259. Tara Henley: Why Canadians Stopped Trusting the Media

Tara Henley joins to examine declining trust in Canadian media, CBC bias, journalism subsidies, objectivity, unmarked graves, the trucker convoy, COVID coverage, independent media and her book The Trust Spiral with host Aaron Pete.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What is the core argument you're making in the trust spiral?

SPEAKER_01 0:03

We are seeing plummeting trust across the Western world in the media. And within the news press corps and news leadership, there hasn't been a lot of introspection about why we have lost trust.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

But if you're the CBC and your CEO still gets all of her bonuses after all of these criticisms, how can you think that the government actually wants you to pivot or change or do anything differently?

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Yeah, the incentive structure works against it for sure.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

How much is do you think the subsidies are hurting our ability to innovate?

SPEAKER_01 0:37

If the legacy players are subsidized, there is no incentive for them to innovate. And it makes it very difficult for us independents, especially the small independents, to compete because you're competing, like a podcast like yours or mine is competing against a podcast who has a staff of 10, right? So, and that their numbers actually don't matter in the long run to their survival.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

What stories do you think the media got wrong?

SPEAKER_01 1:01

So let's start with the grave story because I know you and I have both covered that.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Can I ask, what are your thoughts on someone like Rosemary Barton? Tara Henley, thank you so much for joining again. You've joined a few times in the past, but this is your first appearance on Nuanced. Would you mind briefly introducing yourself for people who aren't acquainted with your work?

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Sure. Thanks so much for having me, Erin. It's great to be here. Uh, I am a Canadian current affairs journalist. I've been a journalist for 25 years. Um I started in an alternative newsweekly and worked in music journalism for a long time. Then I went to women's magazines and I was a writer and an editor there. Um, I've always freelanced a lot for newspapers and online publications and magazines. And I went to the CBC in 2013 to join the team at George Thrombolopoulos Tonight as an interview producer. Then I went to Current Affairs Radio and I worked on probably roughly a dozen uh current affairs radio shows uh in Vancouver and in Toronto. I left the CBC at the end of 2021, um, breaking my contract a year early and talked about why I left the CBC. And then I went independent and I have been hosting the Lean Out podcast for four and a half years. It is a current affairs show. We focus on heterodox, current affairs, nonfiction books and sometimes articles. Um, and I'll also a co-host of the full press media criticism podcast over at the Hub. And uh my second book, The Trust Spiral, is now out.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

I've spoken to you twice since you left the CBC. The first, I think, was kind of figuring out what happened, what was going wrong, and then your second appearance focused on an article you had written that really broke down how to save the CBC and what that process would look like. Uh, as you discussed with Harrison Lohman, there has been no changes in their direction. There has been no uh Mia culpas or kind of reflections broadly speaking about where they are. And I'm sure you saw that another individual left uh the CBC, Travis. And I'm wondering if you could first start by sharing your reflections on some of his testimony that he shared, what the takeaways were. Some of them overlapped with yours, some of them did not. What were your takeaways and what is your reflections broadly on the CBC?

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Yeah, so uh my general stance on the CBC is I support the CBC, I support a fully funded CBC, and I would like to see them live up to their mandate to serve all Canadians. I they have at other points in the past, and I would like to see them do that again. I think it's a really important institution. Um, we are a very large, very diverse country. We do need a shared set of facts, and we need um we need a vehicle for national cohesion, especially if we're going to welcome so many new people to the country. So that's my general stance on the CBC. I've been very critical of them, but I also always want to lead with that so that people understand where I'm coming from. Um, in terms of Travis Donraj, I I know Travis, I like Travis, and I people should know I feel obviously very sympathetic to where he's coming from. Um, it was interesting watching him go through what he went through. I the criticism of me when I left was that I had not provided enough behind the scenes examples. I did that on purpose. I um really care about and respect the colleagues that I worked with, and I wanted to make the argument based on trends and coverage as opposed to what people did behind the scenes, because I didn't think that was particularly fair. Um Travis was much higher profile than me, and of course, a host of his own show, and much uh closer to the power centers for the CBC. I was very rank and file. So his criticisms, I think, are very different. I think they should be taken seriously. And um, the general critique of him was that he was too specific. So I was not specific enough, apparently. He was too specific, and people um he had receipts, he had documentation, he had very specific examples, and he was criticized from what I can tell, for what people, some people, certainly not all people, some people saw as opportunism, which I did not think was fair. Um, I think that when you have someone like Travis who's a big talent and is making uh a very well-documented argument about a national institution, that that should be paid attention to, and um, that we should be open to hearing criticism of our institutions. That's what makes them stronger. And if we can agree that he wants the CBC to thrive and survive, as do I, then um I was disappointed to see that argument not taken seriously in some quarters.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

One piece I found interesting was there was something more emotional about his reaction. And I don't say that as an insult. It just seemed like it impacted him in a visceral way, where his testimony, his commentary on can't be censored came from much more of like he it seemed like he felt betrayed by what he was hoping for, uh, what his vision was, and how you came out sounded much more measured, much more, as you said, trends and facts-based criticisms of where the CBC was. I'm just wondering, is that what you saw, or was I reading into more of how Travis responded?

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Well, I think everyone has their own style, and um, I think we should underline how much Travis had to lose. I mean, he was a high-paid, high-profile host, and he put all of that on the line to make those arguments. Um, so I think he had a lot to lose in all of this. So I don't know. I mean, I don't criticize his his tone or a style. I have a different tone and style. I think we should all be part of the conversation, all listen to. And um I think it's really time for the CBC to take its critics seriously, particularly those of us who um are very pro-CBC people. I would like to see the CBC conversation in this country really take on a more nuanced take. Um, it is such an important institution, and I hear from members of the public all the time. And most of my personal circle is on the left, to be clear. And, you know, I hear from people all the time, and I did leading up to leaving CBC, and I have since I get mail from the public. People are really upset about where the institution is at. And I just don't see that acknowledged by the institution very often or in any kind of deep and meaningful way. And I don't see a lot of changes forthcoming.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Can I ask, what are your thoughts on someone like Rosemary Barton? Because she gets a lot of criticism, as you might see on X, for her biases. And I'm just wondering how how do you take that in? Are are those criticisms apt?

