"Bell Media fires 1300+ employees, shutting down local newsrooms..." June 18, 2023 News Update + Commentary
Turning their back on their responsibility to speak truth to power
The shock and disappointment over Bell Media's decision to fire over a thousand employee continues, as it should.
The move drastically reduces local newsroom staffs and even shuts down some newsrooms altogether.
This wrong-headed decision is, quite frankly, an abdication of their responsibility to serve those communities, which will have dramatic consequences.
The late, great US politician Tip O’Neil once said that all politics is local, and he was correct.
But astute journalists know that all news is local.
How does this political policy or pandemic or wild fire impact your community and your family?
That’s what takes a news story from the abstract to a kitchen table discussion.
That’s what local news coverage provides and that is what Bell media has robbed from those affected communities, and those communities are the worse for it.
But, there’s more collateral damage to Bell’s profit-driven move.
The void in news reporting that Bell has created will be filled, in part, by the purveyors of misinformation and falsehoods that infect the media these days.
By turning their back on their responsibility to speak truth to power in our communities, Bell media, who has immense power to change the disinformation narrative that sullies journalism these days, has put profit ahead of responsibility and that may be the greater tragedy!