While he was at Glendon College, John Parisella agreed to an interview with Marie-Thérèse Chaput, Director of the Office of Advancement, Alumni & External Relations. Below are excerpts from this interview.
Marie-Thérèse Chaput: What difference do you see between students today, especially at the Master’s level, and students 10, 20 or even 30 years ago?
John Parisella: I’m among those who have great confidence in today’s youth. In high school, I taught young people aged 15 or 16. There was television but nothing else. Over the past 10 to 15 years, we’ve lived through a technological revolution not only on the Internet and the Web but also involving social media and devices that affect how people obtain their information. A group of students were asked how many of them got their news through print media and through TV. Most of them answered that they did this via their hand-held devices. Only two out of 25 said they obtained their information from newspapers. Today’s young people are probably more open and alert to what’s happening in the world than we were in our day. That’s a good thing. The rise of nationalism is probably a thing of the past, and openness to pluralism is becoming an increasingly vital factor in a number of countries. Canada and Québec are in the process of opening themselves to various societal groups – to people who come from other places and from various countries around the world; this is really very promising for the future.
MTC: Given that young people can access information immediately, do you feel that your work has to be more in the moment, more in the present time?
JP: I use social media so I can understand the world of youth and grasp the importance of quickly disseminating certain news items – news that is not always fully verified. It’s important to know what fuels the thoughts or actions of young people. It’s obvious that the big challenge ahead is to impose a reflection on how the new media operate, even at the upper leadership level in certain countries or companies. We have a new generation at the helm and it’s a bit lost in terms of knowing how to put things right. A board of inquiry is currently sitting in Québec. I see journalists tweeting while witnesses are presenting their evidence. These journalists are giving their personal assessment of the evidence. La Presse has always been my benchmark newspaper. One morning as I was reading it, my spouse asked me what was in the news that day. Two things, I answered: investigative articles and mood or opinion pieces. We have investigative reporting and not simply information; we also have the moods of the columnists rather than an analysis by the editorial staff. The voice of the editorial writer is heard in a 750-word piece among four articles by columnists who are all in a snit about something. The column takes up the whole width of the page, while the editorial is off in a corner. How, then, can we say that our journalism is changing to meet new the challenges? No, it is not evolving and some soul-searching is going to be needed. That’s where they have a role to play. They have to initiate this soul-searching. This is a necessity and we have no choice because technology has so quickly overtaken the way institutions run their affairs. We have work to do and the only place where it can be done is in the academic world! Everything else amounts to corporate groups giving “self-serving colloquia”…
MTC: We used to have political information shows; now we have more comedy shows. We can see this in the U.S. with The Daily Show. In Québec, we have Tout le monde en parle (TLMEP), featuring humorists taking the lead to become quasi political columnists. It’s a slide towards cynicism, don’t you think?
JP: I’m not bothered by shows like TLMEP; they have their place in society. Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show is extraordinary. I’m just saying that the traditional media have some reflecting to do. I still think the U.S. is a good model, warts and all. You have the Sunday talk shows and the evening newscasts at 6:30 or 7:00 p.m.; then you have current events programs in prime time. You don’t find 60 Minutes on cable but on CBS. Here we seem to have taken all the analytical programs and put them on cable; then we have the 10 o’clock or the 6 o’clock news. But the rest of the time is devoted to entertainment. The media play an important role in giving us information and analysis. There can certainly be opinion pieces: the Foglias and their ilk have a place in our newspapers. But people need to realize that a tweet or a comment on Facebook is not news but an opinion. I see comments on these media by journalists that I would have thought to be totally objective but now they are showing their biases…
MTC: That’s a big change…
JP: We’re not trying to muzzle them. But I don’t think we need to stop providing straight information and analysis because of opinions, mood pieces and investigative articles. We need all of these and I feel that, at the moment, there’s an imbalance. This causes me concern.
MTC: You quoted John F. Kennedy. It was a beautiful quotation that I’d like for you to repeat and put into our current context.
JP: He famously said in his inaugural speech: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” In the same speech, he also said “Civility is not a sign of weakness.” I consider that to be a very important message. Nowadays, people want solutions and dialogue. They don’t see compromise as a matter of surrendering but as a consensus that develops among people of good faith. Civility is an important ingredient in this dialogue and is the approach I prefer as far as the conduct of policy is concerned. You can be a right-wing Republican or a left-wing Democrat, but you can still perhaps agree on immigration reform. You can be a Harper Conservative on a particular issue but you can also share common views with a Mulcair New Democrat or a Liberal. I believe that when you become a prisoner of ideology, you become incapable of compromise. When there’s no compromise, there’s no progress, and people then become less and less civil towards one another. I’ve had two intellectual gurus in my political life: Claude Ryan, who always respected other people’s points of view and always encouraged me to do the same; and Robert Bourassa, who always held out his hand, even to people who opposed him and didn’t agree with him. He wanted these people to express themselves and not become “yes men.” Both of these individuals were very civil in their relations with others and in what they said. In the 1960s, civil rights legislation was passed in the United States with the help of both parties. It wouldn’t have passed if the President, a Democrat, had not had the support of a divided Democratic Congress and he had to rely on some Republican support to get it through. That’s a prime example of people acting for the common good – even though they were on opposite sides of the issue.
Comments edited by Michel Héroux
