media

Saturday June 17, 2023

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday June 17, 2023

Reflecting on Father’s Day and the Importance of Taking a Break from the News

May 13, 2023

Father’s Day serves as a reminder to appreciate the important people in our lives and cherish the moments spent with loved ones. In a world filled with doom and gloom, taking a break from the constant barrage of negative news can be crucial for our well-being. Recent events, such as climate change-induced wildfires in Canada, the tragic Manitoba bus accident, rising interest rates, and the ongoing political polarization, highlight the overwhelming amount of negative information that bombards us daily.

It’s no secret that journalists tend to focus on negative news, and political coverage often adopts a cynical or pessimistic tone. This trend has only intensified over time, leading to a decline in trust in the media and an increasing number of individuals avoiding the news altogether due to its detrimental impact on their mood. This negativity bias, rooted in human psychology, causes people to pay more attention to negative information than positive news. Both news consumers and journalists are influenced by this bias, and it poses a challenge for the media landscape.

Fortunately, there are signs of improvement. The rise of diverse media outlets has created a market for good news, catering to those seeking positive stories. However, platforms like Facebook, with their algorithmic structures, can inadvertently reinforce negativity biases, leaving news consumers torn between their desire for positive news and their immediate attraction to negative stories. Striking the right balance between catering to immediate preferences and providing long-term well-being is a challenge faced by news outlets and social networks alike.

Study: Bad News: Negativity Increases Online News Consumption  

November 1, 2022

A study published in Nature Human Behaviour shed light on the influence of negative news headlines. It revealed that negative words in headlines increase click-through rates, while positive words decrease them. This research suggests that people are more likely to consume negative news, particularly in the realms of politics and economics. Although this bias is not solely the fault of journalists and editors, it raises ethical concerns and contributes to audience anxiety. The online news environment, with its fierce competition for attention, and the optimization of headlines for engagement further perpetuate the prevalence of negative news.

To gain a comprehensive understanding of the trajectory of news media sentiment, researchers have compared the sentiment and emotional undertones of news content over different time periods. A research project analyzing 23 million headlines from popular news outlets in the United States between 2000 and 2019 found that mainstream news media headlines have gradually become more negative over time. Headlines with negative connotations have become more prevalent, while those with positive undertones have decreased. This shift in sentiment is noticeable across various news outlets and can be partially attributed to ideological leanings, with right-leaning media consistently portraying more negative headlines.

Emotional undertones in headlines have also experienced a notable change. The proportion of anger and fear has nearly doubled, while sadness and disgust have seen a smaller increase. Emotionally neutral headlines, on the other hand, have become less common. Interestingly, the increase in anger-inducing headlines is more prevalent in right-leaning outlets, while the surge in fear and decline of emotionally neutral headlines are observable across media outlets regardless of their ideological leanings.

Essay: I Thought I Was Fatherless. Then I Realized What a Father Was.  

June 5, 2012

The reasons behind this phenomenon are multifaceted. Financial pressures to maximize click-through rates, driven by declining revenue in the media industry, likely contribute to the increasing negativity and emotional intensity of headlines. Additionally, crafting headlines to serve political agendas, veering away from fact-based objectivity, may also play a role. While the higher occurrence of negative and angry headlines in right-leaning media is noteworthy, the exact causes are open to speculation and require further research.

It is undeniable that news consumption can be disheartening in today’s world, and the extent of negativity depends on what sources one follows. As researchers continue to delve deeper into the impact of negative news content on readers and democratic institutions, it is essential for individuals to recognize the toll it can take on their well-being. Father’s Day serves as a reminder to prioritize spending time with loved ones, creating warm and positive moments that provide respite from the constant influx of negative information. By finding a balance between staying informed and nurturing our personal relationships, we can foster a healthier and happier mindset. (AI)

 

Saturday April 15, 2023

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday April 15, 2023

Poilievre’s Label Lunacy

December 6, 2022

Pierre Poilievre, aka “Skippy” in Conservative circles, recently caused a stir on Twitter with his demand to Twitter’s Elon Musk to label CBC as a “Conservative news hater.” Poilievre, notorious for his gun-loving persona and tendency to flip-flop on issues, sent a letter insisting on the label, drawing comparisons between the public broadcaster and Russia’s Sputnik TV. However, CBC brushed off Poilievre’s antics, asserting its editorial independence protected by law, despite his reputation as an “angry man.”

