Canadian news desks tackling misinformation
'You've got to just keep attacking the problem. You've just got to keep going at it,' said Jon Medline, from CBC/Radio-Canada.
The lack of trust in the media is not just the job or responsibility of individual journalists – but also the responsibility of news desks.
In my last article, I spoke with Marney Blunt, a TV journalist from Global News, about how individual journalists can help heal the public's relationship with the media.
On a bigger scale, news desks have also been taking the initiative to try and heal that relationship as well.
Social media is now one of the biggest ways people consume news. A study by Maru Public Opinion in 2022 showed that Canadians aged 18-34 consume news through social media 35% of the time.
Tackling misinformation
BBC’s Trusted News Initiative (TNI) is a way for news desks to work together to fight the issue of misinformation.
CBC/Radio-Canada has been a partner with TNI since 2019. Jon Medline, Executive Director of Policy and International Relations said the initiative has been extremely helpful.
“It's been a terrific initiative,” said Medline.
Medline said a big part of TNI has been fighting against misinformation that appears on social media.
The idea of “Content Provenance,” is something Medline says is essential when talking about misinformation.
“Asking the questions, ‘how do we know this piece of content has not been manipulated? Who manipulated it? and When did they manipulate it?’" said Medline.
Medline emphasized that not all editing or tampering is bad.
"Some of these things could be for good reasons when you're … touching up a photo, maybe if there's too much glare. That's not what we're talking about here though," said Medline. "People need to understand what the hell happened to that story or that video or that audio and who did it."
Synthetic media is something else TNI has been attacking as well. Synthetic media includes deep fakes and AI-generated media or content.
"There are some good uses. Imagine a re-enactment of a crime scene. It's done in incredibly an incredibly realistic way. That's not a bad use of technology. However, don't you think? Don't we think that we should tell viewers that what they're seeing is not real re-enactments for digital reenactment?" said Medline.
Being able to trust the news is not just about having more people watch the 6'o clock news. It's about being able to know what's going on and get the truth out to people.
"If you can't trust anything, then we got a real societal problems. So these are important issues to solve," said Medline.
Community engagement
Medline mentioned that being present regularly within local communities is extremely important for the media.
“It's hard to build up community trust when you just aren't there,” said Medline.
If media aren’t present in communities, something else comes to fill the empty space – social media.
“It [social media] fills the vacuum, when there's no local media … certainly not good for trust,” said Medline. “It's like the worst of all worlds,” said Medline.
The future of news
The biggest thing organizations like TNI are doing is educating people in media literacy, but it's an issue that is going to keep evolving and changing.
"So you've got to just keep attacking the problem. You've just got to keep going at it," said Medline.
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