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Turns out woke isn’t for me to use at all

“Woke” : a word I use too often and have recently discovered I know very little about. 

I was hoping to write an article about my perspective of the word woke. I wanted to debunk the concept that woke is a destination, and that once we show an ounce of political or social awareness of the world around us we are woke — and that’s it, we’re done. It turns out that it’s even more than that. After a bit of research, it seems that maybe I shouldn’t be using the word woke quite so freely, as a white person.

According to Emily Brewster, the associate editor of Merriam-Webster Dictionary, woke means “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues, especially issues of racial and social justice.”

So, why not use woke?

This word came from the 1920s in Harlem. Elijah Watson, news editor of an American Black culture website called Okayplayer on the Podcast In Black America, explains that many black creatives became awoken to the world around them or woke, because they all lived very close together and they were able to critique and understand different ideas of blackness.

“Whether they did create conflict or not, they all allowed different types of black people to articulate their blackness in different ways,” said Watson. He explained that today, we use this word and often don’t really know where it came from.

Some people think it was brought to public consciousness by American singer-songwriter Erykah Badu in 2008 with her song “Master Teacher,” as the chorus includes a line “I stay woke.” This is not true; Watson explained it was actually more likely coined by a man named William Melvin Kelley.

Kelley wrote an article in the New York Times in 1962 titled, “If You’re Woke You Dig It.” This piece touched on cultural appropriation of black slang and how it is such a fundamental part of American culture.

This word was meant for Black Americans to learn about how the country functions. Watson said if you were woke, you understood how black culture is constantly being stolen. Watson also stated that the internet has changed the power of the word.

It became this ironic thing, if you show the most miniscule amount of awareness you are considered woke,” he said. “For one that just dilutes it and makes it a universal thing, instead of this thing which had its roots in blackness.”

Since Kelley and Badu, the word woke, quite like many other colloquialisms that were born from black culture have become popular; and because of this, they’ve lost their purpose. This plays into the issue of commodification of Black culture, something that is so present in Western culture.

Not only is woke a commonly misused word, we are missing the mark with the most modern definition. Sam Sanders from NPR explains his frustration with the word as well.

“We’ve made woke a rigid state of being, instead of a process of continual growth,” said Sanders.

The word woke is heard everywhere, but this doesn’t mean we can use it the way we think we should. Language is powerful and it’s important to understand where words comes from and why we use them.

I know now that I’ll never be woke, but I hope I won’t stop growing. 

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Don’t fall for the Girlboss scam

Surely you’ve seen the branded content.

Whether it’s on a millennial pink T-shirt, a sassy coffee mug, or the former Nastygal CEO, Sophia Amoruso’s memoir that started it all, #Girlboss culture has become inescapable online and off.

The girlboss moniker is attached to overwhelmingly white, cisgendered women who have achieved lucrative careers in their field of choice; generally the business sector. The term’s purpose is to encourage women to climb the corporate ladder, in hopes that if more women are at the top of historically male-dominated industries, they will become more ethical and egalitarian.

Girlboss culture didn’t come out of nowhere. Girlbosses are just the millennial manifestation of the decades old “girl power” movement. Girl power started in the 1990s as a result of the radical “Riot grrrl”  feminist movement. Riot grrrls would play underground women-fronted punk shows, circulate handmade political zines, and preach radical self-acceptance. Whereas Riot grrrl was a bottom-up DIY scene, girl power was the market’s top-down commodification of Riot grrrl’s ideals.

For example, The Spice Girls are often cited as a prime example of girl power, yet the band was assembled by two (male) managers connected to major label Virgin Record . Like much of girl power culture, The Spice Girls were manufactured to sell a product, and secondly, to sell the idea of “empowerment” to young girls.

Empowerment remained an important notion in the transition from girl power to girlboss culture. “Empowerment” is one of those words that has become so ubiquitous in popular culture that it has begun to lose much of its original meaning. By definition, empowerment means gaining control over the actions and choices in one’s life.

Since girlboss culture is targeted to mostly white, middle to upper class women in the west, I struggle to see how this veil of empowerment is necessary. Girlboss culture is not about making sure women have the education or structural means to achieve careers, it is simply bolstering already-privileged women into higher levels of financial success. Thus, empowerment is just a trendy word to rally behind that serves no real purpose other than making powerful women feel good about their accumulation of wealth.

Additionally, the notion that a company with women at the top is inherently more ethical is highly flawed. In the case of Amoruso, the original #girlboss of fashion retailer Nastygal, she had several allegations against her company’s culture of image consciousness and lack of accountability and respect for those working under her.

This “trickle down” mode of feminism will not work. Instead of placing our faith in a handful of corporate women to try to change the system from within, why not focus on structural change that will improve the lives of everyday women and other marginalized groups? It will be hard to try to hack at patriarchy without taking capitalism to task as well. Feminist practices don’t need to always be “practical.” Pushing for large structural change, rather than sticking more women into an already broken system, is the only way forward.

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The hidden dangers of online dating

Some use them for fun, while others may be searching for their true love. But there is one thing that is certain about dating apps; they need more regulation.

