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'News Media Sucks at Violence Reporting. How can media also heal?'—Encore episode of 'History. Culture. Trauma.' podcast Thursday

 

History. Culture. Trauma. debuted this year. Our first year has been a success and we are grateful to all of our listeners. We will return in the new year with new episodes and new guests. What better way to close out this year than with our debut episode? The guest was PACEs Connection's founder, Jane Stevens.

Long-time health, science and technology journalist Jane Stevens joins PACEs Connection CEO Ingrid Cockhren to do a deep dive into why people aren’t getting an accurate picture about violence in their communities. In fact, the state of violence reporting boils down to this: the news media is unintentionally providing misinformation about violence.

Remarkably, the basics of crime reporting haven’t changed much since the late 1890s. Essentially, it’s the man-bites-dog approach: the unusual, not the normal. Case in point: Although domestic violence causes comprises most aggravated assault and causes the most damage to communities in the U.S. economically and emotionally, it’s hardly reported. Yet, in many communities, up to one-third of the operating budget goes to dealing with domestic violence and its consequences. The irony is that although change is journalism’s bread and butter, getting the journalism community to modernize is like moving a mountain with a spoon and a bucket. We discuss how the news media can jettison their old ways by integrating knowledge of the science of positive and adverse childhood experiences and, in the process, provide an accurate picture of violence in their communities, reduce and prevent violence, help reduce systemic racism and its effects, and significantly increase their readership.

To listen to Thursday’s podcast at 1 p.m. PT, 4 p.m. ET, click here.

To hear prior episodes via your favorite podcast service, use the links below.

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The news media sucks at objective reporting, period. ... Hell, our mainstream print news-media formally support Canada’s fossil fuel industry. The conglomerate Postmedia is on record allying itself with not only the planet’s second most polluting forms of carbon-based “energy”, but also THE MOST polluting/dirtiest of crudes — bitumen.

During a presentation, it was stated: “Postmedia and CAPP [Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers] will bring energy to the forefront of our national conversation. Together, we will engage executives, the business community and the Canadian public to underscore the ways in which the energy sector powers Canada.”

Also, a then-publisher of Postmedia’s National Post said: “From its inception, the National Post has been one of the country’s leading voices on the importance of energy to Canada’s business competitiveness internationally and our economic well-being in general. We will work with [Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers] to amplify our energy mandate and to be a part of the solution to keep Canada competitive in the global marketplace. The National Post will undertake to leverage all means editorially, technically and creatively to further this critical conversation.”

[Source: “Mair on Media’s ‘Unholiest of Alliances’ With Energy Industry”, Nov.14 2017, TheTyee.ca

https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/201...unholiest-alliances/]

Still, other concerned people would’ve worded it even stronger: “I would argue that what little ethical and moral foundation the country has is deeply threatened by the crumbling discipline of a fossil-fuel-based economy and the politics it spawns. Nothing requires government supervision in so many areas (and nothing has anything like the influence on government) as this industry.

"It follows that no other industry remotely requires the amount and kind of honest, wary media surveillance this one does,” the late Rafe Mair aptly wrote in his 2017 book Politically Incorrect, in which he forensically dissects democracy’s decline in Canada and suggests how it may be helped.

“What has the media, especially but hardly exclusively the print media, done in response to this immense challenge? It’s joined fortunes with the petroleum industry. And a very large part of it has done so in print and in public.

"The facts are that the rest of the media have not raised a peep of protest at this unholiest of alliances and that governments contentedly and smugly pretend all that favorable coverage they get proves their efficiency — not that the fix is in and they’re part of that fix. Let me just comment that the difference from 1972 to 2017 in the media’s dealing with governments and politics takes the breath away!”

And maybe there's an informal/unspoken agreement amongst the largest mainstream news-media: ‘Don't dump on me, and I won't dump on you.’

Really, should the promotion of massive fossil fuel extraction, even Canada’s own, be a partisan position for any newspaper giant to take, especially considering fossil fuel's immense role in manmade global warming thus climate change? And, at least in this case, whatever happened to the honorable journalistic role of ‘afflicting the comfortable’ (which went along with ‘comforting the afflicted’), especially one of such environmental monstrosity?

How can this not be considered ethically-challenged journalism? Unless, of course, it has become so systematic thus normalized — i.e. the ethical (and sometimes even the moral) standard has been further lowered — that those who are aware of it, notably politicians and political writers, don’t bother publicly discussing it.

Too much of mainstream journalism has [at least to me] basically become a profession motivated more by a buck and a byline — i.e. a regular company paycheck and a frequently published name with stories — than a genuine strive to challenge the powers-that-be in order to truly comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable in an increasingly unjust global existence.

Meantime, there still are reporters and editors who will (as though with big innocent fawn-like eyes) reply to such critiques as this with, ‘Who, me? I’m just the messenger.’ Whatever the news media may be, they are not ‘just the messenger’; nor are they but a reflection of the community — or their consumership, for that matter — in which they circulate.

Last edited by Frank Sterle Jr.
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