SPEAKER_01 7:55

Well, uh, Rosemary is a very accomplished journalist in this country, and I I should like to show my colleagues respect. So I certainly respect her. I think when I think about uh Rosemary in this last year or so, I think about the Graves story and her saying on air, uh, yes, there have been remains found across the country. The CBC, to its credit, issued a correction the very, I believe it was the very next day, but but very swiftly. And um I think that was a big misstep for her. And I would have liked to hear her kind of reflect on that a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

Both Rosemary Barton and David Cochran received criticisms from Travis, and there's a sense online that the CBC has become media propaganda, an arm of our government, um, trying to persuade Canadians uh that the talking points of the liberals is the correct one. And I listened to your interview with Harrison and I didn't feel like that piece was grappled with. That there is a portion, I don't know exactly how much, 20%, 30%, that just feel like the CBC is an arm of the government. And that when you hear David Cochrane speak, when he's speaking with a conservative, he's literally using the liberal talking points and their positions when he's countering people, which I don't think a uh a journalist should ever do is use the arguments of the government. I don't think they have a duty to do that. I don't think that's healthy. When you hear those criticisms, what are your what are your reflections on that?

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Well, I think we have to be I think we have to be very careful. I I I I think there's two things going on here. Um there is an argument being made in conservative circles that um that the CBC is an is a mouthpiece for the government, and that um there seems to be a sort of perception that in the newsrooms that people are loyal to the government, that there's some sort of direct government interference happening. Now, I haven't been there in four and a half years, but I do have to say I never experienced that. There was nobody, and you know, the the roles that I had producing roles, um, I did a ton of different roles, night producer, morning producer, once in a while director, um, very rarely, but sometimes show producer. Um, there was a lot of roles that I did, and you actually have quite a bit of decision-making authority in those roles, more than you might expect. And I never had anyone from the government interfere with what I was doing or try to influence it beyond the sort of normal comms people and they're trying to get questions ahead of time, which we don't do, and and that kind of stuff. So I think we need to be careful in that. Um, I also don't I don't encounter a lot of journalists who are pro-liberal party. What I encounter instead is groupthink is an echo chamber echo chamber, excuse me, um, people all having very similar views and very similar talking points to the sort of establishment view in the country, the elites of the country. So sharing those same views is different than being pro-government. It's it's it's I think more nuanced, nuanced, more nuanced than that.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

I guess I'll follow up with that and push a little bit further because you and Harrison talked about broadly, like, why is the CBC not pivoting? Like there's been so much evidence that they're they're falling short and that there's no move to pivot. My understanding is CBC Gem has failed, uh, broadly speaking, like in terms of it having a really strong subscriber base, they did not want to share that um at parliament. And there's just there's no clear sign. You talked about the discussion of the unmarked grave story and how they didn't really address that, even though the Globe and Mail had just come out with this piece. And I think a lot of people would argue that's because they know exactly where they get their funding from. And so long as they don't walk on the toes of the powerful, uh, as long as they don't harshly criticize the government, they will still receive funding. And that is what we're seeing. We're seeing continued funding, continued support for an organization that almost everybody outside of the media bubble agree is not reflective of balanced reporting. Even those on the political left go like, yeah, I think this views more towards my understanding of the world. And so I see that as the most obvious reason. So they may not be intentionally doing it, but I you may have seen my interview with Robert Fife. He thinks Mark Carney's doing a remarkable job. And the comments online are just like, this person is not connected with my lived experience. And so it may not be intentional, but they're certainly not biting the hand that feeds them from the public's perspective.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Yeah, and this gets into the whole question of subsidies. I mean, the problem is I do think that the CBC is a slightly different case because uh I do believe in national public broadcasters. Where I think this gets more complicated is when you talk about the subsidizing of private newsrooms. And I think that that perception that you are talking about that I encounter all the time, I do think it is a real thing. I think that becomes harder and harder to overcome when you're talking about the private newsrooms. And I we saw this play out in the last election. I mean, before the conservatives decided that they would support um limited subsidies, it was a no-subsidy argument from the conservative party and a liberal party that is pro-CBC and pro um subsidizing private newsrooms as well. And that became an election issue. And so you're gonna get a lot more scrutiny on the nuts and bolts of your journalism if you are being funded by the government that you are supposed to hold to account. So I take your point. I think it's a really hard one to overcome in terms of public perception. And one of the ways that CBC could do that is to get a little bit more rigorous about um reflecting different viewpoints. I mean, we just saw a Senate report that took two years that I heard something like 60 witnesses. And one of the top-line findings of that Senate report was that the CBC was not reflecting all the views across the country, and specifically not uh moderate conservative views, and that it should hold itself to account on a yearly basis, that there should be review, an independent outside party that did that review, and and those things could be done. Um I think the biggest thing with the CBC is that they do not reflect the range of views across the country. And um, to me, I think having sat in those newsroom meetings, a lot of that is lack of exposure. And that gets to some of the bigger arguments that I make about what has happened to us as a press corps. We are very secular, we are very urban, we are highly educated, we are mostly progressive politically, and we are uh living in big urban centers. We are very cut off from other experiences. And that kind of grouping of markers that I've just outlined is a niche, niche part of the Canadian public. And I think we need more exposure to more views, and I think we need to reflect more views.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

But if you're the CBC and your CEO still gets all of her bonuses after all of these criticisms, how can you think that the government actually wants you to pivot or change or do anything differently?

