Speaking of Media ....with Keith Marnoch
Insights for Communicators, Interesting for All. 'Speaking of Media' – the Podcast that brings together communicators and the media to consider and critique the world of mass storytelling, hosted by former journalist turned corporate communicator, Keith Marnoch. If you are a communicator - or perhaps someone who speaks on behalf of your organization - 'Speaking of Media' allows you to learn from experts on both sides of the media microphone. The Podcast aims to highlight effective ways to widely share your positive stories and messages, and also – perhaps more importantly - how to avoid getting caught in a negative media storm. Visit www.SpeakingofMedia.com
Speaking of Media ....with Keith Marnoch
Traditional Media Isn't Dying, It's Transforming Before Our Eyes ...with Graham Richardson
Graham Richardson, former CTV news anchor, shares insights from his transition to public relations and discusses the rapidly evolving media landscape that impacts politicians, spokespeople, and organizations.
• Traditional media isn't disappearing despite business model challenges—CTV's news site reached 47% of Canada's population in February
• Today's communicators must adapt to a world where everyone has "HD cameras in their pockets" making everyone potential content creators
• The decline in media resources means less scrutiny of officials and institutions, with 80% of stories now going uncovered
• Trust in media has eroded with many believing journalists are actively deceiving rather than occasionally making mistakes
• The 2023 Canadian federal election demonstrated extraordinary shifts in public opinion, influenced by both traditional and alternative media sources
• Private sector clients still highly value traditional media outlets that can deliver broad audience reach
The most valuable asset for any public-facing person—whether in media, politics, or business—is authenticity and trust, which when lost is extremely difficult to regain.
On this edition of the Speaking of Media podcast, we feature Graham Richardson, a familiar face to many. As a former CTV news anchor and journalist Based in Ottawa, graham has transitioned to the world of public relations, advising national and international clients from the other side of the media microphone. We dive into the rapidly evolving media landscape and what that means for politicians, spokespeople and organizations trying to navigate it. What that means for politicians, spokespeople and organizations trying to navigate it. Graham shares his insights on the enduring role of traditional media, particularly television, and why dismissing legacy outlets might be short-sighted. As he puts it, the audience is still there, but how they access and engage with media is shifting and smart communicators need to adapt accordingly. Need to adapt accordingly.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we have our first ever repeat guest here on the Speaking of Media podcast. And just because he's a beauty and a great guy to talk about all the things that have happened between the last time he was on the show was two plus years ago and there's a lot of water under the bridge since then and but just not a not a better guy in this country to talk about state of journalism and you know the way that we're actually communicating politics. Obviously, in his wheelhouse. We're welcoming back Graham Richardson. Many might know him as the former lead anchor at CTV in Ottawa and before that in southern Ontario. You know him from CTV National News, cfto Local or CTV Toronto and the former Bureau Chief for Global News at Queen's Park and that's where we first crossed paths. So welcome Graham to the show. Thanks so much for the time. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Hi, keith, great to be on again.
Speaker 1:So it has been about a year since you've left the wonderful world of broadcast television news. Tell us a little bit about that and what you're doing now You're at Edelman in Ottawa. Tell us a little bit about what that job is, but, maybe more importantly, the consideration around that significant career change and what landed you here in this new role that you've got.
Speaker 2:Sure. So I'm the managing director of media. Basically, I tell people in all things public facing for our Edelman clients. It's a PR firm, it's a big PR firm. I do a bit of crisis. I do a lot of counsel, a lot of advice, which I tell my former colleagues. We know a lot. You don't know what you know until you go. We know a lot. We know a lot of people. We know how a lot of issues will play.