A recent investigation discovered that most free dating apps don’t conduct background checks on sex offenders. In fact, Match Group, the largest dating app corporation in the United States, has admitted that they do not screen free dating apps for users with sexual-related charges. The company owns some of the most popular dating apps to date such as Tinder, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, and OkCupid.

A simple background check could have saved the lives of multiple men and women who ended up raped or murdered. A study conducted by Columbia Journalism Investigations has found that this lack of uniform policy to conduct background checks had left users vulnerable to an array of sexual assaults.

However, what remains shocking is that Match Group had issued statements pertaining to the protection of its users by ensuring extensive screenings of potential predators, but it has done the opposite, according to CBS News. For years, it had made false promises to users in which they agreed to examine sex-offender registries following the rapes of various women. Both women had matched with men whom they later realized had been convicted of sexual-related crimes on multiple occasions.

One woman matched with a man named Mark Papamechail on the Plenty of Fish dating app back in 2016. His profile indicated that he was divorced, just like her, and looking for someone to marry. The two chatted for months and even went on several dates together until he raped her. She became the second woman to file a police report against Papamechail following a sex-related crime.

According to the same analysis, in 10 per cent of the incidents, dating platforms had matched their users with a convicted criminal at least once before. These statistics should raise an immediate red flag considering the number of people using dating apps daily. The Community Justice Initiatives (CJI) released a study suggesting that this problem will continue, given the growing popularity of online dating apps throughout the years. In 2008, the percentage of adults who used dating apps went from three per cent in 2008, two 12 per cent in 2015. Furthermore, the BBC announced in an article released this year that the number of recorded sexual assaults had almost doubled in the last four years. In England, recorded offenses intensified from 156 in 2015, to 286 in 2018.

Despite the dangers surrounding these dating apps, there are precautions that can be taken for women to feel safer before going on a date with someone they met online. First and foremost, you should always let a friend or family member know about the date ahead of time. You can also let that person track your location using through the Find My Friends app or via Facebook Messenger. I also find that it’s usually best to meet your date in a public place in the event that if something bad happens, there’s always a chance that someone nearby will see something. Never forget, the internet is your friend! So in that case, don’t be afraid to do some digging on the person you’re meeting beforehand. Last tip, if your date takes place in a bar, always make sure to keep an eye on your drink if you feel uneasy because at the end of the day, it’s better to be safe than sorry!

 

Graphic by Victoria Blair

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All news is subjective, and here’s why

A journalists’ role has always been to educate and inform the general public about events or issues that might affect their lives in an objective manner.

However, with the emergence of social media, many would think that their traditional role of gatekeeping would have disappeared. Right? Wrong.

Journalists will always be helping the public make sense of all the information that is out there, especially due to the exponential growth of the internet and the abundance of accessible information. However, I would argue that the news that we are currently consuming is highly filtered and the danger is that it is not as apparent.

The  concept of ‘manufactured consent’ is very important here. It is the idea of denying citizens access to other points of view by showing a partial side of a certain story — in other words, propaganda. Walter Lippmann in Journalism and Its Publics argues that citizens who are denied access to accurate facts are eventually going to create an environment where corruption, panic and disloyalty are present.

Often, when we hear or see the news on the radio or television, we come across these constructed stories produced by journalists who have specific points they want to bring across. According to Gasher et al, in Journalists as Content Producers, journalism as a profession operates within a specific environment with a set of specific ideals, storytelling conventions as well as varied audience expectations. As a result, journalists have to filter out information for various different reasons, whether it be time restrictions, what the producer has asked for or something that they did not think was important enough to include. Little subjective decisions like those are what contribute to the missing holes in news stories. In other words, many decisions go into producing news reports and a lot of filtering happens when it comes to producers deeming a story “newsworthy.” Every producer and journalist has their own set of skills and vision when it comes to their work, which means that a single story could be covered in various ways depending on their organization’s ideologies, values and needs.

However, according to Kovach and Rosenstiel in The Elements of Journalism, the gatekeeping role of journalists’ has shifted — I would instead argue that journalists today actually have more freedom to tell stories subjectively. Manipulation of the news that we consume is created throughout the journalistic process of finding the “truth” and accurately portraying that information to the consumer.

The whole journalistic process itself encourages the careful crafting of stories, no matter what kind of journalism we are talking about. And that is because it is a profession which requires journalists to operate within a specific environment, guided by certain expectations, ideals and conventions which need to be respected. All of these limitations brought upon journalists shape an even more restrictive story to the consumers.

It would therefore be nearly impossible to have news stories that “mirror” reality, because portraying reality would be including multiple sides of a story, which are experienced and viewed differently by everyone. A mirror, after all, shows us only what is placed in front of it, not more, not less. In a news story, the person holding the mirror would be the journalist. In this case, the journalist would have complete control over where to place the mirror and what exactly to include in the frame. It is safe to say that news is not gathered but rather curated, carefully selected and presented for public consumption.

Along with the rise of social media, an increasing chunk of the ‘audience’ now has the power of becoming content creators because of the abundance and ease of access of information available online. That, in turn, means that anyone can create and publish content online, claiming that it is ‘journalism.’ This promotes lower-quality news and the deskilling of journalists which renders them easy to replace. As a result, it makes the average journalist share the same skill set as anyone else.

