Picture via Twitter

Smug Brits the world over will have to find a new spokesman. Sources say CNN head Jeff Zucker is “actively looking for a replacement for Piers Morgan.” 

Generally, conducting interviews with the disposition of a snooty butler is not something people like to watch. But if you like your issues served up with a side of Geoffrey from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, don’t cry yet because the decision is not near official.

However, this could be a victory for believers in the purity of the interview format, if CNN showed some guts and did something different—and, after all, at least we’re getting rid of Morgan.

Morgan seemed to believe an interview was simply a conduit for snappy clips of outraged guests, or public shamings. That the only value to be found in an hour long format could be benign admissions or pointless sentimentality. Splash in a multi-coloured set and you’ve got yourself a show.

He also seemed to believe that people would watch his show to “see what ol’ Piers says next”. An opinion evidently driven by a massive ego and steadfast belief that he was the show, not his guests. Not the topics they discussed. Self importance can be an interesting tactic for an interviewer to use to shake things up, if he/she has the intelligence to back it up. He does not. Ultimately he’s condescending and prickly when it comes to fluffy or fun topics and waaaay out of his element concerning serious, nuanced issues.

I love the interview format, especially in its stripped down, long form iteration. It is a pliable form that can fully capture the essence of a person, their beliefs or their work, often making the esoteric palatable, the tactful candid.

Yet, I get it: the move away from this type of show is understandable in an era where television executives have to compete with other forms of digital media. They compete by throwing more, brighter, buzzier options at viewers (hence the Piers Morgan set). This is a mistake. Less is more, and right now less is different. Extremely different.

Katie Couric is rumoured to take over the spot that craggy old buzzard Larry King made famous. Have you watched her current show? Unless you’re interested in an interview where Katie maternally condescends to Miley Cyrus and then promotes her new album after they drink cocoa together, you’ll probably have to look elsewhere for ‘less’.

Why can’t we get someone like Charlie Rose, instead? Rose is the undisputed Substantial Interview Heavyweight Champ. Being equally at ease with writers, politicians, entertainers and intellectuals is a quality that sets him apart, but it’s not his versatility alone that makes him great. It’s his ability to extract from each person he talks with the thing about them that makes them interesting. So why don’t more people steal from him? Probably because it’s too difficult and the idea of giving someone time to build a rapport with the audience through consistently thought provoking interviews isn’t something CNN, or other networks, is particularly interested in these days.

Unfortunately, this is hardly any different in Canada. What, really, do we have to offer in terms of television interview options? Um, not much.

At the top we’re stuck with the perpetually squinting Peter Mansbridge, who’s buttoned up and very serious. Too serious. He has the demeanor of a concerned principal chaperoning a school dance. (“That’s not dancing” Peter says to himself placing an index finger to his temple.) Most of his interviews have him cocking his head thoughtfully, as if he’s “really learned something”. And, you know what’s worse than a buttoned up, serious Peter Mansbridge? A letting- his-hair-down Peter Mansbridge. This is when he takes the form of grass-roots politican rolling up his sleeves, loosening his tie and “getting back to the people”. He and the subject take a stroll and “just talk” and he gets at truths that the buttoned up Peter never could have. Yuck.

Amanda Lang, who everyone likes as a foil to cartoonish Gordon Geckophile Kevin O’Leary, conveys far too much empathy with every question in her interviews — pausing on every word to let the audience know she’s taking this seriously. But it often comes across as out of place and sometimes disingenuous.  Then, there’s George Stroumboulopoulos, who is (kind of by default) the best television option we have for the one-on-one format, but the show is thoroughly flawed. Stroumboulopoulos or Strombo as he’d like you to call him reminds me of the university professor who thinks he’s cool—not like the other profs you might find around this stuffy institution. This persona, that either Strombo or whoever’s in charge at the CBC has fabricated, gets in the way of an engaged, interested interviewer that consistently allows his interviewee’s to shine more often than not—a skill that I think is very important and seemingly elusive.

Jian Ghomeshi is interesting but probably won’t ever be right for TV. He currently holds the record for most consecutive whispered questions in a row at 1.7 million and counting. He’s very prepared and asks thoughtful, interesting questions while keeping things semi-conversational, but seriously what’s with the whispering? It’s too bad because a more forward Jian Ghomeshi could be extremely compelling to watch, particularly in a stripped down, extensive, limited interruption format. He may be our best hope for a Canadian Charlie Rose , Q has experimented with video content recently, but if it’s this difficult to find substance over style on Canadian Government subsidized television how can we expect to find it on profit driven platforms?

