Carol Off: At A Loss For Words

Over the course of her incredible career, Carol Off has reached a level of journalistic excellence that has been equalled by few. She has covered conflicts in the Middle East, Haiti, the Balkans and the sub-continent. As well as events in the former Soviet Union, Europe, Asia, the United States and Canada. She reported the fallout from the 9/11 disasters with news features and documentaries from New York, Washington, London, Cairo, and Afghanistan and has won numerous awards from her CBC television documentaries in Asia, Africa and Europe.This fall, Carol Off returns with a provocative new book that digs deep into six words whose meanings have been distorted and weaponized in recent years -including democracy, freedom, and truth – and asks whether we can reclaim their value.As co-host of CBC Radio’s As It Happens, Carol Off spent a decade and a half talking to people in the news five nights a week. Those interviews have given Carol a unique vantage point on the crucial subject at the heart of her new book – how, in these polarizing years, words that used to define civil society and social justice are being put to work for a completely different political agenda. Or they are being bleached of their meaning as the values they represent are mocked and distorted. As Off writes “if our language doesn’t have a means to express an idea, then the idea itself is gone –even the range of thought is diminished.” And, as she argues, that is a dangerous loss.