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Yeah, the incentive structure works against it for sure. But we also just have to remember that the CBC is a massive organization that contains so many small CBCs, right? There are so many different little silos within the CBC. It's not one thing, it's it's a huge organization. And I think that's part of the problem is it's really hard to turn a ship around when it's when it's that big and that bureaucratic. Um, and also uh so centralized in in Toronto and and Montreal, really, a little bit in Vancouver, but it's it's very centralized as well. One of the things they have been doing that I think is really useful is focusing more on local news and on trying to decentralize just it a little bit. I'd love to see more of that. I will also say the new CEO I think is slightly better than the old CEO in that she is at least signaling that the CBC should be um reflecting more views. I don't see a lot of action, but at least that's a a tiny step in the right direction.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

Fascinating. You wrote the book, The Trust Spiral. And I'm wondering if you can lay out for listeners what is the core argument you're making in the trust spiral.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Yeah, so the argument I'm making is we are seeing plummeting trust across the Western world in the media. And um within the news kind of press corps and news leadership, there hasn't been a lot of introspection about why we have lost trust, why are we at record lows for public trust. So there's a lot of um reasons that news leaders give things like social media, bad actors online, um, and antagonizing politicians, that type of thing. Those all may be contributing factors, but for me, that lacks a self-reflection. And we need to look at what we in the media have done, especially in the last 10 years, that has got us lower trust. What is it that we're doing and what we we could change? So, what I pinpoint is um in the lead up to the American election with Donald Trump, the first election for Trump, um there was a real sense in the press corps. Initially, you have to understand there was a symbiosis between the press and uh Donald Trump, that Donald Trump's ratings were huge and his clicks were huge. So there was a sense in the media of kind of not taking him seriously as a politician, but enjoying his uh influence in the media in that it really boosted ratings, it really boosted clicks. Uh that started to change shortly before the election. There was a sense that his um antagonistic attitude toward the press was really starting to grate, that his outlandish claims were becoming uh concerning for a lot of journalists, and that this was an extraordinary candidate. And how would the American press grapple with that? And so through the through the first chapter of the book, I look at all of the op-eds and the the really influential media thinkers, and the conclusion that they came to was this is an extraordinary candidate. We need to take extraordinary measures. What we need to do is recognize that our standards and practices are not going to meet this moment. And you had people like Jim Ruttenberg at the New York Times saying explicitly, we need to throw out the playbook that we have been using. And then I argue in the book, we saw the erosion of our standards and practices. Problem being, guardrails exist for a reason. And once you take them down, you can't contain that. And we have seen that that is not limited to Donald Trump. It's been on a number of different files, thinking about the racial reckoning, I'm thinking about me too, I'm thinking about the pandemic. And we have become more activist-oriented. And the problem with that is that leads to factual errors. And I think the problem that the public has most with us is our lack of accuracy. We've we've had a lot of big stories go sideways in recent years. And I also argue in the book that this problem is essentially economic, that really our problem is that the press was already in a really weakened state because of the collapse of our business model, because of our centralization in big cities, the lack of on-the-ground training for journalists, the lack of exposure to other places in our countries, in the United States and in Canada. And that critically, also the lack of a life path for our journalists, because our industry is so precarious, and you have this is now strangely, paradoxically, an elite profession. We went from being working class and middle class to now being highly educated from often cases from families that have private wealth. Because also, how can you get this extensive training and all these degrees and work at unpaid or poorly paid internships in big cities? Who can do that? It's usually people who come from money. So you have all of these people who are highly, highly trained, who come from money, who have aspirations and expectations of an elite life, and you have a collapsing industry where the life prospects are just not good. The salaries are, unless you're at the very top, are not good. And so you have a class of very, very frustrated people. And um and uh that frustration, I think, has been borne out in the politics that we have seen. Uh, I don't know what else to call them other than woke, but in the book, I call it identitarian moralism. And I think the confluence of all of these factors, uh, it's a very complicated set of factors, but I think the confluence of all of them have led to us losing trust.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Can you walk us through the penny press historically and how that informs your understanding of today's media?

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Yeah, so what I try to do in the book is is to take, I'm I'm arguing in favor of objectivity, which is not a popular stance in the media right now. And if you want to sort of look at hard data, you can look. Quillette recently published a piece about this, and they looked at all the coverage of objectivity in recent years in the journalism trade press, and it was an overwhelming majority that was negative. Um, so this is not a popular stance that I'm taking. It is an argument, it's up for discussion and debate. But I looked at the uh evolution of objectivity. And I think when a lot of people in the public hear the word objectivity, they think, okay, so you um See yourself as someone who doesn't think they have biases and you're gonna try to be without bias. But that's not how I intend the word to mean. I'm using the old meaning of it. And it basically comes from this history of journalism, which I'll go into now. So in the 19th century, in the United States, you had papers that were openly partisan and they were funded by political candidates and political parties, and they were acting as essentially as propaganda arms for those parties and causes. Along came the Penny Press, and the Penny Papers were um moving towards a more subscription and advertising model. And um, I looked at Michael Shudson, he's a Columbia journalism professor, his really excellent book on this. And he talked about how the penny papers took a more democratic view of the world. They were kind of wide in the scope, they were more inclusive of who gets covered and what issues get covered, and they were funded by subscriptions and advertising. And in that group of penny papers, the New York Times emerged as this the standard bearer, basically saying they're going to cover the news without fear or favor. And the idea of objectivity came about not as a denial of the inherent subjectivity of our work, but as a collection of concrete standards and practices that would try to mitigate against that subjectivity. And um, it actually has really interesting origins. So part of it is the really egregious reporting errors of World War I and a reaction in the press court to that. Part of it is um the rise of PR and spin and the manipulation of public passions and a reaction to that. That when it came about was a time very much like ours of high suspicion in the press and high economic inequality. And so, um, but also the passion for the scientific method that was gaining traction throughout the public and an adoption of a sort of scientific method approach to news, um, to try to, you know, create news that was not just reliable, but that was replicable. And so that's what we're talking about when we talk about objectivity. It's this collection of standards and practices that try to hedge against our own biases, that make news that is as accurate as possible in the moment, knowing that their stories will always evolve, that new facts will always come to light.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Is Substack and what you and I do the new penny press?

