Facts or Fake News: Are You Being Informed or Misled?

The Empire Club Presents

Lisa Laflamme & Sally Armstrong, with: Facts or Fake News: Are You Being Informed Or Misled?

Welcome Address, by Barbara Jesson President of Jesson + Company Communications Inc. and President of the Empire Club of Canada

January 25, 2018

From One King West in downtown Toronto, welcome, to the Empire Club of Canada. For those of you just joining us through either our webcast or our podcast, welcome, to the meeting. Before our distinguished speakers are introduced today, it gives me great pleasure to introduce our Head Table Guests. I would ask each Guest to stand for a brief moment and be seated as your name is called. I would ask the audience to refrain from applauding until all of the Head Table Guests have been introduced.

Head Table

Distinguished Guest Speaker:

Ms. Sally Armstrong, Human Rights Activist, Journalist and Award-Winning Author

Ms. Lisa LaFlamme, Chief News Anchor and Senior Editor, CTV National News

Guests:

Mr. Ali Badruddin, Managing Director, Management Consulting, StrategyCorp Inc.; Director, Empire Club of Canada

Ms. Sarah Banks, VP Group Director, FCB Toronto

Mr. Michael Cooke, Editor, Torstar Corporation

Mr. John Honderich, Chair, Torstar Corporation

Ms. Rosa Hwang, Senior Broadcast Producer, News and Network Specials, CTV National News

Ms. Lisa LaVecchia, President and Chief Executive Officer, Ontario Tourism and Marketing Partnership Corporation (OTMPC)

Dr. Gordon McIvor, Past President, Empire Club of Canada

Mr. Mike Van Soelen, Managing Principal, Navigator Limited

My name is Barbara Jesson. I am the President of the Empire Club of Canada and the President of Jesson + Company Communications.

We are very pleased to welcome some students from Centennial College and Ryerson University. Thank you to Bill and Nona MacDonald Heaslip for sponsoring our student table today. Students, please, rise and be recognized. This is going to be one fascinating lunch. Of course, what interests me most in this whole debate about fake news and alt facts is the way both sides of the divide shout at one another, and we do not seem to be getting any closer to common ground—not that alternative facts have not always been a part of the political landscape. But, today, emboldened by a U.S. President who regularly derides mainstream journalists as creators of false news, the purveyors of misleading information are on overdrive.

Most of us are quite simply astonished and dumbfounded—one might say gob smacked—by the bold-faced lies being propagated as fact. I was watching a roundup the other night of Donald Trump’s first year in office, and, despite all logic, his base remains solidly behind him and deeply distrustful of traditional media.

Several years ago, I read a book entitled The Righteous Mind, by a writer named Jonathan Haidt. Haidt asks the perennial question: Why does the other side not listen to reason? His research shows that, particularly, when facing moral or political questions, people reach their conclusions quickly and then scan their brains to marshal arguments that defend their position, producing reasons only later to justify what they have already decided. Haidt posits that reasoning itself is not impartial. It does not act like a judge or a teacher weighing in and evaluating evidence.

It acts more like a lawyer or a press secretary, justifying our facts and judgments to others. In this interpretation, reason evolves to help us spin, not to help us learn.

If you want to change people’s minds, Haidt argues that there is no point in appealing to reason. Let us substitute here hard facts. He suggests that we have to address the underlying institutions or emotions that lead to the conclusions that reason defends.

With us are two of the most credible journalists working in the Canadian media landscape. We are very fortunate to have them with us to share their perspectives on this bewildering new world we live in.

Lisa LaFlamme has been the Chief News Anchor and Senior Editor of CTV National News since 2011, leading the country’s number one newscast. She led CTV News and delivered live coverage of the inauguration of Donald Trump from Washington, D.C. She is known for landing exclusive interviews with leading global figures and has interviewed five Canadian prime ministers.

Prior to assuming the Anchor Chair, Ms. LaFlamme spent a decade on the road as National Affairs Correspondent for CTV National News, covering everything from wars and elections to natural disasters in some of the world’s most dangerous locations.

She is a trailblazer for women in Canadian news broadcasting, covering some of the biggest stories of the times.

