Canadians and Americans are alike in this, as with so many other aspects of politics / economics / culture.
Courtesy of Doomberg
“In a properly functioning democracy, journalists use fact-based reporting to keep the public properly informed and hold elected officials to account. Absent such neutral refereeing, democracies tend to malfunction, succumbing to the forces of single-party rule, which inevitably leads to mass corruption and loss of faith in the system. Contemporary political parties might answer to different names and disagree with each other on a few issues, but such is largely theater that serves to deflect attention from the enrichment the political elite are helping themselves to at the public trough. A pliant media is necessary for such boorishness to flourish.
The public’s trust in the media is thus among the best metrics to gauge the health of a country’s political engine, and recent polling data in major Western nations paints a grim picture. In the US, trust in the media has reached an all-time low. According to Gallup, “the share of Americans who have no confidence at all in the media has surpassed the percentage with a great deal or fair amount of trust,” and more than two-thirds of the populace holds the media in very low regard.
Shared by David Blackmon
Canadian journalist Peter Menzies has a good handle on what’s going on with our media, and is adamant in defense of truth, as well as our freedom to speak out.
Get ready to shut up
If you thought the last year was wild for press freedom and free speech in Canada, just wait until the Online Harms Act is introduced
Connect with Mr. Menzies / follow him on LinkedIn to stay current with his articles / posts, or subscribe to either The Line or The Rewrite, or both.
One day, Millennials may sit grandchildren upon their knees and speak, in hushed and reverent tones, of a time long ago when people could express an opinion on the internet without fear of sanction by the state or its proxies.
They will likely get the same curious looks of wonder and disbelief inspired by Boomers’ timeworn tales of writing university papers on something called a “typewriter.” It’s like: “wow, you must be really old, huh?”
So old, indeed, that we remember when the world was celebrating the downfall of tyrants in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere thanks to what all progressive people believed was the wonderful, democratizing and unfettered influence of the internet and its social networks.
Journalists / truth tellers seem to have an inordinate need to not only find information but also to write about it (or use a video format / podcasts).
If mainstream / legacy media has lost our trust - as well as the best of their best people - those same elite (accurate use of the word) have found other avenues and venues to share their work.
Youtube is one such, as is X (formerly Twitter), but many can be found on substack. The most appealing aspect of substack, for writers, is that it allows a paywall as well as free sharing of material or some combination of the two. If you’re making your living sussing out factual information then presenting same, well, substack serves as a marketplace.
For readers? We can access excellent content, often for little if any cost, without advertisements. We can also explore the work of any number of great contributors before deciding to subscribe.
No censhorship (in content or comments).
I highly recommend the following:
Jim Cardoza (a daily list of high points in American news, drawing from independent sources)
Irina Slav (energy)
David Blackmon (energy)
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (coverage of Covid issues)
Sam Cooper (Canadian, a bulldog on foreign interference)
David Clinton (Canadian, the minutiae of governance)
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (insights into Islamism and what the radicals have in store for us)
Yuri Bezmenov (subervting subervsion: I promise you, it’s excellent)
Michael Shellenberger (an excellent investigative journalist in the truest sense of the descriptor with The Twitter Files, WPATH Files, and a host of other revelatory issues to his credit)
Terry Glavin (Canadian journalist)
Other sources of reliable information include but are not limited to:
The Western Standard News (Western Canadian, but provides a bit of coverage on national as well as international events)
True North (although they’ve been known to slip a time or two with respect to reliablity)
Happy exploring, Truth Seekers!
Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on.
Thurgood Marshall