Speaker 2:There is currency in knowing those things, particularly in a rapidly changing world where we have been as media let's say as media in the last 10 years, on the front line of a dissolving structure for our business. The positive in all of that is that consumption has never been higher. You know, you look at it's my job now to know this but CTV and CBC are competing for digital supremacy in mainstream media. I give you an example of February of this year. Ctvca, the news site, reached millions of people 47% of the population, massive, massive. 47% of the population, massive, massive. Peter Mansbridge and Lloyd Robertson never got those kinds of numbers. So it tells us that mainstream media is not disappearing, it is not going away. The business of delivering news is changing and people's consumption. They require it, they need it and they're still consuming it, in some cases in record numbers. So there's been a lot of disruption, but it's also not as dark as many people who quite frankly want to see the decline of mainstream media, are painting a picture of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I love that topic. So you know, agenda-based or bias-based, not so much news but commentary, especially on what Canadians can reach on their TV guide here in Canada and into the States as well. You know Fox News is sort of standout example of sort of agenda driven commentary news. I wouldn't call it news necessarily. How do you sort that out for clientele? How do you when you say that the environment has been disrupted, how do you if somebody's in a, if a client or a company is in distress over a crisis or whatever, how do you make them understand how people are viewing their crisis in the public airwaves?
Speaker 2:When I was a reporter, many years ago now, there would be news conferences and there would be news releases, and now I tell clients there's millions of reporters out there with HD cameras in their pockets so you know if you're a health, if you're a hospital, for instance, and something happens, you know, I'm still amazed. I'm still amazed that the communications departments for large organizations still have policies like the media can't come in here, the media is in there still have policies like the media can't come in here. The media is in there, the customers are in there, the employees are in there. They are the media. And I say that meaning they are generating content right. And so what I like? To coach people and tell people whether it's crisis or not. You should be thinking about digital and phones first.
Speaker 2:You know I do a fair bit of media training. I don't call it that. I call it performance training. The reason I call it performance training is because, just like we're on camera right now, ceos and senior public-facing people and companies are on camera all the time. They're on panels, they're in front of employees, they're giving speeches and, yes, they're occasionally doing scrums in front of media and doing interviews. But we all have to brush up our performance because at any moment, if I was a nefarious guest on Speaking of Media and I wanted to make you look bad, I could grab a snippet of this, push it out on my socials and, before you know it, thousands of people have seen something that you're not very happy about. So that's the kind of footing we all need to be on.
Speaker 2:And again, it's not necessarily a bad thing, because consumption is at a record high and our young people are more comfortable with video than you and I ever were. Now you know they're in their teens now and they know how to edit video. Like. That was a mystery for me and I was in the media for 30 years, you know, until the last five. Um, like, ooh, editing was like this. You know now some of the apps on my phone, on my, on my little camera. It's unbelievable the uh, the ease with which you can do this now and and the mystique is gone Um so um, you know. I think that leaders I think senior public facing leaders need to need to be in the same position in terms of their performance and messaging right, knowing that, like if you look at the editing suites that are at everybody's fingertips and millions of people can now do it.
Speaker 1:if you're public facing for a company or an organization, you've got to be sharp and you've got to be ready and you've got to understand what you're facing I can remember call my first visit to queens park from journalism school, a couple of blocks over, and I carried a hockey bag of equipment and, uh, it was crazy for a 30-second clip, right. So what would you say and you're the best guy to ask this really is what's the difference between, you know, a face-to-face scrum at Queens Park versus what everybody can default to now, like you say, not just being able to collect stories where they go, but the barrier and the filter? I guess that is speaking to someone like we're talking to each other right now, virtually. I think that people get away with a lot of stuff and I love the fact that you're advocating, but for crisis management and immediate training and so on. But so, when you're looking at that issue, what is the true difference between what you used to get in a scrum versus what you get on a screen?