Oh and Steve Paikin is a thing that exists I guess.

Am I missing anyone good?

Truth and lies flourish equally online. Exhausted readers are in retreat. Illustration by Matt Daley.

Though you might reasonably condemn the modern internet for a variety of reasons—ruining attention spans, turning all public discourse into a shouting match, or insulting your sexual prowess with badly punctuated mass emails—one thing the medium could always reasonably claim was its potential for spreading truth. Decentralized and egalitarian, the web seemed to herald the end of the coverup: with no authority to stop the spread of information, facts would inevitably slip the bonds of corrupt politicians, crooked industrialists, and tyrannical generals. Sooner or later, we believed, the real facts would always come to light. The Truth Is Out There.

It turns out that’s not, uh, true.

That’s if the results of a recent study from the University of Michigan are anything to go by. The researchers found that people are remarkably resistant to facts that deviate from beliefs they already hold; the phenomenon is particularly acute in those with strong political leanings. This is the “truthiness” that satirical news anchor Stephen Colbert famously named—a trust in gut instincts instead of documented facts. That intuitive concept has now, somewhat ironically, been scientifically proven. In other words, The Truth Is Out There, But Nobody Can Be Bothered To Go Looking For It.

We already know that falsehood, distortion, and bullshit flourish online just as much as fact. The internet is home to climate-change deniers, 9-11 conspiracy nuts, and fringe politics of all sorts—in part because it is so easy to find “facts” that support whatever you believe. The sheer glut and variety of information online has made it difficult to distinguish fact from invention and truthfulness from truthiness. The result, for many people, has been to retreat into the comfort of the mainstream media.

Canada experienced this during the G20 summit in Toronto in July. After some protestors caused property damage early in the weekend, many journalists found themselves at the centre of what they believed to be an excessive police reaction. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube were central to this real-time reporting, and people who were following the demonstrations and police actions online had a very different experience than live-TV viewers—who mostly saw sensational footage of a burning police car on a continuous loop for two days.

TVOntario’s Steve Paikin—a man who has built a career on measured neutrality—told of what seemed like an illegitimate round up of legal protestors and the beating of a reporter from the U.K.’s Guardian. The Globe and Mail’s Lisan Jutras wrote of her experience being detained in the rain for hours and taken into police custody.

New media seemed to finally be fulfilling its promise: coverage that was richer, more immediate, more diverse, and faster.

Yet a few days after the summit, an Angus Reid poll revealed that a full two-thirds of Canadians not only supported the police action, but were also “disgusted” with the protestors, despite the fact that the majority of them did nothing more than walk down streets holding placards. Images of anarchists breaking windows dominated big media, and the fact that there was plenty of information online offering a different interpretation mattered little, if at all.

The problem is that, unlike TV, you have to choose what you view online. That means that unless you’re already looking for an alternative take, it’s unlikely to find you. But more than that, the web is full of so many different versions of the truth, from the legitimate to the lunatic, that their very existence undercuts the medium’s validity for many people. When it is as easy to stumble upon a cogent, well-researched critique of global capitalism as it is a raving theory about “the moon-landing hoax,” the tendency is to discount the medium altogether.

By allowing anyone to publish and disseminate information, the web broke the historical link between power and publishing. Many people cheered that change, and for understandable reasons. The web embodies the contemporary collapse of all the things that once seemed beyond question: truth, fact, authority. But when nothing is objectively true, it also means nothing is objectively false. Presented with an almost infinite mass of options, most people, rather than diving in, simply retreat into what they already know—and for the majority, that’s still television.

Tremendous excitement accompanied WikiLeaks’ July release of 91,000 military documents related to the conflict in Afghanistan. Perhaps it’s justified. But earlier this year, when the same organization released “Collateral Murder”—a video that showed an American helicopter crew killing unarmed civilians in Iraq—excitement and controversy produced nothing lasting.

Despite the video’s incendiary content, and the clip’s seven million YouTube views, almost nothing changed. In the face of the official story and people’s faith in the authority that stood behind it, the clip was nothing more than a grain of sand, like those blown about by that helicopter’s blades—one more “fact” among millions, lost in the roar of a rushing, directionless storm.