SPEAKER_01 24:38

I don't know. It's such an interesting question. I mean, we're at a very pivotal point right now. Um I think the thing that we need to recognize is that what you and I do is is opinion journalism, right? But what it is predicated on is original reporting. We we can't do commentary if we don't have original reporting. And that the original reporting is uh harder and harder to produce, it is less funded, it the business models for that are not um, they're not working. And so, how do we get to a point where we have the public will to pay for original reporting, a business model that works and the ability to train journalists for that kind of reporting and give them life prospects of a not an affluent life, but at least a stable life.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

How much is do you think the subsidies are hurting our ability to innovate? I just think if we stopped funding everything and gave people tax credits, or there's lots of different discussions on how we go about it, but then there would be a pull towards individuals like yourself, towards more of this independence. So you could hire your own staff. So you could build out a system that mirrors that traditional system, but we can't get there because so much money is going towards these pre-existing systems that aren't innovating, that aren't changing. And I just look at what you do and what I'm trying to do, and I see like there's a lot of space here to do unique, cool things, but there is just not enough appetite because of the pressures of the our competition, which is traditional media, in order for us to move in that direction. The amount of people we can pull in is not big enough at this stage because of the subsidies.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

A hundred percent. It's very, very difficult to scale. I mean, my Substack is uh doing well by many metrics, but it is not thriving financially. And so um it is very difficult to figure out a path forward to scale. Like if you want to build a micro newsroom where you have a, you know, I I have employed people in the past for my Substack, but where you have a couple of people um working and you are able to start to build a small mini institution. That's what we need in this country. We need the next wave of institutions to build themselves from the ground up. Um, but as you say, if if the legacy players are subsidized, there is no incentive for them to innovate. And it makes it very difficult for us independents, especially the small independents, to compete because you're competing like a podcast like yours or mine is competing against a podcast who has a staff of 10, right? So, and that their numbers actually don't matter in the long run to their survival. So these are huge questions. I don't have any specific solutions to them yet, but um, I do think it's a very pivotal point in the media here. I think that we are really in trouble and we need to find a path forward. And in order for that to happen, we need to start uh discussing and debating more. And the problem that we're in right now is there are so many small echo chambers in this country. There is not a shared set of facts, there is not a shared debate, and um, a lot of players are largely ignored by the legacies. And so I don't know how we get to a point where we have a really rigorous debate about the way forward.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Fascinating. My next question is what stories do you think the media got wrong? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

So let's start with the grave story because I know you and I have both covered that. Um and I find this one really an astonishing story for so many reasons. Um, maybe your listeners will be aware, um, your viewers will be aware that the Globe and Mail came out recently, the editorial board, and said that the media, including the paper, um, failed it was a failure of journalism. They did not scrutinize the claims of um to come loops, First Nation, who announced that there had been remains found and that um there were consequences to that. And I think that, I mean, you and I have talked about it before publicly. I was recently commissioned to write a piece for the liberal out that in the state's persuasion on this. And so I tried to track the evolution of the story and like where specifically we went wrong. But I think it's a similar argument to the argument that I'm making in the book. I mean, you have a very weak press corps, you have um a young press corps that has not been trained, that doesn't have a lot of men to her ship, you have an activist contingent in the press corps that is very sympathetic to progressive causes. And you have, I mean, we haven't gotten into this yet, but in the book, I track all of the purges that took took place in newsrooms in the United States and in Canada in 2020 and 2021. It was an incredibly volatile time. You had journalists pushed out of newsrooms in very high profile and very career-defining ways over what is essentially wrongthink, you know, which is really cast a chilling across so many newsrooms. And I certainly felt that the CBC after the Wendy Mesley scandal. And so that is the environment in which this Graves claim was made. And also, I think very complicated story. As you know, um, you can hold two ideas in your mind at once. You can understand the history of residential schools in this country, which I personally view as a tragedy. You can understand the amount of documentation behind the abuse that was perpetrated at these schools, and you can also require evidence for um the claim that there are unmarked graves, that there are mass graves, that there are children who are thrown into incinerators. I mean, I could go along the list of this the claims that were uh extrapolated from that moment. And um how did how did that happen? How did that happen in our media and how do we then correct that? How do we understand that we should have expected evidence for um the more extreme claims while also upholding what is on the documentary record already?

SPEAKER_00 30:58

How do you think about the audience in this regard? Because I just spoke to Globe and Mail uh writer and journalist Tony Keller, and we talked about the claim that Justin Trudeau made, or a report came out that said Canada committed a genocide and was still actively participating in a genocide. And Tony Keller said, I wrote an article just saying, well, okay, like if that report is true, why would the First Nation invite Justin Trudeau to accept a copy? Why would they do a photo shoot? If you believe the report, shouldn't you arrest Justin Trudeau on the spot for genocide if he's admitting that his government is currently participating in that process? And he said that a backlash from that was was really a lot to him. And I think about the bravery a journalist needs to have in order to go against the the mob or the crowd or the audience in order to say what's true. But then I also think about the maturity level of consumers, and I'm I've been a critic of our citizenry, that we need to be more mature. That when I hear uh Francis Widowson or Tim Thielman say something I don't like, I can't curl up in a ball and ask for the principal to stop them from saying, I need to respond, I need to reflect, I need to be able to just sit with opinions that I disagree with. How much do you look at the journalists' need to be stronger on their footing and the audience's need to be able to hear things that make them uncomfortable?

