It's World Press Freedom Day — Which means it’s actually censorship day
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Summary
It's World Press Freedom Day, which means it's actually censorship day. And that's a good thing. Because when the government declares that it's world press freedom day, that's the moment to check to make sure your wallet's still in your pocket because you're about to be fleeced.
Transcript
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Hello, Rebels. It's World Press Freedom Day, which, to most people, means World Censorship Day.
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By most people, at least, I mean people in power. Facebook, Google, places like that.
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They took the opportunity to censor conservatives, and Justin Trudeau announced a whole bunch of plans to root out what he calls fake news.
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Fake news, of course, is defined by any news that he doesn't like.
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That's on my podcast today, and I talked to Alan Bocari about it. He's a senior tech editor at Breitbart.com.
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Tonight, it's World Press Freedom Day, which means it's actually Censorship Day.
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It's May 3rd, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
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Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
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The only thing I have to say to the government of a wire publisher is because it's my bloody right to do so.
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Freedom, look at it. It means being free from something.
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And the biggest something we have to be free from these days is government.
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That applies especially to the media, since while it's important to hold corporations to account
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and to hold individuals to account and other organizations, unions, clubs, whatever,
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the most important political function of the media is to shine a light of public scrutiny on the government.
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So being free from the government is what we generally mean by press freedom.
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Yes, there are other threats to free speech, to a free press,
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especially now that social media companies like Google and Facebook rival the government in power,
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but essentially it's the government, and the corruption of those big companies is at the hands of the government most of the time.
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I tell you that because when the government therefore declares that it's World Press Freedom Day,
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that's the moment to check to make sure your wallet's still in your pocket because you're about to be fleeced.
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I mean, the government promising to protect free speech is like a fox telling you they really want to make sure everything at the henhouse is okay.
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It's Robert Conquest's third law. Remember that one?
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The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
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Now, if you're wondering what that means, the example I always like to give is a city's taxi commission.
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It's usually dedicated to keeping out forms of transportation,
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just the same way the dairy commission is dedicated to keeping out foreign dairy.
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And look at this from our dearly beloved Justin Trudeau.
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Statement by the prime minister on World Press Freedom Day.
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You know, it's like when Trudeau says how much he likes women, he supports women, what a feminist he is.
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You know, it's something we would just know if it were true.
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If you truly, you know, respect women, you don't go around saying it all the time.
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The fact that he never shuts up about it is sort of a clue that it's not true.
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Today, we celebrate the important role journalists play around the world.
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We also take a hard look at the current state of press freedom and remember those who have died in pursuit of the truth.
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The theme of this year's World Press Freedom Day is media for democracy, journalism, and elections in times of disinformation.
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Journalists today face grave and growing challenges in their work to provide the public with reliable and quality information.
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Oh, I didn't know that freedom in the press had themes.
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But no, it's only the freedom for a certain kind of journalism.
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Trudeau thinks that journalism that has disinformation about elections, that's not good.
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So you see, journalists have grave challenges, says Trudeau.
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No, he's their savior, as this press release shows.
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The enemy of good journalists is bad journalists.
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Like when the Globe and Mail broke the huge story about Trudeau firing his attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould,
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when she refused to drop criminal charges against his friends at SNC-Lablan.
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The allegations in the Globe story this morning are false.
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Neither the current nor the previous attorney general was ever directed by me or by anyone in my office.
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Trudeau called it unreliable or disinformation and whatever else he said.
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Imagine if Trudeau would be the arbiter about reporting about Trudeau.
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The digital age has made sharing information easier than ever before,
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but it has also given way to online spaces that peddle disinformation
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and reduce complex issues into oversimplified, toxic, us-versus-them narratives.
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Journalists increasingly find themselves competing in these online spaces
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against malicious foreign agents and opinion makers
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who would rather manipulate people and foment division
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than inform the public and create a common set of facts.
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So Justin Trudeau is telling us that it's toxic to have an us-versus-them narrative?
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Unless it's Trudeau and he's calling his enemies, oh, I don't know, climate deniers
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or when Trudeau's best friend, Gerald Butts, actually called me and the rebel a Jewish Nazi
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But Trudeau wants you to know the enemy of journalism is not him.
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It's journalists, or at least ones he doesn't like.
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Few professions have the power and responsibility to enrich conversations,
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It's not like being a medical doctor or an engineer where there are professional standards.
