Public Health Media Club Ep. 2
CBC do better. Do not do false neutrality with anti-vax talking points.
The podcast is reviewing a podcast.
In this episode we reviewed a CBC (that's Canadian NPR) news podcast episode about the ongoing measles outbreak in Canada. As a podcast producer, this was a fascinating exercise of critical listening for things from the producer's perspective, and boy did I find a lot of issues. I won't spoil too much (please listen to the episode, it means a lot to me) but it presented anti-vax talking points without push back, which is a dangerous decision for any serious media outlet to do.
This seems to be an ongoing and worsening issue with mainstream media (some worse than others) of catering to the unreasonable, unethical, or vile by platforming their illegitimate talking points in false neutrality comparisons. Outlets like The Atlantic, New York Times, Washington Post are particularly infamous for their awful headlines. On the cable front, CBS and CNN have repeatedly aired segments where they allowed far-right guests pontificate unchallenged. In some ways, this is more dangerous than the Fox News or other explicitly right-wing propaganda mill because as "mainstream news", they are supposed to represent the "legitimate" sources. By doing false neutrality to platform these dangerous talking points, they serve to normalize the radical conservative ideology, and potentially convince the lay viewers that these view points "aren't that extreme". This happened in the CBC Front Burner episode. If someone isn't listening carefully or thinking critically, they can easily consume that episode and not feel anything was off.
Let me use this opportunity to, again, recommend everyone abandon mainstream media to instead support your independent, local, and/or non-profit news sources and journalists. I promise you, while you may need to subscribe to more things, you will not miss a thing. These indie and better journalists got your covered. You do not need to give these mainstream news sources any of your money, time, clicks, or attention. Vote with your time and money. If those mainstream news want to cater to the far-right, do not be a part of that shift.
Still, I have a soft spot of public media. NPR and PBS are both completely gutted by the fascist administration, and that is undoubtedly a huge loss for the people. As much as they are flawed, they are not the type of privatized monster like the New York Times and Washington Post which, under the premise of capitalism, values making money as the highest priority and journalism second. At least public media is (or should be in theory) a service for the public. The solution is not to rid our society of public media, but to make public media better. One way is by giving them support to let them know that they do not have to emulate mainstream media to survive.
More episodes to come!
Stay tuned.
