Get ready for a rollercoaster ride of insights in our chat with TV news anchor Chris Gailus, where we explore the intersection of voice, media, and societal impact. We’re chatting about the importance of being factual over being first in a world where clicks rule the roost, and trust in media is wobbling like a jello on a rollercoaster. Our conversation shifts to the vital skills of critical thinking and the need for leaders to not only react but engage thoughtfully with their communities. Chris shares his philosophy on storytelling, stressing that it’s not just about reporting facts but also about connecting with the audience on a human level.

Takeaways:

1. The podcast highlights the importance of storytelling in news media and its impact on society.
2. Leadership requires courage to stand by your values and engage in constructive discussions.
3. In an age of misinformation, fact-checking is crucial to maintain credibility and trust in media.
4. Navigating AI-generated content will be a significant challenge for the future of journalism.
5. Creative storytelling is essential to captivate audiences, especially when covering complex topics.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

1. Ignite Voice Inc.
2. Fantastic Four
3. Rise of the Silver Surfer
4. Sonic the Hedgehog

Your voice is your superpower. Use it. Welcome to Ignite My Voice Becoming Unstoppable. Powered by Ignite Voice Inc. The podcast where voice meets purpose and stories ignite change.

Deep conversations with amazing guests, storytellers, speakers and change makers.

Well, if you check my bio on X Twitter, it's next to Habita Jane, father to Will. It's fact checking is not censorship.

Today we're joined by global news anchor Chris Gailus, a broadcaster who understands what it means to perform under scrutiny and

not just in the newsroom. Chris has appeared in Fantastic Four, Rise of the Silver Surfer and Sonic the Hedgehog, playing a news anchor in both life imitating art.

From revoicing a frozen San Francisco bay for international audiences to bringing his own wardrobe and doing his own hair and makeup on set. He gives us a behind the scenes look at storytelling on two very different stages.

But this conversation goes deeper into bias, courage, misinformation and what it takes to stand steady when trust in media is at an all time low.

This is about leadership, critical thought and why. Let's not be first, let's be factual. Might be the most important standard we have.

Here's Chris Gailus.

Oh yes, well, I have many accomplished roles.

Fantastic Four.

Fantastic Four, Rise of the Silver Surfer. Which to me, I love that name was a highlight. Well, we talked about climate change in the pre interview thing too. And that was kind of.

That's part of what the Silver Surfer was all about. He was changing the climate on Earth. And so I got a chance to be. And it was a real stretch for me. I played the role of news anchor.

No, that must have been tough for you.

It was very tough for me. And then I. And then I did the same thing for, let's see, Sonic the Hedgehog. That's what it was. See, I've already forgotten. It was such a chat.

Has to look it up for you.

Yeah, it was such a forgettable role, but it kills me. And you understand why Hollywood movies cost so much to make.

Because for 20 minutes of work on, especially on Rise of the Silver Surfer, you know, I got paid something like $900 or something like that.

You must have been on set for hours too.

Well, couple hours maybe, but not. It seemed like that's a lot of waiting around, as you know.

Did you get your own trailer?

No, no, there was no trailer. It would show up. And I did get a stipend for showing up in my own wardrobe, which was nice. Got a little bonus because I brought my own wardrobe.

They paid me for that too. But it Was.

Did you do your own hair and makeup?

Yes, yes, I did my own hair and makeup as well.

Okay, you got a stipend for that too?

Yeah, I got a stipend for that. But it's funny, I remember the lines specifically where I had to voice the impacts that this silver surfer was having.

Very strange meteorological things were happening in North America, including San Francisco Bay froze over. And meteorologists are at a loss to explain why San Francisco Bay froze over. And.

And then I got a call back about two months later, and it's like, yeah, we just need you to revoice that. We're going to open the movie in China. And so I'm like, okay, well, this is interesting. You'll see your line when you go to the studio.

So I went to a studio down in Gastown somewhere and put the cans on. That's. That's ear phones for people who don't know the slang.

And the LA producer said, okay, the line is, meteorologists are at a loss to explain why the Yangtze river froze over. And that was the only change I had to do. And I. And then I got another $800 for that too. So, yeah, it was interesting experience.

Were you nervous? Because that's a different venue for you other than being on television.

Yeah, it is.

But to me, it was thrilling because it was a glimpse into what do actors, like, legitimate professional actors, experience in that production process and that creative process. And so it allowed me to kind of go, you know, they. They wanted to maybe a bit of a bigger delivery.