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And Trudeau sort of hates that now because that means anyone anywhere can say anything about him,
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not just professional journalists he can control either through threats or outright financial bribes
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By introducing measures to support Canadian journalism
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and provide better internet access to underserved communities,
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the government of Canada is taking steps to make sure Canadians have access to reliable and trustworthy news sources.
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So he's talking about when he says support the media.
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He's talking about his $595 million media bailout there.
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That's what he means by support Canadian journalism.
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Does anyone actually believe that will make the press freer?
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And he says he's going to help us figure out what journalists to trust.
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This summer, Canada and the United Kingdom will also co-host a media freedom conference in London
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to find ways to combat disinformation and support and defend media against censorship,
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It is unacceptable that journalists face these threats and more for doing their job and standing up for their fellow citizens.
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Now, I'm all for keeping journalists free out of prison,
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including, for example, Tommy Robinson, our former reporter,
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who was arrested and jailed for 10 weeks for reporting outside of court in the United Kingdom.
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And I would remind you that Trudeau's government told the United Nations to ban us at the Rebel from reporting on UN conferences.
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That's what the UN told us when they wouldn't let us in.
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But what's more troubling is that in the same breath, Trudeau says he's for more journalistic freedom.
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He then immediately says he's against disinformation.
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Isn't that just a word for journalism he disagrees with?
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Like that Globe and Mail story about how he fired his attorney general because he couldn't corrupt her?
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I said at the start that the main threat to free speech and the free press is from governments,
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If they were to try to censor someone like they did to Tommy by throwing him in prison,
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And it embarrassed the state when Tommy's conviction was thrown out by the Court of Appeal.
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Much easier just to lean on companies like Twitter and YouTube to do your censorship for you.
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No fuss, no must, no appeals, no fingerprints, no transparency, just on in secret.
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I mean, the pressure on companies to do the censorship is not itself always in secret.
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As you know, just last year, Justin Trudeau personally treated Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook,
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told her that if she didn't crack down on his conservative critics online,
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Here's United Kingdom MPs grilling YouTube's anti-terrorism chief,
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telling him to censor Tommy Robinson, who isn't a terrorist.
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But they were telling YouTube and Google to censor him nonetheless.
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Your algorithms on YouTube, when you are searching for national action,
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will then promote the likes of Tommy Robinson and Britain First.
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This is despite the fact that the Finsbury Park mosque, where somebody was killed,
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despite the fact that videos of Tommy Robinson were cited
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as part of the online radicalisation of Darren Osborne
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We are working to make sure that videos that promote hate or promote violence,
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if they violate our policies, are removed from the platform.
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we have also, at the encouragement of this committee,
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developed a new enforcement mechanism to limit the features that these have.
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They should not be appearing in our recommendation engine.
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If they are, I will take this back to our team and see what the problem is.
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and it wasn't just the Labour MPs who wanted Tommy to shut up.
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And Trudeau himself has actually named us here at The Rebel by name
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which is precisely the people he says he's going to use the government to combat.
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Here's a little video mash-up we made of Trudeau and Ahmed Hassan
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It is disappointing to see the Conservatives engage in peddling rebel media conspiracy theories.
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It is disappointing to see the Conservatives engage in peddling rebel media conspiracy theories.
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It is disappointing to see the Conservatives engage in peddling rebel media conspiracy theories.
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Yeah, he loves the freedom of the press, don't he?
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Well, yesterday on the eve of World Press Freedom Day, Facebook struck.
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They just deleted, just deleted some of the biggest names in conservative punditry.
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Now, they threw in Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam, anti-Semite, just so they could
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say they were after one guy who wasn't conservative, but the rest were conservative.
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They deleted Tommy Robinson months ago, but now they deleted Laura Loomer, a rebel alumna.
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They deleted Milo Yiannopoulos, a mischievous but harmless gay conservative provocateur.
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And they deleted one of the most influential YouTube journalists on the right, a Facebook,
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sorry, a commentator named Paul Joseph Watson, who we've had on our show before.
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He's harmless, never violent, always anti-violent, but they just deleted him.
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All of these people were influential in getting Donald Trump, I might point out.
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We'll have Alan Bokarian in a moment to talk more about this.
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But my point from earlier stands, there's a merger between big government and big media.
