ROTHENBURGER: The convoy – don’t believe everything you read and see

So, negative news gets our attention. Our heart rate goes up; we become more alert. Positive news is a nice diversion from the negative, but it doesn’t excite us as much as the bad stuff.

The media know this. A media outlet is a business — one with special responsibilities, to be sure, but still a business. They have to make money, and that means they need subscribers and viewers as surely as a merchant needs customers coming through the front door to buy widgets.

People used to say, “they’re just trying to sell more papers.” Now that there aren’t as many newspapers around as there used to be, we talk disparagingly about “mainstream media” and “fake news.”

Nobody at the truckers convoy in Ottawa, or at any of the other trucker protests growing across the country, should be shocked when media give prominence to the bad things that happen at them. Sure, they show the occasional video clip of a trucker shoveling snow off a sidewalk or picking up litter, and those acts are deserving of attention, but news events are very often judged by the dumb-ass stunts of a few participants hyped up on the power and excitement of it all. As I said earlier this week, the fact they lost control of the message was no surprise.

Though mainstream reporters are well trained and have codes of ethics about fairness and so on, they’re certainly not immune to bias. I sometimes shake my head at how focused they can become on certain aspects of a story and the sloppy mistakes they often make.

But the “fringe” or “alternative” media and so-called “citizen journalists” are worse. I’ve watched some of it and it’s unashamedly pro-protest on this one. According to them, it’s all sunshine and roses, one big love-in.

An example of the polar opposite coverage is what happened with the Terry Fox statue after it was draped with pro-convoy signs, a ballcap and an “upside-down” Canadian flag. Mainstream media covered the outrage of Canadians over the disrespect shown to one of Canada’s heroes.

CBC and CTV both called it a “defacement.” Global was more neutral, saying the statue had been “adorned” with the controversial material. They quoted various community leaders who objected to what was done.

Rebel News, a fringe news site espousing right-wing views, sent a reporter to interview several truckers who rejected the notion that hanging all the stuff on the statue was disrespectful. They saw nothing wrong with it.

(When I use the word “fringe,” it’s a term to describe media that are outside what we consider “mainstream.”)

So, two very different approaches to covering the news. I have a better picture of the incident by accessing several different media.

Those who are the subject of news sometimes try to pick and choose which media they’ll talk to, in hopes of finding media with sympathetic ears.

Last weekend, protest organizers banned mainstream media such as CBC and the Toronto Star from a news conference. The result was predictable — a story in mainstream media about the ban.

A couple of days ago they tried again with another news conference, this time to downplay the negative incidents and to state that issues with GoFundMe were getting sorted out.

But they refused a couple of questions they felt were off topic, accepting only one that had to do with GoFundMe, then shut the news conference down. It wasn’t a good look.

Much can be said about how the “Freedom Convoy” could be handling things better, such as instantly denouncing things like the Terry Fox incident instead of defending it. Right now, though, the narrative has moved on to the impact on nearby residents and fears of the whole thing degenerating into violence if police move in.

There will be much more news coverage — and much more debate about that coverage — in the days to come. I recommend, by the way, Politifact.com, published by the Poynter Institute. It covers both American and Canadian news issues, investigating the truth of claims made by politicians and the media, labelling them by degree of truth or falseness.

For my part, I put most but certainly not all of my trust in the mainstream media who know their craft. That’s my bias and my studied assessment, and, for the most part, their coverage of the convoy has been thorough. But I don’t ignore the rest. Fringe media and citizen journalism are valuable in providing alternative coverage, sometimes in spite of themselves. At times, they get stuff the traditional media don’t.

People who absorb only the media they agree with tend to be less informed than those who are willing to read, watch and listen to those that challenge them to think. That’s actually been studied.

As they say, you can’t believe everything you read in the papers. That’s true of all forms of media that feed us information, or misinformation.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.

by Mel Rothenburger

ROTHENBURGER: The convoy – don’t believe everything you read and see

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