Foreign interference shows need for Canada to get serious on media literacy: advocate
OTTAWA — As federal parties craft the scope of a possible inquiry into foreign interference, Canada's media-literacy charity argues governments and schools need to do a better job of preventing citizens from being manipulated by hostile states.
The two claims could be easily disproven by simple Google searches, such as a reverse-image search. But Johnson noticed both were widely amplified, which he agues is an indication of how easily foreign actors can disrupt Canadian democracy. Johnson, from Media testified at a February committee meeting on foreign interference about the need for media literacy, but MPs largely focused on comparing Canada to allies that have expelled Chinese diplomats or launched foreign-agent registries.He said Canada should look to peer countries to see how they respond to bad actors and proactively prime the population against foreign narratives.
It has produced reports on Chinese interference in municipalities in Sweden and created a handbook for journalists to help them prevent manipulation attempts — such as people coming to them with fake stories or hate-mail campaigns trying to discourage them from reporting on certain topics. "We really have not, in very many cases, updated curriculums particularly to reflect the increasingly central role of media in kids' lives," he said.
Johnson said older generations need to"unlearn" the instinct to reflexively trust whatever they're reading, which stems from an era when credible media outlets and governments were largely the only ones who could afford to put out messages.
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