Speaker 2:Well, there's a couple of things there I mean. First of all, there are not enough watchers anymore. The media has been depleted to the point where I know politicians who have told me as I left CTV you know they're good people, they're not scammers, but they're like. I can get away with way more now than I did 10 years ago. The scrutiny has gone way down. The anger and the town square of throwing tomatoes at our elected officials has gone up, and the ability to do things. Because of that anger and that lash out factor of social media it's more difficult for governments to do things. But actual, real scrutiny has gone down. Because Dalton McGinty told me years ago when he first was premier, he would travel all through Ontario and visit newsrooms in northern Ontario and all over the place and by the time he finished as premier, especially up in the north, there weren't any left, there was nobody to visit. It's not a good thing and it's the same thing at major city halls where there used to be 10 people in the press gallery competing for stories, going to committees, going to council meetings. Now there are three and they're assigned to other things when council is not sitting right. And so all of that means that small, tiny example.
Speaker 2:I opened up my property tax bill the other day and oh, my garbage collection yearly surcharge was now 245 dollars for Ottawa. And, by the way, lived all over the country Ottawa garbage collection some of the best, just like snow. Okay, I'm not dumping on them, but I was like 245. That sounds like a lot. And then of course there's the gobbledygook of the bureaucratic answer as to why it's gone from this to that. And I sort of looked around at the pamphlet. They gave me the pamphlet and essentially it was it's up 21%. Wow. So I dutifully told my former assignment editor. I said, hey, here's a snapshot on my phone of my property tax assessment thing and it looks like garbage has gone up 20% and maybe I missed it.
Speaker 2:I didn't see any coverage of that. Now, like I said, I'm not watching City Hall super close. It might have been covered. But that's like one tiny example. Bob Fife, one of my mentors, and you know just a legend. He says when he started on the Hill 40 years ago, 80% of the stories got covered and 20 didn't. Now it's reversed 20% of the stories get covered, 80% of the stories don't get covered. It's true in every level of government. In municipal it's even worse. So it's very troubling.
Speaker 1:And that does translate to the corporate world as well, right? So my concern really these days is that, you know, journalism, the scrutiny that comes especially of our elected officials, public officials, but just generally on stories. You know, without it, democracy is really in question and, without making it sound too over the top, but without that scrutiny, I really feel that journalism is a part of our, you know, ability to live in a democratic world where we feel like our elected officials are being held to account. You're obviously, you know, from the story you just told, you're obviously seeing, you know, a new era, I guess, in terms of people basically being able to say what they want and get away with what they want. I guess my impression is right now, when we do look south of the border, that words have really become weaponized and are very much more tactical, perhaps, than they were in the past. And are we seeing that here in Canada?
Speaker 2:I think the incivility of our politics you talk to, like, I mean, I covered the convoy and I cover, you know, talking to some of the city councillors and some of what they were receiving online in person, like the threats I didn't sign up for this a lot of them said, some of them left, you know. So I think incivility is a big problem, but you know, don't get me wrong, I believe I truly believe, just like sports, just like comedy, just like business coverage, consumer issues, food, there's a lot of content. What I fully and totally reject is the notion that mainstream media's reporting on politics is all slanted and they're in it for someone else and they're lying to the public. Every year we do a trust barometer at Edelman worldwide. It's a massive survey and we are finding the people, the portion of the population that believes elites, whether they're CEOs, companies, the media and politicians are not necessarily saying things that the public disagrees with. A larger portion of the public believes that they are actively and willfully lying to the public for some nefarious reason. That's a subtle but very important and disturbing difference. That you know.
Speaker 2:I think, regardless of what you think of President Trump, there's a certain element there of um, everybody was always this way. He's just being open about it and I don't accept that, but a lot of people do. They think that the Bidens or the Clintons or the Bushes of the world were a part of some grand conspiracy to enrich themselves and to keep the people down. You know, and it's an overly simplistic answer to complicated times and I think it applies to a lot of our politics and we do have to check ourselves right. For years we've been, for decades we've been at least we're not like them. You know, and after Convoy, I'm not convinced I.
