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Amid the swirling stew of alarm about social media, here is a sobering assessment by a Harvard University centre of the impact of the mainstream media in spreading Donald Trump's misinformation about voter fraud. It's an alarming look at the impact of the mainstream media on civic society, where the determination to appear even-handed means they blast Trump's false claims out in headlines, tweets and news alerts. https://cyber.harvard.edu//Mail-in-Voter-Fraud-Disinformat

The mainstream media are struggling to cover the COVID-19 story, a pandemic that is upending so many lives, and with no end in sight. This article surveys the fractured information waterfront and is spot on about the media's systemic limitation - "the media’s default rhythm of constant piecemeal updates is ill-suited to covering an event as large as the pandemic... the staccato pulse of reports merely amplifies the wobbliness of the scientific process, turns incremental bits of evidence into game changers, and intensifies the already-palpable sense of uncertainty that drives people toward misinformation." The difference in today's world is that social media offer easy access to an ocean of disinformation and paranoia.

The Russian Gary Kasparov observes The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth. Those words are coming home in spades to America in this Age of Trump. This article by Jay Rosen is an excellent description of the crisis facing the media as they adapt, duck or confront Trump propaganda.

The media has traditionally ducked controversy by presenting "both sides" which implicitly means promoting false equivalence. Now take that up a few notches. "Republican strategy, he now realized, was to make stuff up, spread it on social media, repeat it in your answers to journalists even when you know it’s a lie with crumbs of truth mixed in and then convert whatever controversy arises into go-get-em points with the base, while pocketing for the party a juicy dividend: additional mistrust of the news media to help insulate President Trump among loyalists when his increasingly brazen actions are reported as news."

The situation is no different in Canada. The loss of local news is having a major impact on civic engagement and just plain awareness of what's going on. https://www.nytimes.com//local-news-disappear-pen-america.