The demand by Poilievre, also dubbed the “Gun Nut” by some, left many scratching their heads, with advocacy groups like FRIENDS slamming his irresponsible tactics. Poilievre, a vocal critic of public broadcasting, has a history of bashing government-funded media, but his latest Twitter tantrum has taken things to a whole new level of absurdity.

Opinion: Why CBC isn’t the enemy — no matter what Pierre Poilievre and Elon Musk may think  

July 28, 2022

The brouhaha over the “Conservative news hater” label has sparked a hilarious debate over the use of labels and terminologies. Twitter’s recent change from “state-affiliated” to “government-funded” for public broadcasters like the BBC has left media outlets rolling their eyes, and questioning if Poilievre has taken comedy writing lessons from late-night talk show hosts.

As CBC contemplates how to respond to Poilievre’s demands, other media outlets like NPR have decided to quit Twitter altogether, fearing that their accounts may be inaccurately labeled next. This latest episode in the ongoing circus of Poilievre’s antics has further exposed Twitter’s questionable handling of labels, and left many wondering if politics has turned into a stand-up comedy routine.

NEWS: Poilievre’s pitch to defund CBC, keep French services would require change in law  

September 13, 2022

In conclusion, Pierre Poilievre’s recent demand for a “Conservative news hater” label on CBC’s accounts has brought comedic relief to the otherwise serious debate on government funding for public broadcasters. Poilievre’s fiery antics, including his tendency to flip-flop on issues and his gun-loving persona, have drawn both amusement and bewilderment from various quarters, highlighting the absurdity and unpredictability of modern politics in the age of social media.

 

Thursday March 2, 2023

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday March 2, 2023

Google is stealing from Canadian newspapers and advertisers

June 26, 2019

For 15 years, we’ve all been hearing a fake story about why newspapers around the world are dying. It goes like this — the internet killed the news, with old, slothful media companies being unwilling to adapt to new technology. The closer you look, the less sense this story makes. There are plenty of new media companies, everyone from the Huffington Post to BuzzFeed, digitally native firms with deep pockets and clever managers, who can generate huge amounts of web traffic, but aren’t able to sell the advertising to monetize it. And there is still advertising, lots of it. It’s just that the money for those ads isn’t going to the newspapers on whose sites they sit.

The real story of why newspapers are suffering can be found in an action in January by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, when the U.S. Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, along with eight U.S. states, filed a suit to break up Google’s advertising business. According to American enforcers, the search giant has unlawfully engaged in “monopolizing multiple digital advertising technology products,” basically the software plumbing underneath most online advertising, and thus, the revenue that newspapers rely on. Google inflated its profits, redirecting advertising revenues from newspapers to itself.

June 12, 2019

It’s a complex story, but at the heart of it is what looks like theft. Most of us think of Google as a search engine, and it is. But Google has many other lines of business. This particular suit involves display ads on the open web, which are what you find on the Wall Street Journal or ESPN. These ads are bought and sold in an unusual manner. If a user goes to the site of a newspaper, unbeknownst to the consumer, a highly complex financial market kicks into gear. Newspapers no longer sell most of their advertising directly but have become integrated into a giant set of global auctions. In these auctions, advertisers bid for the right to place their ad not into a specific newspaper, but in front of a specific user. Money then changes hands, from the buyer of the ad to the publisher, with a set of middlemen each taking a cut. This happens in a split second, billions of times a day. At this point, online advertising is far bigger than the stock market in terms of the number of transactions.

Well, guess who runs the software to manage this financial market? Google. And guess who takes the lion’s share of the revenue? Google.

March 21, 2018

There’s a decade-plus-long backstory to this scheme. In the mid-2000s, Google transitioned from its role as a search engine into the main intermediary of all online advertising. In 2005, Google had a lot of advertisers that were buying its search ads. It also started to let smaller websites put strips of ads up and gave them a share of the revenue. Ad industry insiders at the time realized that advertising was transitioning from a Mad Men-style set of local, regional and national markets to an automated set of marketplaces.

Google’s strategy wasn’t to remain a search engine, but to expand and control all online advertising. But the firm had a problem. It couldn’t break into the market for the space on big established publisher sites, because that market was already controlled by another near-monopolist, DoubleClick. DoubleClick had 60 per cent market share in the software used by publishers to manage how they sell ads on their site, or what’s known as an ad server. So, Google’s then-CEO, Eric Schmidt, did what every good monopolist does when in a lax policy regime: he bought his rival — DoubleClick — in 2007. (Continued: The National Post) 

 

Wednesday December 14, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday December 14, 2022

By-elections don’t matter, except when they do

August 1, 2013

Do by-elections, which usually have notoriously low turnout, matter?

