Tag Archives: News

Missing the point

“The meaning of your communication is the response that you get.”

This is a quote I heard in a communication course that I took in my early 20’s, more than a half of my life ago… but I remember it and it is a bit of a mantra for me. So, when I share something and the message isn’t clear, I recognize that I need to take at least partial responsibility. An unexpected response tells me that my communication was not clear enough to get the response I expected.

Yesterday I was mad. I actually expected a shooting like the one in a Texas school to happen. I didn’t know it would be a school, but I saw the publicity the supermarket shooting in Buffalo the week before got and I figured another high profile shooting was coming. When it happened, and when it was a school, I was angry. That anger came through in my post, Enough is enough. But writing it wasn’t enough for me. I don’t pretend I have an audience big enough to make a genuine difference. So, I sent it to some local and some US reporters that I have access to via Twitter. It only went to accounts that allow Direct Messages, so that I was sending the messages privately.

One reporter responded. I won’t name him, because I have a lot of respect for him and I appreciate him responding to me… he was the only one. These were his words:

David, I don’t agree with you one bit. The rate of mass shootings in Canada (and MANY other countries) versus the US is so vastly different, with practically no difference in the way media treats the subject. That in itself is evidence of a flaw in your logic. I am in the businesses of shedding light on the issues that erode our safety and security because ignoring a problem never makes it go away. Do I wish these events never happened? Am I heartbroken and traumatized by what I see and hear and have to filter for our audience? You’re damn right I am. I hate every minute of it. But am I to blame? Not at all. Why don’t you direct some of your energy at those who refuse to put restrictions on killing machines and those who pull the trigger?

And this was my response:

I’m only saying don’t report their names. Don’t highlight their lives. Yes this is a US problem, I’ve mostly sent this to US news. But how hard would it be not to dignify the killers. To remove any mention of their identity? The stats tell us these are more likely to happen after a high publicity act. The people doing the copycat act know they will be (in)famous like the other killers before them. I know gun laws in the US are a big problem… but that doesn’t diminish the fact that all news outlets are making it worse. Apologies if you think I’m blaming you, I’m not. I’m blaming a news system that glorifies killers. That’s the part I am struggling with. Stop naming the killers. Stop highlighting their lives. That’s my point. It’s not about you, it’s about this:

That is the part media outlets play. And all of them can do better.

He took it as a personal attack, and he missed the point. I blame myself. I should have written a plea, not a condemnation. The irony to me is this line he shared, “I am in the businesses of shedding light on the issues that erode our safety and security because ignoring a problem never makes it go away.” The simple fact is that by glorifying the killer, he and his colleagues are eroding our safety and security. They are publicizing to the weak and the disturbed that they too can become famous.

“Am I heartbroken and traumatized by what I see and hear and have to filter for our audience?” He said. Yes, filtering for the audience is part of being a news reporter, and what I’m asking is for him and his colleagues to filter out the names of the idiots with guns. I’m not saying, ‘Don’t report the news.’ I’m not saying, ‘You are responsible.’ I am saying that highlighting and profiling the idiots with guns erodes public safety and security. How hard would it be for news media to have a simple code of conduct:

  • Do not mention a mass shooter’s name.
  • Do not share images of them.
  • Do not investigate their lives, profile them, or quote them.

That’s what I wanted to say. But that’s not what I communicated. I can’t blame anyone for missing the point, when I failed to make the point clear.

Enough is enough

I invite everyone to write a letter to the news editors and producers of their favourite newspaper and newscasts, and feel free to borrow freely from what I share below:

An Open Letter to News Editors:

You wouldn’t do it. You wouldn’t quote a Nazi manifesto and share their message. You wouldn’t promote hateful messages of racism. You wouldn’t incite a riot. Yet day after day, year after year you promote gun violence and mass shootings. You contribute to them. You incite them. You shoulder part of the responsibility. Shame on you for perpetuating the problem.

There are decades of research that suggest publicizing mass shootings and suicides lead to more of each. This is a known fact. We know that publicizing high profile shooters will often lead to more shootings. Yet last week media outlets across North America shared detailed information about a killer in Buffalo who committed a senseless act of violence. Five years from now no one outside of Buffalo will remember the victims names, but there will be an unwell person in North Carolina, Florida, Washington, Nevada, or Philadelphia that will know the killer’s name… will have read his manifesto… will have saved photos of this evil person… all of which you shared, all of which you made possible.

What you are doing is unconscionable!

Remove the details of the murderer in the Buffalo story from your headlines, and it is unlikely that the school shooting in Uvalde Texas would have happened yesterday. That’s right, it happened because of you and your media colleagues. Because of you. You didn’t pull the trigger, but you are partially to blame.