SPEAKER_01 32:30

Oh, it's such a good question. And no one's ever asked me that before. I love it. Um, it's it's such a great question. And I think that I guess the first thing to unpack there is is the public. And I, you know, I have a huge faith in the public, actually, that I think that most people are reasonable. They might lean left, they might lean right, they might pick and choose which article or which uh issue they align with which party on. But most people I think are open to finding common ground, are open to changing their minds. They are not ideologues. I think that the flack that we get as journalists comes from a very, very small amount of people in the public. Um, and that it's really important to understand that that doesn't mean that it's not damaging to our careers or our reputations. It can be highly damaging, and it doesn't mean that it's not personally painful to go through. Um, certainly I've had my fair share of that and I have not enjoyed it. So that's one thing. But I think we should recognize that it's not all people and not even most people in the public. Um, in terms of journalists being more brave, I think that, of course, I think that. I also talk to a lot of journalists all the time. I know that they have children to support and mortgages to pay or rent to pay and um are working in a cutthroat industry with a diminishing amount of jobs. And so I feel sympathetic to that perspective as well. And that if the consequences, I mean, take the grave story again. If the consequences are you um could be called horrible names by your peers, you could be called horrible names by the public. Again, a small group of people, but enough to for it to be painful. And then you have a Senate considering an amendment in which you could go to jail for two years for residential school denialism. I mean, these are not, these are not small forces working against journalists being more brave. They are very strong social and legal pressures working against us. And so I think we also have to just, we also have to give journalists a little bit of grace too. I mean, if you're making, you know, $50,000 a year and trying to support a family and just really trying not to lose your job, uh, let alone go to jail, how do you make that calculation? And also the last thing I'll say is, and I know you know this too, some of us are more comfortable being, I don't want to say hated, but I think like um, you know, you you've said on air before that you were very high in disagreeability, and as am I not interpersonally, but certainly professionally. And uh while I certainly don't like being called bad names, I think it bothers me a little less sometimes uh than it might bother other people, if that makes sense. And that we should leave space for for people to have differences in personality and temperament as well.

SPEAKER_00 35:29

When I look at my circumstance, I kind of view it as like a ball of yarn that's all tied together in this really bizarre way, where I've I've felt a duty to because we're in this weird space where First Nations get a higher ability to say things about First Nations than a white male does. I don't agree with that. I don't think that that's a healthy society if we're having tiers of perspective. But given that some people think that I have some privilege to say I don't like land acknowledgements or I don't agree with this policy or that policy, I feel an onus to say something because for some reason my voice does carry more weight. And now that I'm a First Nations chief, I feel even more of an obligation to call out my side, call out the excesses of reconciliation and indigenous affairs and all of these things because I'm in the position where I can push things in a certain direction or I can have conversations that other people wouldn't have. Uh, as you've alluded to in other interviews, I was willing to do a breakdown on the unmarked graves story extensively and try and make sure I laid that out clearly because you weren't going to hear that from the CBC or from Global News or from CTV. They didn't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole, but I could. And so I'm wondering what is the individual's duty when we can contribute to the movement? Like I'm sure you're aware that at like heterodox academy events, they'll have a black speaker come out and talk about how DEI isn't always useful. And it it's somewhat like I support, but it's also weird that we have to be the ones kind of criticizing it. What are your reflections on the role that individuals like myself and other, I don't know, BIPOC individuals? I don't I don't like calling them that, but like people of those persuasions willing to criticize their own side have in all of this.

SPEAKER_01 37:20

Right. Well, I think now's a good time to let you know, and I know that you do know how much respect I have for the work that you did do on the grave story, that you um really exemplified actually an old school journalism value, which is to not be held captive to one perspective, to hear a range of perspectives for a story, and to trust the public, you know, trust the public to take in the information and to make up its own mind. And that this sort of um view of no platforming that has evolved in the last few years, I think is unhelpful and uh very anti-democratic, actually, and against civil discourse, and that we can hear people out who we massively disagree with, in which some cases I think you do, right? But you can have these civil conversations and it's it's to the betterment of the country to have them. And so I really respect what you've done. So um, in terms of responsibility, I guess I think about it less in terms of a racial lens and more in terms of um just broad-based societal debate. And so I think that the I think about you as a heterodox individual, as, and I think that we need heterodox individuals of all backgrounds within media organizations to um to be the ones to say, well, hang on a second, you know, what about this? What about that? Why aren't we talking to this person? I think that is like we always had people in the newsrooms like that who played that role. And I think it's a really important role to play, um, regardless of your background or or your identity. I think we need those people desperately. And in terms of responsibility, I mean, I think about the lens of just truth seeking, right? Of accurate information. How do we arrive at more accurate information for the press? Knowing that we are in a digital environment where things move incredibly quickly, where it is very difficult to get to the bottom of what's going on in many cases, and where, I mean, you heard Bob Fife say the other day that 80% of our government is not being covered right now. So it's we are inundated with waves of information, but not all of it is the information we need. It's not always useful. So I think that the environment that we're working in is really complex. And how do we get to more accurate information? And I think that's the central question going forward is how do we get to more accurate information? What's been going on in the legacy media in recent years is not producing a ton of accurate information. Although on some stories, I think there's still lots of great reporting being done. So I don't want to paint it all with a broad brush, but but there are problems in legacy media. Now, there are problems emerging with the influencer media as well. Like, how do we get to accurate information? That's my central concern. I am less concerned about a political movement or a direction. I just want to know how we get better information.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

I'll follow up uh just on that question because the denialism bill that came forward, I don't know how much. It could be 1%, it could be 10%. But me coming forward as a First Nations chief and saying I will go to jail over this, I I do think had some sort of impact. I have no idea how much. But I just again I felt like I had a dude, like it's not something I wanted to do. Certainly, my community had a lot of questions for me about like, wait, you're pro-denialists? What like that doesn't make sense because you your grandma went, but that doesn't that like they were confused, so they had questions for me. So it was not easy within my community. I understand where their concerns were, because they're not often interacting with like what's the idea of truth and how are we organizing our laws and what's paramount? And then within the Assembly of First Nations and all of these things, they're looking at me like, why do you hate your own people? Like, why do you hate your own people? And it's like, I don't. I just don't think this is the legislation to get us to a better place. And so I didn't feel like I had an option. Like I just felt like if I don't, then then the only voices that will come forward against it are your typical kind of crew of people that the government can kind of go, we don't need to listen to those people. But I have like an onus in that way. And I'm just, I really value your perspective. So I just like should was that the right thing? Did I need to do that? Um, in this very strange time where my voice is carrying more weight than it otherwise would if I was just a white person with no indigenity.