It's like, imagine you're a Fox News anchor and you're. I'm like, well, that's easy, because I just came back from New York City, where I worked for the Fox affiliate in New York City.

And if you want that kind of energy and tone, I can, I can do that. So it was fun to. To be a little bit more creative during that experience too. It was fun.

I guess news isn't really very creative, is it?

Well, I think there are opportunities to storytell in a creative way, and I think we need to be very mindful of that in the way that we produce local news stories, right. At the end of the day, people are still interested in listening to and watching stories that captivate them.

And, you know, there's an art to that too. And that's. And there's a craft to that. And those are skills that are, you know, honed over years.

Students, as you guys know, get the basics of the skills, and then it's the following years of being out there and trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear sometimes, when.

When maybe the topic is a little dry, but is important if you're covering municipal politics, for instance, or even politics at any level, to make it compelling enough that people want to watch and listen when they have. And let's be honest, a lot of people just don't. They're not that interested in it.

You've got to find a way to creatively tell that story so that it matters to the listener and the viewer.

I'm glad you brought that up, Storytelling, because story is so important.

And, you know, news might not be the entertainment that we're used to, Hollywood style, but you're right, there's an art to crafting that story so important for who you're telling that story to, whether it be the listener or the viewer. And we always have to remind ourselves, who are we doing this for and why?

That is so key.

Because, you know, as a reporter, you can kind of get in your own head about the topic and, you know, let's say you do three or four interviews on the topic to get up to speed on, you know, what are the issues? You know, perfect example. And I don't like. I hope it doesn't impact the timing of this podcast, but right now, sort of we're dealing with.

It just popped into my head because I have a dog. Dog paths and trails in Pacific Spirit Park. Right. So that's a kind of a hot button issue right now. So.

And if you're a dog owner, what are your own biases about what the city is planning, what is Metro van planning to do, and limit access to some of those trails for dog owners.

So you have to factor all of that in to how do you tell the story in an objective and unbiased fashion, and how do you reach people who may or may not be dog owners or may or may not even use Pacific Spirit park trails and make that story something that relevant? It's relevant to them, and that's an art story.

And I'm chomping the bit because story is just such a fascinating topic.

We just did a podcast just a short while ago about story in terms of mythology, in terms of belief system, in terms of, you know, based on your background, you will want to interpret a story or see things a particular way. It was about Amelia Earhart.

It was fascinating.

Oh, yeah. What a mysterious, fascinating story. Hers is.

It is lots of different theories on it.

You know, there's almost stories that are pretty unbelievable, right, that some people really hold onto for various reasons, politics, a belief in the American dream or whatever. All this mythology is embedded in stories.

And as we've said so often, stories are such a double edged sword in that it can be a bridge to discovering new things and so many things, but it can also be manipulated so easily. As humans, we're susceptible to believing a story when maybe we shouldn't.

And bias certainly comes into that, doesn't it?

Sure it does. And it's part of the training to recognize it in yourself and to try to try as much as you can limit it.

Having said that, we all have a set of values that matter to us. And generally speaking, that is that truth, kindness, compassion, compassion matter.

And if we see things happening in our world that run counter to those values, you're going to want to expose that, you're going to want to highlight that and you're going to want to talk about that and tell stories about that. And obviously right now the world is focused on what's going on in the United States and what's happening with ice.

And you know, we need to be mindful that the values that dictate the set of rules that Americans and Canadians have lived by for years and years are that are that compassion matters for people who are trying to find a better life in the United States. And there's a lot of people who don't follow the rules.

And 100% those people need to be rooted out and guided back to a legitimate process to come into the country. Same thing here.

But when you see some of the human rights abuses that are happening in the United States right now, it makes, it makes all of us pause a little bit to see how did we get here and what are the values that are being demonstrated right now and what are the values that are being eroded? And can we tell that story in an objective, unbiased way or is sometimes there's only one correct perspective.

If an American citizen is hauled out of their house, when somebody shows up there without a warrant and wants to come in and is hauled out of their house and they're an American citizen and it's a case of mistaken identity and oops, sorry, do we ignore that or do we point out what a miscarriage of justice that is? And I think you know, there's a correct answer there.

Well, and you have such a unique perspective in that you've lived in both cultures and you come from a legacy media background of kind of observing cultures. So you got pretty unique place. Do you. Selena brings up some questions. Do you see A strong distinction between the cultures. What do you see there?

