Juno News - November 28, 2018


Canada's media is being corrupted by the Trudeau Liberals

Topics
media corruption and funding
Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Trudeau Liberals Unifor Jerry Diaz Susan Ormiston Andrew Scheer Peter
People wanting a government solution to plant closures just don't get it The True North Report： Justin Trudeau's Franco-virtue signalling

Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

140.69

Word count

964

Sentence count

63

Harmful content

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A free, independent, free-thinking, rigorous, robust, respected media is vital to our free society, but Canada s media is deeply corrupted, and it s time to take a closer look at what s happening in our own media.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.680 Attacks against the media pose a threat to democracy.
00:00:04.860 This according to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
00:00:07.580 One of the institutions that is most under stress right now is a free, independent, free-thinking,
00:00:17.360 independent, rigorous, robust, respected media.
00:00:21.440 This is what Justin Trudeau said during a Remembrance Day news conference with other
00:00:27.440 Western leaders in France.
00:00:29.760 He discussed the important role of a free press in informing citizens and ensuring a well-educated,
00:00:35.520 well-informed populace.
00:00:36.520 And he stated vaguely that these institutions are under attack without really spelling out
00:00:41.760 how or why.
00:00:42.760 Now, I don't say this very often, but on this matter, the Prime Minister is right.
00:00:47.940 A rigorous and independent media is vital to our free society.
00:00:52.260 The only problem is that Canada's media is far from free-thinking, independent, robust,
00:00:58.720 rigorous, or respected.
00:01:00.480 Canada's media is deeply corrupted.
00:01:02.480 Let me explain why.
00:01:04.480 Now, everyone knows that most members of the mainstream media are part of an exclusive
00:01:08.680 club of left-leaning urban elites who live in downtown Toronto, Ottawa, or Montreal.
00:01:14.240 They have a very narrow worldview.
00:01:17.240 Frankly, they don't understand the values or concerns of most everyday Canadians.
00:01:22.240 Worse than their own personal biases, which most of them are completely oblivious about,
00:01:28.000 there is ample evidence that the companies these journalists work for are themselves neither
00:01:34.760 independent nor free.
00:01:37.000 Take the recent political campaign launched by Unifor National President Jerry Diaz. 0.99
00:01:41.760 We will stop sheer stupidity, wrote Diaz on Twitter, mentioning Conservative leader Andrew 0.95
00:01:47.640 Scheer and unveiling Unifor's new anti-conservative political campaign called The Resistance. 0.99
00:01:54.520 This private sector union is taking it upon itself to launch a major campaign to discredit
00:02:00.480 and to attack a political party in Canada, using the forced dues collected from its members.
00:02:07.520 Now, unions waging campaigns against Conservatives is nothing new.
00:02:12.560 The previous federal Conservative government had introduced a law that required financial
00:02:16.960 transparency for unions.
00:02:19.280 These unions hated that law, and so they worked hard to help elect Justin Trudeau and the Liberals.
00:02:25.040 Trudeau and the Liberals then scrapped that financial transparency law immediately after being elected.
00:02:30.920 This type of quid pro quo happens all the time.
00:02:33.800 It's become common in Canadian politics.
00:02:36.680 The problem with this new Unifor campaign is that the union represents thousands of Canadian
00:02:42.040 journalists, including many of my own colleagues at the Sun newspapers.
00:02:45.720 I should note that I am not a member of a union.
00:02:49.000 But according to its website, Unifor is Canada's largest media union, representing over 13,000 workers
00:02:56.160 from coast to coast in printing, graphic arts, newspaper, film and broadcasting.
00:03:01.680 13,000 Canadian journalists pay money to this union.
00:03:07.040 And that money, in part, is going to fight a political campaign.
00:03:10.720 Now, I don't blame journalists for joining a union.
00:03:14.480 Look, it's a tough market out there.
00:03:16.480 Everyone knows traditional media outlets are dying.
00:03:19.200 They're slowly shedding jobs and a lot of people are out of work.
00:03:23.600 But how do Canadian journalists claim to be neutral and unbiased when their own union is openly waging
00:03:30.320 a campaign against a major political party?
00:03:33.760 It's an obvious conflict of interest.
00:03:36.160 It undermines public trust in the independence of those Unifor journalists.
00:03:42.240 Now, it isn't just private sector journalists who suffer from a lack of credibility.
00:03:47.040 Canada's state broadcaster is even more conflicted.
00:03:51.440 During the last federal election campaign, funding to the CBC became a major political issue.
00:03:57.360 Every major political party addressed CBC funding in its election platform.
00:04:03.280 The Conservative government cut the CBC's budget by $115 million.
00:04:07.600 The Socialist New Democrat Party pledged to reverse these cuts.
00:04:12.480 While the Liberals went the furthest, they pledged to not only reverse the cuts,
00:04:16.320 but also to give the CBC an additional $150 million in funding.
00:04:22.320 Lo and behold, with $265 million on the line,
00:04:26.720 the Trudeau Liberals received glowing coverage from the CBC, which helped them win the election.
00:04:33.040 Our senior correspondents, Adrian Arsenault and Susan Ormiston,
00:04:36.880 have been watching the debate with a critical eye and critical ear.
00:04:40.800 And they're going to drill down into some of what the leaders told you tonight.
00:04:44.880 The Liberals now say they'll really boost it.
00:04:46.880 $125 billion over the next 10 years compared to the Conservatives' $80 billion.
00:04:52.560 But here's the crutch.
00:04:53.680 The Liberals will go into three years of deficits to pay for it.
00:04:57.680 And the New Democrats and Conservatives mock Trudeau for that.
00:05:01.360 But economists we've spoken to say modest deficits for infrastructure could be defendable.
00:05:08.720 It's still a hot debate, Peter.
00:05:10.720 A cynic may call this a bribe.
00:05:12.960 A very large and very public bribe using our money, taxpayer dollars.
00:05:18.000 According to the media in Canada, however, it was fair game for the Trudeau Liberals.
00:05:22.800 The problem with our media is far worse than a mere bias from the left-leaning journalists
00:05:26.880 who cover the news.
00:05:28.480 Increasingly, media outlets themselves are the ones that are corrupted by meddling politicians.
00:05:34.400 And it gets even worse.
00:05:36.160 The Liberals are now seeking to expand government's influence over journalists.
00:05:40.720 They are offering a taxpayer-funded slush fund to dole out to more failing media companies.
00:05:48.400 How can journalists remain independent when they're the beneficiaries of government handouts?
00:05:54.160 Can they really be trusted to scrutinize the politicians who fund them?
00:05:59.120 And really, will they remain independent?
00:06:01.680 Will they remain unbiased if another politician down the road threatens to end their funding?
00:06:07.360 How can we claim to have a free press in Canada when so much public cash is doled out to journalists,
00:06:14.080 while other journalists are part of a massive union that openly hates conservatives?
00:06:20.240 Like Justin Trudeau said, a free and independent press is vital to a democracy.
00:06:26.640 Unfortunately for Canadians, our media institutions are already corrupted,
00:06:31.040 and journalists who work for those companies are failing to provide the full story.
00:06:36.400 For the TrueNorth Initiative, I'm Candace Malcolm.