SPEAKER_01 41:42

I think that the fact that you did that was extremely helpful. And um, you saw Terry Glavin follow your lead and say he would also be willing to go to jail for that. I think that when you start messing around with a free press, which is what this um potential criminalization of residential school denialism could do, I think it's really important that that is pointed out. And I will just say, I mean, Terry Glavin's reporting uh was identified as a textbook case of residential school denialism. Here is someone who has written, co-written a book with residential school survivors who has zero, zero heterodox views on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and who, as you heard on my podcast, um fully supports the negotiation of Aboriginal land um titles. So this is not a Terry Glavin is not a um a particularly radical figure in terms of of um the residential school conversation in this country. And so that was very concerning to me. I do think that that was a really admirable thing for you to step out and say that. I will say I think that your authority in this story also has to do with the work that you have done untangling what is an incredibly contentious story. And I appreciate your approach so much. And this is one I try to take too of um turning the temperature down, trying to get to the bottom of what the facts are, trying to hear out all sides, and um still expressing empathy, still expressing one of the things that I love that you have said is that this is a sensitive conversation. You are dealing with people who are grappling with the legacies of abuse. There's no reason why we can't take a sensitive approach to this. We still need to get to the bottom of the facts because that is what's good for everybody in this situation. But we don't need to be exclusive or inflammatory or provocative. We can take a measured approach, a fact based approach, and also an empathetic approach. So I think your authority on this story comes as much from your identity as it does from the work that you've put in and the measured approach that you have taken.

SPEAKER_00 43:51

Do you think that they need to excavate in Cam loops?

SPEAKER_01 43:55

I think we need to find a way to get to the bottom of this story. I think we need to get Back to a shared set of facts. What you have right now is a very polarized story where different sides share a completely different understanding of the file than other sides. And I don't know how we bridge that gap, but we have to get back to a shared set of facts. It's great to have debate from different perspectives, but we need a main fact pool and we don't have that right now. So I don't, I don't know what it is going to take to establish facts at this point, but we need to, we need to do that. What do you think it would take right now?

SPEAKER_00 44:35

I'm just curious, why are you hesitant to say that we should excavate? That that like that would, to a lot of people's points, that would bring this all to a close. We either find out that there are uh children's remains or we find out that there's not, and that would give us a shared set of facts instantaneously.

SPEAKER_01 44:50

I guess as a journalist, I try not to make prescriptions. I try as much as I can to get to the diagnosis and it um and to allow the public to come up with its prescription. How does it want to be governed? How does it want to move forward? So I try as much to stick to that as I can.

SPEAKER_00 45:10

Yeah, I support excavating. I think it was um it is still true, uh, no matter what, that children did die at these schools. And so we don't lose anything by being honest and transparent. We asked for truth and reconciliation. This has become an incredibly divisive issue. It's hurting not just Camloops, it's hurting other First Nation communities' relations with their communities, the amount of messages I get. I think one of my favorite things about pivoting the show to nuanced is how many people reach out and go, I don't agree with you, Aaron. I don't even agree with you, guest, but I love tuning in to hear the exchange of ideas on contentious issues and the amount of people who turned into the Robert Fife interview who commented, I don't even want, I don't even agree with him. I think he's a liberal propagandist, but I trust you in your ability to conduct an interview was uh was a huge compliment. And I think the more we can just get the facts on these pieces, I think the better off we'll be. But I guess my follow-up question, because I th you you listed a lot with Harrison of uh failures in media around the trucker protest, around when they reopened schools. And the what one of the most common responses you'll see people give is Tara, we didn't know that much at the time, or facts were evolving so quickly. And it's it's like a deep, deep cop-out. Because if you do break it down at the time we did know some of these things, there was evidence to suggest masks didn't work. There was evidence to suggest that removing children from school that that wasn't gonna work. There was evidence from journalists on the ground saying there is no violence at these trucker protests. But then you kind of get this glossing when it's inconvenient to people to go, well, Tara, that was four years ago and there was a lot going on, and we were, it was COVID, we were all going through a lot. And it's almost like we're removing accountability for getting these stories right. How do we, how do we reground ourselves in some of these truths?

SPEAKER_01 47:02

Yeah, I mean, I think that we try to go back and and do autopsies on these stories. I mean, that's what I've tried to do in a very limited way, of course, because it's a it's a short book and it, you know, it grew out of an essay, the the 2024 Massey essay. So it's a it's a very short book. I've tried to do that in a really limited way, but I've been saying for a long time that we need like a full COVID inquiry inquiry in this country. We need to go back and look at what was known and what was not known. We did do the Public Order Emergency Commission for the trucker convoy, and we learned a lot from that commission. So I think we do need to revisit these stories and do a full autopsy and look at what was reasonable at the time, what was known at the time and what wasn't. And there was, you're right, there is, there was a lot that was known. I mean, if you look at the school closure issue, for example, you had very credible journalists. I'm thinking of um Alec McGillis at ProPublica, who did investigative journalism on the ground, showing that the school closures were having real harms, particularly to marginalized students from low-income backgrounds. And that we did know at that time that the benefits of keeping kids out of school were, you know, not clear, but the harms were very clear. And so as these stories evolve, it's been super interesting to watch the reporting on them and to see the conclusions on some of these stories really land in favor of we should have had way more rigorous public debate on these stories. Um, and there were lots of us that were saying that at the time. That's the thing, right? And if you if you um if you demonize and ostracize and pile on to the few journalists that do that at the time, that that report these stories out or that make these um commentary on on these stories, or you know, stick their toe in the water even a little bit, it disincentivizes everybody else from doing it. And I think one of the things I think about a lot is um Jacob Siegel just came on my podcast and I quote him in the book, and he talks about how um one of the most powerful forces happening in newsrooms is certain stories just uh take on um a sort of distasteful sheen to them. They're they're considered um kind of repugnant, really outside of polite society. We certainly saw that with the trucker convoy, but we've seen that with a lot of other stories as well. That like to get into them is is just kind of like a moral lapse. It's to step outside of polite society. That is a very, very powerful disincentivizing mechanism for covering these stories. And so I think that was a lot of what was at play at the time. And um again, to your point about cop-out, we also need to start having some maya culpas. We saw it with the New York Times. The New York Times did say that they went too far in 2020, that there were excesses and that they were trying to get back to pre-Trump standards. They said that very clearly. And um, I we haven't seen that in this country. We haven't seen any admission of the stories that went sideways. We haven't, you know, CBC has issued at least three corrections on the grave story, and we haven't seen any sort of reflection on what the consequences of getting that story wrong were. What were the consequences for the country? What were the consequences for reconciliation? What were the what are the consequences for First Nations people in this country? What is the consequence for the press? There's no introspection at all. And we need to start having some of that. I think that would be a remedy to the what you I think very fairly characterize as a cop-out.