I do. Although there are a lot of similarities in the fact that Canada is becoming divided as well. Right. Like we see a real split.

That kind of seemed like the beginning of this real divide in America. And so you, you really see that politically there. I think Canadian values are still skewing a little bit more obviously to, to the center, but.

But yeah, I believe there are similarities, tremendous similarities in our cultures. Americans and Canadians, by and large, share the same set of values. We really do.

It's just we've stopped talking to each other about what are the fears, what are you afraid of? And how can we come to an agreement about what is best for the country moving forward?

And if we all focus on what our individual wants and needs are, it's going to be very difficult to come to a consensus on anything because people have such a varied opinions about things. But we have to get back to sort of thinking about the collective.

How do we do that?

Yeah, it's a good question, but I

think

it's not ignoring or being afraid to engage with people who don't seem to share our values at the moment and being willing to engage in constructive conversations with those who don't share our point of view.

And that's the key right there, constructive conversations. But it takes courage to stand up for your morals and values when in this culture right now there's a negativity and people are pouncing.

You certainly see that on social media in a very negative way. So those who want to stand up and voice a counter opinion are being shut down by that tremendous negative voice.

That's really hard, isn't it, to stand up?

Yeah, it is.

And I always think I have a hard time finding a net benefit for social media, although I'm very thankful that it has exposed me to writers who have written things that maybe I wouldn't normally have read or experiences that people have had that pique my curiosity or movies and things, recommendations from people.

I think it's great, but at the same time it allows people to indulge the most awful base instincts that they have in a way that's in many cases anonymous. And I'm talking to you, Brian. Bunch of numbers after your Name on Twitter and every other social media. Yeah, right.

Sorry to everybody named Brian out there, but you know what I mean. And yes, it can be so toxic out there, but there's a reason I'm still on X Twitter, Schwitter, however you want to pronounce that.

Because I don't want to seed ground to bullies. It turns out I don't mind taking a punch or two as long as I can get a few in.

One of the terms that just as you're talking, that has come up in my head and I hate this term, is fake news. How are you dealing with that? Being a news presenter, a journalist, someone who believes in news?

Yeah, well, if you check my bio on X Twitter, it's like next to hubby to Jane, father to Will. It's fact checking is not censorship and I think it's one of the most important things that we can do now.

And look, there's their trust in media is at an all time low and it's never been more important for us to make sure the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed and we have our sources checked and really, especially when it comes to video content and sensational things that are going viral online to make sure that we check sources and that we verify what we see and be not quick but thoughtful about what we're seeing and how we share information on all of our platforms.

And you know, we've been burned a couple of times too, where it seems like something is sensational and people have, you know, within our newsroom have looked at it and thought, oh, this is real. Let's add it to the, let's add it to the. Run. Somebody phones in. Yeah, I have a, I have a comment that I'd like to make on that.

And it turns out they're not really who they are. You know, we've, we've been burned.

So we're trying to double down on, let's not be first, let's be right and make sure that we take a reasoned approach to covering news. And before we add to the misinformation by spreading a falsity that we check.

And there are great organizations that are helping people weed, you know, weed out misinformation and bad video and deep fakes. And we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg now with what AI is going to be capable of when it comes to producing false narratives, false video.

We were just talking about that this

morning because my other half, she caught

a story that, I mean, your better half, Kenny.

Yeah. My better half that she got pulled into.

In a nutshell, it was just an older person telling her story on camera as to why she chose to get divorced at 70.

And it was kind of a captivating story of, you know, I lived this myth in a marriage, and really I wasn't supported, and now I'm seeing life, you know, so differently. She was just telling a story, and so.

And stories captivate.

Yeah, for sure.

She showed me the story, and it took me about two minutes to have my little hairs in the back of my neck stand up when I started to think. I think this is AI generated.

But what was it? Do you remember what it was about it?

That the cadence of the speech was too consistent.

Yeah.

And there's layers of emotion, but they're consistent, too. I was surprised at the amount of emotion, but I started to see that. Wait a second, it's not shifting.

The space between the words is always exactly the same. The person looks like the ideal grandmother getting divorced and then wanting to go to Mexico and be naked on the beach.

It looked so perfect. So perfect.

That sent the alarm. But it took me a while, and I'm, you know, I guess we're experts at this. Yet it took me a while to really see it and then start to dig deeper.

