Der Zusammenbruch der lokalen Nachrichten in Kanada stellt eine Bedrohung für die politische Verantwortung dar. In zu vielen Gemeinden ersetzt Facebook-Empörung echte Nachrichten
Canada’s local news collapse is a threat to political accountability
Der Zusammenbruch der lokalen Nachrichten in Kanada stellt eine Bedrohung für die politische Verantwortung dar. In zu vielen Gemeinden ersetzt Facebook-Empörung echte Nachrichten
Canada’s local news collapse is a threat to political accountability
9 Kommentare
No one wants to pay for news. We see it here everyday with people complaining about paywalls. If no one pays for it the journalist makes no money and has nowhere to work. Who else is going to work for free? Government subsidies only make people distrust the outlets that take them.
If people want this service they’re going to have to learn to pay for it.
The news lost the ability to hold politicians to account decades ago.
Trudeau’s blackface scandal is not something that should have broken in his second term by an American outlet.
The pictures were from literal yearbook photos, that’s something that should have been hashed out during the Liberal party leadership race.
Sorry that the govt and 1%ers align the media to their agenda, media outlets like CBC CTV and the rest are only good for the sheep, it’s not the news we need to be hearing
This article isn’t really going into detail about _why_ this is such a serious issue, as folks often cite mass social media „accountability“ as a way to circulate issues regarding government corruption and ineptitude. The problem is that social media is _reactive_ in place of investigative journalism being _proactive_. This creates a giant blind spot in democratic accountability:
* Anything that is sufficiently kept out of the public eye is effectively immune from social media outrage, due to the lack of investigative effort to uncover anything. This often leaves corruption entirely undiscovered in Canadian municipalities.
* Typically, by the time public outrage has already happened over a particular policy decision, damage has already been done. Investigative reporting can warn the public about impending issues of material concern _before they happen_, and allow the public to effectively lobby local government to change course early.
* National media outlets are often hesitant to inject themselves into local politics unless it concerns a very large municipality. They typically do not allocate the resources to report exhaustively on smaller jurisdictions and, especially in the case of the CBC, often have an unspoken rule of not „lighting fires“ in local communities.
From personal experience, this collapse has been one of my biggest gripes with democratic accountability in northern Canada, but it happens everywhere. It’s also not a matter of political bias, I’m sure lots of folks will point to social media platforming reactionary misinformation as their primary concern, but it’s really just part of the distraction from what _isn’t_ being told.
It’s too bad Canadaland turned into such a dumpster fire, because before Jesse Brown went off the deep end, this was an area where they were doing good coverage
The news collapse is also national. I streamed CBC News this morning on YouTube (livestream) and there seemed to be an unceasing stream of ads for gambling sites and forex trading sites—not ads interrupting the stream, but ads that were embedded in the stream between segments.
As someone who once worked in news, one of my most disturbing realizations has been that most people don’t actually have any idea what a reporter does.
More informed people will talk about the need for investigative journalism or neutrality or professional ethics, which are important. But the most vital thing a professional journalist does is *basic fact checking*.
If a car runs into a storefront downtown, a journalist actually goes down there, talks to witnesses, gathers photos, and reads the police report.
As simple as that sounds, the people running these „news“ social media accounts are doing literally none of it. They wait for someone else to post a photo of the incident, they skim a few unverified comments, and they craft whatever narrative suits them.
They are certain to get fundamental facts wrong because they didn’t bother asking any questions! And unlike the media, they will face no consequences for getting it wrong because they are too small to sue and because their revenue doesn’t depend on their credibility.
If you get news from social media, you are not being informed.
Canadians would have been better served by not allowing American owned Postmedia to gobble up so much of Canadas media outlets.
Our taxes should support Canadian owned and operated media and if any ties to external influence is discovered all funding to those outlets should be cut.
We also should implement stronger foreign influence laws in regards to news media. Some editorialists with Postmedia like Brian Lilly are just transparent traitors using their public voices to damage our society as much as they can.
The shift from reliable local news to social media/bad faith media misinformation is the most important cause of our age, imo.
I have no idea how you solve that problem, but it’s partly why I give the government a wide berth with the (very imperfect) things they’ve been trying.
It’s also why people using these bad faith sources should be routinely shamed until they stop.