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As you know, the head of censorship in Canada at Facebook is this guy, Kevin Chan, who
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used to work in the Liberal Party's leader's office.
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So yeah, it's pretty much a merger between big government and big tech.
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Same with all the tech companies, especially in the U.S.
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They're all jammed full of former Obama executives.
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Google's senior VP at the time, Eric Schmidt, was an actual Clinton campaign worker.
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Google News Initiative partners with CJF to help tackle fake news.
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Looking to address concerns over Canadians' capacity to identify authoritative information
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online, today the Google News Initiative announced a grant of $1 million to the Canadian Journalism
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Foundation to bring NewsWise to vote-aged Canadians.
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Help all Canadians understand the difference between fact-based journalism and fake news in
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Well, hang on, is that the big threat to journalism?
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So this really isn't a press freedom announcement.
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It's promoting the demonization of journalists that the official people don't like.
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Official people getting huge money from other official people to comply with and enforce
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By the way, they based their plan on this bizarre study by the liberal-linked, quote,
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research firm called Ernst Glyph that studied Canadians' choices of news.
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And they included the alternative left-wing site called Rabble.ca, which is a union lefty
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site in Canada, been around for more than a decade.
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And the conservative site they tested was the U.S. site called Breitbart.com, which I like
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I wonder if they secretly tested the rebel, but just didn't want to release the results.
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How odd that is, that we test an American site in Canada.
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Anyways, the oddest part of it all is that the Canadian Journalism Foundation is not about
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increasing journalism, but it's about decreasing it, not about supporting journalism, but rooting
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it out, limiting it to those approved by big tech and big government.
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Now, as you know, a gaffe is defined as when a politician actually tells the truth by mistake.
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And Justin Trudeau tweeted about World Press Freedom Day.
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He actually used to be a journalist once upon a time.
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And he said, on World Press Freedom Day, remember that a free press isn't free.
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And a lot of the free stuff you see online masquerading as news isn't, to be honest,
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about the most trustworthy outlets these days are the CBC, especially radio, Globe and Mail
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Well, at least we know who's getting the 595 million bucks in bailout money, right?
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But that's the thing about World Press Freedom Day.
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It means the government doesn't get to choose which journalists are acceptable and which aren't.
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I was given no reason whatsoever for being banned by Facebook or Instagram.
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Someone who makes meme videos laughing at social justice warriors.
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Or is handing the power to decide who gets to have free speech
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to a handful of giant politically partisan corporations dangerous?
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They put me on a list with terrorists, human traffickers and serial killers.
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Because I criticise modern art and modern architecture.
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Yet you still host Antifa accounts which threaten to assassinate the president.
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who sent death threats to Ben Shapiro's family.
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who I think is one of the best conservative communicators out there.
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Although he's based in London, he has a massive following worldwide.
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And he took a real interest in Hillary Clinton in 2016
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publishing some wildly successful critical videos of her
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that I think helped win the battle for Donald Trump.
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You certainly can't ascribe that win to any one person.
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But collectively, I think it's taken as conventional wisdom now
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that Donald Trump won the battle on the internet,
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through Twitter, through Facebook, through YouTube.
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Hillary Clinton outspent Trump by several multiples.
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Trump had grassroots voices like Paul Joseph Watson.
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Is it a coincidence that those voices were all wiped out?
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When clearly, as Paul Joseph Watson himself just said,
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Joining us now via Skype is the senior editor of Breitbart Tech,
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our friend Alan Bokhari, to talk more about this.
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And you were playing that clip from Paul earlier.
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the mainstream media would prefer to talk about fake news.
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are deciding for millions and millions of people,
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We've handed this power over almost every news outlet now
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it's almost impossible for a news outlet to survive,
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that can take away your freedom of speech at any moment.
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when corporations are allowed to circumvent free speech rights
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And if you let a corporation dominate the public square,
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you have to also hold them to the standards of free speech
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And literally while I was on TV talking about it,
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Not his personal account, but his campaign's account.
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I can't think of anything more meddlesome in an election
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with a huge shareholder, Prince Al-Walid bin Talal of Saudi Arabia,
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an official candidate just in the middle of an election.
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But what I observed with my own eyes in real time
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to delete, to take away the voice of a candidate in an election.
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that we've grown accustomed to in liberal countries.
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where they're going to have a much tougher time
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that have been on the statute books for centuries,
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and they're trying to get what they want that way.