Bell Media fired two members of their team Thursday, as a journalist I take no joy in the job losses, but I also understand why it had to happen.
The outright attack on Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was beyond anything that should be defended by anyone in the media industry.
With a federal election that could come any day now, and the Liberal government’s public favour continually waning, some, shall we say, unorthodox media practices appear to be afoot, particularly in terms of how Pierre Poilievre is being presented to Canadian viewers. The Conservatives are always complaining about progressive media bias. This is what they mean.
h/t DS
Liberal Government House Leader Karina Gould claimed criticism of media is an “attack on Canadians” after CTV National News was forced to make an on-air apology for deceptive edits, per Blacklock’s Reporter.
They lie about everything. It’s a sickness.
Conservative MPs will refuse to engage with CTV and its reporters until the network acknowledges that a recent clip of leader Pierre Poilievre was “maliciously” edited.
While CTV issued an apology, Poilievre’s director of media relations Sebastian Skamski said it wasn’t good enough.
Holy crap, that's bad. @fancypants_s They'll probably get a big $$ bonus from Trudeau for that one. https://t.co/aNC4cg8nJG
— Patti Jo (@TheSupeHero) September 23, 2024
h/t Patti Jo
Multiple political conventions have happened across North America in the last one-and-a-half years, and journalists have been busy covering them.
But while The National, CBC’s flagship program during the nightly news devoted loads of coverage to US conventions while mere minutes to Canadian ones.
I don’t watch their coverage because of CBC’S TDS and its knee-jerk anti-Americanism.
Some news organizations have begun to bare their teeth and their bias in the fight to retain federal subsidy dollars.
In doing so, they are displaying a willingness to unashamedly defend Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, in order to preserve the funding regime it established for media unable to adapt to the digital age.
At some future point, historians will need to judge precisely when the free press died in Canada. And while historians are rarely able to identify the exact moment of an institution’s death, this past week is in with a strong shot.
Not that you’d know it. The much-vaunted “free press” certainly isn’t saying much about its own demise. The mighty Parliamentary Press Gallery, a not-infrequent thorn in my side when I was director of communications to Stephen Harper, has been quiet as a mouse. Strike that. The gallery is the dog that isn’t barking.
Canadians are losing their trust in the media. According to a report from the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford, overall trust in the media among the Canadian population has fallen from 55 percent in 2016 to 40 percent in 2023. Among English-speaking Canadians, trust in the news is even lower with just 37 percent saying they trust the media in 2023.
Among the less commented-on results of the Toronto-St. Paul’s by-election was the performance of the People’s Party of Canada, the populist-nationalist party led by former Conservative cabinet minister Maxime Bernier. If you missed it, here it is: they got 234 votes, or 0.63 per cent of the total.
What a disappointment this must be for the PPC, after winning 2.67 per cent of the vote in the riding in the past general election. But it’s in keeping with the trend nationally. In the 2021 election the PPC took nearly 5 per cent of the vote. Nowadays it’s mired in the two-to-three-per-cent range.
Coyne bullshits for a living, but this nonsense is below even his typically low standards.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has proposed to increase the Canadian journalism labour tax credit at the rate of an extra $104 million.
The tax credit, also known as the “media bailout,” was first established in 2019.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Canadian government has proposed a new budget, including $42 million in additional funding for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
The increased subsides are purportedly to ensure that “Canadians across the country, including rural, remote, Indigenous, and minority language communities, have access to high-quality, independent journalism and entertainment.”
Because nothing fosters “independent journalism” like having the government pay your bills! Canadian taxpayers rejoice!
Pierre Poilievre is courting support from groups that spew hate. Is this really the alternative to Justin Trudeau we want?
Perhaps Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was feeling too comfortable.
After all, his party is ahead of the Liberals by 20 points in public opinion polls. The poll aggregator 338Canada.com has the Conservatives winning a 207-seat majority in the House of Commons, if an election were held today — a Brian Mulroney-sized landslide, and that’s without the Bloc Québécois’ seats.
The Conservatives, according to Abacus Data, lead across all age brackets, education brackets, even gender lines.
Trudeau’s media is getting desperate. At this stage outside of Toronto and Ottawa you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who likes Junior.
The Diagalonians should sue the Star.
RCMP documents contradict mainstream media claims Diagalon is a ‘far-right threat’
Internal RCMP documents reveal law enforcement concluded controversial Diagolon does “not pose a criminal or national security threat,” contrary to the Public Safety Minister’s remarks.
h/t Mauser
What, if anything, should voters make of Pierre Poilievre’s attitude toward journalists?
What should voters make of Pierre Poilievre’s criticism of journalists?
All politicians disagree from time to time with the way they’re depicted by journalists. Any number of them have been vocal about it, publicly or privately. (The late Brian Mulroney, who has been fondly remembered over the past week, was known to harangue journalists on the phone when he disagreed with their coverage.) Sometimes their complaints have been justified.
Ottawa’s financial fight with Facebook has damaged CBC’s popularity online, according to financial statements that show the media firm lost millions of website visitors last year.
CBC.ca has long been the most viewed news site in the country with content uploaded by upward of 1,000 staff writers and editors.