In sum, subjectivity is always present in stories, no matter how blatant or subtle, because they are carefully crafted to “hook” readers and are heavily filtered by content producers in order to comply with their standards of “newsworthiness.”

But what measures can be taken in order to avoid bias and filtering of information in news stories? Unfortunately, as human beings, we are biased creatures by nature and journalistic practices and values are not expected to change anytime soon. However, allowing for a more inclusive environment in the newsroom with people of different opinions, coming from different religious and cultural backgrounds, could be a start. This would allow for a healthier flow of opinions, and the collective subjectivities would then help create some sort of large objective perspective from each news agency.

 

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How can we save journalism?

Journalism is facing a crisis on many fronts.

The business model based on advertising revenues is no longer sustainable and journalism layoffs are at their highest level since the last recession. Some political leaders are in a campaign against the mainstream media and social media algorithms are taking on the role of gatekeepers, deciding what kind of content people are exposed to. Recently, the spread of fake news gained momentum, and public trust in media has been declining ever since. But aren’t journalists also responsible for the shrinking trust in traditional media?

The arrival of social media democratized the access to and production of information, making people connect to each other more easily. Instead of getting closer to communities from the beginning, journalists just watched, believing they would still be the only ones responsible for disseminating high-quality information. Which did not happen— people relied on YouTubers and bloggers to get their news. Now, to regain the audience’s trust, journalists should find ways to reconnect with them.

The bad news is that audiences seem not to care about news anymore. According to the latest Reuters Institute Digital News Report, almost a third of people (32 per cent) worldwide responded they “often or sometimes actively avoid the news,” including 41 per cent in the United States and 29 per cent in Canada. The report added that people run away from news because “it has a negative effect on their mood” (58 per cent) or because they feel “powerless to change events.”

At the same time, new technologies have brought enormous development and made it easier to produce and spread false stories. Although fake news is not a new phenomenon, they have gained more strength in a globalized world because of its speed, spread, and power.

Oxford research indicates that the production of fake news is associated with the origin of print media in 1439. At that time, there were already conspiracy theories about sea monsters and witches, or claims that sinners were responsible for natural disasters.

Today, however, fake news is spread in a much larger way. According to a Freedom of the Net report, the algorithms of Facebook, Google, and Twitter tend to promote viral or provocative articles that generate clicks, regardless of the veracity of their content. In effect, a BuzzFeed News analysis showed how false stories outperformed true stories from “traditional” media outlets on Facebook during the last US election.

Social media algorithms are taking the role as “gatekeepers,” a duty journalists once had pretty much to themselves—the only problem is that they can leave people to access false information. Despite some efforts, social media companies are still not fully engaged in combating the spread of disinformation on the internet—and I am not sure if they will anytime soon.

Besides, we see political efforts to weaken traditional media. Around the world, authoritarian leaders are appropriating the term “fake news” to characterize media coverage they do not like, which reduces the trust in these newspapers and media outlets. Inspired by Donald Trump, the president of my country, Brazil, the far-right conservative Jair Bolsonaro, often refers to the Brazilian mainstream media companies as “enemies,” moving people away from traditional newspapers and broadcast channels.

It is easy to point fingers at tech companies and political leaders and demand them to take responsibility for the rise of fake stories. But we cannot expect much from them. While they don’t take action to rebuild the trust in journalism, journalists should. Or, at least, it is the only option we have.

Rebuilding trust, however, requires a lot of effort and rethinking of journalistic practices.  Perhaps the idea of objectivity that fit well in traditional journalism for so many years doesn’t make sense in such a complex world. Some claim that journalism should stand for something: to keep the powerful in check, to pursue the truth, to provide context and perspective. “We take journalistic objectivity to be as natural and immutable as the stars, but it’s a relatively short-lived artifact of 20th-century America,” author Antonio García Martínez recently wrote in Wired. We live in an era where events are instantly captured from a dozen angles, allowing multiple interpretations. To think that only one media outlet will produce the “undeniable truth” is a bit naive. People want to read other people’s opinions and discuss them, that’s one reason social media has become so politicized.

It doesn’t mean that journalism is dead and journalists don’t have a role in this new public sphere—they just have to get closer to audiences. Being transparent in reporting, which ranked among the most important factors that influence trust in journalism, according to a Knight Foundation and Gallup poll, can be a starting point. Also, focused listening—a practice where newsrooms try to listen to their underserved or disengaged audiences— has a great potential to create connections.

Stories with personal approaches are also becoming very popular; one reason why podcasts are amassing audiences right now. Freelance journalist Jonah Weiner argues that voices in podcasts convey “warmth, empathy, personality and provide us with company—an antidote to the loneliness of the internet.”

With so many resources to create storytelling, journalism should be seen as a field full of opportunities, not a dying career. A study by The Discourse found that independent, digital media outlets are emerging as a sub-sector of the journalism industry, with the potential to deliver public service journalism in communities using audience-pay models. These outlets use practices of “slow,” engagement and investigative journalism and, as small outlets, they connect with their communities.

The solution to the existential crisis may not be found in technology, but in reconnecting with audiences. It is simpler than we imagine and it is up to us.

