We need a new model for news
Teaching a class called Introduction to Journalism at Humber College has been both invigorating and sobering.
While it is a good thing for a former hack who made a living as a reporter for more than 30 years to interact with young people about to launch their careers, the experience has brought me a profoundly sad insight into the state of the news media. The students are in non-journalism communications courses like advertising, marketing or public relations. My task is to teach them about the job and business of journalism.
At the beginning of each class, I ask: “Anybody here read a newspaper on a regular basis?” In three years of teaching, I have seen at most one or two people raising their hands.
“How about watching a TV newscast or listening to the news on the radio?” Occasionally, I get a yes, usually with the student saying: “I watch sometimes with my dad.” And here’s the killer. “Anybody here know the name Adrienne Arsenault?”
Blank looks. Not a single student has been able to identify the anchor of CBC’s “The National,” one of the finest broadcast journalists of her generation.
“How about social media?” A scattering of hands goes up and they most often cite TikTok, Instagram and X (Twitter).
“Do you trust what you read on those platforms?”
Heads shake. Some will say, wisely: “Depends on the source.”
None of this is surprising, not after the relentless waves of layoffs and shutdowns in the news media and not when I see one to two lonely copies of the Toronto dailies sitting unwanted on convenience store racks that were once piled high with thick reams of news produced by small armies of reporters. Reporters who do the meat and potatoes work of covering city hall and local news are disappearing, even as liars flourish on social media.
The stark evidence of my classroom surveys hammers it home. Young people are not reading, watching or listening to the work of reporters, at least not directly from news outlets.
In my days as a political reporter, I enjoyed saying with some hubris that the definition of my job was to watch the battles from above and afterwards go down and shoot the wounded. I don’t know who first came up with that observation, but it always got a laugh. Now journalists are the wounded and in the merciless blood sport of politics, some are pouncing.
When Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre munched on an apple, oozing contempt as he parried a B.C. reporter’s hapless attempt at a grilling, his team gleefully shared the video to rally the base. His message: don’t trust reporters because they won’t treat Conservatives fairly.
Anyone has the right to complain about their coverage and politicians always have, usually behind the scenes. Poilievre takes it to a new level. With the news media clinging to leaky life rafts, Poilievre cynically tosses them an anvil.
Astute political operatives know well that they do not need journalists the way they used to. Politicians reach voters where they are — on social media, unfiltered by pesky reporters. It is only in moments of crisis or desperation that leaders step before the cameras to submit to old-fashioned accountability questions.
In my class, I tell the students that the overwhelming priority for professional reporters is to get things right. I tell them that we should all question bad faith players who trash journalists for personal or political gain. Even though they had never heard of her, I play one of Adrienne Arsenault’s award-winning stories covering the Ebola outbreak in Liberia from a decade ago. The students are invariably impressed and recognize the report’s importance.
There remains an insatiable appetite for information. What we need is a new, sustainable model for delivering reliable news that can compete with the fire hose of falsehoods on social media. There are a few shining examples, like my former colleague David Skok’s The Logic. We need many more. Our democracy depends on it.