Sally Armstrong is a human rights activist, a journalist and an award-winning author. She has covered stories about women and girls in zones of conflict all over the world. From Bosnia and Somalia to the Middle East and Rwanda and to the Congo and Afghanistan and Iraq, her eye-witness reports have earned her awards including the Gold Award from the National Magazine Awards Foundation and the Author’s Award from the Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Letters. She received the Amnesty International Canada Media Award in 2000, 2002, 2011 and again last year.

She is the author of several acclaimed books, including Veiled Threat: The Hidden Power of the Women of Afghanistan; The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor; Bitter Roots, Tender Shoots: The Uncertain Fate of Afghanistan’s Women and Ascent of Women.

Please, join me in welcoming these two remarkable journalists to our podium.

Lisa LaFlamme & Sally Armstrong

LL: Hi, everybody.

SA: No shortage of news today.

LL: I guess I should say at the outset I have had about two hours of sleep, so forgive me.

SA: I had plenty. I heard the news and went to bed. My first question, of course, would be: Given the shocking story that CTV broke last night, and given everybody’s concern and quick accusation these days of fake news, could you take us through the anatomy of a breaking news story and how you make sure it is not fake news?

LL: I think what unfolded and what ultimately went to air last night on CTV National News is an absolute affront to what fake news is in the sense that it was a collaborative effort. It is months in the process to break a story like that. The last few weeks have been about intense interviewing of not just the victims, but anybody connected to them. The amount of work that reporters and producers put in to verify every single thing you hear from locations to you name it—it is a stunning thing.

For the last week, there were hours on the phone with the lawyers and because, of course, we listen to—this very small team—every single interview that has been conducted. I do not laugh, believe me, but this morning, I listened to many people saying, “Well, they are anonymous victims.” I think people do not realize they are not anonymous to us, and they are not anonymous, in this particular case, to Patrick Brown. It is our journalistic obligation to tell the person that you are about to report on what the allegation is to give them plenty of time—six hours in this case—to respond to the allegation. It is fascinating how many weeks and weeks and weeks of really quiet work goes into something like this. Then, it gets really intense when you feel like you have got it.

Then, yesterday we had the final corroboration that we needed to know this is just so solid. When our lawyer said, “Okay,” this became a journalistic question when you push the go button, so to speak. Then it is intense. It is crazy. To be in a newsroom on the night of a huge story like that—it is just otherworldly because, in the early part of the afternoon, only a few people really know. We have got a fake intro, fake news.

We put a fake intro in the lineup, so that nobody else knows because we do not want anybody to have the information until it is perfect in the system. Lots of people can access your news computer from across the network anyway, and then slowly it started emerging. We have got something really significant here.

Then, we heard that there was a press conference at 9:45. When I first saw that email, I thought “9:45 in the morning.” I was thinking, “I can do that and still get to this event,” and I was thinking of everything else. Then I read it again and realized: It is 9:45 tonight. Wow, what is he going to do? Then, we watched the press conference. We were live at 10 o’clock. Literally, the show was going to air, and someone yelled out, “They’re resigning.” At 10 o’clock, four of the people around Patrick Brown had resigned. After the 11 o’clock news, we were up to five resignations. By one in the morning, it was up to seven resignations. By 1:40 in the morning, he had resigned. It was just a flurry of craziness at that final moment. You do not know. I think we are all a little nervous when you are about to put something to air.

The one thing that gives me confidence is the hard work that everybody has put in, the hours and hours. The public does not realize how much work goes into these stories, so that we are absolutely rock solid. That is what makes us not fake news. That is the difference right there.

SA: A lot of what we are looking at today has to do with public awareness, public education, informing ourselves, so that we have better decisions and opinions to share. Fake news seems to be a pretty easy thing. You simply stand up and say, “No, I did not do it,” or “No, I was not there.” What we are seeing so often, today, is an outright lie. We are getting so used to it that we tend to move on to the next item. Define for me ‘fake news’.

