CTV provides ammo for anti-vaxxers with Stephan COVID story

Originally published at Political RnD

CTV Calgary came under justified criticism this week for running a story based on the social media postings of a uniquely infamous quack.

David Stephan, for those who might not recall, was charged alongside his wife Collet on Valentine’s Day 2013 for failing to provide the necessities of life for their 19-month-old child Ezekiel, who died of a hypoxic brain injury after his parents had treated his meningitis with herbal remedies.

They were convicted by a jury in 2016, but the Supreme Court ordered a new trial in May 2018, which lead to an acquittal by Justice Terry Blackson in September on the grounds that the parents didn’t know Ezekiel had meningitis and that, even if they did, he didn’t directly die from meningitis, a certain genre of ruling that only makes sense to lawyers.

So no, the Stephan’s aren’t murderers, nor were they charged with that, but suffice it to say David’s health advice ought not to be taken seriously.

The recent news story’s headline originally read: ‘Alberta natural health activist says COVID-19 is a hoax’, but was changed to the less inflammatory “‘Public health experts are just that, experts’: U of C professor rejects Stephan’s claim that COVID-19 is ‘a hoax.’”

(It’s important to note that reporters don’t necessarily write their own headlines and, at least in the newspaper business, generally don’t.)

While expertise from University of Calgary’s Dr. Juliet Guichon was included, the lede — the top of the news pyramid — remains focused on Stephan’s view that COVID is a hoax to promote “fancy new vaccines,” and links directly to Stephan’s Facebook post.

A trusted media outlet allowed a conspiracy theory, debunked by medical professionals, to shape the story’s narrative — which is precisely what he wants. Anyone inclined to agree with him isn’t going to be swayed by medical expertise.

One could argue in general, but particularly during a pandemic, there’s a crucial responsibility for news outlets to avoid sensationalism.

This is, admittedly, a difficult balance to strike while attempting to cover sensationalized news but the responsibility lies with the trusted organization — no one else.

“There could be many reasons for a news organization to publish such a story – they may have noticed it going viral on social media without rebuttal and have wanted to counter it; they may see significant interest in stories around Stephans and want to build on that; they may believe that it is crucial to fact-check hoax claims,” University of British Columbia media historian Heidi Tworek tells Political RnD.

“But there are dangers to amplifying these claims, even as we rebut them.”

Jeremy Klaszus of Calgary’s The Sprawl tweeted that this reflective of a certain tendency in mainstream journalism to seek out ‘both sides’ sides of an issue, even when one side hasn’t a clue what they’re talking about.

“This is what happens when you hold up neutrality, rather than truth, as the ideal for journalism,” he said. “They are not the same. People think they are, but they’re not.”

CTV Calgary managing editor Dawn Walton declined to comment on how the network decided to run the story.

“We appreciate your interest, but we will not be participating,” Walton wrote in an e-mail.

Tworek says the CTV story clearly rebutted Stephan’s claims, but at the same time clearly provided amplification to an anti-vaxxer.

While Stephan’s Facebook post was shared 192 times, the CTV article was shared more than 3,000 times on the same website, she observed.

This demonstrates the importance of guarding against “unintentionally granting greater notoriety to conspiracy theories by debunking them,” said Tworek.

“More broadly, though, this article raises the question of how we will deal with the anti-vaxxer movement if a vaccine really is the only long-term solution to the coronavirus. We are going to need clear communication that does not just frame stories around debunking anti-vaxxers.”

Broadcast council says it’s not their jurisdiction

Canada is sort of a Wild West for regulating broadcasters’ online presence.

There’s no regulation mechanism for online content in Canada, according to Canadian Broadcast Standards Council spokesperson  Kristen Smeltzer.

The CBSC is a complaint-driven organization, which forwards complaints to the broadcasters themselves, who provide an explanation. If the complainant is unsatisfied, the CBSC secretariat investigates whether there was a breach of their Code, Smeltzer explained.

