit that my own opinions and beliefs color what I present overall. Perhaps that's either a perk or a weakness of the media. Those of us who 'own' the media have the power to shape what gets broadcast. Our own egos get served by the words we allow to be heard. Some very ignorant people get hold of media outlets and we end up hearing their dull misinformed points of view. After surveying the media landscape you've got to say, "Look who's talking'.
I broadcast FSN newscasts and several news/political type programs. I try to stay away from commentaries and opinion type pieces. E.g. FSN 5 minute newscasts include a commentary/opinion piece. I dropped the 5 min version for the 3 min version without that. And dropped a couple programs for more suitable ones.
I have to say that I'm at peace with my decision to eliminate news on Artisan Radio. We'll be replacing it with 5 minutes of poetry/short story readings every hour (except during the Old Time Radio segments). I don't think I've read/heard yet an article about the current Middle East situation that wasn't a blatant propaganda piece for either one side or the other; Opinions and misinformation are being presented as fact right across the board.
I'll keep my own opinions to myself, so I certainly don't want to peddle others.
I've got all the raw material for the additional programming - I just need now to put together the playlists.