SPEAKER_00 50:37

What does a real admission look like? And I'll use one example. I just had Tony Keller on when he walks through that it was believed by the Conservative Party in his reporting that Justin Trudeau and and the liberal staff all knew that if they push immigration higher, the conservatives, if they did tackle that issue, that they would be called racists by the liberals. When you look at the Graves story, Justin Trudeau goes out and makes this a very big story. He contributed to the heightening of the importance of the story by making these admissions that we're a genocidal uh country based on those ideas. And so, what does a real admission look like from your perspective when we look at these issues that have really shaped the last 10 years of Canada?

SPEAKER_01 51:24

I was really impressed with the Globe Mail editorial board for coming out and saying it was a failure of journalism on the grave story and that um, you know, the premier of BC has passed away. Unfortunately, he's not able to correct the record, but Justin Trudeau could. And so I think that that was, I think that was a real admission and that did go around the world. I heard from journalists around the world on that. I had an American outlet can't um contact me to cover it, and I had a German outlet contact me to cover it. So these things are being watched and they are being considered by the sort of global journalism community. That is a real admission. I would like to see the CBC um take another look at the trucker convoy story and their own coverage of it. And it would it be possible for them to uh admit that the picture that they painted, that this was extremism, it was foreign funded, and it was violent, those three claims have not held up. Would they be prepared to revisit that? Now, that is not to say it wasn't highly inconvenient, that it wasn't highly disruptive, that some people were very uh offended by the stance taken by the truckers and the way some of them behaved in the Capitol. I mean, we can continue to hold two thoughts in our mind at the same time, but I would love to see them revisit that. I would love to see them revisit their coverage of the vaccine mandates. Um, I would love to see a number of school closures, uh, lockdowns. It's within their power. They're a huge institution. They could revisit their coverage and they could decide to take a transparent look about how well they served the country during those really explosive, explosive moments.

SPEAKER_00 53:01

What do we do with individuals who come out at the beginning when it's unpopular and take these claims? You've spoken to Terry Glavin. He came out very early on and received a lot of tomatoes, and he may have other words to describe what he went through during that period. Uh, the trucker convoy, these people came out and they stood on civil liberties, uh, broadly speaking. Obviously, there are individuals amongst them that we can disagree with, but broadly speaking, they were standing on the idea that they are free people that have the right to choose and should not receive uh control over their decision making. The vaccine mandate, people chose not to participate in that. Now, I'll say, like, I've interviewed, as you know, Francis Widowson, and she explained very clearly like, I don't have I've been removed from my university. Like, I can't do that in the building anymore. And so she's talked about like I want to do this in the academic way, but I'm not allowed in the academic institutions anymore. And so, short of going silent and disappearing, I'm wearing a sandwich board at a university to force the conversation. And then you have high society kind of go, we're willing to talk about the unmarked grave story, but we can't have Frances there because she went all the way. And it's like, but would we be having this conversation but for Candace Malcolm, Francis Widow Sim, Tim Thielman, Dallas Brody? Like they're kind of forcing the conversation on us. And then when we're ready for it, it seems like we don't want anything to do with them. And I've asked several pieces people this question like, what do we do? How do we treat these people who took all the arrows and the tomatoes? And I just haven't received a satisfactory answer because they deserve some credit for what they did. They deserve some recognition, they deserve some sort of points up. And then when you get a story completely wrong, you deserve points down. Like if we had a rating system for journalists, their credibility should increase and the the individual journalists who got it wrong should decrease. But we don't seem to have that. And I just, it feels like we're living in two separate bubbles where journalists can get things wrong and wrong and wrong and continue to get articles in the CBC. And Francis Widdleson can be right on some of these technical issues and get no acknowledgement from the mainstream media.

SPEAKER_01 55:11

Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of things to untangle about that. I think the first thing is you're making the assumption that journalists know who Francis Widdeston is for the most part, or Tim Thielman, or I I don't know that there is a broad, I mean, the I think the pressure from the margins has been healthy in terms of um in terms of critical thinking and questioning on some of these files. I would take a uh an approach more to to what you would do, I think, which is to to try to um to stay like a low emotional threshold, to stay um more in the center as we know negotiate these conversations. I think that that's a valuable position to take. But I think so the first thing is with journalists in this country, I think we can't make the assumption that people are that people know who these people are or that they have watched their documentaries, read their books, listened to their interviews. We are so can I just quickly share?

SPEAKER_00 56:07

The only the main reason I interviewed Francis to begin with was because she was interviewed by the CBC. By that CBC. And that went so, so astonishingly, horrendously. It was embarrassing to watch this journalist try and ask questions when she knew nothing about anything to do with what she was asking about. And that's what drove me to go, like, I can't let that be the record on the conversation about this issue.