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Preventing Fake News

Social media gives a platform for anyone to share their stories and opinions. All one needs is an internet connection—there is no criteria for professional journalistic skills or ethics. However, with this freedom comes opportunity to publish literally anything — including fake news.

Fake news involves the dissemination of information that is intended to mislead or manipulate an audience. It is also known as disinformation. Fake news can influence public opinion or perception, or instill fear. According to the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer, 71 per cent of Canadians worry about fake news being used as a weapon. It is so easy to spread fake news—so citizens need to be better protected from it.

It recently occurred to me how easily information can be transformed into disinformation. On World Cleanup Day on Sept. 21, I was photographing the many Montrealers who took to the streets to pick up garbage. My camera lens caught one of the participants, François Raymond, putting Justin Trudeau’s campaign poster into a garbage bag. Raymond was smiling as if he looked happy about throwing it away. The first thought I had was that his smile was linked to his political views. I assumed he did not like Trudeau.

François Raymond, a participant, cleans the streets on World Cleanup Day near the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald in Montreal, Quebec. Photo by Reham Al Azem.

However, after I approached him to verify my perception, he said his smile had nothing to do with his political views, he was just happy with the amount of trash he had collected so far.

It got me thinking that if my picture had been shared on social media without context or with the wrong caption, it would misrepresent Raymond’s actions of simply cleaning his city. For example, if it was published on a social media page affiliated with the NDP or Conservatives, the picture could give the impression that Canadians are not supporting the Liberal Party, and affect voter perception. And with 40 per cent of Canadians using Facebook as a news source, according to the Reuters 2019 Digital News Report, many people could be subject to this disinformation.

This type of situation isn’t unheard of in the mainstream media. In 2016, during a campaign in South Carolina, a photo of Hillary Clinton went viral. It depicted her tumbling on steps with aides helping Clinton get her balance. The photo was used in the alt-right news site Breitbart published it as a clue of Clinton’s deteriorating health from a previous brain injury.  The Getty photographer Mark Makela was disappointed how his photo was misappropriated, in an interview with Wired.

With how easily fake news can be produced, social media companies cannot be depended upon to police themselves. Although Facebook Canada  with Agence France-Presse (AFP) launched its third-party fact-checking program, this will not do enough to prevent disinformation on its platform, according to a new transparency report released by the U.K.-based fact-checking charity organization Full Fact. For example. they state  government should be more involved in providing public information on subjects where harm can be done by disinformation.

I believe that using artificial intelligence to monitor social media on a daily basis will decrease fake news. Yet, Facebook’s fact-checking program is only a partial solution, since it’s impossible to combat the many fake news posts, often mixing opinions, conspiracies, and even facts, which can sometimes appear as real news.

More needs to be done, and I think it should start with legislation, as ultimately, the way people perceive fake news can completely change their views and potentially harm their lives. Law should be a method to protect users’ safety first and foremost,  and to protect journalism as a profession, as it’s one of the main institutions aimed at keeping democracy in place.

In Canada, laws around the dissemination of fake news haven’t been very effective. Section 181 says “ Every one who wilfully publishes a statement, tale or news that he knows is false and that causes or is likely to cause injury or mischief to a public interest is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.” But in 1992, Canada’s Supreme Court deemed the offense unconstitutional as it the right to freedom of expression. And since the  section is not legally effective, there is still a gap when it comes to fighting fake news in the country.

With the new big technology shift occurring, it broadens the chance to have misleading news and lies. To hold that back, new laws need to frequently be enacted on a case-by-case basis in order to suppress the harmful mistruths. I think fines should be imposed on those who repeatedly publish fake information. Ethical hackers can be used to track down perpetrators who are causing significant harm on people’s lives or reputations. This will still keep the flow of democracy without limiting people’s right to free speech.

Due to a national survey conducted by Nanos Research for the organization Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), More than 70 per cent of Canadians agree or somewhat agree that government regulation is needed to prevent the proliferation of fake news, while more than 60 per cent of Canadians think that the federal government is not transparent or somewhat not transparent when it comes to the information that is available about what governments do.”

In the meantime, all we can do is to think critically about everything we see or read, and be skeptical, especially on social media.

 

Graphic by @sundaeghost
Photos by Reham Al-Azem

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Maybe The Office Actually Does Age Well

Older television shows are often under fire for being tone deaf or insensitive.

Shining light on the boring and unacceptable jokes is important and this accountability is a crucial part of growing as a society. However, there is one show that I always find myself defending — The Office (the American version).

Have you heard of it?

I have read and heard a lot of criticism about this show and I find that often, these comments are missing the mark. Where the office differs from a lot of other sitcoms from the 90s and early 2000s is one thing — intention.

The intention of the office is to exaggerate workplace misconduct. Jaya Saxena, a writer for GQ says, “The butt of the joke is the sexist, racist fool of a boss, and if you are taking his jokes at face value, you don’t understand what’s going on.”

The show is exaggerated and often excruciatingly awkward, but at the end of the day it is a satire and social commentary about the struggles of an office dynamic. It addresses many of the problems that emerge from this hierarchy.

