​Truth is essential in a difficult world.

Last Wednesday with hundreds of others at UNB Saint John, I felt privileged to hear the distinguished author and broadcaster, Carol Off, speak about six words which have become denigrated in today’s world.
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Freedom, Democracy, Truth, Woke, Choice, and Taxes are the six words that Off highlights in her new book, At A Loss For Words. The former host of the evening CBC radio show “As It Happens” points to Donald Trump in the U.S.A., and sadly, Canada’s Leader of the Opposition, Pierre Poilievre, as well as other hard right political leaders across the world, for denigrating these important words.

Off notes that Trump-supporting January 6, 2021, rioters on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, and trucker protestors on Parliament Hill in Ottawa a year later chanted the word “Freedom” as “they demanded relief from Tyrannical governments”.

Poilievre often uses the word “woke” to describe those pursuing social justice or greater equality in Canadian society.

Carol Off, author of At A Loss For Words

David H. Walker, author, war era drawing by John Watton

Of the six words highlighted by Off, the one I want most to concentrate on here, is “Truth.”
Truth is a vital part of journalism. This truth is not absolute, in other words it is not the same as when we say, “There are seven days in the week”, or “The sun rises in the east and sets in the west.”

In my book, Wires Crossed I cited the great American journalist Robert Caro, who wrote that in news and journalism: “There is no one truth. No objective truth. No single truth…But there are facts. Verifiable facts. And the more facts you come up with, the closer you come to whatever truth there is.” 

As I wrote in my book, this is an excellent description of the nature and purpose of good journalism. It is based on facts, and good opinion writing is also based on facts. Done well, they deliver to the public what is new or is “news”, and also what is an opinion to which we need to pay attention. 
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As Carol Off points out in her book, Donald Trump says repeatedly that journalism is “fake news”.  Trump’s words have been taken up by demagogues around the world.
 
Unfortunately, Pierre Poilievre is also very critical of the news media. He insults journalists and has no time for them, especially young reporters just learning their trade. Poilievre has promised to “unfund” the CBC, which is the closest thing we have to good journalism in Canada, especially in New Brunswick, which has been this country’s ultimate news desert, after close to 65 years of monopoly journalism under first the Irving and now, the Postmedia monopoly.

Digging for the truth, and telling it like it is, is not always popular. I argued in my book that, done well, it involves working in “a risk-taking, courageous and dynamic environment.”

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Truth became a major preoccupation in the life of my Scottish-born father, David H. Walker. Early in the Second World War, he was captured in France shortly before the evacuation of Allied Forces at Dunkerque. He was then a prisoner of war for five years in various Nazi camps.

 The POW camps were nothing like the Concentration camps suffered by the Jews during the Holocaust, but the long-term confinement took its toll. The POW’s survived mainly on rotting potatoes, and they circled the camps incessantly on foot to stay fit as they dreamed of freedom.

My father escaped three times from the various camps where he was imprisoned, but he never made it all the way home. His most dramatic escape was when he was 31 years old – the Warburg escape, when 40 prisoners went over the camp wire.  Just three made it home.

His buddy on each escape was his great pal, Patrick Campbell-Preston, a fellow officer in the Royal Highland Regiment of the Black Watch. In his memoir, Lean, Wind Lean which David Walker wrote much later, he described their rapid journey away from the camp:

As rifle shots sounded around them, their pace slowed.
“Arr you wounded, Davie,’ Pat asked in a hoarse Scottish whisper.
“Tired,” my father replied,
 “You know, Pat, whatever might happen to us ever again, that would have been the best thing ever.”
He continued: “Nothing could ever touch it, nothing. That was true for both of us. I think it must have been true and remained true for all the people who got over the wire at Warburg.”

The determination, discipline, and danger, of their escape brought truth to the fore for all these men.

The truth remained uppermost for my father throughout his writing career in which he wrote over 20 novels. My mother and father chose Pat, as the God father of their first- born son, Patrick, who died of crib death. They again chose Pat as God father for their third son, David.
Both Pat and my father are no longer living.

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But to return to the world of truth from the perspective of Carol Off, she writes: “Words matter. Truth matters. It’s foundational for our lives as social beings, because without it, we cannot trust each other. But currently there are more regulations in place when it comes to the safe operation of your microwave than to govern a technology that has hacked into the central core of humanity – its language, its storytelling.”

How, she asks, “does the news media regain the attention and trust of the public?”

She continues: “I think the truth can recapture the public imagination if it’s aspirational, if it gives us some reason to hope, some sense that we have a future. If it allows people to take part in a conversation not as tweeters or Facebook friends or Redditers, but as citizens, as members of a community of shared values…meant to improve all our lives.’

Off argues that many small, upstart news producers are doing just that, “in a mini- revolution of online media, much of its content tested and reliable. They need subscribers, tax breaks, public support.”

One of the great disappointments of my life is that the Saint Croix Courier, an independent small newspaper founded in 1865, and which I edited for several years, is no longer available as a print publication.
 
But there is hope. Like Phoenix rising from the ashes, the only independent community television station in New Brunswick, CHCO, has bought the Saint Croix Courier name and is well under way in bringing back The Courier as an online edition under the courageous and indefatigable news director Vicky Hogarth

And the CBC and Radio-Canada must persevere as the media heart of our country. It is not hard to find detractors of the CBC. But we must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Carol Off is herself a CBC icon, but the network stars include David Cochrane on CBC TV, and Matt Galloway and Catherine Cullen on CBC radio and locally in New Brunswick, CBC radio’s Jacques Poitras and Robert Jones.

There is much need for new blood at the top of the CBC. The incoming President and CEO of the corporation, Marie-Philippe Bouchard is talented and has been deeply involved in the panel drawing up a new mandate for the corporation. It cannot afford to be all things to all people, and it must make choices.

Huge support for the CBC was clear at the large gathering for Carol Off’s book last week at UNBSJ. We owe it to Carol to get going on what she recommends.