{"id":453,"date":"2024-11-16T04:39:07","date_gmt":"2024-11-16T04:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/reimagining-political-journalism\/?p=453"},"modified":"2024-11-16T04:44:09","modified_gmt":"2024-11-16T04:44:09","slug":"heers-keynote-highlights-rise-of-anti-system-politicians-who-cant-be-felled-by-mere-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/reimagining-political-journalism\/2024\/11\/16\/heers-keynote-highlights-rise-of-anti-system-politicians-who-cant-be-felled-by-mere-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"Heer’s keynote highlights rise of ‘anti-system’ politicians who can’t be felled by mere facts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Nkele Martin<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regina-based political columnist and podcaster Jeet Heer gave a keynote address at the  Reimagining Political Journalism<\/em> conference that audibly amused the room when its title \u2014 \u201cFact-Checking Won\u2019t Save Democracy\u201d \u2014 was announced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heer, who writes for New York City\u2019s The Nation,<\/em> prefaced his speech by announcing it was a \u201cprovocation,\u201d an attempt to make listeners think about \u201cwhy something that is one of the best parts of journalism, this commitment to facts\u2026why it isn\u2019t quite working \u2014 and to think of strategies around it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the last 10 years there has been a resurgence of fact-checking and a gradual shift in its role, Heer said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Keynote speaker Jeet Heer questions the role of fact-checking amid a rise of “anti-system politicians” at the Reimagining Political Journalism conference at Carleton University on Nov. 15, 2024. [Photo \u00a9 Natasha Baldin] <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The coinciding rise of former and future U.S. president Donald Trump, disinformation and genuine journalism branded as \u201cfake news\u201d pushed fact-checking to the forefront of North American news. There was, said Heer, a \u201cbelief that journalism has to respond to this crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cThere was an idea that\u2026 (the) consensus of truth was breaking down, so you needed to elevate fact-checking to (be) not something that\u2019s done behind the scenes, but something that is actually done upfront and involved in the political system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result, Heer said the number of fact-checking departments worldwide grew significantly. \u201cThere became a sort of cottage industry of reporting Trump\u2019s lies, responding to them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As hinted at in the name of his talk, Heer believes this strategy did not entirely work. There was an oversight of a \u201ccrucial point\u201d about today\u2019s political landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe fragmentation (of society) that\u2019s encouraged by social media is part of a larger fragmentation and atomization of social life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re used to the political spectrum of left and right, but I think that in the current moment, the actual political system has been reconfigured and it is pro-system and anti-system,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He referenced the company that both 2024 U.S. presidential candidates kept, with Democratic candidate Kamala Harris welcoming the support of \u201csystem-aligned\u201d individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s basically the party (with) people who think \u2018the American system is basically good. It needs reforms here and there, but it\u2019s OK.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘This is a problem that we have as journalists. The very tools we have, of fact-checking and discovering scandal, the anti-system politician has an immune system to that.’<\/p>\u2014 Keynote speaker Jeet Heer, columnist and podcaster with The Nation<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Epitomized by his recent appointments \u2014 such as tech titan Elon Musk as a government \u201cefficiency\u201d expert, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary \u2014 president-elect Trump and his cohort operated as \u201canti-system\u201d politicians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heer said the message coming from these politicians is that \u201cthe system is corrupt,\u201d which acts as a kind of \u201csuperpower\u201d protecting them from conventional critiques.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt immunizes them against certain things that journalism can normally do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a problem that we have as journalists. The very tools we have, of fact-checking and discovering scandal, the anti-system politician has an immune system to that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heer cited a \u201cbreaking down of hegemony\u201d through a series of events in the last two decades that have eroded trust in systems and made large populations amenable to the ideas of anti-system politicians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heer claimed fact-checking failed in part because it was \u201cused and weaponized by pro-system people as a way of protecting the status quo and protecting it from legitimate critique.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He mentioned a lengthy<\/a> fact-check by the Washington Post<\/em> on Vermont senator Bernie Sanders\u2019 comment on the six wealthiest people in the world having as much wealth as the bottom half of the world\u2019s population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Sanders\u2019 numbers were factually correct, the Post<\/em> gave it a three-Pinocchios truth rating because it lacked \u201cnuance about wealth accumulation and debt in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heer said he was flabbergasted by that logic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf this is your fact check, doesn\u2019t this begin to question the whole task of fact-checking?\u201d Heer asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heer described this and similar instances as \u201cfact-checking that shuts down debate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said that while fact-checking is vital, journalists who depict facts as a one-way street and discourage debate, can alienate the public and breed mistrust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs journalists, maybe the rethink that we need to do is with a lot of these questions, not (only focus on) why people got the facts wrong\u2026. But where they are coming from,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think a lot of the stuff that we are seeing, of people\u2019s skepticism and doubt \u2014 even distrust of what we do \u2014 comes from good places. We have to meet them at those good places, and that\u2019s how we can engage them so that they don\u2019t end up at the bad places.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Immediately after his address, Heer was joined by award-winning journalist and author Andrew Cohen, a former Carleton journalism professor, and Carleton University Master of Journalism student Sarah St-Pierre for a panel discussion on the topic, followed by an audience Q&A session.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nkele Martin Regina-based political columnist and podcaster Jeet Heer gave a keynote address at the  Reimagining Political Journalism conference that audibly amused the room when its title \u2014 \u201cFact-Checking Won\u2019t Save Democracy\u201d \u2014 was announced. Heer, who writes for New York City\u2019s The Nation, prefaced his speech by announcing it was a \u201cprovocation,\u201d an … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","latest_post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/reimagining-political-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/reimagining-political-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/reimagining-political-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/reimagining-political-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/reimagining-political-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/reimagining-political-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":459,"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/reimagining-political-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions\/459"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/reimagining-political-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/reimagining-political-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/reimagining-political-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cusjc.ca\/reimagining-political-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}