The documentary style of the show helps release a lot of the tension that is built up from the audience. For example, I cringe when Micheal makes inappropriate jokes towards Pam. He comments on her appearance and sexualizes her but she often looks to the camera to relieve the tension he creates. Her eye contact helps the audience empathize with her, rather than listen solely to Micheal’s comments. The fourth wall creates a relationship with the more relatable characters of the show, that in an odd way, hold Micheal’s absurd behaviour accountable.

This doesn’t mean that The Office isn’t hard to watch sometimes. It’s crude and not very sensitive when addressing deep societal injustices. In some ways, the #MeToo movement has been a catalyst for the harsh reaction and frustration surrounding this show. This movement and other similar ones have brought unified attention toward the issues of workplace harassment. This in no way means that these problems weren’t prevalent and invasive before, nor does it mean this is the first time they have been addressed. This speaks more to the recent shift of public consciousness. Although this is evident, Saxena says that The Office enables us to laugh at our own unhappiness.

“Its humour, and its problems, come from it being a situation most of us can’t avoid,” Saxena continues. “Most people have bosses and co-workers. Most people have been in a position where they have to decide between taking a stand and keeping their job.”

Writer Matt Melis from Consequence of Sound explains that if we take a closer look at The Office, we will notice that the characters behaviours are representing that of society.

Do you remember the episode in the third season where Phyllis gets flashed in the parking lot? Each character reacted more inappropriately than the next. At face value, this might seem like one big joke. Micheal alludes to how he thought this would happen to a more attractive woman like Pam. Angela shames her, Dwight blames her, Creed dismisses her and even Pam turns it into a joke. Melis explains that this episode does a “remarkable, if not entirely realistic, job of illustrating just how alone and unsupported a victim, male or female, might feel after that sort of terrible experience.”

Like any other sitcom, The Office isn’t perfect. I think criticism and discussion surrounding any show can be productive, especially when it’s political and satirical. This is the exciting thing about sharing opinions and learning about what is harmful.

When our beloved Monica is fat shamed in Friends, she is the butt of the joke. When Seinfield does a bit on suicide, these people are the ones being made fun of, not the health system. However, what sets The Office apart is that when Micheal does something ridiculous, we are supposed to criticize him, we are supposed to roll our eyes and cringe at the ridiculousness and reality of the situation.

I would recommend rewatching it with this lens. You just might be able to laugh at the unpleasant reality that is the power structures of a traditional and workplace dynamic — and you might not. There’s space for both. 

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Good journalism shouldn’t be free

Journalism is in a crisis — print and digital advertising revenues have collapsed.

According to the Local News Research Project, over 250 news outlets have closed their doors in the last decade in Canada, and many more have had to lay off journalists to stay afloat.

Now that advertisers are turning to social media, news organisations are being forced to change the way they do business, and many are turning to audience-paid models.

You have probably encountered some of these before: The Montreal Gazette gives you five free articles per month, and outlets like La Presse ask you to contribute a small amount monthly.

Paywalls have likely discouraged you from reading an article or watching a news video in the past. Why pay when you can get the same information for free elsewhere?

Well, I think it’s time to stop expecting quality journalism to magically appear on our newsfeeds.

As an audience, we need to differentiate between quality and commodity, and start paying journalists accordingly for the service they provide.

We can’t expect journalists to be the watchdogs of society, to attend city council meetings and political events, to investigate corruption and keep the powerful accountable, and then write engaging articles about it… for free.

Journalists are members of society, and although journalism may be their passion, it is still their profession: they need – and deserve – to get paid for the work they do. Especially since, as the National Association of Journalists in The Netherlands has reported, they have to do more work with fewer colleagues and less resources.

If we don’t pay for quality journalism, there will be no quality journalism.

According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, only seven per cent of Canadians paid for news in the past year, and most of these people only paid for one news subscription.

These are not promising numbers, and paywalls seem to work only for certain legacy news organizations like The New York Times.

However, we as an audience can make the decision to pay for journalism and help small, local news outlets thrive. And, as a 2018 study by digital news company The Discourse has shown, when we pay for news through memberships and subscriptions, journalists are incentivized to directly serve our communities and perform public service journalism – such as solutions and investigative journalism – instead of selling our attention to advertisers.

As U.S. media critic Jay Rosen said, a subscription business model is about “re-establishing a direct relationship between the users of news and the producers of news that is strong enough to withstand the telling of hard truths.” It allows the audience to pay directly for the news they value, and provides the news people need in addition to the news they want.

This kind of journalism is incredibly important in this day and age. We can’t rely on news outlets owned by millionaires or funded by foundations to give us in-depth, unbiased information. These organizations, by virtue of where they get their funding, cannot be fully independent. Even if these donors have no bad intentions, The Columbia Journalism Review has shown that journalists feel the influence of these donors, and that affects the journalism they do.

The only way to get quality journalism that does not influence us, but inform us, is to willingly pay for it. I believe paying for journalism should become as natural to us as paying our monthly phone bill.

To be clear: I am not arguing for paywalls. Business models based on making certain tiers of information only accessible to those who can afford it are a recipe for disaster.

I am only arguing that those of us who can afford to pay for news, should. If you can afford to pay for a Netflix or Spotify subscription, you can afford to pay $10 a month for The Montreal Gazette to provide you with the information you need to be an engaged citizen.