And when I go to news articles about the Uvalde massacre, I see the killer’s name. I know where he worked, I can learn all about his life. What you are actually doing is inciting a similar incident. You are inviting it. You are partially responsible for it. You, the editors of newspapers, the producers of television news, you hold some of the blame for Uvalde. Shame on you.

Stop printing the killers name. Stop sharing their words. Stop sharing images of them. Stop profiling them. Stop the cycle of contributing to the problem. To continue is to be complicit. You are complicit, you are an accomplice to murder.

You can help break the cycle.

—–

Don’t share their names

It’s so senseless and sad. A radicalized idiot with a gun in Buffalo has taken the lives of innocent people.

I saw this response on TikTok, and the title of the post is ‘Don’t say their names’. I’ve said this before, and explained myself in a footnote:

*I referred to the person who murdered children and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown last Friday as ‘Idiot with a gun in Newtown’. It would be a whole other blog post to speak of how horrible our news media is at iconicizing (not sure if that’s a word) murdering, evil, or deeply disturbed people who commit violent acts. On this principle, I do not name this murderer here. I chose to convey him as a nameless ‘Idiot with a gun in Newtown’. If that offends you, sorry.

When someone like the idiot with a gun in Buffalo commits such a senseless act, part of their desire to follow through with this is to be known. They know that their manifesto will be shared. They know newscasters will peruse their Facebook and Instagram pages and put images of them on the news. They know their name and face will be mentioned and shared.

They don’t deserve the acknowledgment. They deserve to remain nameless. They don’t even deserve the image of their face to be shared. Idiots with guns, that’s what they should be known as. Idiots. Nothing more. Let anyone thinking of doing this in the future know that they will be forgotten. That’s what they deserve.

Cone of silence

When I was a kid I used to watch Get Smart, a ridiculous comedy about a bumbling secret agent who seemed to always accidentally solved his case. Whenever his boss was going to tell him something top secret, Max, agent 99, would insist on using the cone of silence… a device that succeeded in preventing them from hearing each other, and could always be heard from the audience’s perspective, outside of the cone.

I sometimes try to put myself in a cone of silence, not watching the news, not paying attention to social media posts related to news events, not discussing anything related to the news. I try to block things out for a couple days and just live in blissful ignorance of the world beyond my daily life.

Does it work? Not always. But every now and then it’s fun to try.

Weapons of mass recording

As we watch war and resistance play out in the Ukraine, we are watching it from the film footage of civilians. Phones have become weapons against propaganda, weapons against tyranny, weapons of war. Instead of the story being told by a handful of brave reporters, anyone with a phone is now reporting and sharing updates.

These videos are being mapped and checked for authenticity, and they are being shared on social media. The battle might be being played out in the Ukraine, but it’s also being replayed all over the world. And now Elon Musk’s Starlink will ensure that the videos keep coming.

Resistance is now a shared global experience. The phone camera has become a weapon against tyranny.

Misinformation machine

Yesterday I shared this tweet:


Daniel Funke shared a thread of images that are NOT from the current invasion of the Ukraine by Russia, but are being spread in social media as if they are from the current battle.

Today I read an article that stated, “Facebook has blocked Russian state media outlets from using its advertising platform or using other monetization features in response to the invasion of Ukraine.”

Its amazing that propaganda is so prevalent today when there is such easy access to information. But we are not living in an age where facts travel at the speed of fiction. Lies spread faster than truth. Sensationalism trumps information, and upset or outrage create the perfect venue for the re-sharing of fabricated stories that go viral.

Facts blend with fiction into a narrative that is anything but real news. What stories do the news stations in Moscow share with their citizens? How different does the news sound in neighbouring Belarus, compared to China, compared to news here in North America?

It’s easy to share narratives that match your own view, even if the source of the data is unreliable. We are living in an era when misinformation reigns. Social media has become an unstoppable misinformation machine, and every time we click a like, re-share, or forward a narrative that isn’t true, we become part of the machine. After all, we are the social in social media. We are cogs in the misinformation machine.

Freedom, censorship, and ignorance

This is an interesting time that we live in. I find myself in a position where I need to question my own values. I don’t do this lightly. I don’t pretend that my values have suddenly changed. It’s just that present circumstances put me at odds with my own beliefs around freedom of speech.

I am a strong believer in freedom of speech. I think that when a society sensors speech, they are on a dangerous path. I take this to an extreme. Except for slander, threats, and inciting violence, I think people have a right to say and believe what they want. I believe that taking away such freedom puts us on a perilous path where a select few get too much control, and can undermine our freedoms.

An example where I take this to the extreme would be agreeing with Noam Chomsky.

That has been my stance for a very long time. But the spread of misinformation on social media has me second guessing this. There is a fundamental difference between someone standing on a soap box in a town square, and a nut job with a massive audience spreading lies.