LL: Fake news is exactly that, the deliberate effort to mislead people. It is misinformation that is designed to discredit a company, a person, to smear a reputation with a snippet of information that is a rumour, largely. It is funny—even Barbara mentioned Donald Trump—as much as he likes to say he coined this, he did not, but he did use the term ‘fake’ last year in 2017, 400 times. That is unbelievable to me that he is the man that has really put this worm in the brain of everybody, and there are those who just see this as a permission, almost. The term ‘fake news’ is permission to ignore a story, permission to say, “I do not like what you have got to say, so I am going to label it fake news.” It is very dangerous.

SA: He uses language, I was going to say, to his own liking, but he uses language that I do not even think a grade four student would use, words like ‘bigly’, which I heard him say the other day: “I’m going to change things bigly.” I used to be a teacher. But he is huge. Come on, you know what I mean. He is huge.

I am interested in talking to Lisa about how this is affecting all of us. It knocks us off kilter. We do not believe anybody anymore. We do not believe our institutions, and with plenty of evidence in the news to say our institutions might be taking a piece of us, we do not believe people anymore. From what I understand, it is a very damaging thing for democracy. I would like to ask you, how do you think about that as a news anchor, a person in position of holding the trust of the public?

LL: At the outset, I want to say that just a few weeks ago, I looked at a poll, in this country. We are all very quick to just assume the information from the U.S. is our same story, and it is so clearly not, specifically on this. I am proud to say, as a member of Canadian journalism that at the last poll—which was a sizeable poll—85% of Canadians still believe in credible news sources, in mainstream media, if you want, legacy media—call it what you want.

The United States is shocking. For them, 37% believe in the conventional news outlets that have forever been the purveyors of information on any level. To your point, it is true that this destabilizes democracy to have this accusation. It is not just that we do not believe in what the media says; we do not believe our banks; we do not believe schools. It is that we have lost trust in the things that make us a robust democracy, which is why I do not think we should take this as a joke or laugh off fake news. It is a very real trend now that is damaging to that which we hold dear, which is democracy.

As a journalist, it saddens me so much, because I see firsthand every day, day in and day out, what the work of journalists around the world and around this country do every day to make sure that what they are putting in a newspaper or on television newscasts is the truth. It is a very disturbing thing.

I also look at how, globally, dictators are just doing the happy dance that now we can use the term ‘fake news’, because Donald Trump used it. I hear officials from Myanmar saying about the report that 600,000 Rohingya, who were ethnically cleansed out of Rakhine state in Myanmar and are now living in these squalid camps in Bangladesh, “Oh, that is fake news.”

We have journalists who, as you do, and as you know so well, risk their lives to go and show you exactly what is happening on the ground. That is why it is so critically important, and it saddens me also. I do not want to get into this, the shrinking of the media profile, because, now more than ever, this needs to grow, so that we can counter these uninformed accusations of fake news.

SA: We have to wonder how long fake news has been around. How long have people swayed the truth or added a ‘fact’ that was not true? When you are covering conflict, we know that one of the first casualties of war is usually the truth. It is not necessarily that somebody wants to lie to you. In my experience, they are so afraid you will not believe how bad things are. They up the ante a little, but you have got to be very careful.

There is a quote from Isaac Asimov, the U.S. scientist and writer. He said this long before Trump. He said, “The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” Is that what we are dealing with today? I am thinking of the red states.

LL: He has been dead 20 years or something, and he said that. He is probably rolling over in his grave right now at how true that statement is today, and at how even the most uninformed opinion has to be viewed through the same prism as an informed opinion. It is absurd that anything less would be undemocratic. Yet, it is true. I think Twitter has become a platform for that—a lot of social media outlets: “This is what I have to say.” People confuse opinion with fact. I think that is such a true statement for—do you know what year he said that?

SA: No. It has got to be the ‘80s

LL: This is, to a degree, where we have come. Algorithms are dictating what people read and what they watch. You are letting your Facebook feeds—I am going to say I am probably the only person in this room who is actually not on Facebook, intentionally. But it is true that we have sort of handed over our critical thinking gene to these algorithms who said, “You really like those all-bright sites, so that is all we are going to feed you.” It is kind of why we are so polarized right now. Everyone is in their bunker, their biased bunker, and it is so negative. It is really unproductive in trying to build any kind of unity or fairness in society right now.

