The bitter partisan environment that dominates US politics is coming here. Three examples are have been captured and posted to Twitter – here the ‘freedom rallies’ exhibit hostility toward media crews on the ground who are there covering the event.
These two incidents may not be typical of the all the protests but I think are indicative of the misplaced skepticism and vilification of established news media sources that is becoming normalized in Canadian society.
I am not endorsing less media awareness or less critical thinking, on the contrary, triangulating news events and stories is vital for a more comprehensive grasp of the issues at hand. But this isn’t what is happening. It is outright hatred and physical violence against media outlets perceived not to be the home team.
These sorts of actions are not acceptable in Canadian society.
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February 21, 2022 at 6:21 am
Carmen
It’s also been interesting to note that ‘alternate’ sources of news have been (I feel) pushed on social media. During the protest, for instance, my FB feed started pushing sites like Canada Unity. . .there seemed to be a new one every day, sometimes several a day. At first, I ‘x’d out the articles in the corner and thought that would affect the algorithms so that they’d not come back. It took a few days but most of them eventually stopped showing up on my feed. However, the site ‘Canada Unity’ was the most persistent. I finally had to block it from popping up on my FB feed. That did the trick; I haven’t had any of those sites popping up since. I am in the process of getting rid of my FB account and plan to write and let them know why. . I feel it has not done enough to get rid of misinformation on its platform and that misinformation, in my opinion, is poisoning many people’s minds. This mantra – ‘don’t believe anything you read on mainstream media. . .it’s all LIES!’ – has been persistent with the anti-vax crowd; they are constantly reminding people to beware of confirmation bias. Of course, that does not pertain to them. ;) smh
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February 21, 2022 at 7:49 am
tildeb
What we’re seeing is the inevitable result when choosing and protecting a narrative outweighs other considerations… like respecting what’s true, like respecting and tolerating differences. The mainstream media has utterly FAILED to do its job here and report facts and what’s true but has swallowed the blue pill and peddles a ‘progressive’ narrative. (We joke that 6:15 pm in the national radio news is assigned to be the indigenous segment and 6:20 pm the Black segment).
This belief in narrative is as true for the Right as it is the Left and is the predominant framing used throughout ALL mainstream media today as if there’s only one ‘correct’ framing and the ‘other’ narratives are ‘wrong’. The Rittenhouse case amply demonstrates just how widespread this practice is. Truth be dmaned because it simply doesn’t matter when it comes to ‘reporting’. A more recent example is how ANY criticism of mandates is constantly framed in MSM as an extreme Right wing, anti-science, anti-vax position. What’s true simply doesn’t matter.
In the same way, say, BLM is constantly framed and constantly supported and constantly excused by MSM as if always legitimate no matter what actions are actually done (including violently attacking journalists known to criticize it). Anyone who criticizes this BLM racist framing of all things Canadian is therefore a ‘bad’ person – and, sure enough, is automatically and reflexively fit into the same envelope of being some deplorable and extreme Right wing racist.
Eventually, this championing of narratives by MSM over reporting honestly on what’s true carries a cost. And that’s what we’re seeing now writ large: a rise in incivility, hostility, and even violence. That rise in partisanship is beneficial to advancing populist politics. And that will tear a diverse country like Canada to shreds. ANYONE who believes that partisan narratives are true is part of the problem.
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February 21, 2022 at 6:06 pm
hbyd
You’ll notice that the right wing on twitter are minimizing the attacks on mainstream Canadian press. They tweet that International media are reporting on this topic differently. Perhaps the foreign media aren’t the ones being spat on.
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