So now, even as an ardent defender of free speech, I find myself agreeing with YouTube’s decision to ban vaccine misinformation:

YouTube doesn’t allow content that poses a serious risk of egregious harm by spreading medical misinformation about currently administered vaccines that are approved and confirmed to be safe and effective by local health authorities and by the World Health Organization (WHO). This is limited to content that contradicts local health authorities’ or the WHO’s guidance on vaccine safety, efficacy, and ingredients.

Two, four, eight, or sixteen years ago when YouTube began, I would have screamed ‘Censorship!’ at the idea of a platform banning free speech. Even now it bothers me. But I think it is necessary. The first problem is that lies and misinformation are too easily shared, and spread too easily. The second problem is that the subject area is one where too many people do not have enough information to discern fact from fiction, science from pseudoscience. The third problem is that any authentic discussion about these topics is unevenly biased towards misinformation. This last point needs explanation.

If I wanted to argue with you that Zeus the Greek God produces lightning and thunder when he is angry, I think everyone today would say that I was stupid to think such a thing. However, if I was given an opportunity to debate a scientist on this in a public forum, what inadvertently happens is that my crazy idea now gets to have an equal amount of airtime with legitimate science. These two sides do not deserve equal airtime in a public, linkable, shareable format that appears to give my opinion an equal footing against scientific evidence.

Now when dealing with something as silly as believing in a thunder god is the topic, this isn’t a huge issue. But when it’s scientific sounding, persuading and fear mongering misinformation that can cause harm, that’s a totally different situation. When a single counter example, say for example a person having adverse effects from a vaccine, becomes a talking point, it’s hard to balance that in an argument with millions of people not having adverse effects and also drastically reducing their risk of a death the vaccine prevented. The one example, one data point, ends up being a scare tactic that works to convince some people hearing the argument that the millions of counter examples don’t matter. And when social media platforms feed similar, unbalanced but misleading information to people over and over again, and the social media algorithms share ‘similar’ next videos, or targeted misinformation, this actually gets dangerous. It threatens our ability to weigh fact from fiction, news from fake news, science from pseudoscience. It feeds and fosters ignorance.

I don’t know how else to fight this than to stop bad ideas from spreading by banning them?

This flies in the face of my beliefs about free speech, but I don’t know any alternative to prevent bad ideas from spreading faster than good ones. And so while I see censorship as inherently evil, it is a lesser evil to allowing ignorance to spread and go viral. And while it potentially opens a door to less freedom, and I have concerns about who makes the decision of what information should be banned, I’d rather see a ban like this attempted, than for us to continue to let really bad ideas spread.

I thought in this day and age common sense would prevail and there would be no need to censor most if not all free speech. However it seems that as a society, we just aren’t smart enough to discern truth from cleverly said fiction. So we need to stop the spread of bad ideas, even if that means less freedom to say anything we want.

What the next year will bring

I’m not pretending that I have a crystal ball, and can see into the future, but here are some predictions on the year ahead:

1. Vaccines.

A) In the developed world: despite growing evidence that vaccines are saving lives, there are going to be too many people that choose not to get them and the Delta variant (or another yet to be named variant) will bring prolonged restrictions that the very people refusing to get the vaccine will be the most vocal about.

B) In the developing world: It will be another year from now before many countries have enough vaccines to distribute two shots to every person that wants one… but in some of these countries it will be mandated, and that will be a new front of contention and fear mongering in ‘more free’ countries.

C) Booster shots (a 3rd dose) will not be seriously considered for at least 6 months to a year, if at all… but watch for news as elites decide to get it anyway, and while this won’t influence anti-vaxers to get their shots, many with 2 shots will want the 3rd shot as a security blanket.

2. Conspiracy theories.

These will flourish for two reasons:

A) Social media is too easily exploited by clever use of targeted advertising dollars, and fake news/information travels faster than boring but true facts.

B) The news plays easily into the hands of controversy = clicks = advertising dollars. Example: Share the story of an articulate 22 year-old choosing not to be vaccinated. Let her express her concerns for a minute, give a 30 second response, let her get the last word in. The controversy is more important than the science, and the news cast plays like an anti-vaxer advertisement… for free, with a large audience.

3. American Politics: The next year will decide the 2024 election. It is comical to me that some people still think the last election will be overturned… it won’t. However, I think Trump will make a lot of waves in the next year. While I won’t make a prediction as to weather he rides the wave or sinks, I think contention around the last election will be the counterbalance to Trump’s legal woes, and both of these will play into keeping his name in the news, and on the minds of Americans. If in a year he is not in legal hot water, then be warned that he could be a legitimate candidate in 2024.

4. Climate Change: Freakish weather will make this a hot topic for the next year. That said, not much will change with respect to doing something meaningful about it. Newsworthy, but somehow not change worthy.

