Now not the time to waver on objectivity, facts

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/03/2025 (214 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Back in November, I wrote an overly dramatic (or so it seemed, at the time) column about a sense of foreboding with Donald Trump’s reascendancy to the White House. I expressed fear of war that could be started by a newly elected Trump, a sense of alarm that beckoned me to confront the sudden feelings of immediacy around the approach of Remembrance Day.

I don’t often return to past columns I’ve written. Besides feeling a bit self-indulgent, I can’t help but criticize my work and invent better turns of phrase. It is, as the young people may say, “a bit cringe” to look back on my writing. But I was reminded of the column by a reader this week, and had another look at it.

Cringe? A bit. Melodramatic? As it turns out, not really.

I think Trump has had his eye on threatening Canada’s sovereignty since before the 2016 election. I recall raising an eyebrow during one of his debates with Hillary Clinton, when he said something like, “It’s very bad up there. We should really do something about how bad it is up there.”

I remember asking a friend, an editor here, what would happen if the U.S. attacked Canada and the Free Press had the last presses running in the country. A ridiculous thing to ask, and she said so. But as a journalism outsider, I enjoy learning about how crises are covered and how decisions are made at the newspaper.

The bottomless pit that is online information will never distil any answers for me. Instead, I will be locked into an algorithmically designed room of mirrors that seems larger than it is, but keeps reflecting the same information back at me.

Unfortunately, these kinds of “what if?” conversations are now more common in our country and many of us are searching for answers to an unending array of possible scenarios.

Online spaces are flooded with speculation and questionable hypotheses. I find myself scrolling to find the latest updates, wherever they may be.

I’ve come to realize the reason I’m doing this is borne of a desire for safety, a desire to be among the first to know which way we ought to run, as well as when and where to.

But the bottomless pit that is online information will never distil any answers for me. Instead, I will be locked into an algorithmically designed room of mirrors that seems larger than it is, but keeps reflecting the same information back at me.

Confining my search for safety to the endlessly updated and disparate (even malicious) narrative of the internet isn’t helping my sense of security after all.

Instead, I find myself wondering which of the comments and replies I’m reading are actually written by bots or bad actors. And I worry that in my quest to dig for truth, I’m actually caught in a circus of anything but.

Generally, I can’t go to the Free Press for that same hit of dopamine that’s promised by the ever-updated sea of online slop. In contrast, the newspaper is only published once a day. Stories appear on the Free Press website as they come in.

We’ve been convinced to equate news with sensationalism and skepticism. Social media and propaganda has trained us to crave information designed to keep us engaged and fearful, not informed and aware.

This is why the Trump administration and affiliated tech oligarchs are targeting legacy media. This is why The Associated Press is no longer allowed to cover White House press briefings.

This is why billionaire Jeff Bezos, as owner of the Washington Post, has decreed the opinion pages will only support “personal liberties and free markets.”

This is why the New York Times, National Public Radio and Politico no longer have offices at the Pentagon. Real news will never capture attention like sensationalist clickbait and propagandized “opinions.”

As long as the messages from the White House cause alarm and agitation, instead of nurturing awareness and critical thought, Trump can continue bending the narrative to his aims.

Real news will never capture attention like sensationalist clickbait and propagandized “opinions.”

We’re lucky. We have a newspaper in Manitoba that is wholly owned and operated by people who live here.

There’s no head office, no Bezos to answer to; just a collection of friends and neighbours putting their heads together to tell our stories, while adhering to strict measures of accountability, balance and integrity.

We even have a web page where readers can learn about what those standards mean and how they’re enacted, and provides them a place to ask more questions if in doubt.

I may indulge in the occasional bout of catastrophic thinking, but I know I can temper the online storm by trusting my local paper is still fighting the good fight against misinformation by presenting balanced opinions and truthful representation of fact.

Along with the rest of Canada, the Free Press has its elbows up in defence of our stories and identity.

rebecca.chambers@freepress.mb.ca