Editor’s note: In honour of National Newspaper Week, which runs Oct. 4-10, here’s a guest editorial from Gordon Cameron, executive director of the Ontario Community Newspapers Association
I don’t spend much time on social media anymore. Granted, part of it is due to Facebook and Instagram’s parent company deciding to block all Canadian news rather than sharing some of the money it was making from it, but it goes beyond that. Once upon a time, I’d log on and be updated on the lives and loves of family, friends and acquaintances. Now my feeds are increasingly filled with ads and posts from companies, groups and bots that our ol’ friend Al Gorithm thinks I might enjoy.
Sorry, Al. You’re not on my friends list. You don’t know me very well, and your recommendations are made with your corporate interests and not my actual interests in mind. If I could block you, I would.
However, I’ve got to hand it to Al. He’s not content to sit on his laurels and soak up the California sun. Having vampirically sucked the joy out of social media, he’s now turned his greasy gaze towards news. And while it stinks that he’s hiding photos of my friends, the wretched miasma emanating from his foray into journalism is enough to choke us all.
Al’s the kid in class who copies someone else’s homework, only he’d rather copy from the most popular kid rather than the smartest. Sometimes, they can be the same kid, but when they’re not the harm goes well beyond Al’s academic career. Ever the entrepreneur, Al does a brisk business in monetizing his plagiarism by giving “his” homework to anyone who wants it. If the stolen paper was good, then the loser will be the ace student who did the work yet is seen as being no better than those who stole from him. When it’s bad, you end up with an entire generation of kids who think the United States won the War of 1812.
Al’s penchant for the popular is even worse when it comes to news. As he only consumes news online, the work of credible journalists and news sources can be overwhelmed by uninformed opinion, biased writing, AI slop and the work of bad actors who sow misinformation and discord. Al knows that people are more likely to click on something that seems shocking or counter intuitive, so that’s what he gives them, truth be damned.
Fortunately, there is an antidote to Al – local journalism created and curated by real people in your real community. They’re your neighbours. They sponsor the local festival. Their kids go to local schools. If they get something wrong or criticize someone unfairly, they know they’ll hear about it. Al? He’s never been to your hometown, his e-mail is unlisted and even if you did manage to get a message to him, he doesn’t care as you’re only a number to him.
The character of Al Gorithm is a silly way to bring attention to a serious problem, namely that you shouldn’t allow a bunch of ones and zeros to tell you what going on in a world it can’t comprehend. Human journalists aren’t always right, but we are dedicated to truth, fairness and our communities in a way that Al never will be.
And while you can live without the latest photos from your friends, you can’t live without the truth about what’s going on in the place you call home.