5. Cryptocurrency: Countries will begin to adopt their own digital currencies. Paper bills will not be produced by most countries in 5 years, and this will be evident by next summer. Developing countries with massive inflation issues will lead the way.

6. Cancel culture: I’ll end on this, and in all honesty, I think this is a wish more than a prediction. I hope that there is some rebalancing around people being cancelled for poor indiscretions. What I mean by this is that someone saying something stupid can’t be treated as equally vile as someone who commits an evil crime. Human beings make mistakes. Two things matter when those mistakes are made. First, how much harm was caused? Second, what is the response/consequence?

I don’t think public/social media spaces are spaces where restitution and resolutions happen. Instead these sites become cesspools of anger, hate, rage, and an attack on people which prevents conversation and learning. Some of these attacks are worse than the indiscretion, but that doesn’t seem to matter.

I would like to see people provided a chance for redemption, rather than vilification and cancelation. We need to allow for learning and growth.

—–

That’s 5 predictions and a wish. I’ll set a calendar date for a year from now and see how I did.

Good news on the vaccine front

I will admit that I’ve been critical of the vaccine rollout in Canada. I really thought that it took much too long to get things started. However, I now have to say that I’m very impressed with how things are going. Have a look at this chart as of yesterday:

It seems that Canada’s strategy of getting the first shot to as many people as possible is paying off. I get my second shot next week, and I just read that the new Canadian goal is to have every person from the age of 12 and up to be able to get their second shot by September… every person that wants it.

That’s the new challenge we face, how many people in our population will not choose to get vaccinated? With the Delta variant hitting the unvaccinated population extremely hard, Covid-19 is proving to be hearty and resilient. The Delta variant spreads very easily, and on average causes much harsher symptoms, putting more people in hospital than other variants.

Reducing the threat of this variant, and subsequent variants is best done with a comprehensive vaccine rollout. Reduce the likelihood of spread, and you also reduce the likelihood of mutation and new variants. The spread of measles provides a good lesson for us. Measles is preventable by vaccine and numbers have gone down for years heading into 2010. But the last decade has seen spikes due to anti-vaccine sentiment, and a larger population of unvaccinated kids in different populations.

Canada is lucky. For such a large country, we don’t have a massive population, and the population we do have predominantly lives in a narrow band near the US border. So, not many people, but mostly living in a concentrated area. This makes vaccine distribution easier on two fronts. The third and final frontier is the willingness of the population to do their part.

Our younger generation seems to be more willing to do their part than in other countries. As soon as the 18+ population were given the opportunity to get a vaccine in Canada, uptake has been good. Since younger age groups seems hard hit by the Delta variant in England, it is comforting to know that the Canadian population that had to wait the longest for their turn at getting the first shot have been so willing.

It’s good news all around in Canada, and so now as the vast majority of the population lines up for their 2nd shot, it’s my hope that we also see more people take advantage of their first shot. This is the challenge ahead of us. Not the rollout of the second shot, that is going very well. Rather it’s the rollout of the first shot to the population who seems hesitant to do their part. The closer we get to full immunity, the more likely we are to be protected from dangerous variants spreading through our communities… and our loved ones.

The wrong focus in the news

I’m becoming more and more disappointed with news reporting. Journalism has become a way to tell a predetermined story, with the focus being to exaggerate a narrative that is negative. Here are two examples:

1. TV – A report on the AstraZeneca vaccine in Canada. A large amount of the vaccine is is about to expire, but because of the fear of blood clots, which is extremely low, officials are acting slow in deciding what to do with this supply of vaccines. In the report, they mention that the blood clot risk for the second shot is significantly lower than than the low risk with the first shot. Then they interview a woman who had her first AstraZeneca shot and is cautious and doubtful about having the second shot. She becomes the story. Not two people with different views, one saying yes, and one saying no… just the cautious perspective.

2. Newspaper – This is a message from our local paper to our Valedictorian:

The Tri-City News is reaching out to SD43 valedictorians about what it’s like to graduate during Year 2 of the pandemic.

Can you please write two paragraphs — no longer than 150 words in total — about your Grade 12 experience, and describe what it’s like for you and your fellow grads to transition without any official ceremony?

Congratulations valedictorians, please write to us and tell us the reasons why you are disappointed with your last year of school.

What an awful thing to ask!

In both of these news stories the focus of the story is one that stirs emotions, not to benefit anyone, simply to prey on the emotions of the audience. I’m seeing this time and again. The question isn’t ‘what is the story here?’, the story is ‘what will get the most watches, clicks, likes, and shares… at the expense of good reporting.

I find myself wondering, is real journalism dead? I hope not. But I don’t know the way forward? It seems to me that this kind of negative reporting hits a chord that less biased news does not… and in a very competitive market for people’s attention, stirring negative emotions makes for better views. What’s the way forward from here?