If there’s a potential Code violation, the matter gets sent to an adjudicating panel composed of members of the broadcasting industry and public.

Outlets found by the panel to have breached CBSC standards are required to air an announcement of the finding.

But this process doesn’t apply to online outlets.

“The Codes that the CBSC administers apply only to content broadcast on traditional radio or television relating to issues such as representation of identifiable groups, violence, sex, coarse language, accuracy and fairness of news, privacy, etc.,” Smeltzer wrote in an email.

“Thus, the CBSC cannot deal with complaints about internet content or social media, even if that content is related to a CBSC broadcaster associate’s station and posted on their website.”

Some online outlets are members of the National NewsMedia Council, which provides similar oversight to print publications, but no Canadian broadcaster’s online division is a member.

 

Hope in a time of unprecedented crisis

Originally published in the Medicine Hat News

There’s no question our world has changed immeasurably in less than a week.

Seemingly overnight, our daily lives have transformed into the beginning of every post-apocalyptic science fiction movie. But the choice of what happens next is in our hands.

Please, for the love of all that is sacred, listen to the advice of medical professionals. Wash your hands as much as physically possible. Limit your physical exposure to other people, particularly if you’re feeling ill. Better to err on the side of caution in the throes of a pandemic.

We in the media, who are fortunate enough to be one of the industries who can continue work from home with relative ease, have a particular responsibility to not understate the risk we’re in.

People will die. If you look to Italy – where hospitals are so overcrowded frontline healthcare workers must make the dreadful decision of who should receive treatment – this much is clear. The issue for us here in Canada is to minimize the number of deaths from this contagion.

The federal government must immediately take steps to close the border with our neighbour to the south, whose leadership tragically has no plan whatsoever to deal with the emergency at hand and is far more likely to contribute to the spread of the virus here than anyone else.

We have to be prepared for the worst, but we also have to look towards our future after the pandemic is settled, at the very least to avoid mass hysteria. It’s a delicate balance, undoubtedly.

Policy prescriptions that were seen as beyond the pale just five days ago, such as a universal pharmacare, guaranteed basic income, printing money and nationalization, are now necessities when so many are going to be out of work and in poor health for the foreseeable future.

Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures.

The reality is we’re going to need a massive pooling together of public resources, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Second World War to ensure society doesn’t collapse under the weight of this pandemic.

The government is going to have to step in to offer massive bailouts to entire industries that will be affected. But we can learn from the mistakes of the 2008 bailout of the financial sector, where financial institutions were propped up while the rest were left to suffer.

There will be those who use this crisis, just as they used the financial crisis, to promote their corporate agenda.

While we’re all rightfully focused on COVID-19, the Alberta government is still, as of press time, preparing to auction off Crown land near Taber on March 31.

And Premier Jason Kenney is using the chaotic scene at airports to flex his Wexit “fair deal” muscle, lambasting “inadequate federal screening protocols for international travellers” and directing the province to step in.

Provinces should indeed play a salient role in addressing this crisis alongside the feds and municipalities, but now is not the time for superficial political theatrics between the different levels of government.

For the time being, the provincial government appears to have called off its wars on nurses, doctors and teachers.

But when there’s a return to a semblance of normalcy, be prepared for the hits to come even harder.

Those of us who are proponents of strong climate action and all the major, structural changes it entails need to make the case that if we can come together in a time of crisis to ensure everyone is taken care of, we can do so to avoid the next major crisis on the horizon.

In these trying times, it’s easy to fall into despair. But just remember, we’re all in this together and we can only get through this crisis collectively.

So reach out to your loved ones, particularly those who are elderly, immunocompromized or living with mental illness. Even though we’re going to be physically isolated from each other, we have the opportunity to put the “social” back in “social media” and, like Noah from the Bible, figure out what happens after the deluge.

This will all end eventually. The question is what sort of world we want to build afterwards.