B.C. Catholic readers have been speaking out, and some of them aren’t happy.
Letter writers are taking us to task for publishing opinions about COVID that don’t align with theirs.
Their anger is understandable, if only for the fact it’s so rare to see certain opinions about the pandemic allowed to be expressed in public anymore. The B.C. Catholic is one of the few newspapers allowing a variety of perspectives on COVID to be printed. We publish points of view about the virus and government and broader society’s response to it that you won’t see in most other publications, where a single narrative is supported both in news and opinion.
When our writers and our readers have something to say that’s reasonable and responsible, we’ll publish it. Whether other writers or readers are appreciative or critical, we publish those opinions too. See this week’s letters for example.
In the old days, it wasn’t considered so bold a thing for a newspaper to let people on all sides of an issue have their say. But those were the days before newspapers became members of “trust” organizations with lofty sounding names like The Trust Project – an international consortium of news organizations “promoting standards of transparency and working with technology platforms to affirm and amplify journalism’s commitment to transparency, accuracy, inclusion, and fairness so that the public can make informed news choices.”
Members of The Trust Project, which is funded in part by Facebook and Google, include the Washington Post, Toronto Star, CBC News, the Globe and Mail, and CTV.
Other media are members of the Trusted News Initiative, set up in 2019 in advance of last year’s U.S. election to “tackle the most dangerous disinformation worldwide.” Two weeks after the World Health Organization announced the COVID pandemic, it decided to “tackle harmful coronavirus disinformation.” With its partners including CBC/Radio-Canada, Facebook, Google/YouTube, Microsoft, and Twitter, it has now expanded its mandate to include “combatting the spread of harmful vaccine disinformation.”
The Trust Project is also part of the Facebook Journalism Project, which provides a service called Facebook's Third-Party Fact-Checking Program.
Facebook is also paying 14 Canadian media companies an undisclosed amount of money as part of its News Innovation Test which pays news outlets to allow Facebook to link to news stories. The initiative is described as “a new initiative aimed at promoting a healthy news ecosystem, elevating authoritative journalism and delivering a valuable experience for news consumers on the social network.”
It seems ironic that as more and more news organizations partner with like-minded media and with Google, Facebook, Twitter and other tech/com giants to show how trustworthy they are, fewer points of view seem to be getting out where people can discuss them, especially on COVID-related issues.
In 1997, 25 actual trustworthy journalists decided to analyze what had become of journalism, so jaded had the public become about the profession. They produced the Elements of Journalism, 10 principles that journalists must strive for. Today the list looks like a fossil from another era and a quick glance tells us everything we need to know about why growing numbers of people don’t recognize themselves, or others, in the news anymore.
- Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth
- Its first loyalty is to citizens
- Its essence is a discipline of verification
- Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover
- It must serve as an independent monitor of power
- It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise
- It must strive to keep the significant interesting and relevant
- It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional
- Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience
- Citizens, too, have rights and responsibilities when it comes to the news.