And sure enough, they had put a disclaimer on the site eventually that said, these stories are based on real people, but it's all AI generated, blah, blah, blah, blah. So our talk was a recognition that, wow, it's accelerating every few months, it's getting better and better and better.

Two years from now, we're not going to be able to tell what's real and what isn't without some kind of a check system. What do you think of that? Where do we go with that when we can't tell what's real?

Yeah, it's. It's a huge conundrum, and it's going to be a great challenge for our industry, there's no doubt about it.

But I also believe that there will be processes and. And expertise that evolves to be able to help us navigate that, too.

And

just like your instincts told you, this doesn't ring true.

I think that's going to be critical in the future, too, which is why it's important for us to raise our kids to be participants in their communities, to deal with real humans, because we all. We all know that, you know, it's not smooth and perfect when you step in front of a microphone and tell your life story.

It's not smooth and perfect when you Talk about important, deep issues with strangers. Right.

And, and that to me is an instinct that, that develops from human contact and human conversation and first and foremost, and I read it recently and I'm not gonna remember the name of the author right now who said it. Be most suspicious when people are trying to enrage you. Right.

And that I think is going to be critical because we're already seeing it as a tool to try to manipulate feelings and points of view about people who are different from ourselves. And you know, that is critical, I think.

And the other thing that I try to tell Will too, my son, who, who's 14, he's 14 and he sees things on social media too, like he'll send me little things and you know, a lot of it is not all of it, but there's quite a bit of it that's AI generated. And I always remind him that, you know, the world reality is actually. It's kind of boring, right? It's kind of boring.

And so this non stop feed of sensational videos and amazing things that have happened and things that seem to defy gravity and physics and, you know, it's impossible that there's a continuous stream of things like that to grab your attention online and people want you to engage with it. The minute you forward that stuff on to your buddies, all it does is pump more into your feed algorithms. Yeah, be mindful. Yeah, be mindful of that.

And know that yes, it's a big planet, there's 9 billion people on it, there are amazing things and awful things happening every day. Even if it's with 0.001% of the population, it can travel around the world in a nanosecond.

But most of what humanity is dealing with and experiencing is pretty mundane.

And it's where you put your attention to what motivates you, what you're looking at. Do you want to look at the positive? Do you want to look at the negative?

It's critical thought that we're talking about and being able to have that skill. And when you're dealing with a 14 year old who doesn't have the prefrontal cortex yet online, their brains aren't developed.

Our brains don't get developed to about 22. Mine's still developing.

You're not alone.

How do you help a young person navigate those really difficult challenges and questions and bombardment through social media and then bombardment through their social network of friends? How do you help your son?

Yeah, that's a huge question and I don't have all the answers to that. All I Will say is we have an open dialogue with him.

We're Jane, Will and I are all on a Instagram thread, and if we see things that we think the other will like or be entertained by, we'll share it. And every now and again, we need to have a conversation about it because it's something that veers to the unreal and AI generated.

And not everybody on social media is being honest about what is AI generated and isn't for obvious reasons, because, you know, a lot of people when they see AI, and I for one, am like, I've always been really interested in car design and is sort of an area of interest to me.

But when I see AI generated images of vehicles that don't actually exist, and I'm interested in what a concept vehicle is and whether it could ever be legitimately brought to market, and I do follow some artists who pump out concepts, if it's an AI generated example, I'm less enthusiastic about it. And I'll say, look, I want to see what you have created. I'm not interested in what a machine has created.

And there's got to be a human element to the art. And artists will say, well, AI is just another tool to use.

You know, you'd use cad, computer assisted design to design a concept vehicle, but at the end of the day, there's a human at the end of the pen doing the drawing. And to.

And some of these accounts now that I like, some of the concept artists that I follow, I'm getting a lot more AI generated content that I'm not interested in that. And the law is lagging behind what technology is able to accomplish. Right. So there's really no way, really no way for me to stop it.

If somebody in India or China or any other place.

You may never know.

I may never know. But I've also said AI could help me speak fluent Cantonese or Mandarin and do a newscast in Hong Kong.

Now, if we wanted to do that, as long as it was labeled, this is an AI generated translation of a Vancouver newscast or a national newscast, if it was at the national scale, and there's an opportunity there potentially to open up a new audience in different cities or different countries, as long as they know that it's a translation service that we're offering and that the only AI component to it is just me. It's just the language.

