Memo To Canadian Media: Stop Appeasing People Who Hate You

You Know What This Is

Last week, Angus Reid put out a poll which, amongst other things, asked people about their views of the Canadian media, and whether they could be trusted or not to be reporting facts. Overall, trust in the news media was 61% of the sample, and 39% thought media organizations couldn’t be trusted, but that’s not where the story is. Angus Reid broke down their sample into four (self-selected) ideologies – left, centre-left, centre-right, right – and there’s a clear pattern here.

Distrust in the media, by segment (from left to right): 20%, 33%, 41%, 67%. Yes, two thirds of the right in this country don’t trust the media to be mostly doing a good job, and that is a crisis.

I don’t need to hear about Postmedia and the Star and how left wing media has been hollowed out in this country – it’s true, but it’s irrelevant. This is why the Canadian media is descending into the pits of darkness and despair, because they know the same thing that I knew before this poll, and that this firm just reaffirmed – the right doesn’t trust them, and therefore they have to bend over backwards to try and come off fair and balanced. The problem, and this is where the clusterfuck starts, in attempting to avoid the appearance of right wing bias, they end up being horrendously biased towards the right, because they think the way to appease those who distrust them is to try and be more sympathetic to it. The problem is, they fucking suck at it, so we’re in a downward spiral where the right isn’t mollified and the left loses their patience.

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Put aside your views on vaccines, mandates, COVID policy, all of it, and think of the last time you saw the Canadian media actually interview a public official who held anti-mandate, anti-restrictions views. No, a few random citizens at the first Convoy protest doesn’t count – when was the last time someone with this view was put in front of the cameras to make their case for their view?

It’s not like this view was that uncommon – the PPC got 5% of the vote in the election, plenty of Conservative voters were opposed to vaccines and mandates, and there was about 30% of the adult population that either never got vaccinated or only got it when compelled to, either for work or for the purposes of attending events that required proof of vax – and the answer, as far as I can remember, is never. The media’s view of these people has always been in the abstract, either substituting Pat King for the whole movement or pretending that King and his fascist buddies weren’t real people. And that’s a systemic failure.

What we have ended up with in Canada is a bastardized, inverted version of what the American media has with the left – a growing movement that is only understood by maybe 12 people in media, because everyone else is clinging to stereotypes on either side of the divide. The entire Canadian media apparatus has journalism degrees from like 3 schools – Carleton, Concordia, and the school formerly known as Ryerson whose new name I don’t care to remember – and so they all are elitists whose exposure to the unvaccinated is entirely against their will. When you think of how they’ve covered vaccination policy and things like the Convoy, you have to remember that the journalistic class in this country were some of the first people to get vaccinated because they were the exact kinds of people to spend 4 hours a day working through the 17 different systems to try and find an appointment right at the start of the process.

None of the talent for CBC or CTV supported the Convoy, but they couldn’t admit that, so they ended up twisting themselves into knots to pretend they had legitimate concerns, and as soon as the pivot to Trudeau bashing for divisiveness showed up, they took it, because that was their way to avoid showing their contempt for the unvaxxed hoards ruining their capital. In trying to avoid reporting the truth as they all saw it, they pivoted to the next available thing that would burnish their credentials with the right. The problem is, because the media had never done the work to understand the movement, the right still thinks they’re elitist assholes and the left is starting to get agitated.

The problem for the Canadian legacy media is they are trying to thread the needle through a very precise exercise – be more sympathetic to views we don’t hold without alienating the left – but they’re doing so with the subtlety of Max Verstappen screaming at his race engineer in Spain because his fucking DRS wouldn’t open. The Verstappen comp actually extends, because Red Bull gave Verstappen a free win in that race by telling Sergio Perez to let Max go through, letting Max race the last 15 laps in the lead and in clean air, unchallenged.

The next week, Perez won, a consequence of the weird and wacky Monaco Grand Prix, and Jos Verstappen, Max’s (genuinely deranged) father was criticizing Red Bull for … I mean, I don’t even know what exactly, but for not protecting Max enough, basically.

Yes, the week after they literally gifted him a win, Jos was complaining Red Bull doesn’t do enough for his son.

You see the metaphor?

There will always be some ultras who think that the media is biased against them, but the way the Canadian media has responded to those complaints by the Canadian right solves none of those problems, because like Jos, they’re still gonna find something to bitch about even if their heads are up their asses. If the CBC or the Globe or whatever pivots right to avoid being called out by the right, then the rest of us are going to increasingly lose our patience with legacy media outlets, and the CBC especially will do so for nothing, because it’s not like facts matter to these people – they’re mad as hell and their minds were made up long ago.

The Canadian media is playing an unwinnable strategy, because at the end of the day, they have to cover the news, not the version of the news that they think can appeal most to the most number of people. They have an obligation to facts and truth, but even beyond that, they have an obligation to not be fucking morons – and right now, their strategy is a dumpster fire because they’re playing an impossible game.

What would a good strategy look like? Ditch the panels and go more long form interviews, including more figures with idiosyncratic views, especially on vaccination and COVID. Instead of having proxy fights about this shit with 3 MPs or 4 political commentators, give Max Bernier 15 minutes at the top of the show to talk about Canadians who feel disillusioned with their country and want to be able to go back to a country they better understand. Instead of arguing about environmental policy with someone from Greenpeace and someone from the Oil Lobby, give 15 minutes to Andrew Leach to talk about the difficulties of building a made in Alberta environment and climate policy and what he thinks can earn buy-in from the right.

Instead of everyone trying to do a pale imitation of a Paxman, use your airtime to educate, not harass. We know these broadcasters can do it – they’ve done it with military experts for the last four months vis-à-vis Ukraine and Russia. Those interviews are generally crisp – the host talks very little, the guests are given space to explain complicated topics and give nuanced answers. Try that instead of half-baked panels where I know what everyone will say before they say it.

I was asked recently whether I’d call Salvation In The Storm a “gay story” or not, because it’s an interesting question. Yes, the protagonist is gay, but plenty of stories about and with gay characters aren’t inherently “gay stories”, and there’s a sizable difference. In the case of Salvation, it is a gay story, because James coming to terms with what that meant, and how to interact through the hoops of gay life was the main driver of the book. Other things I’ve written are fundamentally less so “gay stories” because while one or more characters might be gay, their homosexuality is written in a way that is incidental to the story I’m actually trying to tell.

The reason I’m thinking about this is that that basic question elicited a paragraph long answer, because sometimes this shit is hard, or at least hard to explain. Everytime I do a podcast appearance I listen back to it to get better for the next time I do it, and I can tell I’m a lot crisper in getting in and out of my answers now than I used to be – shockingly, do something more often and you get better at it. But the reason I give good answers in that format is because I am given good questions to answer and the space to actually answer them.

We are at existential crisis for the media, but they have no idea what to do about it – because they’re still trying to find the ghost of their ideal solution that will never work. There will always be a Jos Verstappen, there will always been a person unpersuadable, and if the Canadian media continues to bend over backwards to avoid reporting facts to try and avoid pissing off the right, they’ll end up like Red Bull after Monaco – with Max’s fans pissed that he lost that race, and with Checo’s fans thinking that he could have won 2 in a row if not for Red Bull propping up Max.

Think carefully, Canadian media. Keep up this failure and you’ll end up with nothing soon.