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The world is dangerous when people are blinded from the facts

We know that since World News Day began in 2018, the challenges facing the industry have only grown, says Globe and Mail editor-in-chief, David Walmsley.

Making a positive difference to someone’s life is the greatest gift a journalist can give. Perhaps an individual is heard for the first time or an injustice is settled.

Those moments when a news editor picks up a phone to hear a scared voice say, “You are all I have left; I have nowhere else to turn” are the last stand between hope and defeat.

It is a sacred contract, as old as journalism itself, yet the tenor of our times would try to divide the people from the newsrooms. If those who attempt to turn journalists into the enemy are successful, the people’s right to independent access to information will be lost. And as we all know, a world where people are blinded from facts is a dangerous one.

During the global pandemic, record audience numbers were reported around the world as readers, viewers and listeners absorbed news and information that saved lives. Nevertheless, an ever more vociferous minority pedalled a derogatory term, the so-called “mainstream media” — as if being together in a fact-based environment is a bad thing.

That’s because the facts can sometimes be uncomfortable, and journalists have a big responsibility to get them right.

If those who attempt to turn journalists into the enemy are successful, the people’s right to independent access to information will be lost, writes David Walmsley @globeandmail @WorldNewsDay22 #WorldNewsDay #journalismmatters

We know that since World News Day began in 2018, the challenges facing the industry have only grown. We may better understand the commercial pressures and ever-changing audience habits, but we still don’t do enough to explain ourselves.

That means newsrooms have their work cut out. Explaining their methodology and how facts are uncovered has become as important as the facts themselves.

Those who are potential audience members consume most of their information in closed, fast-paced networks. We have seen examples time and again where small but active minority groups simply believe what they are told, often by powerful forces with something to hide. The journalist is used as bait in an attack against uncomfortable truths. As a result, the industry has to devote more time to reaching those who have already decided the facts even without possessing them.

Federal leader of the New Democrat Party of Canada Jagmeet Singh scrums with media in Toronto, Ont., Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019. File photo by Cole Burston / Canada's National Observer

Walled environments exist across the internet, preventing a plurality of thought and opinion, fact and reality from being shared. Amid the myriad challenges facing us all, certainty is one of the least attractive traits on display.

World News Day, involving more than 500 newsrooms, is a global initiative aimed at improving media literacy and audience engagement. We include examples of how lives are improved when journalists tell a story. We showcase the efforts of small newsrooms as they represent the importance of community. We underpin all our work with the belief that access to information is a human right.

The speed of change and the dangers and risks in society sometimes seem only to go in one direction, leading to a global audience that is both exhausted and saturated with information. We have constructive roles to play amid these extraordinary news developments.

The convening power of independent journalism has never been more important, and sadly, because of that hyper-relevance, the risks and threats to journalists, your storytellers, only grows. The speed of polarization, an 18th-century term used originally to identify the characteristics of light in photography, today makes agreement unfashionable. But as newsrooms around the world often say: we are all entitled to our opinions, but we are not entitled to our own facts.

A reporter prepares for a media appearance in Ottawa on Nov. 30, 2018. File photo by Alex Tétreault / Canada's National Observer

War, economic uncertainty and a determination to run roughshod over generational practices at our institutions are the changes facing the world. Journalism at its best is in the middle of it all, with a role to sow not division but mutual understanding and transparency.

World News Day exists to help the news industry explain itself better and to involve the global audience in showcasing how accurate information makes life better.

U.S. President Joe Biden was born closer to Abraham Lincoln’s presidency than his own. That perspective shows less the age of the man and more the opportunities and advances that have been taken in the past century, raising with urgency the questions of where we go from here.

David Walmsley is the editor-in-chief of The Globe and Mail and creator of World News Day.

World News Day is a global newsroom campaign to highlight the value of journalism. It is organized by the World Editors Forum of the World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) in partnership with The Canadian Journalism Foundation.

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