Manipulating the Message
How Powerful Forces Shape the News
Journalists hate the term fake news, but there’s a troubling reality: spin doctors routinely try to dupe them into reporting misleading and distorted stories.
Check the news on any given day and here’s what you’ll find: Governments routinely lie. Companies inflate claims about their products
and practices. Institutions release studies with misleading data meant to deceive. Police departments, infected by systemic racism, downplay crimes against Indigenous and racialized people.
The public depends on the media to help them understand the world, but are journalists catching all the daily lies, omissions, and distortions? Shrinking newsrooms and an army of spin doctors mean journalists can get duped. Despite valiant efforts by a handful of investigative journalists, the truth is routinely left behind.
Award-winning journalist Cecil Rosner insists there is something we can do about this. We can pressure news organizations to stop blindly regurgitating the firehose of press releases and focus instead on determining what is actually true. Rosner empowers readers by sharing his techniques for detecting misinformation and disinformation.
Cecil Rosner is an award-winning investigative journalist whose career as a reporter, television producer, and news manager spans four decades. He has exposed wrongdoing, uncovered wrongful convictions, and revealed systemic injustice. An adjunct professor at the University of Winnipeg, he has trained journalists across Canada. He lives in Winnipeg.