SA: I think one of the issues—now that we are facing fake news—is that we see stories from two different points of view, and we do not know whether to trust either of them. I have an example that Lisa and I were both involved with. A week ago Sunday night, the fantastic television program 60 Minutes did a story on the American military in Afghanistan. That was Sunday night. On Monday night, I was on CTV with Lisa to discuss Afghanistan—I had just returned from Afghanistan where I had done a story on the people of Afghanistan. The 60 Minutes story was absolutely accurate. It was about the fact that American military cannot put their feet on the pavement of the city of Kabul. If they need to go two miles away, their words—I would put that in kilometres for us—they go by helicopter. Two miles. They go by helicopter because they are not safe to be on the streets of Kabul. The whole program was about that lack of safety for the American military, armed to the teeth.

They made no mention of whatsoever of the people of Afghanistan. My story was about the people of Afghanistan. I did mention the fact that the Taliban are boasting that they have taking over 50% of the country. There are five insurgencies. Security is a catastrophe. I talked about the fact that the people of Afghanistan are actually—security to one side—are better off than they have ever been in their lives, as 9.2 million kids are back in school; maternal mortality has decreased by 75%; life expectancy has increased from 47 years to 62 years; and polio is almost eradicated. This is pretty amazing news. That was what my story was about. Their story was about a soldier cannot walk on the streets of the main city in Kabul. What is this, propaganda on their part? Propaganda on my part? How do we, as viewers or readers, determine how to take news like that? Their story would say that is the worst place on the planet. Mine would say, “Look at this; they are moving ahead.”

LL: Through the lens of military, I think it is. It feels that way because of the fact that they need an apache to get them from A to B down the streets that we both walk down when you could. Both our news and both reporters—any correspondent who is covering military is trying to get to the truth of whether the military is having an impact or not. You or any journalist covering the humanitarian side is trying to see what is happening in the city market. Is it still safe? They both, actually, have to work together. The military is there so that the public can be in the public market as they would like to see progress that you have described in your piece. Both are news, and, as I say, the goal is for both sets of reporters to find the truth.

I have to come back to the concept of fake news, because I, personally, have very close friends who have done these stories and are suffering deeply, mentally, because of the trauma of what they covered. To me, anybody who suggests that the work they are doing or the work you just did there—anybody who says that is fake news is committing a crime in itself in a sense. To me, it is so upsetting that this stuff can just be dismissed and discredited.

The President of Afghanistan is quite—as you talked to him as well—open about what is working and what is not working in that particular country, but both of those stories have to emerge, and I think we have to trust again. It is about the credible journalist that when they go cover the military, they are looking at the up and the downside; they are not spewing the military brass line, and you are not just carrying the shiny bauble that shows kids are at school. You also show that to get to that school, they are risking their lives—there are acid attacks, random IEDs that blow out a school. Then what happens to the progress? We focus, sadly, on that explosion. That is why I loved what you just recently did, to shine a light on the positive stuff that we do not share as often as we should. I admit that.

SA: Tell me, sitting in your chair every night, what is the biggest change you have seen regarding this kind of reporting, let us say in the last two years?

LL: We always cared about facts and truth and getting it right. We do not always. I think that is an important point, that when the legitimate media outlet gets it wrong, we correct it. You admit it, and you correct it. What worries me is—well, it worries me as a journalist and as a human being, really—this destabilizing of all things that were credible. The hard work people do can, by one simple social media post—what do you call it when Twitter blows up? I cannot even think of the term now, but character assassination happens so fast. It is break-neck speed how something can happen, and boom, we forget. Tomorrow, we may not even remember that last night something happened that changed the face of the largest province in this country and the political campaign that is unfolding. That concerns me greatly: The short attention span of the public.

I am saddened when I see open racism. I have never seen it like this before. I will say that it did not start with Donald Trump. I saw it building. I saw it building in our own election campaign that my Twitter feed was just full of hate and open racism. These are people who confuse free speech with hate speech. Who is there with the checks and balances? Legitimate media outlets, people for whom this is our job that we are trained to do. I think we just have to keep the fight up to keep reminding people that no, this is not just someone comes off the street and starts spreading a rumour and says this is a news story. That worries me enormously. It does. Honestly.