We have the power to change the way journalism is done: when we directly fund small, local news organisations, we give them the resources to produce in-depth stories from a range of perspectives. And when larger news outlets see that we want diverse, complex coverage of issues that affect us, they will follow suit.

Ultimately, in the words of Last Week Tonight host John Oliver, “sooner or later, we are either going to have to pay for journalism, or we are all going to pay for it.”

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Algorithm editors and what they mean

What would journalism be without editors? Well, in my opinion, it would be pretty chaotic.

Editors are the backbone of journalism — take them out of the equation and you are setting loose a tsunami of fake news, badly written and poorly researched stories – to sum up, just total amateurism.

But, what do editors actually do?

According to Amelia Pisapia, journalist and former editorial director of Novel, editors are talented problem solvers who excel at putting information in context, assessing the accuracy of data and weeding out bias.

“They view issues from multiple angles, connect the dots and uncover human stories in complex systems,” writes Pisapia.

Pisapia adds that editors work within established ethical frameworks. She says that all editors have five values in common: accuracy, independence, impartiality, humanity and accountability.

However, in recent years editors have started to quite literally lose some of their humanity. With developments in technology and artificial intelligence, more and more media and news distributing platforms have started to use algorithms as editors instead of actual humans.

A good example is the algorithm behind the news feed on Facebook.Tobias Rose-Stockwell, a strategist, designer and journalist for Quartz wrote in his article, “[Facebook’s algorithm] shows you stories, tracks your responses, and filters out the ones that you are least likely to respond to. It is mapping your brain, seeking patterns of engagement.”

Sounds great doesn’t it? Having only quality news that you are interested in delivered right to your doorstep without having to move a muscle.

Well if it sounds too good to be true, it’s because it simply is. Algorithms are actually very far from being these perfect editors that we hope them to be. They have massive flaws and are actually very dangerous.

Don’t misunderstand me, algorithm editors have some good sides. They do surpass humans on some points — vis à vis their conduct as an editor for example.

In his article, “Can an Algorithm be an Editor?,” José Moreno, former multimedia director at Motorpress Lisboa explains that an algorithm has the silver lining of always acting the same way.

“Human editors always act differently on the basis of a common code,” Moreno says. “In a way, there is more accuracy and reliability in a “system” that always performs a function in the same way than in a “system” that always performs differently.”

So, yes algorithms have some upsides; Professor Pablo Boczkowski from Northwester University even called Facebook’s algorithm “the greatest editor in the history of humanity.”

But unfortunately, despite their virtues, any positive aspect that algorithms may present are always heavily outweighed by their negative counterparts.

The study , The Editor vs. the Algorithm: Targeting, Data and Externalities in Online News done by a collection of professors from different universities compared the different aspects of AI and human editors. The researchers discovered an alarming number of problems with algorithms editors, for example the algorithms tend to serve a less diverse mix of news to readers. They create a “bubble” effect as readers are presented with a narrower set of topics. An example the study presented was about readers who lived in German states where there was a high share of votes for extreme political parties. In the last election, those people were more likely to increase their consumption of political stories when their stories were selected by algorithms.

Another flaw with algorithms is their lack of social awareness; every calculation they make is based on an individual-level data. Algorithms don’t take into account “socially optimal reading behaviour,” according to the study.

“It doesn’t differentiate between factual information and things that merely look like facts,” said  Rose-Stockwell, referring to the Facebook example above. “It doesn’t identify content that is profoundly biased, or stories that are designed to propagate fear, mistrust, or outrage.”

The worst part in all of this, is that algorithms have even started to change the way some human editors think as well as the behavior of some news organizations. We have entered a traffic-at-all-costs mentality. News outlets are influenced by numbers, clicks and views now and no longer by journalistic values.

Despite all their flaws, regrettably, algorithm editors are still here and due to humans’ lust for technology and artificial intelligence, they are probably going to stay and even multiply.

But, why should algorithm editors be opposite to human editors, why should it be human vs machine?

The solution is easy: use a mix of both. The researchers from the study mentioned above concluded that “the optimal strategy for a news outlet seems to be to employ a combination of the algorithm and the human to maximize user engagement.”

In the digital age that we currently live in, machines will continue to take over more and more aspects of life. However, humans are more relevant than ever because these machines aren’t always optimal. So, in the end having a symbiosis between humans and machines is actually a comforting thought. It is the promise of a better tomorrow where machines will help humans and not supplant them.

Graphic by @sundaeghost

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I’m a journalist and an activist. Deal with it

In September, the Global Climate Strike took the world by storm with approximately 7.6 million people marching for climate action.

According to its organizers, this was the biggest climate mobilization in history. People sent a clear message to their governments: they expect climate action, and they expect it now. With approximately 500,000 people striking in Montreal, this was the largest strike in the city’s history, said Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante.

I was part of the march both as a journalist and an engaged citizen. I wonder if my objectivity could be discredited, since I personally share values with some climate activists and align myself with certain environmental movements.

Many journalists think it’s important to keep a distance from groups and movements, at the risk of losing credibility and thus the trust of readers. I’m aware that I have my own perspectives that impact the filter through which I view and describe events; and inevitably shades the, so to say, “truth.” However, I truly believe that being aware of these biases can only encourage me to be more objective and motivated to deliver the “truth.”

