At the recent tech conference Collision Toronto, a panel entitled “Fifty Shades of Truth” featured Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté from the independent investigative journalism outlet, “The Grayzone.” Many leaders in tech, media, and news attended the conference, and while the organizers were smart to invite some independent journalists to their stage, they seemed oddly overly nervous about it. They could not have given more qualifiers introducing the speakers, which included within the span of two minutes:
“we said we’d keep it interesting”
“now you’re really gonna get something”
“may be a little… contentious for some people”
“challenge, maybe, some of our perspectives”
“this is going to be a very controversial and hot topic”
Who is this Grayzone who needs to be so carefully managed and couched so as to soften their presence on this industry stage, one may wonder? Well, they have been called many things: “fringe,” “far-left,” “conspiracy theorists,” spreaders of “disinformation” and “pro-Russia propaganda,” and “a Chinese state media darling.” Whether or not any of these descriptors are true of them, they are certainly tried and true adjectives pulled right from the “How to Discredit Alternative News Sources” handbook. And although the two did manage to defend themselves against some of these accusations during the discussion, this panel wasn’t about any of that, specifically. It was meant to be about truth, facts, misinformation, trust in media, and how to sort through it all (full video below).
It’s not clear how much closer the panel got towards its stated goal of delineating fact from fiction in the media environment today, but what it did offer was a clear glimpse into an alternate, independent, citizen-funded news perspective on what is so often termed “mainstream media,” with many of its members in attendance. Some of the ways in which Blumenthal and Maté described corporate and/or legacy media during the discussion are offered below:
“[Joe Biden’s] little band of stenographers”
“the most prolific disseminator of disinformation on the planet”
“controlled by the same people who control our society”
“one voice, one message, one line, …completely identical to the line of the Defense Department and the State Department”
a system “designed to rob you of your integrity and your independence”
“the biggest purveyors of fake news”
Whew. If you thought the public’s opinion of news media today was low, for these guys it is practically subterranean.
Clearly, we’ve got two versions of journalists attacking and discrediting each other in various ways in the current mediascape, and both have different ways of establishing their own credibility over the other (a history of standards and established credibility in the legacy space, and a claim of independence from the state and funding sources in the alternative space). And it is, of course, possible that this is simply all about the competition for audiences.
So, why does any of this matter? It matters because it is the latest example in one realm - journalism - of the tension between the top-down and bottom-up means of information, knowledge, and content production and dissemination that plagues nearly all of our institutions today, which has yet to be resolved in any way that makes things easier for those of us trying to navigate and make sense of the world. And yet, it is those of us who are trying to do just that - the so-called audience, the masses, the people, the public - who all of these organizations are trying to appeal to.
Perhaps the key takeaway from this snapshot into the information wars is that the best thing to do to win over the “people” is to find the opportunities for harmony rather than hostility. A multitude of voices can be a discordant cacophony, or it can be a beautiful symphony. Major disagreements can lead to chaos and destruction, or to discovery and innovation. I think all of us would find much relief if our information leaders could begin to find ways towards the latter side of those equations rather than the former.
Maybe inviting these speakers onto the stage of Collision Toronto, however many qualifiers were needed to make it happen, was a step in the right direction. And for all their hostility, Blumenthal and Maté offered their own olive branch as well, when they invited the mainstream press to speak out against the case the US state department is currently bringing against Julian Assange, which, they state, is essentially “criminalizing...publishing factual information,” a cause that all journalists should undoubtedly want to get behind.
One can hope that the grassroots and commercial sides of media might both learn something from this glimpse into each other’s universes. Perhaps they can take away from it a need to find a new approach, a kind of competitive collaboration that involves informing each other, learning from one another, and viewing one another as sources and opinion brokers rather than enemies to be crushed. Perhaps they are beginning to get as tired as we are of the repetitive, endless, continued attempts to attack, discredit, censor, and/or cancel each other (thus, essentially, cancelling each other out).
Or, perhaps not. Only time will tell I suppose.