Rosa is here, and she is my absolute right arm every day, all day, and every weekend and always, whether we are traveling on the road or are here, in Toronto. And it is always, always the same question: Do we have this right? We need to do three more phone calls. We have got to make sure we have this right. Every word in that newscast we analyze. I am not kidding you: We go through every single word. We ask, “Is this really conveying what we mean to say here?” It is very serious when anybody tries to dismiss this kind of credibility for any journalist so off the cuff like that. That concerns me.

SA: Let us look at it from the side of the public just briefly. Last question.

LL: Already?

SA: What is the responsibility of the public? What have you done about your comments section, for example?

LL: Wow, that is a great question. We closed our comment section, as did other media outlets, because it became a forum for hate. Even, I will say to you, you were on the show a week ago.

SA: Do not you tell anybody that someone said something bad about me.

LL: Not you, Sally. I will be honest, because it is important people know what is out there. Sally and I do a great segment on the positives unfolding. What do I get? A litany of tweets, which I do not respond to, but I am human; I do read it. It is all about, “Okay whatever, I am glad things are going well; keep them there.” It is all anti-immigration stuff. It is just shocking how people—some of them put their name to it—have no problem revealing this dark, ugly side of society and humanity that has always been there, and now it is like free license to say it out loud. We closed our comments section, because it was not productive. For our CTV National News Facebook account, you can still comment, because it is your name, and we can find out what you had for breakfast three days ago on that one. Twitter is a different ballgame. Yes, we have taken action, as have others to try to cut down on adding fuel or being a platform for something we do not support, to give air to.

SA: I think we are about to face a big pushback from audiences all over North America, and I hope all over the world, because somebody is going to have to deal with the fake news, with the really disgusting things that are being passed around on social media.

In fact, the Canadian Journalism Foundation has just announced that there is a news literacy prize of $10,000 to the organization that—I am going to try to quote them properly—encourages practices that underpin factual reporting as key to democracy. It always comes back to the public, and what are the people going to do about this? Now, what are you going to ask us? We have time for a few questions, do we not? Please, go ahead. There is one right there.

Questions & Answers

Q: Thank you for those comments, really insightful and interesting. I am wondering if you could share some insights around perhaps the balance or tension between journalistic integrity and the sensationalism that we are seeing more and more of, I think, that drive audiences or sell papers and that drive balance and/or tension, or however you see it?

LL: We call it ‘clickbait’, and a catchy headline has always been, forever, as long as there has been newspapers or tabloids or TV news, that one liner. We have this joke in the newsroom that something in your fridge will kill you. Stay for that. It is coming up after the break. Then, it is like mold or something like that. We do have to think about that, but I hope that the viewer and the reader is as discerning. This is, I think, what you mean when you talk about media literacy. The new illiteracy is people who know how to read, do not [read]. It does not preclude you from being the President of the United States. It is a fascinating thing. Again, it is about tearing down the sensationalism, which is also another definition of fake news, and telling it like it is. There are wars over what story is going to get the most clicks on it, and, therefore, the dimes that some advertiser is going to make, because enough people clicked on it. It is the balance. It is the constant balance of finding it.

SA: The sensationalist side of it is so easily available, especially, where I work. Stories like that, you can pick up six a day, but to get to the real story behind all of that, that is the story that stays with the reader or viewer. That is a story that makes change and contributes, I believe, I hope, to democracy. To pick up the sensation— well, people do, and we can pick them up on feeds all over the place.

LL: A good point to that is during the U.S. election, this story, “The Pope endorses Donald Trump,” was clearly BS, but it trended on Twitter. It became fact, for a lot of people believed that was fact. I think that part of media literacy is that the public needs to click on the site; do a little bit more homework; find out who owns that site. What is the point of that site? Who is trying to convince you of something and why? There are such simple ways, and it is always about checking the source. Consider the source.

SA: One of the ways, I have to say, is that when the Toronto Star started—I am just losing his name, the reporter who kept track of Donald Trump’s lies.

LL: Daniel Dale.

SA: Yes, it was a brilliant idea. It became the news itself, and everybody started talking about what a great idea it was repeating the lies, et cetera, but it is a check and balance that we did not have to use before. I thought that was very smart Mr. Cooke.

