Which outlets should be trusted for the facts?

By Letter to the Editor on March 6, 2019.

Re: “Media content with just the facts, opinion omitted, would be ideal,” Feb. 23

I share Leath Johnston’s concern about separating factual reporting from opinion and bias. I cannot endorse his proposals for resolving this challenge. Two themes of his letter are particularly problematic.

First, I am baffled by Johnston’s enthusiasm for the YouTube channel Rebel Media as a source of factual news reports. Is he aware that the founder and editor of that media outlet, Ezra Levant, specifically states that he is not a reporter?

In 2014 court testimony under oath, Levant described himself as a columnist or commentator, not a reporter. Therefore, he argued, neither he nor his staff could be considered journalists.

Journalists report news. That’s their job and obligation. If Rebel Media doesn’t employ journalists, it has no obligation to report accurate news. That was the essence of Mr. Levant’s argument in court.

Johnston says he wants facts free from opinion. I think he is unlikely to find them on Rebel Media, in material edited by a self-described “columnist.”

Columnists provide a particular interpretation or “slant” on their subject matter. They often base their columns on selective, exaggerated, or downright fanciful ideas. It would be naive to depend on a staff of columnists as a source of comprehensive, factual information.

Second, Johnston claims to believe that he can judge a news outlet’s “value, facts, and truth” by the size of its subscriber list. He says “truth sells itself.”

This is an astonishing claim. It disregards millennia of critical thought about the signs of truth and the tests for factuality. Even so, it is clear that Rebel Media doesn’t sell very well to several important groups.

Rebel Media writers (also known as “correspondents”) have left or been fired in large numbers. Advertisers have deserted it, notably in 2017. In just three months of that year Rebel Media is reported to have lost over 300 advertising accounts, including CCM Hockey, Red Lobster, Volkswagen Canada, General Motors, the Hudsons’s Bay, and the City of Edmonton.

Many politicians, even those with pronounced conservative leanings, refuse to engage with Rebel Media or its staff. Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, Brian Jean, and Jason Kenney are a few notable examples.

Johnston wants individual news outlets to “stand on the merits of their own political bias and agenda.” The facts suggest that Rebel Media’s bias and agenda have little merit in the eyes of many original staff, companies, and public figures.

Perhaps Mr. Johnston could, in a future letter, point out virtues of Rebel Media and similar “news” outlets that I have overlooked. Failing that, readers might be well advised to depend on more reputable media channels as sources of information.

David Gue

Medicine Hat

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