It's time the CBC and others got serious about insisting journos zip it with online opinions
Taxpayer-funded reporters need to remember that not every thought that pops into their head needs to be shared with the world
Social media hasn’t been very kind to news organizations.
Facebook, and then Twitter, created a more interesting place for people to spend their time and a more efficient way for advertisers to reach audiences. It’s not surprising that many media organizations struggled to find ways to react.
One strategy was to encourage staff to build large online audiences by becoming social media personalities capable of driving traffic to their employers’ websites, increasing revenue and maybe even saving their jobs. On another day we will more fully assess how this has turned many reporters into digital junkies, in some cases destroyed careers and doesn’t seem to have saved a lot of jobs.
In the meantime, suffice to say The Rewrite shares the rebellious view of Bari Weiss, who in her resignation letter to the New York Times stated:
“Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor,” she wrote. “As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences.”
But today we will just focus on how journalists have grown far too comfortable thinking the world will be a better place if it just knows more about what they think of it.
Reporters, as opposed to opinion writers, are paid - or should be - to, as Weiss wrote, “allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions.”
For that to happen, reporters should be very careful to avoid doing anything that would make readers, listeners or viewers doubt their fair-mindedness. Most major news organizations - including the CBC - have recognized this by developing internal rules/guidelines that, using far more professional language than I am about to employ, instruct staff that when it comes to social media, the best practice is to just shut the *&%# up.
CBC’s guidelines can be found here and, while not obvious in the screen shot below, they include two phrases worth paying particular attention to. One is this:
“In particular, the expression of personal opinions on controversial subjects, including politics, can undermine the credibility of CBC journalism and erode the trust of our audience. Therefore, we refrain from expressing such opinions in profiles or posts for any account which identifies or associates us with CBC/Radio-Canada. The question we should ask ourselves: if someone saw the content of this account, could they determine that we work at CBC?”
So it seemed inconsistent with the spirit of these guidelines to see a CBC journalist posting a criticism of a private sector competitor on X/Twitter. Western Standard’s use of Artificial Intelligence to create illustrations for its commentary was the focus of the poster, who also took note of its ownership and editorial slant. It’s not like the post said the worst things in the world or that there was anything factually incorrect. What was so striking, though, was: Why? What was the actual point? Was it just to look make a shoestring startup competitor appear inferior? If so, why?
Why would someone take time from their busy day to do this? How does that reflect on CBC’s culture? The Mother Corp has almost 90 years of history, gets more than $1.4 billion in public funding and gets to compete for advertising dollars with Western Standard (and everyone else) which, on principal, won’t take a nickel of government money yet pays taxes to help fund CBC.
Further, there’s nothing journalistically objectionable about using AI graphics provided they are identified as such - which the Standard’s Derek Fildebrandt said was the case.
Fildebrandt avoided escalating the discussion, although within a couple of days the original post had been looked at by more than 50,000 people, many of whom appear to have had a good laugh at Western Standard’s expense.
Which brings us to the other phrase of note in the CBC’s journalistic standards and practices:
“We understand that should our social media activity create a perception of bias, it would influence decisions editorial leaders make on who can cover certain stories.”
That’s it? CBC journalists can create a perception of bias that harms trust in the corporation and in the craft and the only consequence is that their editor might assign someone else to a certain story?
Little wonder the corporation’s existence is about to become an election issue.
A cautionary tale was told recently by Northern Capital News regarding why news platforms should never post single source stories.
This story in the Prince George Citizen was based entirely on one person’s recollection of events regarding what he believed was the RCMP’s failure to respond to numerous 911 calls. The report, which reads very much like a social media post, includes a phrase stating the Citizen had reached out to officials and the RCMP for comment.
When the RCMP did have something to say, according to Northern Capital News, they explained that they had indeed responded and, given the limited number of 911 lines available in northern B.C. had asked the caller in question to use the non-emergency line for follow up to make sure that, should an actual life-threatening event occur, the lines weren’t occupied.
Cpl. Jennifer Cooper, Media Relations Officer for the Prince George RCMP is quoted in Northern Capital News as saying: “Our police officers attended this location twice in a two-hour time span to respond to the complaints made about the person loitering inside and outside the facility. In between these particular calls for service, the same police officer responded to two separate reports of assaults-in-progress, while the other on-duty police officers were similarly busy.”
Here’s the tip: If the police don’t immediately respond to your story, nag them until they do. Nag, nag, nag. But don’t let yourself get hung out to dry by a single source who winds up doing a lot more damage to your credibility than their own. Just don’t.
For as long as the Bloc Quebecois has existed - almost 33 years now - Canadian media have reported their standings in national politic polls with phrases like this:
“While the Conservatives would win a majority government, 338Canada said it would win the popular vote at 42%. It said the Liberals would come in second place (24%).
“After the Liberals would be the NDP (18%). This was followed by the Bloc Quebecois (8%) and Greens (4%).’’
Those paragraphs were taken from Western Standard (having mildly pumped their tires above, it only seemed fair to pick on them) but they could have been from any news organization in Canada. They all do it and by “doing it” I mean reporting the Bloc Quebecois’s number as a measure of national support - the way pollsters report them - when that isn’t even something to which the separatist party, which only competes for seats in Quebec, aspires. The only thing that matters about the Bloc’s number is how many Quebecois et Quebecoise intend to vote for them. And yet every time readers see a national poll, they have to access their calculators to figure out what that number is.
Nothing quite says reader “unfriendly” like making them do mathematical calculations to make sense of news stories.
The Rewrite’s editor has been asking for a more affable approach to reporting polls for more than three decades now. And all to no avail. But the crusade will continue, unto and beyond the grave if necessary.
Yes, I will haunt you. Subscribers will be spared.
(Disclosure: I am an (unpaid) member/adviser to the Western Standard editorial board which consults on the once in a blue moon occasion that it writes a corporate editorial. I have no financial interest in it. I support the CBC with my taxes)
As a side note to the Western Standard's (perfectly reasonable) design choices, I'm not convinced that images are all that important for digital publications. I actually removed them from most views on my own Substack because they used up valuable screen real estate that was needed to surface my article subtitles.