It’s been three years since I joined the roster of columnists with Canada’s National Observer. But I’ve been a monthly subscriber since 2016, and a fan since the start. Indeed, I remember talking to CNO founder Linda Solomon Wood when the idea of the Observer was just a twinkle in her eye.
And look at it now!
No other news publication in Canada gets the climate emergency like the Observer. No other Canadian daily media outlet is treating this crisis like the existential threat it is.
Like many of you, when I open my email inbox, the morning headlines from the Observer is one of the first things I turn to. Without fail, each weekday, it is jam-packed with the latest climate news, telling us all how this battle for our lives is unfolding at home and abroad, a solid mix of sobering updates and hopeful stories, from an outstanding stable of mission-driven reporters. And if you miss anything during your busy week, you can count on the weekend newsletters from Adrienne Tanner and Chris Hatch to pull it all together with first-rate insight and great writing.
This is what journalism at a time of emergency is supposed to look like, written by front-line reporters in this defining struggle of our time. It’s setting an example for the rest of the Canadian media landscape to emulate.
And, friends, that’s something worthy of our support. Those of us who understand the gravity of the crisis need to financially support those who are going further to meet the moment – those who are telling essential truths. Mobilizing for the climate emergency has many elements, and core among them – donating to those institutions that are sounding the alarm. That’s why I am a proud supporter of the National Observer.
Will you join me with a gift in support of CNO’s spring fundraiser campaign?
When I give talks about the need for a wartime-level approach to the climate emergency, I frequently make the case that this includes a vital role for the media to inform and rally the public, just as occurred in the Second World War. Some push back on this notion, asking “don’t we want our media to be objective?” Some worry about journalism having a “whiff of advocacy.”
Here’s the thing. We want our media and reporting to be factual, guided by science, and evidence-based. But in the face of a civilizational threat, we also want the media to pick a damn side. And that’s just what the Observer has confidently and unabashedly done. That, folks, is well worth supporting.
Until June 3, become a subscriber for only $49.99 (that's 64% off) during our spring subscription drive and read all of our climate coverage.
Comments
Since we're down to it here, and it's now very stark-- either THIS or THAT, the whole ethos of journalistic objectivity has truly lost meaning, but from the time that a 24 hour news cycle was initiated by CNN and Fox "News" was granted a license, basically sanctioning outrageous tabloid journalism as on a par, which was further exacerbated by the ubiquitous, seedy clamour of reality TV and the internet, the writing has been on the wall so to speak.
Unfortunately and increasingly inexplicably, big media has chosen "bothsidesism" to hide the fact that the side they've actually picked is CLEARLY the wrong one. The Globe and Mail exemplifies this dance perfectly because they used to declare their support for the conservatives before a federal election but have now stopped the practice of endorsing. However, their headlines give them away (we subscribe and have for years) as do their editorials much of the time, but not ALL the time, so just enough to stop short of endorsing someone like Poilievre. Because they're probably embarrassed to do so, and bloody well SHOULD be.
It's despicable and entirely indefensible but CTV and GLOBAL do the same dance. Even CBC keeps trying to include the recalcitrant, braying intransigence of the cons even though Poilievre disdains them utterly and would cancel them utterly given power, a fact that for them as for all of us when it comes to climate change, should actually be EXISTENTIAL.
But we all look to the election as the horse race that will settle the simmering conflict, even when one side are poster boys for the banality of evil, essentially a threat to our very survival, but like the media are again, inexplicably and disturbingly ahead in the polls. Maybe that's why there's more of an American style of fever pitch in the absence of an election even having been called; we want the test that will reassure us that as a country we haven't collectively lost our mind just because our political right wing has.
The fact that they, and they alone, have deliberately and with malice aforethought created such intense, widespread and unprecedented anxiety is the "banality of evil" part.