Assorted content to end your week.
- Roni Caryn Rabin, Apoorva Mandervilli and Shawn Hubler discuss the U.S.' reconsideration of plans to lift COVID-19 recommendations and restrictions in the face of the Delta variant, while Mike Hager points out the expert response to the push by some Canadian premiers to eliminate masking requirements. Nikolaj Skydsgaard and Jacob Gronholt-Pederson report on the WHO's warning of another wave in Europe (driven in substantial part by spread through sports venues and bars), while Derek Hawkins reports on an 85-person outbreak at a single Illinois summer camp. And Emma Tranter reports on the Yukon's COVID crisis which has broken out despite it being Canada's most-vaccinated jurisdiction.
- Joe Roberts highlights how most of the support governments have provided throughout the pandemic has served to prop up corporate interests rather than people's well-being - raising the question of when we'll insist on building something better than an exploitative economy.
- Matthew Klein argues that we should be looking to err (if it all) on the side of overshooting what's needed to build the economy and society we want, rather than once again falling short. And Diane Francis (!) writes that the U.S.' downfall as a society can be traced to the systemic cultivation of distrust in government which has allowed bad actors to run wild.
- PressProgress discusses new research showing the difference between younger people who want the facts about issues such as climate change and systemic racism, and older ones with a preference for false "neutrality". Crawford Kilian writes about Thomas Piketty's analysis of Canadian politics - confirming that the Cons' base in particular is aging and insular while strong patterns as between the NDP, Greens and Libs are far more difficult to find. And Paul Willcocks notes that Erin O'Toole is only exacerbating his party's weaknesses by playing to ignorance and bigotry.
- Finally, Mumilaaq Qaqqaq discusses her reasons for not celebrating a legacy of colonialism and genocide. And Cindy Blackstock writes that the long-overdue moment of awareness has come about only after years of activists screaming into a void, while Suzanne Shoush wonders whether Canada is finally waking up to the cries of Indigenous peoples for relief and justice.
I must say I question the PressProgress piece. I think it's not so much that the younger, left-er crowd ACTUALLY believe less in journalistic objectivity as such, it's more that cognitive dissonance on the subject is less useful to them. For instance, in the US we have Republican lawmakers simultaneously talking virtuously about the wonders of free speech, while passing laws outlawing speech about critical race theory and so forth.
ReplyDeleteI think those older people who supposedly prize journalistic neutrality are working on the tacit assumption that that neutrality will exclude viewpoints they dislike; if the news started including, say, socialistic viewpoints in their "neutrality" those same people would be quick to call for excluding them.