Speeches and Interviews

June 13, 2004

Media Responsibilities in an Age of Terror

Keynote address by Michael Ignatieff at the 2004 Banff Television Festival. Introductory remarks by Robert Rabinovitch, President and CEO CBC/Radio-Canada.

Ladies and gentlemen,

For many among you — creators, writers, broadcasters and thinkers alike — Michael Ignatieff requires little by way of introduction.

He is at once a man of letters, and a media celebrity. He is a preeminent liberal thinker for our time, and a social critic noted the world over.

Born in Toronto, the son of a Russian émigré father and Canadian mother, Michael joins us from Harvard University, where he is the Carr Professor and Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government.

His accomplishments number too many to list — novels, biographies, essays, articles, lectures, film, television, and radio. 

Combining expert analysis and first-rate reportage, Michael has in recent years sought to investigate and illuminate the various aspects of crisis and conflict and, in particular, their human rights consequences.

He suggests that, while answers to tough questions might not come easily, we have a fundamental duty to not only ask them, but more importantly to make tough choices and take tough action.

And he has the courage of his convictions; last year he supported the US role in Iraq when it was ‘unacceptable' in the liberal milieu. Today he is courageous enough to challenge his own thinking and raise questions of relativity and degree in the battle against terrorism. Absolutes are so much easier to handle than relativity.

Fittingly, in last month's Globe and Mail, Doug Saunders included this quote in the headline of his article on Michael:

"Everything I've said and believed since I was 18 is on the line."

Some of us, I'm sure, can relate and we suffer with him as he publicly analyses, critically, his own thinking. In fact we get angry reading some of his detractors with their facile prescriptions and clairvoyant hindsight.

I can think of few, if any, people as qualified to speak to us about Media Responsibilities in an Age of Terror.

Michael has spent years evolving answers to such questions as we, who are involved in the media, now face. 

For as much as the world is dealing with the enduring crisis that is terror — in all its forms — so too are we, the media, faced with our own crisis of sorts, albeit on a different scale: a crisis of trust.

What issues must we resolve, if we are to inform and enlighten our audiences and foster that elusive sense of community, inclusion and political imagination, of which Michael has so often spoken?

Everything I've said and believed since I was 18 is on the line.

Ladies and Gentlemen, while I cannot say for sure what Michael will put on the line for us here today, I do know that he will leave us with much to reflect upon, and even more to discuss.

And so it is truly an honour to present to you...Michael Ignatieff.

Media Responsibilities in an Age of Terror (PDF - 626 Kb)