It's a slippery slope, though. It's so hard.

I read a couple articles in the Guardian lately about the AI factories that researchers are starting to discover, and we're starting to Analyze the content on YouTube. And the percentages are shocking.

Yeah.

Because an AI factory, if you will, is constantly trying to generate creative stories and can create these images and these storylines in seconds. And in our attention economy, you know, everything's about grabbing your attention.

Yeah.

And so these factories, which are growing very fast, are just in the, in the dark, creating thousands of thousands of stories every day. And every one of them is doing that, pumping the stories out there in order to get our attention, in order to make money.

At the end of the day, it is. Everything is about advertising and eyeballs. And that is true for a local newscast, too. Right.

We do need advertising to keep the lights on, unless we go to a subscription model, which is not something that the company has identified as a path forward. We do need people to watch and we need businesses to buy advertising on the newscast.

And the biggest challenge for us right now is that ratings have become unhinged from revenue. Right.

The amount of ad space out there now just in the last 10 years has changed so greatly that, you know, our sales force and our audience is still very strong. We just talked about it. Friday's numbers were 500 and I'm going to say 530, I think thousand people had their televisions on.

This is conventional TV, right. For you younger viewers and listeners. 530,000 people had their TVs on.

We had 50, almost 50% of them at 6 o' clock, from 6 to 6:30 in that first half hour. That's huge. It's a huge number. It's a number that any television station in any market in the world would die for.

And yet the money that we're able to get from ads now is shrinking dramatically.

And if people watch it on their phones, as they can do through the global television app or through our streaming service, you know, the ads there are pennies on the dollar. And we're competing now against not just the other networks for ad space. We're competing against all of the streaming platforms.

That said, hey, if you subscribe to this, you'll never have to watch ads again. Well, now every one of them offers ads because they want you to pay extra for the premium, no ad version. Right.

So Netflix, Netflix, perfect example, you know, perfect example. NBC Universal, like Paramount, all of them. Amazon, list them all.

And you know, it's funny, we're back to a conversation about wouldn't it be great if there was just some service that aggregated all of the channels and put them together in one and all? Yeah, that was cable. Look what we did.

Long time ago.

We killed it. Yeah. Long time ago.

Yeah. It's funny, I was just thinking about movies. I love going to movies, but I resent having to sit through about 10 commercials before the movie starts.

They've got a captive audience, but that's. I find that's not fair. I didn't pay for those ads. I want the movie.

Well, there's been a cultural shift.

You know, when I was. When I was a teenager, 10 years ago.

I'm not laughing. We're laughing.

Sorry. I almost spit out my tea.

I worked in movie theater. Right. The usual usher thing in the theaters.

Oh. In the olden days.

I remember there was like. I remember that they tried. Way back then, they tried running some ads at the beginning of the movies.

Oh, yeah.

And what was the cultural reaction at that time?

Boo? Booze?

No, they threw the food and drinks at the screen.

Wow.

And they're very expensive screens, so we had to quickly shut down advertising because you have to replace a, you know, $100,000 screen. So the culture reaction was strong, loud, now nothing. Crickets. We just accept it.

If we all stand up together collectively, then we can make a difference. Have we lost that art?

Well, culture shifted too, though, right? We've now accepted advertising. It's ubiquitous. Right. It's everywhere. And that's the way life is. We have no choice.

But we have a choice to vote with our dollar, don't we? We have a choice to not go to that store, not buy that product, not listen to the ads. We have choices.

But you have to be aware of having a choice. You gotta go. Maybe advertising shouldn't overwhelm my life. So you have to make that critical decision.

Coming back to critical thought.

Yeah. Maybe the culture now just accepts it and it's okay, and we just have to move forward and there's nothing we can do.

Chris reminds us that storytelling is. And power requires discipline. In a world driven by clicks, outrage, and algorithmic amplification, credibility doesn't happen by accident.

And it takes courage to stand for your values and just as much courage to question your own bias. Especially when emotions are running high. Right.

AI is accelerating everything. Speed, scale, distortion. Which means leaders can't just react. They have to regulate, slow down, verify,

engage in constructive conversations. That's leadership.

That's critical thought and authenticity combined and in action.

And that's using your voice wisely.

Ignite my voice. Building community and supporting you with your voice. So join us. Ignitemyvoice.

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Ignite my voice. Becoming unstoppable. Your voice is your superpower. Use it.