The presence of multiple independent news organizations is obviously beneficial in a time where all media seems to be cloned script. The danger of being such an organization is the dependence on donations and non government funding to stay alive. This can sometimes lead to damaging aggressive behaviours. The question being, are these organizations really much different that the ones they are trying to distance themselves from?
Take Rebel News in Canada, for example. Despite best efforts not to be like other media organizations, they have somehow failed and worse. In a recent donation campaign, I was contacted simply because they have my phone number. The solicitor was aggressive in his approach to gaining a donation commitment. The timing of the call could not have been worse just having learned of my mom’s passing. I told him so and he simply went on, not once, but 3 times forcing me to have to hang up. This man didn’t even miss a beat in pushing for a donation commitment and he certainly wasn’t empathetic in any way.
I was shocked and had other things on my mind so some time later, I wrote Rebel to express my concerns. Silence is what I received – simply crickets as they say. Not an expression of empathy or apology for ignorant and non compassionate behaviour – its simply like I didn’t matter and was not worthy of a response. Interestingly, this is much the same level of concern CBC reporters provide to those they deal with begging the question, what’s the difference?
Both organizations seem to operate similarly except for a different funding source and different political bias. Both seem to provide articles which have already been tuned, slanted, or presented in a specific light. Neither provide articles in which just facts are presented and the opinion is left to the reader and both treat individuals in in a similar way. If the presentations are both leaning and devoid of plain facts, then there isn’t much difference between them other the the direction, bias, or slant being presented.
The cold reality is we still do not have a truly independent solid fact based reporting system and both have their own set of biases and problems. So much so that the government has used the opportunity to introduce more control by choosing “Qualified Canadian Journalism” or by using “The Ban“. The only difference in the media we currently is which direction the bias is in and if the above listed government intervention becomes the norm, there will likely be only one making things even worse.