LL: Whoever thought the word ‘lie’? Like, we never ever accused people of lying on TV. We just never did it.

SA: You would not dare do it.

LL: We never did it. Now, to say that is a lie or that he lied is a fascinating thing. I think it is a great challenge for parents of kids these days and all the students at those two tables: You have got a lot of work to do for your generation to help them know how you check a source and make sure a story is fact.

Q: Just picking up on that point, Lisa, that you just said. A part of it—as a former journalist who, well, you are a journalist for life, really—is when we talk about how informed we are, it is also about how we inform our society, our future generations, and how much of that should be on us, so that they can recognize the difference between fact and fiction, so that they are not led by social media.

LL: That is a great point, because we are all in this together. Let us face it: We are a society. It is not journalists; it is not teachers; it is parents. It starts at home. It has to. Those are the first influences of a child’s mind. I am not a mother, but I have eight nieces and nephews. Believe me, I grill them regularly and always have. It is a part of a conversation that has to start very young, and then it carries through. It cannot be on the shoulders of any bad behaviour. It cannot just be at the top level. Everybody on every level has to watch this, expose it. If you see something, say something. It is that sort of thing. That education really starts right away, I think.

SA: The other thing is to look at the problems that media outlets are having today in getting the paper out or the book printed, or the program made. Maybe it is time we had a look at hardcore media and what they are doing, what problems they are running into, and how we can—I mean, it is possible that a lot of people do not even read the news in a day, so they are so vulnerable to picking up rubbish that is easily available all over the place.

LL: Yes, it is a headline world. That is why, I have to say this, too: Everybody keeps saying the conventional television newscast is dead. Sorry, but we have massive ratings. We have never had better ratings. I look at this, and I ask, “Why is this?” Because all day long, people are inundated with headlines or tweets or bits of information. I guess it speaks volumes for Canadians that they say, “I want to actually know the context; I want to know the actual story.” I think it means a) that, more than ever, news is critically important and b) that people do want, in this country, people to be informed. I think that is a headline right there. We are different than our neighbours to the south.

Q: Why do you think Trump seems to be so immune to the things that have felled so many others? They just seem to roll off of him. There are differences between Canada and the States, but you think, in some ways, the States is much more conservative in their values. If you could just sort of give me an opinion on that, I would be interested in hearing it.

LL: That is a very tough one. It is fascinating that a porn star can get $130,000 in hush money from the president, and he is still the president. I do not know how to answer that question.

SA: I believe that is why we are all feeling so off kilter. Time magazine ran a short essay last week by Steven Pinker, the psychologist, to talk about how to manage yourself through these very unsettling times. A dishonest person won the biggest race in the world. A dishonest person continues to hold the chair with one lie after another, and it leaves you thinking, “How can this be? Where do I fit in this? And what is going to come at me next? And which company is going to tell me another lie?” I think that is the bottom line in terms of how unsettled people are.

There was a review, also, on how many people have PTSD simply from listening to the news. I think it is a good point.

There has to be pushback, and I think the pushback is beginning. This forum, for example, and the Canadian Journalism Foundation coming out with a $10,000 prize, in our business—that is a pretty big deal. I think people will creatively come together and decide; they always do, at the darkest hour, decide how they can make change.

LL: Satirists always nail this. Every night, the late-night comedy shows do. They nail it every night, and it is funny. It is funny when it is presented in front of you that way. Yet, it is so not funny, this era of nothing matters and that you can do anything you want, and you can say anything you want, and, depending on your position, in this case, it does not seem to matter.

I agree with you that there will be a pushback. There is a pushback, and it does matter if enough people say, “Yes, actually, this does matter.” And democracy always dictates in the end. There will be mid-term elections. We will have an election next year. It always comes down to the voter, thankfully, in the end. We will see how things unfold at that point. It is a really tough question to answer. There are mechanisms in governments, and we will see if they are enacted.

SA: The bottom line, I think, is we are in a very troubled place, and it is all of us. It is not just the President of the United States or the anchors, CTV National News, or any one of you. It is all of us, as Lisa said. We are in this together. Together we are going to get out of it.