We get told general campaigns do, all the time. But what about by-elections? Should we care — and should we care that no one seems to, you know, care about them?

That legendary political muse, Dan Quayle, had the best take on it all. Said the former U.S. vice-president: “A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.”

Well, yes. Hard to quibble with that one. Good insight, Dan.

Fewer folks went to the polls in this weeks by-election in Mississauga Lakeshore — only around 30%. But, before some political scientist starts writing wordy op-eds about the need for compulsory voting, remember: by-elections are beloved by hacks and flaks, but rarely ever regular folks. And they’re the bosses.

June 9, 2022

For instance: Toronto Centre had a byelection in October 2020. More than 80,000 people were entitled to vote. Slightly over 16,000 did. York Centre had a byelection in the same month, with about the same result: more than 70,000 were eligible to cast a ballot. Only 11,000 bothered. Democracy survived.

So, before academia gets its tenured knickers in a knot, remember: by-elections don’t ever attract as much attention ruin as general elections do. That’s normal. And it’s unlikely to change.

Mississauga-Lakeshore therefore had the standard byelection turnout, but a notable result. The result tells us a few things, participation rate notwithstanding. Here they are.

December 18, 2013

One, the Conservative Party got clobbered. The Liberal candidate — a former Kathleen Wynne government minister, and therefore not without blemish — basically massacred his Tory opponent, by thousands of votes. He took 51% to the Conservative’s 37%.

That’s notable, as noted, because that’s a worse showing than what the much-derided Erin O’Toole got when he was running things. In that race, O’Toole’s chosen candidate did better than Pierre Poilievre’s.

Wasn’t Poilievre supposed to sweep the ‘burbs and all that? Wasn’t he supposed to be the thing that cured all that ailed Team Tory?

September 13, 2022

Well, Pierre has represented an Ottawa suburb for years, winning in seven elections. But he didn’t in Mississauga-Lakeshore. How come?

His spinners, all coincidentally anonymous, insist it was because the aforementioned riding is all-Liberal, all the time.

Well, no. That’s false. Sure, Liberal Svend Spengemann represented the riding in the Trudeau era — but before that, Mississauga-Lakeshore was federal Conservative territory for a number of years.

And, oh yes, this: provincially, the riding is still Conservative territory. Just a few months ago, in June, a provincial Conservative candidate won there — by many thousands of votes. And four years before that, same result: the Tories won it, by a lot.

So, that’s all you need to know about the excuse that Mississauga-Lakeshore is a Liberal fortress and Conservatives will never win there: it’s an excuse. It’s bollocks, in fact.

June 24, 2022

What about Team Poilievre’s other excuse — duly reprinted, without attribution in the pages of the Toronto Star, because it serves both their interests — that it’s all Doug Ford’s fault? You know, that the Ontario Premier sank his federal cousins in the by-election because he’s unpopular? Guilt by association and all that.

Except, that one doesn’t wash either. When he’s been running things, in good times and bad, Ford has taken that riding handily. Twice.

Did Ford’s misadventure with the notwithstanding clause, and the general strike it would have caused, hurt Poilievre’s chances?

Again, no. Ford ultimately never used the notwithstanding clause to win a fight with an education union — and there was no general strike, either. And, besides: both those things were controversies many weeks before the by-election even got underway.

So, what was it? Who is to blame for the first real-world test of Pierre Poilievre’s leadership since he became leader?

November 5, 2022

Well, that would be what Poilievre and his caucus see in the bathroom mirror every morning: themselves. The convoy crap, the crypto-currency craziness, the whackadoodle WEF weirdos. All of that, and more, has persuaded many Canadians that, under Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative Party of Canada has abandoned the political center. And is, you know, chasing the People’s Party vote.

Which, by the by, got 286 votes in Mississauga-Lakeshore.

About which, our muse Dan Quayle might say: “Not winning enough of the popular vote? It means you are not popular.” (Warren Kinsella, Toronto Sun) 

 

Tuesday December 6, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday December 6, 2022

Pierre Poilievre’s self-imposed media vacuum is about to face its first test

October 20, 2022

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre believes the voters whose support he needs to lead his party to government in the next federal election will not be reached via the mainstream media.

His strategy is about to be tested.

On Dec. 12, the voters of the GTA riding of Mississauga-Lakeshore will be going to the polls to fill the vacancy left by the resignation of Liberal MP Sven Spengemann last spring.