Speaker 2:I think there's a significant portion of the population that that that firmly believes that as an anchor I was actively lying to them every night as a member now of a public relations firm. I'm there to, to manipulate and to to, to, to do things to average people that doesn't help average people and that I'm in on something. I'm in on something and I, you know, without getting too stark here, it's kind of humorous, right, like whenever anybody from any party suggests there is a collective anything going on in the parliamentary press gallery. They have never spent any time around the parliamentary press gallery. They can't organize and agree on a lunch, let alone we're going to treat this party better than that party. Now do they make mistakes? Yes, are there biases there from where they come from?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:But this notion that they're in on something to go easy on one group and not easy and harder on the other group, I just I throw my. I just I refuse. I'm sorry, I just refuse to believe that.
Speaker 1:I'm glad that you mentioned the convoy referencing that. I mean, I remember your reports. They were quite compelling. I remember them strung together. It almost felt like you were realizing this on the front lines. You were starting to like, and I almost felt, like some in some of those stories that were in that string, that you did, you were, you were shocked and you were trying to manage. You were trying to manage what you were seeing and realizing in a really stark way.
Speaker 2:So there was and you were trying to manage what you were seeing and realizing in a really stark way, and there were a couple of things. I won't go on and on about the convoy, but I think that the convoy represented a low point for the country for a variety of reasons. On the media front, I knew, keith, whenever you went out, covered provincially political elections, like federally or provincial. When you went to the conservatives, regardless of level of government and you were media, a group of media, there was always suspicion, in some cases light hostility. I noticed that in the Harper years, some light hostility right, that in the Harper years, some light hostility, right. This was something entirely different. This was not only do I not watch you, you're in on it and you're lying, you know. And in the space, in that space where they've turned away, it's been well documented right. The algorithm is giving them what they want, right. And if you don't like a news report or an anchor or a news reporter, there are multiple sources you can turn away from who you agree with, and so there's a lot of that going on right.
Speaker 2:And yeah, the convoy gave life to that and I've said this before and I tell convoy supporters and people who have had it with lockdowns in Trudeau. When the police tell you to leave and you don't leave and you gum up Canada's capital city the way you did. It's illegal and it was also not violent for most, for the most part. I saw families bouncy castles. Some of my friends in the West end of Ottawa came down to take a look at it because they didn't believe the way it was being portrayed, and they came back saying yeah, I think you guys have made it worse than it is. And then I pointed out people can't get food in apartments. It's really bad. So I just think there were a lot of people who just had it, and I think we will be talking about the pandemic, the convoy and all that it represented. I think that will be a topic of discussion 60, 70 years from now. Agreed, agreed.
Speaker 1:I went back and listened to our first interview that we did for this podcast specifically, and you were mentioning and I think we were sort of on the cusp of what we're experiencing more now in a regular way is that you're always searching for and expecting professionally sifted journalism and when it's not, that you know it, Are you still confident that you know it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I am. Yeah, I am Like I'm a mainstream person. I pay for subscriptions, I watch mainstream news. I don't turn to YouTube for my news, but there's many, many people who do, who don't have cable and they want to be informed, and some of those voices are partisan. That's fine, that's fine, as long as you know they're partisan and they're going to say things that are partisan, that are not fully fair, if you will. But look at what we're doing. You're creating content here that's hopefully of interest to people, and it doesn't necessarily have to be the current on CBC. You know, like there's well, I mean the Curse of Politics and that panel that David Hurley's put together.
Speaker 2:It is, you know, habitually listened to by, I would say, 80% of the people who work right up the street from me on the Hill. Number one they're entertaining. Number two they swear it's fun, it's got a certain vibe for itself and it's very, very high quality and it's not on mainstream. So that's fine, that's fine, it's just good for them. I just think there's. I don't accept the people who turn to YouTube saying everything else is junk. It's like me saying everything on YouTube is crap. Right, it's not.
Speaker 1:Right, can't let you go without talking about Canadian politics, and we are speaking with Graham Richardson here on the Speaking of Media podcast. We're coming to you from the Digital Creative Arts Centre at the Boys and Girls Club of London, ontario, happy to have Graham with us and couldn't let him go without some politics talk.