Objectivity is thought of as an absolute – journalists are either 100 per cent objective, or not at all. But in fact, journalists, like other human beings, are all subjective. They too, have their own interests, values, opinions and ideologies. I believe that, consciously or not, these values shape who they are, what they think and how they act as citizens as well as journalists. My personal interests are based on environmental and social issues and I believe in climate change and the need to act now. The planet is the number one subject I want to report on and I believe my interests and experiences in this field can add value to my journalism.

There is also this fantasy that journalists are independent and serve only the public. In theory, journalism is meant to deliver the truth and help the readers make their own opinion about the world, beyond the influence of any source of power, such as the government or private companies. I believe that in reality, even the most conscientious and cautious journalist can be influenced either by powerful sources or by various situations. For example, influences may come from the political views of the news organization the journalist works for.

Moreover, in my opinion, there are always two – if not more – sides to a story. The concept of “balance” can give you the impression that both sides should always be covered equally. But should they really? Journalists can sometimes give equal voice to people of unequal knowledge. For example, when covering stories linked to the constant debate on the existence of a climate urgency, journalists tend to grant equal importance to both scientists and global warming sceptics. Fearful of being seen as biased or discriminating certain opinions, they sometimes don’t help but confuse and mislead the public opinion.

Also, depending on deliberate choices concerning the materials used to depict an event or news, such as the composition of the pictures taken during a protest or the words used to describe the event, journalists can convey different sides of a story. They may do it unconsciously as they are sometimes just following news conventions, like publishing a picture showing the one violent demonstrator in a peaceful protest. It makes a more compelling photo than showing peaceful marchers, but I don’t think this depicts the actual event as it happened. I believe it is part of the journalists’ job to break barriers between people of different opinions and not only share what people do, but why they do it.

As part of my studies as well as my personal interests, I decided to join an environmental movement last July, to better understand activism and its link to journalism. Born in France, known for its revolutionary people, I had never joined any protest or any march before and had always thought protesters were very different from me. But the more I started attending protests, the more I realized how alike we were. This made me realize that there is a very powerful stereotype among the public opinion concerning activism. More and more, I could see that activism was often portrayed as violent, and activists as harmful troublemakers.

On the other hand, when I went to protests myself, I could see how peaceful they actually were and how cautious they had to be to fight against this misinterpretation commonly held in the public opinion that they’re the ones messing with the system. I believe journalists matter in this, since they have a certain influence on the public opinion.

Journalists decide what is news. Journalists are the ones to attach relative importance to news events. Readers interpret those events through the language that journalists choose to constitute their coverage. 

It’s obviously very difficult to leave my personal interests out of my work life, and I think that it’s a journalist’s responsibility to have integrity in their work. There will always be an inherent link between the authenticity of my work and my values, and it would be hypocritical to hide it. I strongly believe that if I acknowledge my personal interests, am conscious that I may have biased first reactions but am willing to try my best to deliver factual reports, I should not be considered any differently than other reporters, and I believe my knowledge of the ecological crisis can make me even better equipped to talk about such issues.

 

Photo by Britanny Clarke

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What about the amputees?

On the east end of my not-so-prosperous neighbourhood, and, on occasion the green line, I notice an increasing number of amputees — usually with one or both legs removed at or below the knee.

Curious as to why they all were wheelchair-bound, I did some research and discovered that they probably can’t afford anything better.

In some Canadian provinces, Ontario being one of them, about 70 per cent of healthcare funding comes from our taxes and the remaining 30 percent is paid for by you and I directly — or through private medical insurance. If there’s no free lunch there’s no free healthcare, either. The 30 per cent that we passy for ourselves includes most dental, hearing and vision care, prescription medication, certain vaccinations, or a ride in an ambulance. While these holes in the system are known to most Canadians, they’d probably assume that a prosthetic limb required after an amputation would be covered. Sadly, they’d assume wrongly. Fact is, the Canada Health Act doesn’t cover prosthetic limbs.

Provincial programs to fund prosthetic limbs are complex to navigate and may even be deceptive. According to CBC, Ontario’s Assistive Devices Program (ADP) claims to cover 75 per cent of the cost of artificial limbs but the coverage is capped. ADP’s approved prices were last reviewed in 2012; advocacy groups claim that even back then, prices were severely out of date.

Nineteen-year-old Emilio Dutra-Lidington lost his right leg to the propeller of a boat on Lac Pemichangan two hours north of Ottawa. Following multiple surgeries, the time came for a prosthetic leg – the quoted price was $91,577. Emilio’s family learned that the leg had to be replaced every three to five years for common technology and every six to seven for higher technology. The life-time cost of the prosthetic leg might run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. How much would Ontario contribute? A sum of $6,792. Help for Emilio came from a crowd-funding campaign launched by his parents in June 2019; within four months it amassed $130,000.

Ontarian Patty De Guia lost her leg to cancer a few years ago. Global News reported that while in hospital, her chemotherapy meds were covered; but once home, her lower-dose chemo pens ($4,000 each) were only partially covered by her private insurance. With her finances already depleted by out of pocket expenses for at home chemo, she couldn’t afford the $50,000 prosthetic leg her doctor recommended. She opted for a $10,000 “loaner,” $2,500 up front and a promise to return the leg once she got something better. After nine years, De Guia’s neighbours set up a GoFundMe page to help her buy a suitable prosthetic which cost almost $90,000.

