The Greater Kingston Chamber of Commerce held their annual meeting on Thursday at the Portsmouth Harbour Restaurant, and Troy Reeb, senior vice-president of news at Global was the guest speaker at the yearly luncheon.
The news veteran took time to speak with local business stakeholders about the importance of stalwart news sources. In an age where fake news and conspiracies can be shared with millions by a simple click of a button, Reeb said that it can be difficult to focus on the truth.
“People are choosing their own narrative rather than engaging in a shared narrative, called the facts,” said Reeb.
Reeb then told the intertwining stories of CKWS News and The Whig-Standard, Kingston’s two major news sources. He mentioned that the Whig-Standard, which began in Kingston in 1834, is the oldest continuing publishing daily, and that in its inception, CKWS started as a subset of that daily paper.
“The final two letters in CKWS stand for Whig-Standard,” Reeb told the audience.
Although they parted early on, Reeb said the two organizations acted as gatekeepers of news in the community.
But in a digital age where news can be made up and disseminated by many, it can be easy to get lost in the sea of conflicting voices, Reeb noted.
“What role is left for the gatekeeper, when the gate is gone?” Reeb asked to the room.
Reeb pointed out that fake news wasn’t the only challenge facing the news industry today, but the dissemination of poor and opinionated journalism.
“Opinionated diatribes are cheaper to do than carefully researched journalism,” Reeb said.
He ended his speech on the note of the importance of trusted and established news sources, as The Whig-Standard and CKWS, and encouraged the local businesses in the room to invest in their recognized news sources.
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