Speaker 1:It's just been well you left and then everything kind of got really exciting. But you know we don't have hours to talk about this, even though I would love to. But so we look at the federal level and liberals going from wondering if they would be a party to back in government and the craziness of I mean, I guess it wasn't official that the conservatives were going to walk away with a majority because they didn't secure it before it happened. But first of all, like that's you know, when you look at the historically craziest turnaround because of circumstance, I suppose, and factors coming in from every angle just your general impression on how that election kind of bore out. You were on election night on TV and saw it unfold.
Speaker 2:Look, james Moore is in our firm ex-industry minister under the Harper years. He's never seen anything like it and he was in cabinet. You're right, we were all talking about for months the collapse. The Liberals were talking about the collapse. Staffers were depressingly trying to find work and leave government because they knew they were going to lose. And then, of course, two things happened Trudeau resigns and Donald Trump starts threatening Canada.
Speaker 2:And so just extraordinary, extraordinary, and I think that I think that it it's we here at Edelman, because we're the public affairs side, a lot of ex-politicals, while we were taken aback and surprised, like everybody else, quite early on, president Darcy Walsh was internally saying and he's a former conservative saying I'm not sure Pierre's got this, I think this is slipping away, and he got some pushback. Come on, really Like, look at the numbers. He's like I just you know, and so it was unbelievable. And I think, keith, I think these are complicated calculus, complicated decisions made by voters, but at the same time quite simple, and I just think that, by and large, jenny Byrne and Pierre Polyev are too conservative for the country, the big voting blocks of the country, the Torontos, montreal's, vancouver's, ottawa's, like where the votes are right, and I understand. My family's from Alberta, my in-laws are from Alberta and I've got lots of friends in Alberta. You know where they're pulling 80 percent of the vote. I understand that those messages were landing and continue to land, with millions of people. I'm not dismissing what they were able to achieve. I just think in order to win I agreed with Brian Mulroney you have to fish where the fish are, and I don't think they did.
Speaker 2:And the other element that I think gets a little bit underlooked, it's not necessarily Trump. For me anyway, it's just the recklessness of Elon Musk and what he was doing to the federal government in the United States leading into our vote. Now, was Pierre Polyev going to do that? Not as far, but there were certainly discussions about fundamental change behind the scenes. That, I think, was a bit too much for many Canadians. They weren't sure what they were buying yet and they kind of knew Carney, even though Polyev's been in public life for a long time. So you're right, a whole bunch of things happened extraordinary, unprecedented and in the end, the very resilient brand of the Liberal Party, for a variety of reasons, bounced back and almost got a majority Incredible.
Speaker 1:Incredible. The message was one thing, but here on this show we talk about media. So we saw that podcasts became much more of a way to buy in and maybe, as you were saying earlier, people were trying to find, you know, the stories, the commentary, the news that they wanted. How much of that did you find in Canada, moving away from mainstream television and newspapers in Canada to a bit more grassroots, on-the-ground kind of podcasting?
Speaker 2:There's some of it, particularly on the conservative side. Quite a bit of it. I mean, the number one YouTuber in the country remains Pierre Polyev. He doesn't need to speak to CTV News and CBC News and the Globe and Mail. There's questions about the strategy of openly being so hostile to them and what that kind of looked like to the rest of the country. You know like his supporters loved it. I understand that. So, yeah, there's, there's a there's like, like his Jordan Peterson interview.
Speaker 2:You know how many hundreds of millions of views, but but there there is a large voting block that still relies on traditional sources. I think what I'm most interested in post-election is where those young men who voted, who shifted strongly to conservatives, how long they're going to hold on and how he's going to hold on to them. You know, because Carney's got a massive job ahead of him and these are early days, but we can assume, just like every other government, he's going to go down in popularity and then what you know, if Polyev can hold on, he's likely going to hold on. It looks like he's obviously going to win that seat in Alberta and he's going to get back into the House of Commons. You know, does that team have enough next time to get that message over the goal line and form government.