LL: This feels really depressing. We are actually a lot better at a dinner party, but it does feel depressing, and yet it is not. It should be encouraging to everybody here that we can make a difference. Every single person makes a difference when they say no, I am not buying that.

Q: My question concerns the influence of nations that want to destroy democracy, such as Russia, and their role in the U.S. election, and apparently the attempted role in the French election, but the French pushed back and said, “We are not going to stoop to that level.” What role do journalists play in making sure that Canadian politicians do not ever take the bait to endorse things that would promote outside interests for their benefit and at the expense of their opponent?

LL: I think we all learned a lot about the way the U.S. election coverage unfolded. In this country, I know that Facebook has already been in meetings with the federal government to try to come up with new rules around who you are going to allow to advertise, how you are going to reveal up front who is paying for that infomercial or whatever it is, and there are mechanisms that are being worked on before our next election to prevent against exactly this. I think that it is a shock that it seemed to just sweep the U.S. election and, now, we learned pretty much two days after last November, how influenced they really were and how there was some guy in a basement in Macedonia firing out all this stuff, getting paid for it, and making it seem real. Facebook, Google, you name it, ran it. They ran it with no headline, flashing lights saying, “This is fake news!” People bought it. We have all learned a lot. I think we continue learning on that front to try to expose who is trying to corrupt our democracy from outside our own borders.

SA: I want to add to that, though. It is not our job, as journalists, to convince politicians not to take that route. It is our job, as journalists, to follow them, to report on them, to dig out what is being hidden. I had to do an interview in Afghanistan recently, and, actually, with our very, very charming ambassador. When I was arranging the interview, he said, “Is there anything else you need?” I said, “Yes, I want you to put me in touch with two people who can tell me what you will not tell me.” That is our job: To find out. Our job is not to tell politicians how to behave. I am sure you saw the movie The Post and the dogged work people did in order to get at the truth and expose the danger that was going on.

LL: That is the old line, our job is to make people in comfortable positions uncomfortable, exposing the truth.

Q: Hi, Lisa. After all these years in the industry, what still inspires you?

LL: Wow.

SA: I did not hear.

LL: After all these years in this business, what still inspires us? That is such a great question, because I am perpetually inspired. I really am. I am not an easy mark, but I am inspired by people every day, whether they are here, in Toronto, or last night it was Joannie Rochette.

SA: Was that not terrific?

LL: There are so many times Rosa warns me, “You better watch this story before it goes to air because it is really emotional,” because there are so many people who are doing inspiring things. I am always inspired. I am never going to let that go because what is the alternative, honestly? It would be a pretty black world if things that people do, little things that are world-changing would never even get noticed. I do believe it. I know I said it before, but it is one person at a time that makes a difference.

SA: Just when you think you have seen it all, nothing could top this story, a little, tiny story blows up and becomes even better than that when, again, it was while I was in Afghanistan, just a few weeks ago. Do you remember? It was 2009. Do you remember that terrible story about the young girls going to school in Kandahar, and a bunch of boys came by on motorbikes, and they threw battery acid in their faces for going to school? It made world headlines. I remember Laura Bush had a lot to say about this, and President Karzai contacted the young girl who had the worst of the acid. Her name is Shamsia. He said he would send her to India for treatment, but he said to her, “I will find the man who did this to you, and I will have him executed.” The kid goes off to India; she gets treatment, very, very good treatment. She comes back; she finishes school; and she gets picked up by this extraordinary group called Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, and they turn her into a top-notch teacher because they have got modern methods, and they have got a way of enhancing their own knowledge. She becomes a teaching star. What did she say? She said, “President Karzai broke his promise to me. He did not catch that guy.

That guy is still wandering around my neighbourhood.” She said, “I gave that man a worse punishment than the President could ever give him. I am teaching the girls.” You are forever inspired by a new story.

BJ: On that note, we have a question from our student table. LL: Ladies and gentlemen, the future.

Q: Hello. In regards to the next generation, my question to you is how do we voice opinions on what we believe is unethical or wrong in the media we hear, besides the use of social media? I find that social media has been such a huge influence and a platform for students, like us, to voice our opinions, whether or not they are correct or wrong. How do we go about that?

