As origin stories go, the one about the birth of W5 is pretty great. Even legendary among the hundreds of journalists who have worked on the show over six decades. It begins in 1966 with a fumble by a rival, a snatch, and a heroic run.
The CBC, in 1966, had just cancelled a ground-breaking and saucy weekly current affairs show called ‘This Hour Has Seven Days’. It poked the powerful, bent traditional storytelling, and earned plenty of enemies. Too many for the management of CBC News at the time to withstand, so they canned it. It was a very controversial decision as the show had powerhouse ratings as Canadians liked watching aggressive reporting.
CTV National News was then in its infancy, but plucky. It saw the opportunity CBC had provided, and launched a similar hard-nosed current affairs show called W5. The Five W’s being ‘Who What When Where Why?”. The private-owned network was in desperate financial shape at the time, verging on bankruptcy. But W5 still took on powerful interests in the country. Its debut episode earned outrage from authorities when it demonstrated how easy it was to take a loaded shotgun to the observation deck of Toronto’s new city hall and pick off pedestrians, in theory. The outrage helped the show make its mark quickly, and led to security changes.
Scrub through 58 more seasons of W5, and you land on it’s final episode this weekend. Still as brash and determined as in its earliest days, but without the support of its current leadership and owners who are flush with the kind of cash those earlier bosses could only dream of.
W5 was cancelled by Bell on the same day it provided its shareholders with yet another dividend increase, the 16th year in a row. The media division’s profit margin had dipped a percent since a year ago, but was still a little less than a quarter on every dollar earned. W5’s staff was dismissed or scattered as part of Bell’s biggest layoff in thirty years, which is still going on, and pledged to reach 4800 people across all divisions. None of it has helped the share price, however. It’s still falling.
But the loss of W5 and thousands of journalist’s jobs are only part of the story I think is worth telling at this moment in our history. Because they are occurring at the precise time there is also a surging digital threat to the safety and security of Canadians that our media conglomerates like Bell seem to be signalling surrender to.
Let me explain.
Canada’s security agencies have jointly warned “Cyber threat actors are attempting to influence Canadians, degrading trust in online spaces” The Canadian Security Agency warns these foreign powers “...are increasingly using generative artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance online disinformation.” NATO has given it the name ‘cognitive warfare’. “More people are unable to differentiate between legitimate and manipulated information” the alliance warned in April. Allies need to focus on “strengthening and defending the mind”. They are already in some of our heads, influencing our decisions, and undermining the truth. Perhaps, like me, you have friends and family members you suspect are already under its influence, with their politics and opinions growing more extreme.
The number one anecdote to cognitive warfare, security experts agree, is robust verified journalism and fact checking. Yet at the exact moment these misinformation campaigns are supercharging with AI-created fake videos, the largest and most profitable media company in Canada has chosen now to drastically shrink its division devoted to the pursuit of truth: Canada’s most-watched and listened-to source for news, CTV and Bell radio. Look at the public record:
With the world rapidly destabilizing and growing more dangerous, Bell Media has chosen now to eliminate every international news bureau outside of North America.
With climate change and cyberattacks contributing to more civic emergencies across the country, Bell Media has chosen now to eliminate most local radio reporters..
Bell Media has chosen now to leave many of their local TV newsrooms abandoned on weekends.
Its reduced the number of employees providing national news in every province outside of Ontario to one person. One.
And Bell Media continues to eliminate the most experienced reporters and anchors Canadians had learned to trust.
All of these decisions risk making Canadians less able to combat cognitive warfare with verified facts and credible reporting. The agents of misinformation and manipulation face less resistance - which risks further polarizing Canadians and reduces our country’s resilience to this new form of hybrid warfare.
Bell’s leadership has said in statements it believes the business model for national news needs to evolve. Everyone I’ve heard from inside CTV News completely agrees. Innovation and experimentation is vital to finding new ways of reaching Canadians and paying for journalism. What no one has seen over recent years, they tell me, is any real plan for anything other than cutting hundreds of qualified staff every year and doing much more with much less
It is my opinion that the Board and senior leadership at this profitable company, which was granted stewardship of Canada’s #1 news source by federal regulators in 2011, should acknowledge the current threat of psychological information warfare and reverse course. Invest in its newsrooms, sustain W5, and try some new ideas to fund real journalism.
This is the time to fortify our information defences, not tear them down.
Bell seems to already know that. It is promoting itself to business these days as a cybersecurity leader. “The threat landscape is changing” its ads say, “Bell has you covered”.
But when it comes to the security of how we think, Bell is steadily capitulating. By eliminating long-form investigative journalism, turning its back on the informed foreign reporting, and cutting local news and radio to the bone, Bell risks unwittingly aiding our adversaries in undermining our trust in truth, one another, and leaving our peaceful society more vulnerable.
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.