Let’s Debate That

INlate November, a sold-out crowd of 2,630 gathered in Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall to hear four distinguished journalists debate the proposition “Do not trust mainstream media.” Arguing for the proposition were Matt Taibbi, author of Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise Each Other and one of the three journalists granted access by Elon Musk to the emails of the previous regime at Twitter; and Douglas Murray, a writer for England’s Spectator and author of The War on the West and The Strange Death of Europe. Pitted against them were New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg and Malcolm Gladwell, the author of multiple mega-best-sellers, including The Tipping Point and Outliers.

At the beginning of the evening’s event, which was the 28^th in the series of semi-annual Munk Debates held in Toronto since 2008, the audience was polled on the proposition; 48% supported it and 52% opposed. Even making allowances for differences between Canada and the United States — where, according to an October New York Times-Sienna College poll, 84% of respondents view the media as a threat to democracy, including 59% who view it as a “major threat” — that initial result suggests an educated and left-wing audience, who have more confidence in the legacy media. Nevertheless, two hours later, that figure had shifted to 67% support for the proposition, with only 33% opposed — a 38-point shift, the largest in the history of the Munk Debates.

That swing cannot be laid at the feet of incompetent debaters. All four debaters are highly intelligent, articulate, and veteran journalists. I would guess that Goldberg debated in high school. She repeatedly made the sort of “inherency arguments” favored by high school debaters: Yes, the current system has it flaws, but they are not inherent flaws, beyond correction. Sure, the mainstream media makes mistakes, she urged, but only the MSM has self-corrective processes in place to ensure that inaccuracies are caught and corrected.

I’m also pretty sure that Douglas Murray was well-schooled in Oxford style debate, which puts a premium on quick thinking and wit tinged with malice. Every time the debate turned personal and nasty, he showed his rapier to be sharper than Gladwell’s.