LL: How do we go about voicing our opinions? On social media and…?

Q: In terms of social media, what sort of platforms can we use?

LL: CTV National News. Hello? The point is there are now more ways than ever in history to voice an opinion. The question is do not confuse an opinion—what is that great line? You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts. That is the key to this; it is to call out the errors, the lies. There is some site called “Snoop,” I think. What is it called?

Q: Snopes.

LL: Snopes. This is an amazing site that I am just recently learning about where you can, if you read something on social media, call them out. Then, everyone knows that this story has no veracity or where it came from or something like that. Anyway, Snopes.

Note of Appreciation, by Dr. Gordon McIvor, Past President, Empire Club of Canada

I could have listened to you guys all afternoon. That was absolutely wonderful.

By the way, there was such a great documentary, here, with the two of you speaking on this topic.

If you want us to give you the tape, we are glad to do so. We are very fortunate to have heard from two highly qualified, respected and experienced Canadian journalists, today, on a topic that is now certainly part of our zeitgeist, an unfortunate reality that has not only made life more difficult for journalists, as we heard, but, indeed, as both of our speakers articulated today, for every citizen as well, since we can no longer assume that anything we consume is based on empirical fact.

The emergence of fake news has changed the way we view the world, which has become increasingly complex and difficult to navigate with any certainty. It changes the results of elections.

It causes people to hate each other based on falsehoods, lies and innuendo. It leads many of us into a kind of a permanent, philosophical grey zone where there is little certainty left, or so it can seem at times.

We, at the Empire Club, have been tasked for well over a century now, 114 years, to be exact, to bring these types of issues to Canadians. Of course, it would have been inconceivable to go through this year, of 2018, without an examination of this hugely important societal development.

When we decided to put this topic on our roster this year, it was clear that we had to hear from journalists who are leaders in their field and are looked to by others to set the standards and provide markers along the media consumption pathway, which has become somewhat perilous. For that reason, one of our biggest media stars, Lisa LaFlamme was a pretty easy choice as our preferred speaker on this topic, a professional who has spent decades in the field chasing the veracity of stories around the globe.

What better resource to pair her with than veteran journalist, Sally Armstrong, who has, during her career, had the opportunity not only to pursue the biggest stories of the day, but—what I find really fascinating in having followed your career—to go through a lot of personal examination on what it means to report on a story without becoming involved and having feelings, which is, after all, the very core of our humanity, about the stories being reported on.

One thing is for sure. In a world of lies where we must clear away the debris of falsehoods and find the truth, the profession of journalism just significantly upped the ante. For many men and women, today, journalists have actually become the custodians of the golden fleece of truth.

This new moral imperative puts more pressure on them than ever before, and it also gives rise to practitioners who run the gamut from the good to the bad to the ugly.

How fortunate are we, today, to have had in our midst two of the best, both having demonstrated not only excellent journalistic technique, but, perhaps, even more importantly, moral values that are solid and dependable. For that, we thank them and wish them the very best as they continue to seek the truth in a world where truth can be elusive, confusing and even often painful. For that, Lisa LaFlamme and Sally Armstrong, a heartfelt thank you from all of us at the Empire Club of Canada.

Concluding Remarks, by Barbara Jesson

I want to express a sincere thank you to our sponsors, today. We could not bring programs like this to our audience without their support. We are extremely grateful. FCB Canada and Navigator Limited, thank you so much for making this event possible.

I would also like to thank mediaevents.ca, Canada’s online event space for webcasting today’s event for thousands of viewers around the world.

I also want to thank two of our sponsors, National Post, our print media sponsor, and our newest sponsor, Toronto Life, who has a table across the way. Thank you so much. We are looking forward to our partnership with you.

Although our club has been around since 1903, we have moved into the 21st century with social media.

Follow us at @Empire_Club on Twitter and online at www.empireclub.org. You can also follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and on Instagram.

Finally, please, join us again at our next event on February 15th, an evening event, featuring a panel on NAFTA, with MP Andrew Leslie and Ms. Scotty Greenwood, in conversation with Robert Benzie of the Toronto Star.

Thank you for your attendance, today.

This meeting is now adjourned.