JOURNALISTS RALLY SUPPORT AMID RISING DISINFORMATION AND DISTRUST
- Media Action Plan
- Sep 24, 2025
- 2 min read
For more than a decade, Nobel Prize winning journalist Maria Ressa has urged all of us to “hold the line” against the dismantling of our institutions.
Ressa’s words aren’t hyperbole or hypothetical. They are a clarion call to action to defend press freedom and democracy, against disinformation and authoritarianism.
As journalists, in both Canada and around the world, they are words we heed every day.
Journalists are there when news happens, on the ground and bearing witness, recording first hand accounts, talking to the sources, making sense of events, fact checking, double checking and then checking again. We don’t always get it right, and when we make mistakes, we correct the record.
But during this critical time in history, journalists are asked to do more with less. There are vast news deserts with no credible news gathering at all. Trust in the media is at an all-time low. And this loss of trust in legitimate news reporting has, in part, been engineered. Independent media has been targeted by those who benefit from breaking the public's faith in facts and the truth. That's not just south of the border. It's here in Canada too.
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) and Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) are proud collaborators with UNIFOR’s “Fact Check” campaign stressing the vital importance of our country’s legitimate news outlets. We are on the front lines of a war against truth, uncovering corruption and abuses of power perpetrated by those who benefit from attacks against the media.
We know it’s frustrating and overwhelming and there’s a temptation to just look away from the news. But we need the public as we work hard to sort the lies from the truth. We need your support. Because as political theorist Hannah Arendt wrote, “If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.”
Michelle Shephard, Journalist, Author and Filmmaker and CJFE Co-President.
Brent Jolly, Journalist and CAJ President.
I appreciate this sentence from your general statement: “And this loss of trust in legitimate news reporting has, in part, been engineered.” Perhaps there have been outside efforts to reduce trust in journalism but I would say that much of the damage has been self-inflicted. Journalists are human beings who often operate under deadlines and are full of biases. I see many instances important stories ignored, stories framed oddly and critical context omitted. For example, I’ve written to CTV National News on a number of occasions to call them out for such practices when they were blatant and have never received any response.