Freedom and responsibility
As a gun rights guy, I have a lot of discussions with people about gun control, and I’m often told that gun rights should come with some responsibilities. I don’t disagree in principle, but since the “responsibilities” come in the form of government mandates, I’ve got a problem. Yes, some people are morons and do stupid things, but the answer isn’t to regulate people who did nothing wrong.
And honestly, the Canadian media should be thrilled to hear someone like me maintain that as the case, because if not, I’d be hopping and calling for their freedom of the press to be seriously curtailed.
It all started a few years ago, when there were reports of mass graves at the site of a former Catholic “residential school” where indigenous children were sent back in the day. This sparked outrage and led to dozens of churches being set on fire.
There’s just a problem. It was all complete and absolute BS.
For years, the media in Canada pushed the narrative that the Catholic Church in the country, specifically Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows in Manitoba and other churches and a residential school in Kamloops, were sites of mass graves where the Catholic Church buried the bodies of indigenous people.
As of 2023, no bodies had been found in any of these sites, but at least 68 Christian churches in the country had been vandalized or destroyed via arson.
Now, finally, Canada’s Globe & Mail admitted it never scrutinized the false claims that led to the Kamloops scandal.
But the converse is also true. The fact of the crimes committed against Indigenous children at residential schools over many decades does not automatically validate claims that hundreds of students were dumped into unmarked graves in Kamloops and other residential schools. That is an extraordinary assertion, one that requires proof.
That should have been the starting point for the media in May, 2021, when the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation first issued a press release announcing the “confirmation of the remains of 215 children of the Kamloops Indian Residential School” through the use of ground-penetrating radar that identified subterranean anomalies.
The media, including The Globe and Mail, did not initially scrutinize, much less challenge, that assertion. The initial headlines and stories in the media simply stated as fact that the remains of 215 children had been found. Many of those early stories, including in this newspaper, made reference to “mass graves” (a historically fraught phrase that does not appear in the Tk’emlúps 2021 press release).
Ah, so the media believed the story without fact-checking, because it checked all the right narrative boxes. Only now, that destruction has happened, do they retract the story.
Remember, the government tried to use the story to criminalize ‘residential school denialism.’
In other words, the Canadian media heard something too juicy to really check, ran with it, and then decided to attack anyone critical of their coverage and wanted to make it a literal crime.
They wanted censorship, while actually making the case for censorship because of how they went off half-cocked over absolutely nothing.
The Globe and Mail tried to pretend that this wasn’t that big of a deal, even if it were untrue, because there were great injustices toward the First Nations people in the past. Those injustices did happen, both in Canada and here with our own Native American population.
I won’t pretend otherwise. It’s part of why I simply cannot bring myself to trust any government with any more power than is absolutely essential, and I’m not thrilled about trusting it with that.
But the sins of the more distant past don’t excuse the Canadian media from not just vetting the story in any meaningful way, but trying to criminalize those speaking out against the veracity of the reporting.
Freedom of the press comes with some degree of responsibility. As a member of the press myself, I owe it to both myself and you, my readers, to be as accurate as I possibly can. I don’t get it right all the time, because I’m human, but when I get it wrong, I owe it to everyone to try and make it right. I’ve done that, including deleting posts that could have made me a fair bit of money, all because it was the right thing. I have no problems doing it, beyond the problems I have with myself for screwing up.
It seems that too many of my contemporaries are unable to understand that.
So, for years, the Canadian press has actively perpetuated the claim that there were mass graves at this site. There’s been discussion of similar graves at similar sites. While other things may or may not have occurred, those were never the topic of here and now, which were the supposed graves.
And those graves simply didn’t exist.
There’s nothing wrong with saying you got it wrong. There’s something very wrong with getting it wrong for years while trying to criminalize people telling you that you got it wrong.
I get that Canada isn’t the United States. This is yet another example of me thanking God that it’s so.
But on the same token, let’s not pretend our own media is immune to this. How many are still touting January 6th as a violent insurrection despite there being a profound lack of violence by those who took the unguided tour of the Capitol? The only person who was actually killed was one of the protestors, but sure, it was horrifically violent, and they keep pushing it as such.
And that’s just the first such issue that comes to mind.
The problem is that the media has a great deal of power. Our Founding Fathers wanted the press to have the ability to criticize the state without fear of repercussions because they knew that the press had the power to keep the government in check to some degree. They wanted this, but what we’ve seen is that the press thinks they’re more than they are.
But this can and should come with the responsibility to do it right.
In a just world, every journalist who was tasked with covering this story and failed to do the job right would be drummed out of the industry once and for all. They won’t.
Even plagiarism isn’t enough to get someone blacklisted. Pulling out your junk and jerkin’ the gerkin’ during a strategy video call just gets you a couple of weeks off, so this? This is nothing at all, especially when it advances the leftist narrative that white people are bad.
Look, I’m not saying that bad things didn’t happen. There’s enough blood on everyone’s hands, especially if you go back far enough. I’m just saying that while this shouldn’t have happened, what really shouldn’t have happened is the Canadian media tripping over itself to keep the fires burning and to make them even hotter over nothing.
Recently, I got a new paid subscriber from Canada. He reminded me that a lot of Canadians aren’t thrilled with how things are going in their country, and, like those in “fly over country” here in the United States, they’re kind of in the same boat with being ignored. I absolutely understand that.
A good place to start, when they begin to reclaim their country, would be to drive these existing media entities out of business entirely. They don’t deserve to continue to exist, but freedom of the press means only the market can punish them, so to the market, I simply say, “Make it hurt.”
Tilting at Windmills is 100% reader-supported. If you enjoyed this article, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription for 15% off the first year or making a one-time donation here. Either would be greatly appreciated at a time when I know good and well I’m about to have some serious expenses coming.
Tom:
Further to your thoughts on letting the market itself destroy the MSM... Here in Canada the Feds have been and continue to financially subsidize the big networks. With taxpayer money. To the tune of over 30% of their entire budgets. The big networks and establishment media have become paid shills for the party in power; which is almost always Liberals. Sound historically familiar?
Well said. Quinn Que just posted an excellent essay overlapping on this topic; I found it useful.
https://edokwin.substack.com/p/error-has-no-rights?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=250377&post_id=199505703&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=6ylnr&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email