Speaker 2:It's very, very hard for conservatives to win federally when the NDP disintegrates, and that's what they've done. They disintegrated. You know, jack Layton won something like forget in the in the harvard majority 2011. Uh, I think uh, layton was 19, 20, something like that.
Speaker 1:Like that's all liberal vote and it all went back to carney, right, yeah, so looking at elections, uh, you, like I said you, you you appeared on the television on election night, the whole mechanism around elections, so networks calling an election. So I noted this year that CTV was willing to call the winning party and sort of name the prime minister and take a stand that night. It was sort of close but not really, and I noticed that the folks over at CBC didn't go there. Is it an actual mechanism, like, do you actually have more than pollsters sitting in a room and looking at it? The way that we break it down on the pie charts on the screen?
Speaker 2:Yes, and just for a quick correction, that wasn't actually on election night. I'd done some work beforehand just. Fyi, I was out of town. Oh, okay, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:Leading up to it, I guess. No, no worries, Just wanted to for the record Perfect.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's much more than the pie charts. It's much more than they have a. Each network has its own system to do it and they have a very like. It's people driven, it's data driven. Um, I'm not surprised that ctv called it first. I happen to know the people involved. Um, they're not a massive team, but they've.
Speaker 2:They've been doing it, I think, since the late 70s or mid 70s and they just, you know like, they taught me that, for instance. Like take a merrill's race for, for instance, right Merrill T Race, when you have 20 to 25% of the vote in, or even lower, you know the pattern and it's unless there's something highly unusual happening, you can see where it's going and predict what's going to happen and that's all this is Like with. You know, why didn't they call X riding more quickly? Likely because they were within three points and it was one of those ridings to watch and it ended up being like a hundred vote separation and they shouldn't have called it. They don't call it recklessly.
Speaker 2:I do trust them. They know this stuff and they know the reputation will be battered if they're wrong, you know. And so it's not about they're in the business of telling people what they think might happen tonight, and this is our best. It's more than a guess, but I understand the public is somewhat suspicious because the polls are still open in the West and they call it Right and most journalists. It bothers them too, because the story's not done until all the votes are counted. And BC really mattered this year Absolutely.
Speaker 1:As it always does, but yeah.
Speaker 2:But I guess I always wonder not too skeptically or any kind of conspiracy theory, but it's just how you keep the entertainment going on a seven or eight hour show right like it's yeah but if you look at, if you look at the budget, if you look at the spend, if you look at the number of people on air, that money's out the door anyway. So do they want to make the best show possible? Yes, but they would not. They would I'll put it this way, they would not monkey with editorial to make a better show, right, you know, anybody found that out, omar. Anybody would be, just, you know, like that's just that. But I understand the suspicion too. Oh, they're just. You know, they're just trying to cork something up or whatever, but it's not quite like that.
Speaker 1:Right. So coming back to sort of the journalistic integrity here and we're kind of winding down here but just kind of looking a little bit ahead you're sort of now in more of a I guess you're more of an observant role in terms of how media is going and trying to figure that out for your clients and so on. But what do you see? That's coming down the road in terms of challenges, I guess, to journalistic integrity and what does that matter to the general public? Well, the challenges sorry.
Speaker 2:I mean the challenges are obvious. The business model has been challenged severely. I like to say we're kind of getting Ubered and we're the taxi industry and so, but you still need to go from point A to point B, and so there's always going to be demand. For I used to say to my colleagues and my young reporters, if I could, I'd start every newscast with get this. There's always going to be currency and there's always going to be value in what happened down the street, what happened at City Hall, how's traffic, how's weather, you know when is that heat wave going to end? All of that. And conventional media still packages that into a really compelling, locally driven, in my case, package that has value, locally driven, in my case, package that has value.
