TV News in Canada: Is it Worth a Damn?

Kai Nagata and I have never met. We're separated by 50 years and 2,000 miles. But we're both TV journalists who care greatly about the people's essential and democratic right to fair, accurate, and unbiased news.

Kai believes TV news is mortally ill and not worth saving. I believe TV news is seriously ill and worth saving.

But only if enough journalists in enough newsrooms get pissed off enough to rise up and demand that TV news regain its honour by returning to its public-service roots.

First, Kai, a confession.

After reading your J'accuse, I emailed a colleague:"I think Nagata is a self-absorbed adolescent who believes his own ideas are more important than journalism and, in a fit of pique, quit before learning the craft."

On sober second thought, I was wrong. Sure, I disagree with a number of your points. But, overall, I believe your very public resignation could help save Canada's sickly, and often sickening, TV news. You were brave, brash, and far more right than wrong.

Now for my second confession.

Back in the 1970s, I was a reporter for WABC-TV, New York, which started the whole Eyewitness News revolution.

"News doctors" studied our suddenly soaring ratings, worked out that we included a lot of crime, disasters, celebrities, etc., and, since then, have charged heavy money to persuade TV newsrooms all over the known world - including at the CBC - to copy. What the cynical doctors never understood was that the essence of Eyewitness News was a revolutionary commitment to abandon the dull, institutional news of the day and, instead, genuinely serve the people. So I've already been part of one TV news revolution.

Now, as I approach my prime, I'm hoping to be part of another.

Kai, I believe we can be best "informed and engaged" if TV news remains part of a diverse mix of journalistic media, not least of which are thousands of multimedia websites.

TV news in this country - not just the CBC - is based on the BBC model of public service ("accuracy, fairness, and impartiality.") The theory is that trained, dedicated, experienced journalists provide disinterested centres from which professionally researched information is broadcast without bias, fear, or favour. (The fact that Canadian broadcast news has deteriorated so sadly over the past years doesn't negate the vital importance of having such centres.)

The big problem with news based entirely on social media is that, at least at the moment, they have no such centres, no institutions to protect fairness and impartiality. In fact, the proliferation of information websites encourages citizens to visit only those sources that confirm their pre-existing biases. When you hear only one side of a story, you live in a narrow, dangerous, fantasy world, ignoring the multitude of different views and voices out there.

As to "the huge companies that own the networks," a brave government (certainly not this one) should break them up to provide more choices and voices or, at least, force them to spend a lot more money on Canadian content including, of course, our beloved journalism.

But in the end, if we're to save TV news, I think it's going to come down to us journalists taking the lead.

Sure as hell, Kai, any salvation for TV news isn't going to come from the top. That's where the sickness starts - in the executive offices of the big networks where people agonize over ratings. Nor will the toothless, management-friendly broadcast unions be of any help.

No, Kai, we journalists are the only people who can save TV news, restore its soul, revive its honour.

Journalism, in a democratic society, is a craft, defined and protected by centuries of struggle. Journalists literally represent the people, are the irreplaceable messengers serving and guarding the people's democratic right to know. It takes years of training and experience to produce a first-class journalist.

It would be unfair to point out that some kid in his mother's basement, who's mastered Facebook, Twitter, and blogging, simply doesn't qualify as a journalist - so I won't.

TV news has been around for some 70 years. Often, it's been great. Sometimes, it's been lousy. Right now, in Canada, it's mostly lousy. But that's no reason to kill it. Instead, let's use its platform, its experience, and the dedication to public service of so many of its remaining journalists, to reform it.

And you can continue to click into as many social-media outlets as will make you happy.

You say the existing TV news channels, poisoned by the concentration of ownership and the sordid fight for ratings, are failing us. I agree. As does damn near every one of our erstwhile colleagues.

So, in light of so many sad conversations with said colleagues, I suggest the time has come for the journalists who now produce our TV news (and the journalism-school students who will follow us) to put up or shut up. To meet, plot, and retake ownership of our news from the cynical establishment.

What if we in Canada, and eventually around the world, start Howard Beale societies (named after the mad news anchor in the movie Network )? Our motto would be his: I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!

What if we all revolt?

I believe that only a journalists' revolt can save Canadian TV news and protect the people''s sacred right to fair, disinterested, honest, public service information.

That cause is so important, so vital to democracy, that just about every week while serving it, somewhere in the world, a journalist is killed in the line of duty.

Gandhi warned us: "We must be the change we want to see in the world."

To that end, a righteous journalists' revolt needs a righteous anthem:

Rise up, rise up,

Oh rise and show your power.

Rise up, rise up ...