SPEAKER_01 56:31

For sure. And I think that that is like an exceptional case. That was a local journalist. And but I still think that we are so siloed in the media in this country that I don't know that there's a broad understanding of this file, who the players are, what their opinions are, how they differ, what their approaches are. So that's that's the first piece. But the second piece is getting back to your point about what do we do with the individuals who um come first. Again, I want to take, you know, I want to take some caution to unpack different approaches. And I do think that sometimes more inflammatory approaches are not helpful. But we do see when people are forced out of mainstream dialogue that they do become radicalized. That is what happens. And this is this is an argument for civil discourse for broadening the scope of viewpoint diversity so that people are not driven to the margins where they become more radical and more angry and more inflamed. So I think that that is important. The last thing I'll say on this is I think that the United States has done a better job of dealing with their um, I don't know, the word that comes to mind is dissident, but that's not the right word. They've they've they've done much better job of dealing with their dissenters than we in Canada have. What we do when people step outside of the bounds is we push them to the margins and we ignore them indefinitely. That's what we do here. In the United States, there is more viewpoint diversity. And you have seen some of the people who came out in the 2020 era, Barry Weiss being an example, being now folded back into the mainstream. I think that's a healthier response. I think it's a healthier response to broaden the scope of debate, to incorporate some of the more heterodox people back into the mainstream, which I think strengthens the institutions, makes them more relevant. Um, I think that's a healthier approach than what we do here.

SPEAKER_00 58:20

Can anti-establishment media develop its own trust spiral?

SPEAKER_01 58:25

Yes. Again, back to accuracy, right? Again, back to accuracy. Anti-establishment, I mean, that is a core principle of media, period, and or it should be. But um, is it anchored in standards and practices? Is it anchored in the nuts and bolts of truth-seeking journalism? Or is it an anti-establishment impulse that's woven into um the kind of opinion journalism that we see sometimes with influencers right now, which is anger-based, outrage-driven, and um not as careful in terms of the facts, and uh making decisions based on political views as opposed to making decisions based on what the whole picture of a story is and trying to get at the truth of that and trying to best understand. Again, this is all very difficult to do in real time in digital speech, but trying to get the best understanding of the set of facts that we have available to us.

SPEAKER_00 59:23

In 2003, you completed an SFU master's thesis titled Make Me Nod My Head in Reverence: Passion, Pain, and Politics in Hip Hop Poetry. You later received a $10,000 Canada Council grant for proposed book called Global Beat, uh, The Hip Hop Diaries, and traveled to the examination of hip-hop's cultural influence. Yes. And I'm wondering what became of that project for you.

SPEAKER_01 59:48

Yeah, it was so interesting. So I went to um a number of different countries for that project. There ultimately was not a market for a book on global hip-hop at that time. So I wasn't able to sell that project, but I did do all the research for it. And it was absolutely fascinating. One of the things that it helped me with a lot is because I um was a music journalist at the beginning of my career, I worked for Double XL, the big hip-hop magazine in New York City. And um I was spent a lot of my early years as a journalist interviewing rappers. And then to take that into a more global perspective and to interview rappers in different countries and to understand again, just how, even in the topic of hip-hop, how small and how narrow our perspective is in North America when you look at the world as a whole, when you look at the available perspectives, when you look at the range of perspectives. Um, it was really, really eye-opening for me. And I think that also I will just say, and this is such a tangent, but I have to say it because um I know that um the issue of fathers is a really big issue in hip-hop. And that, you know, sometimes people perceive me now as a conservative thinker. I came up in the progressive left, I was an environmental activist in high school. Um, I grew up in very progressive circles. My parents lived on communes when I was young, like, or before I was born rather. So I come from that whole world. And it's so strange to me to now be perceived as more conservative. But when you look at my views um on things like, you know, uh family structure, for example. I mean, I there is a view now in the progressive left that any family structure is fine. And, you know, I know you would never demonize single moms because yours was absolutely heroic, as was my single mom. But um all those years interviewing rappers, uh so frequently we talked about absent dads and about that pain of that. And nobody would ever have interpreted that as a neutral fact, you know, nobody that I spoke to would have ever said, um, it's just a neutral fact that my dad wasn't around. And so, and of course, I really respect and care for my own dad who who wasn't always um present either. So these are, again, when when you do a ton of interviewing, uh you're you can change your mind on things, and your views can sometimes appear to be, my view on family structure would appear to be very conservative, but how did I reach that, right? How did I reach that view? Another uh one that I think about a lot is I'm very, very pro-gay marriage. Um, and so I'm also very pro-marriage. And I know you just got married, right? How did I arrive at a pro-marriage perspective? Well, the breakdown of my own family, interviewing a ton of people whose families broke down, growing up in a in a milieu that was um not particularly interested in marriage or family and seeing the consequences of that. And then on the gay marriage front, that was the first time I heard a full-throated case for marriage being made by the gay marriage movement. I found it incredibly moving and very persuasive. It changed my perspective on marriage. And so I hope I owe a huge debt to the gay marriage movement. So does that make me conservative or does that make me liberal? I have no idea. I'm I'm not really invested, but it's the sort of thing you think about when you're promoting a book because people would like to slot you into a particular area. Um, but all of us are, as you know, all of us contain multitudes. None of us fit in a box. And um I'm much more interested in the details of everyone experience than I am about the labels.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:36

How can people find your work?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:38

They can find me on Substack at Tarahenley.substack.com and the podcast on anywhere where you get your podcasts.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:45

And where can they get your new book, The Trust Spiral?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:48

That also can be ordered anywhere you get your books, The Trust Spiral, uh Why the Media Needs Operativity.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:54

Thank you, Tara. You uh guided my work at a very early stage of the podcast. I think I'm starting to find my rhythm now and starting to figure out how to contribute. And I'm just very grateful you helped develop my understanding of how to prepare questions, um, how to approach things rather than saying, yes, I agree, or totally uh when somebody's finished a thought to make sure that I go, okay, or move on to the next question without um just always encouraging whatever the perspective of the guest is. And so I greatly appreciate that. Uh, I appreciate your book and the approach you take to your work.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:28

Thanks so much for having me, Erin. And I'm just so impressed with the work you're doing. I think it's a huge contribution to the country, and uh it makes me really happy to see your star on the rise.