In Quebec, the Régime d’Assurance Maladie du Québec (RAMQ) decided that Hugues Leblanc’s two hand prostheses, a complete bio-mechanical hand valued at about $35,000 and a forceps worth about $25,000, would be 100 per cent covered – a  wonderful outcome that might not have happened if the Journal de Montreal hadn’t covered Leblanc’s tragic story and if his deputy, Pascal Berubé, and heavy hitter Danielle McCann, Minister of Health, hadn’t intervened.

A study published in 2017, based on 2012-16 data shows that 6,000 Canadians underwent lower limb amputations each year. In addition, there were perhaps 1,500 upper limb amputations in the same period. Unfortunately, some of these amputees might stumble into a Kafkaesque perfect storm that begins with an illness or accident followed by amputation, then expensive prescription meds – not covered – and a hugely expensive prosthetic limb – not covered – loss of earnings, perhaps even loss of one’s employment during months of rehabilitation. The amputee may end up bankrupt or deeply in debt and perhaps severely depressed with limited access and horrendous wait times to psychological services.

Surely in Canada we can do better? I mean, how can Canada make amputee Terry Fox a national hero while nickel-and-diming its everyday amputees? It just seems so un-Canadian, hypocritical even. What to do? Canada could revise its Health Care Act to include prosthetic limbs and other assistive devices, and provinces could cap costs rather than coverage. The provinces could get together to create a national purchasing agency for prosthetics, or prescription meds like the one in the UK, to bulk buy and drive down costs. A “Canadians with Disabilities Act” similar to the United States’ “Americans with Disabilities Act” (ADA) might help.

Learning more about this risk that might come knocking at your door is important. We all need to know and make some noise about it, which is what I’m trying to do. 

Graphic by @sundaeghost

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Why we have all fallen victim to greenwashing

Have you ever noticed that your favourite shampoo is now mysteriously in a green bottle, with shaded trees and reminding you that plastic can be recycled?

Or maybe you feel like the paper towel you usually buy to wipe your dirty counter is helping you change the world because it has a leaf on it? Did that kombucha bottle come up from the roots of the earth, or is that just the new design?

If any of these scenarios resonate with you, you might be a victim of a marketing tool called greenwashing. This term was coined by an environmentalist named Jay Westerveld in the 1980s, “to describe companies which grossly overstate the environmental or ethical benefits of their products and services.”

That’s right, 1980. We have been manipulated by falsely sustainable products for almost 40 years and the trend is only growing. This marketing tool could not be more valuable in our modern economy, as everyday we collectively panic about the climate crisis.

Many of us are doing what we think is right by buying what we think are sustainable products. Capitalism has a funny way of turning a disastrous crisis into an economic opportunity, with big companies exploiting and manipulating the market for their personal gain.

One of the main issues with greenwashing is that defining sustainability is not as straightforward as it is marketed to be. We tend to respond well to simplified categories and digestible explanations, but sustainability is a very complex issue. It is often defined as maintaining ecological balance or being environmentally conscious, but these terms are vague, and companies are using this to their advantage.

Let’s take a look at a textbook greenwashing example: Fiji water bottles. Fiji as a company has done a very effective job at perpetuating a message that they will help you connect with nature. One of their slogans was “a gift from nature to us.” Not to mention, they got a cute little girl to say it, which creeped me out, but seemed to work for others. The creepy little girl also says, “bottled at the source, untouched by man.” I mean, it’s beyond me how they created mass amounts of bottled water without touching anything. Also, where is that girl’s mother? Anyway, the irony here is obvious. Fiji promotes connection to nature, while feeding into the destruction of it.

According Our Changing Planet, 47 per cent of Fijians do not have access to clean, safe water. This company is sending a message that they are saving forests and creating sustainable change, but it’s propaganda. The unnerving thing is, even though, New York Times Magazine came out with an article criticizing Fiji’s integrity in 2008, the company is still a massive capitalist giant. Although we can rationalize the clear intent of the company, they are professional manipulators. We have to push back against our instincts to get lost in a little girl’s cute voice and a pretty forest background.

My consumer conscience relaxes when I clean my toilet bowl with a green bottle. I fall for buzzwords like “all natural,” “eco-friendly,” and “sustainable” all the time. A lot of people do — that’s why companies continue to do it. This being said, we have more control than we think. There are good companies out there — but greenwashing is loud and invasive, and often drown them out.

Try your best to buy local products and try to avoid chains when possible. I know that sometimes this can be more expensive, but often choosing the more environmental choice just takes a bit more time and research. When you are buying products keep in mind where they are coming from, how much packaging they use and what ingredients they consist of, although this is just the tip of the melting iceberg.

Like Our Changing Planet states, “One of the greenest things you can do is to buy fewer things. No matter how great the product is, it’s probably still kind of deceptive to market it as green.”

So remember, mass consumption of sustainable goods is a harmful paradox, and for goodness sake, get a reusable water bottle. 

 

 

Photo by Britanny Clarke

 

 

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