Public service media is an antidote to misinformation

Photo: Radio-Canada Ottawa-Gatineau's journalist, Rosalie Sinclair.

This op-ed from Catherine Tait, President and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada, was published by the Toronto Star on October 2, 2024.

In 1998, Canada eliminated measles. The highly contagious and deadly disease was no longer spreading in the country, thanks to high vaccination rates.

Yet today, measles is again a public health problem, in no small part because of misinformation. As few as 30% of children have been vaccinated in some parts of Canada, and cases are on the rise. Clinicians say it's only a matter of time before more serious outbreaks occur. Europe is the canary in the coal mine - measles cases there rose from 900 in 2022 to 30,000 in 2023, an increase of more than 3000%.

We all witnessed the devastating toll of COVID-19 misinformation and disinformation, which contributed to a tragedy of 2800 unnecessary deaths in Canada.

But the dangers of misinformation and disinformation did not end with the pandemic. They are still with us.

This year, Policy Horizons Canada warned that people not being able to tell what is true and what is not is at the top of the list of the most significant threats facing our society. The pollution of our information ecosystem with disinformation and AI-generated fakery is a threat because it undermines the trust we have in the reporting of news and events around us.

What can we do? Trusted sources of information are vital but are increasingly under attack due to economic and political pressures. Local news outlets are closing across the country, leaving a vacuum for misinformation to fill. Strong public media is more important than ever.

Countries with strong public media are more resilient to disinformation, studies have consistently shown. Robust public media set the bar for all media in a country, so that citizens have more news sources that follow the standards of professional journalism. These standards are nothing new, but they are more critical than ever. Practices like verifying images or videos before including them in articles or on newscasts and corroborating information with a second source are essential to sifting fact from fiction.

Next week, public service media from around the world will be in Ottawa for Public Broadcasters International (PBI)*, an annual event where we discuss solutions to the problems we all face.

Top of mind at PBI will be how public media will use AI technologies for good. Earlier this year, CBC/Radio-Canada published our approach to using AI, which is consistent with our mission of serving all Canadians; the BBC has also been at the forefront of thinking about how to use AI responsibly. Public media can lead the way in charting a course for all media to use AI ethically, and in ways that diminish rather than contribute to the flow of misinformation.

Verifying information has become more difficult in the AI era. That's why CBC/Radio-Canada is a member of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), an industry-wide group of news organizations, content publishers, and distribution platforms. CBC/Radio-Canada and BBC were founding members of this project, which helps publishers and audiences establish the authenticity of different types of media, and understand when they have been altered.

This type of transparency and accuracy is paramount. Reporters Without Borders has established an international standard, the Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI), to promote trustworthy journalism. The Winnipeg Free Press and public media like France Télévisions, RTÉ News (Ireland) and SWI swissinfo.ch are among the media fully certified by the JTI. CBC/Radio-Canada was recertified by the JTI last month.

Public media have also been working to improve online conversations. Last year CBC/Radio-Canada launched the Public Spaces Incubator (PSI) with the public broadcasters of Belgium, Switzerland and Germany. PSI is developing and testing ways to encourage civil online conversations as an antidote to the harmful, toxic online discourses that are fed by misinformation and disinformation. We'll be making an exciting announcement about this project at PBI.

We don't have to live in a world where people can't tell what is real and what is not. We can create a better world-and CBC/Radio-Canada is part of the solution.

Catherine Tait is President and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada

*The Public Broadcasters International conference took place from Oct. 7-9, 2024 in Ottawa. You can read Catherine Tait's opening remarks on our Media Centre.