Branksome Hall takes on the Munk Debates

“Be it resolved, don’t trust mainstream media”

On November 30, 2022, Branksome Faculty and Students had the opportunity to attend the Munk Debate hosted at Roy Thomson Hall. The Munk Debates occur bi-annually in Toronto, with an audience size of 3,000 people. The Chair of the Munk Debates, Rudyard Griffiths, claims that “as our democracy becomes dangerously polarized, we believe that civil and substantive public debate is a vital public good.” Members of the Branksome community shared stage seating amongst the four debaters. The motion for the evening? “Be it resolved, don’t trust mainstream media.” Debating for the Pro side were Douglas Murray and Matt Taibbi. Murray is a British author and political commentator, he has written columns for publications including The Wall Street Journal. Taibbi, an American author and journalist, is well known for his time as a contributing editor for the Rolling Stones publication. On the Con side of the debate was Malcolm Gladwell, a Canadian journalist, author and public speaker. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996 and is a 5-time New York Times bestselling author. Joining Gladwell in arguing against the motion was Michelle Goldberg, American author, journalist, and New York Times Op-Ed columnist. 

During his opening remarks, Taibbi speaks to the shifting aims of news outlets following the arrival of the internet. Nowadays, outlets “pick an audience and feed it news you know they’ll like. Instead of starting with a story and  following the facts, you start with what pleases your audience and work backwards to the story.” Taibbi argues that nearly all facets of mainstream media are perpetrators of this “demographic hunting business.”

Goldberg commences by stating “I’m not standing up here and arguing that the media never gets anything wrong. The media’s full of human beings who are subject to all of the frailties that human beings are subject to.” She goes on to state that “if you paid attention to the mainstream media, you were likely to be much safer and much closer to the truth than if you followed the kind of contrarians.” She references mainstream media and its ability to address and effectively communicate new information as it becomes available, specifically when the current lens of the COVID-19 pandemic over the past few years is taken into consideration. 

Murray questions the responsibilities of the mainstream media during his opening remarks. He claims that mainstream media outlets are no longer interrogating government actions, speaking specifically about the mainstream media’s failure to question Justin Trudeau’s enactment of the Emergency Powers Act earlier this year. His reasoning for this lack of transparency? – “In this country, your media, your mainstream media is funded by the government.”

Gladwell reflects on the first 10 years of his career as a journalist for The Washington Post, and how certain industry standards were commonplace for himself and fellow mainstream media reporters. He states: “If you quoted someone denouncing someone else.

The Con side claimed that regardless of where the story may take the journalist, pillars in the mainstream media like The Washington Post and The New York Times have always been built upon and you had to call up the person who was denounced and get a response. If X said something about Y, you had to call Y and find out how they felt about what X said. You had to make a good faith effort to talk to all sides of an issue.” If these standards of journalism were not upheld, a piece would not be published, and as such could not gain any traction.

Throughout the evening, the Pro side remained firm on the fact that the mainstream media is no longer writing objectively for a broad audience of readers. Instead, there is a new type of targeted media engagement occurring, with writers everywhere catering to a specific population of audience members of the same political demographic rooted in the integrity and honesty of their journalists.

At the beginning of the evening the audience was polled, and 52 percent of audience members voted that mainstream media should be trusted. After the debate, this number decreased to 33 percent of audience members, proving to be the largest vote gain for the Pro side of the evening’s events in Munk Debate history.

Following the closing remarks, Branksome students and staff had the opportunity to speak with the debaters. This opportunity to participate in the second biannual Munk Debate of 2022 certainly sparked both conversation and curiosity amongst community members, as the lively discussions held at Roy Thomson Hall surrounding public trust in the media continued in the days following the event.