In the wake of Donald Trump’s political resurrection, acclaimed Canadian author and journalist Jeet Heer wonders if “one of the best parts of journalism” still works.
“My speech is a little bit of a provocation,” said Heer in the opening to his keynote address, kicking off a national conference seeking to reimagine political journalism hosted by Carleton University in mid-November.
“We’re used to the political spectrum that came out of the French Revolution of left and right,” said the national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nationpodcast, The Time of Monsters.
“But I think that in the current moment, the actual political spectrum has been reconfigured, and it is pro-system and anti-system,” added Heer.
The pro-system group, which supported Democrat Kamala Harris in the recent U.S. presidential election, trusts institutions such as government, civil society and journalism. This group feels OK, for the most part, with the status quo. They see no need to “make America great again” because, as Hillary Clinton succinctly summed up the ethos in a 2016 tweet, “America is already great.”
The anti-system folk, on the other hand, propelled Trump to the White House again for what’s likely to be alternative facts: part deux. This group sent Trump to Washington to blow up what he called the entire “corrupt” system. This brigade of system skeptics increasingly distrusts institutions such as government, the legal system, science, medicine, education — and the news media.
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