Speaker 2:The challenge is that fewer people are gathering and so their information is being dispersed over various platforms that are not monetized as well as television is. It happened to print and now it's happening to TV. So how deep will it go? I do know, with some encouragement, with some sort of optimism. I do know that clients, big corporate clients, care very much about mainstream media radio, newspapers whether it's an issue or a paid ad, where that lands, they care very much about that. They care where the eyeballs are and where people are consuming a broad audience that only mainstream still can deliver. But how long will it be able to deliver that and how long will it be able to support anchors, reporters, producers, editorial writers, all of those things that we've come to value in media properties? I don't know the answer to that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:A lot of the discussion on my LinkedIn connections lately around media and corporate communicators and so on, seeing a lot of people not fleeing media but moving out of media, moving into communications or PR, as you have. So people shouldn't take your move from the anchor desk to the boardroom as sort of giving up on that. You're still seeing, you're still being robust about broadcast in terms of a communication tool.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I'm a huge supporter. And just for full disclosure, look, disclosure, look. I always knew I would do this work post-television career. It came a bit more quickly than I expected. What I say to people is I didn't want to be the angry guy waiting for a check, talking about how things used to be. I wasn't like that. I wanted to go out on my own terms. I made the choice. Ctv has been wonderful to me. Oh, the Medea to bowl is a fantastic anchor, fantastic show still going on.
Speaker 2:You know, it was very important for me that when I left, that they that it wasn't like oh Graham's leaving. Therefore, we're not going to get you know it's, it's declining, because that's not true and so no. But but I will say look, I mean the business model. As you probably know, fewer and fewer senior people have room on the balance sheet, right. And so I just looked. I'll put it this way I just turned 55. I don't know what would have happened if I stayed until I was 58 or 59, but if that happened I probably wouldn't be able to land something like this and sort of recreate myself. So that's what I wanted to do. That's what I wanted to do. That's why I left.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I think you're a great guy to move into that space and, like you say, in time to be able to make it probably a very valuable portion of your career and bringing such great experience and, but more importantly, just you know that want to be authentic, to always be curious but fair and understand how all that sort of mixes out for your clientele, but just generally speaking, how people are consuming news and their information. So maybe just one last thought as we move forward in terms of you know where our country's going and how you relate that back against communications generally.
Speaker 2:I think, and thanks for all that ease and authenticity and trust. You know I've been very flattered as I walk around Ottawa, people still coming up to me. We miss you, you know. Thank you, people were just lovely to me. I was very, very privileged and part of what they talk about is we, for the most part.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, you know, they'll say sometimes we totally, didn't totally agree with some of your reporting or some of your anchoring, but, um, we knew we could trust what you were saying, um, and that is the ultimate compliment and that should be the ultimate goal of anyone public facing, no matter what you're doing. You know, um, and I I do. I do worry a bit that there's this notion that there's a grand conspiracy to mislead the public. There is not, but people think there is and that's a problem valuable. For any leader, public facing, leader in front of a company, in front of an organization or a media person, there's nothing more valuable than authenticity and trust because it can go quickly and when you have it it matters and when you lose it it's very, very difficult to get it back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well said, well said and well represented through all the work that you've done previously and I hope, like I say, the new career and the new outlet for you is just as valuable and, as I guess, rich for you as your television and your news career has been. So, graham Richardson, can't thank you enough for making the time. Only you and I will know how much it took to get this together and I really appreciate your patience and your willingness to appear here and great for our listeners to be able to appreciate your point of view and your take on what's going on. So, thanks, and we're going to stick you on the list and we're going to come around at some point again and try to get you back on, because I really appreciate your viewpoint. So, thanks very much.
Speaker 2:Keith, anytime, have a good time.
Speaker 1:And so some great insights today from Graham Richardson on the evolving state of journalism and the political landscape here in Canada. We hope to have him back on a future episode. This episode was recorded at the Digital Creative Arts Centre at the Boys and Girls Club of London, ontario, and produced by Michael Marucci. I'm Keith Marnock and I look forward to the next time we're together when, once again, we will be speaking of media.
