Rebel Roundup: Abagail Hamman and Sheila Gunn Reid
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
157.4481
Summary
Sheila Gunn-Reed and Abigail Hammond join host David Menzies to discuss the government's plan for a $600 million bailout for Canadian media outlets. They also discuss the latest in the Samuel Opoku case, and the reaction to it.
Transcript
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Hello, Rebels. You're listening to a free audio-only recording of my show, Rebel Roundup.
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Tonight, my guests are Sheila Gunn-Reed and Abigail Hammond.
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And now, enjoy this free audio-only version of my show.
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Welcome to Rebel Roundup, ladies and gentlemen, and the rest of you.
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The show in which we look back at some of the very best commentaries of the week by your favourite rebels.
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Remember that $600 million newspaper bailout announced last year by the Trudeau Liberals?
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Namely, those papers now getting taxpayer-funded welfare better say nice things about the Liberals or else.
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Sheila Gunn-Reed will have all the news that is unfit to broadcast.
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And did you catch the most recent Democratic Party debate from Lotusland?
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If not, I'm sorry to say you might have missed the most unintentionally funny GabFest of 2019.
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But not to worry, Abigail Hammond has all the knee-slapping highlights.
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And I'll share some of your responses regarding my encounter with Samuel Opoku outside the courthouse of Toronto's Old City Hall.
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Opoku is the individual who stands accused of pouring buckets of liquefied human feces over the heads of five individuals on three separate occasions.
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But as you'll see, when he's confronted by a camera and microphone, Opoku, he's not so brazen.
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The media, all over, is overwhelmingly liberal.
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And people are force-fed liberalism every night on their TVs.
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And LeBoutelier, unfortunately, she ran into people in her riding who rejected it.
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And it appears she was startled by these free thinkers in Quebec who reject Ottawa's paternalism.
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I mean, think about the last time you saw a balanced panel on the state broadcaster that reflected you or your community.
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Or that didn't treat generally mainstream ideas supported by the majority of Canadians.
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Ideas like reduced immigration rates or freedom of speech like some sort of white supremacist plot.
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And who could forget how Unifor, the National Media Party Union, declared themselves the resistance to the Conservatives, with little or nearly no pushback from their own membership.
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But LeBoutelier is implying the media was not liberal-friendly enough to her?
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Guess what liberal minister is picking the recipients of the $600 million media party bailout?
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And just like us, Blackflocs says they won't take any of that bailout cash either.
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Tax officials in a document called Guidance on the Income Tax Measures to Support Journalism said Minister LeBoutelier would have final veto over which newspapers would qualify for aid.
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If you make a deal with the devil, it's probably a good idea to read the fine print.
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Because when it comes to those print outlets accepting filthy lucre from the federal liberals,
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well, what if the fine print basically suggests that if your newspaper is critical of the feds,
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space must be provided so that the libs can spin their fibs to the readership?
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With more on this story is the host of The Gun Show, Sheila Gunn-Reed,
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a journalist that could never be bought and paid for.
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So, my friend, can any media outlet right now in Canada claim to be objective
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when they are accepting this sort of bailout dough given all these inherent strings attached?
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I mean, for so many of these journalistic outlets,
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normally they would be shouting from the rooftops
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if conservatives had attached this sort of caveat to their funding.
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But you're not hearing any outrage about the fact that the liberals are requiring
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journalistic outlets, be they print or broadcast,
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to allow the government space for rebuttal if you write an article critical of the government
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You're not hearing anything from the journalists.
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You'd think that there would be extreme pushback because, you know,
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they basically are required to publish liberal propaganda in the form of a balanced rebuttal.
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I mean, I think I'm the only person talking about this.
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And I can tell you, I remember once going to a journalism seminar in the 80s,
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It was about, remember the Exxon Valdez tragedy where there was the oil spill in Alaska?
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And it was about how there was a Toronto Star journalism photographer.
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And the only way to get to it was by Exxon's corporate helicopter.
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And the star actually, to their credit, in the aftermath,
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worked out how much that would have cost and sent a check to Exxon
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There was this absolute separation of church and state, you know,
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Now they can hardly get their mitts on this taxpayer grub.
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I mean, we've been hearing about the demise of the rebel for, well, pretty close to five years now.
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And in the meantime, we watch everybody else get laid off.
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The most astounding thing, and you and I were talking about this off air,
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is the Alberta government under, they called him Bible Bill Eberhardt.
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He was the premier of Alberta, social credit premier.
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He passed a law that basically said that newspapers had to publish a rebuttal from the government
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And that law was ruled unconstitutional because the Edmonton Journal challenged it.
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And the Edmonton Journal was the first foreign newspaper to ever win a Pulitzer Prize
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because they challenged this law, had it ruled unconstitutional,
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and defended their own journalistic independence and integrity.
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And yet, I've heard nothing from former Edmonton Journal columnist,
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now so-called independent, liberal-appointed Senator Paula Simons about this.
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And you'd think that she would be somebody who is shouting about this from the rooftops again,
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complete and utter silence from the journalists,
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and now the former journalists who call themselves independent senators.
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They've gone native, I guess, when it comes to getting some payola on the side.
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And, I mean, listen, I understand their business model,
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which was conceived before the internet, it doesn't work anymore.
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Newspapers that were, you know, weekend editions that were once the size of a town's phone book
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But still, A, it is not the government's mandate to bail out media outlets
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or any corporations as far as I'm concerned in the auto sector,
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Chrysler, GM, which are always coming up to the trough.
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And B, I don't see how any journalist, how any publisher or newspaper owner
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can say we are completely independent and unbiased
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when you've got a political party, essentially, paying for your existence?
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because we've figured out that there's a different way to do it,
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that you need to innovate, you need to be ahead of technology
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and embrace technology and embrace new ways of doing things.
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But the other legacy media outlets and the mainstream media,
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They aren't adapting to what their readership or viewership wants.
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And the liberals are giving them money under the guise of protecting journalism
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because they value journalism, but actually they're making it worse.
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And there will come a time where they, even the liberals, I think,
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are going to come to a realization that they're throwing good money after bad.
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And all these news outlets who failed to innovate
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in completely collapsing the news industry in Canada at some point
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because it will be a bubble that will eventually burst.
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No, you know, I think you're absolutely right, Sheila.
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And, you know, most of my life in the journalism business, I was in print.
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in terms of the sheer volume of readers out there
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Yeah, CBC's viewership, I think, is at the lowest ever.
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So they compete with the private sector news organizations
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because they aren't insulated from reality anymore.
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the liberals probably didn't even have to do this
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it's when a journalist self-censors him or herself.
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because there's so few opportunities out there.
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The media outlets are going to print government spin