Canadian media is having a moment of reckoning.
In late May, the Globe and Mail’s editorial board wrote a piece criticizing how the media has covered assertions of mass unmarked graves at former residential schools.
Media, including the Globe and Mail, “did not initially scrutinize” these claims, the editorial says. Since those assertions were made in 2021, no human remains have been discovered at these sites.
For independent journalist Tara Henley, the situation reflects a broader concern: that journalists have moved away from professional standards of objectivity.
In her latest book, The Trust Spiral: Why the Media Needs Objectivity (Polity Press), Henley, who worked at the CBC for nearly a decade, argues many journalists’ goal is to be activists, and that this desire has led to factual errors that erode trust in media.
Henley spoke to Canadian Affairs reporter Meagan Gillmore about the origins of objectivity, how readers can detect activist journalism, and the qualities new journalists should cultivate.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
MG: Clearly journalists are going to read the book. What would be your pitch for people who are not in the media to read it?
TH: The thesis of the book is that during the first Donald Trump election, the American press panicked and made an argument for pulling down the journalistic guardrails: that this was an extraordinary candidate, and that what was required to cover him was extraordinary measures, and that this would involve suspending standards and practices.
We in Canada also took that argument to heart, and we did the same.
This attitude did not stay limited to the Trump era. We saw a number of rolling emergencies, this included the racial reckoning, it included #MeToo, and it included the pandemic. And here in Canada, it included the unmarked graves at residential schools.
In these examples, you had a press corps that was already weakened economically that believed that the old standards and practices were outdated, and in some cases even harmful, and believed that it was time for the press to pivot toward advocacy journalism.
My argument — and this is an argument, it is for discussion and debate — is that that really resulted in a lot of factual errors. We know that trust in media has eroded a lot.
It behooves us all, who want a pluralistic democracy with open debate, and who want a shared set of facts, who want truth in society, to understand how this happened, and to demand more of us in the media.
MG: When journalists talk about objectivity, what are we traditionally talking about?
TH: Objectivity arose after the era of newspapers that were openly funded by partisan candidates and parties. After that you had the penny papers arise, and they took a more democratic approach to the news. In that era, you saw the New York Times develop this new standard of reporting the news without fear or favour.
This standard of objectivity arose in a time that was very much like the time we’re in right now, with a lot of suspicion toward the press.
Objectivity is not a negation of our inherent subjectivity; it is an attempt to mitigate against it. It can be everything from having multiple editors read a piece, to disclosing conflicts of interest, to not allowing newsgathering journalists to give opinions on controversial topics in public.
All of these things are the guardrails.
MG: For people who are consuming media, how would you encourage them to decipher between what is activism journalism and what is not?
TH: A piece that is not activist would not have inflammatory language in the headlines. All doubtful assertions would be substantiated with evidence. Most claims would be attributed to the person making them, as opposed to the journalist.
It would not be clear what the journalist’s personal opinion on that news was. And you would see some attempt — particularly on contentious issues — to consult a range of perspectives.
The general orientation of the piece would be to try to lay out the facts and lay out the different perspectives, and allow that reader to make up their own mind.
The position that we are moving toward now is you have outlets on the right and outlets on the left, and the reader is forced to consult a range of different outlets to try to decipher what is going on.
I contend that that’s a terrible situation for democracy. It’s a lot of work for people who just would like to be informed. I would like to see us have a shared set of facts that we are able to debate in the public square.
MG: You can make an argument that there is a business model for having a clearly partisan press, either on the right or the left. What do you think the dangers are of these politicized publications?
TH: I think the dangers in general are lost trust.
You are selecting details based on this ideological perspective, as opposed to what is salient to the story, what provides nuance and understanding, and what establishes the facts of the story.
The overall danger is readers end up shouldering a lot of the responsibility of trying to get to the bottom of what’s actually happening.
However, the business model, all the incentives go in the direction of politicization right now. I don’t know how you solve for that.
MG: One of the reasons you could argue why we’re in this polarized spot is because local media has been gutted. Why is local media an important part of this story?
TH: So much of Canadian journalism and American journalism is concentrated in a handful of cities where so much of us share very similar backgrounds. Our worldviews are incredibly limited based on where we’re living and what we’re exposed to.
Local media is a great solution for that. Local media is more accountable than national media, because the people that journalists cover the journalists are likely to encounter at the grocery store.
It used to be in the newsrooms that you would have a hierarchy: you would have the veterans, and they would be sitting with you and vetting articles and poking holes in them and pushing back and asking for more context. That mentorship on the ground is invaluable for journalists.
It was also the case that many journalists would move from place to place across the country. By the time they got to Ottawa, they would have that breadth of experience.
Now, people are coming straight out of journalism school without the nuts and bolts knowledge, without the mentorship, and also without that life experience of understanding this is a massive country.
MG: You’ve made the argument that we don’t need journalism programs to train journalists. Why do you say that?
TH: I think that our system of training journalists weeds out people of different backgrounds, because it is expensive.
I would like to see diversity expanded in the press corps. My argument is that the best way to do that is to remove the degree requirement. You’re just going to get a broader section of people. You’re going to get more working-class people in the newsrooms.
MG: What do you hope changes as a result of this book?
TH: To spark discussion and debate within the press corps. My contention is that we have narrowed debate too much and to our own detriment. In order to get to a healthier place, we need to discuss and debate more. That’s all I’m hoping for.
MG: What would you say are the character qualities or practices that an aspiring journalist particularly needs to cultivate?
TH: The absolute number one value is curiosity — being curious about the world and going into your work with an open mind, with an understanding that people have very different ways of looking at the world, and with some humility.
We have to be low certainty and high humility, and understand that with how fast everything moves, that things can and do change.
