Juno News - CBC admits to pushing out fake news about a Conservative MP

00:00:00.440 CBC admits they pushed fake news. The legacy media wage a war against Maxine Bernier while also doubling down on an accusation that conservatives are racist.

00:00:08.900 Plus, we'll talk about why you should never, ever, ever listen to the legacy media and their narrative.

00:00:13.940 It's Fake News Friday. I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

00:00:21.380 Hi everyone, welcome to The Candace Malcolm Show. Thank you so much for tuning in. It's Friday.

00:00:24.700 This is the day of the week where we go through the most egregious lies that get pushed by the legacy media.

00:00:29.420 We deconstruct them and we talk about why so much of the information that gets pushed in the legacy media is fake news.

00:00:36.520 So, sometimes here at The Candace Malcolm Show, we come across a story that's just so delicious, so rewarding.

00:00:42.240 And I'm going to focus on this story a bit today.

00:00:44.860 So, you may remember this story. Back in November 2020, almost a year ago, my colleague Anthony Fury over at the Toronto Sun

00:00:51.400 put out a really good report in the Toronto Sun talking about the comorbidity rate that came along with COVID-19.

00:00:58.020 He was using official statistics released by the health department over in Alberta and he basically found that the overwhelming majority of deaths in that province

00:01:06.960 were of people who had more than three comorbidities. So, people who were suffering serious other illnesses, caught COVID, died.

00:01:14.380 We don't know if they died from COVID or from their other illnesses.

00:01:17.180 This was kind of something that wasn't really out in the open in that part.

00:01:19.740 It was a big report and no surprise, a lot of people were sharing it on social media.

00:01:23.820 One of the people who shared that was conservative MP Rachel Harder, the MP from Lethbridge. 0.54

00:01:30.040 Well, the CBC, being the CBC and doing what they do, they put out a really, really silly story.

00:01:35.400 So, this is the original story. It says, 0.70

00:01:36.960 Lethbridge MP under fire for sharing article on COVID deaths, comorbidities, and restrictions.

00:01:42.940 This is like the worst kind of journalism, bottom of the barrel, really, really bad, clickbaity kind of stuff.

00:01:47.720 So, basically what happens is a news reporter, rather than writing an opinion piece, rather than being honest about their own views

00:01:53.700 and putting them forth as an opinion piece to the audience, they pretend that they're doing journalism.

00:01:58.660 Usually, they'll go out and they'll find an expert that agrees with them and it'll be like, expert says so-and-so.

00:02:03.980 But when they can't even find an expert, they resort to one step lower, which is social media reacts or social media outrage over this piece,

00:02:11.340 which is really just to say, me as a journalist, I don't like this piece, so I've cherry-picked like five angry dudes on Twitter who share my views,

00:02:19.040 and I'm going to write a story, construct an entire story around this.

00:02:21.840 So, this is exactly what we saw here, the journalist at the CBC called Brian Labby.

00:02:27.480 He writes, Rachel Harder shared article that says,

00:02:30.440 Just 10 otherwise healthy people have died of COVID in Alberta.

00:02:34.420 And again, he just finds like very random people, like not people of interest, not public figures, not like other politicians or like public officials of any kind.

00:02:44.080 He just finds like random people out there who are super angry about this and they're ranting.

00:02:48.920 And the whole story is based around that.

00:02:51.260 So, no surprise, this is the kind of stuff that CBC puts out all the time.

00:02:55.040 The reason I'm talking about it today and the reason why it is so delicious is because there was a complaint about this article.

00:03:01.780 The CBC ombudsman took a look at this report and they came up with a conclusion that the complaints about this piece were correct.

00:03:09.360 The piece did not live up to their standards.

00:03:11.020 And so, now there's a little editor's note at the top of this article.

00:03:13.420 It says,

00:03:14.240 This article was updated on January 11th, 2021 to better reflect the views of Ms. Harder and contextualize some of the reactions to her original post.

00:03:23.440 So, this is where this all came from.

00:03:25.180 Blacklock's reporter had a piece earlier this week saying, 0.89

00:03:27.340 CBC regrets slandering MP, the CBC has expressed regrets over a garbled online story that depicted re-elected Conservative MP Rachel Harder as callous and ignorant.

00:03:38.840 Records detailed snide questions from a CBC Calgary reporter who falsely accused the MP of spreading misinformation about COVID.

00:03:46.280 I agree we failed to live up to the high standards we set for ourselves on several fronts, wrote Helen Henderson, Senior Director at CBC Calgary.

00:03:53.440 Henderson added,

00:03:54.700 The piece fell short of what we deem acceptable.

00:03:57.000 Let me reiterate that I regret we did not live up to our and our audience's expectations of CBC News.

00:04:03.240 The CBC last November posted a website story headlined,

00:04:06.980 Lethbridge MP under fire for spreading misinformation about COVID deaths in Alberta.

00:04:11.520 The article recited social media users' comments after MP Harder on her Facebook page posted a November 17th Toronto Sun story.

00:04:19.220 That was a story by my colleague Anthony Fury.

00:04:21.220 The story goes on to say the Sun item correctly stated that a majority of COVID deaths occurred among patients with pre-existing medical conditions like dementia.

00:04:29.780 Figures were supported by subsequent data from Statistics Canada and the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, which put the average age of COVID victims at 86.

00:04:37.880 The CBC account read,

00:04:39.000 It goes on to say MP Harder called the CBC story bent, inaccurate and sensationalized.

00:05:07.920 CBC ombudsman Jack Nagler agreed the story appeared manufactured.

00:05:13.440 I am not a big fan of stories based on outrage over social media, he wrote, and that there was no question data in the original Toronto Sun story were accurate, he wrote.

00:05:22.020 The ombudsman called the CBC version a significant failure that failed to test a balance.

00:05:27.200 Under the Crown Broadcaster's Journalistic Standards and Practices Guide, there were violations of policy and I hope fervently that programmers will learn from their mistakes, wrote Nagler.

00:05:36.480 The overall package was flawed, he wrote.

00:05:38.660 CBC failed to meet their standards.

00:05:41.120 The network released a text of a written exchange between MP Harder and Brian Labby, the CBC Calgary reporter who wrote the original story.

00:05:47.100 Do you believe people with underlying pre-existing medical conditions are less valued, he asked.

00:05:52.740 Do you think less of the people because they have pre-existing conditions? 0.96

00:05:56.280 So you just see how completely biased the CBC reporter is, even the CBC's own management, even their own ombudsman said the story is wrong, it's manufactured, it's trash.

00:06:06.060 Yet for some reason it still exists, it's still up on the CBC's website.

00:06:09.180 But you kind of get a little glimpse into the process of just how biased the CBC is, that even the CBC's own brass agrees that their journalism is fake and cannot be trusted.

00:06:19.540 So pretty embarrassing moment over at the CBC and a little bit of indication for Anthony Fury and MP Harder.

00:06:27.200 So interesting to see.

00:06:28.720 Moving on to another story that shows the anti-conservative bias that lives in the hearts of so many legacy media journalists.

00:06:36.200 I'm talking about the story where a bunch of legacy media reporters decided after the election to run on this narrative that the PPC is actually a far-right neo-Nazi party, like actually neo-Nazi parties.

00:06:48.120 Like I think there's like seven or eight neo-Nazis in the entire country of Canada and the CBC and other legacy media outlets is convinced that the real base of Bernier's party is white nationalists, neo-Nazis and far-right extremists.

00:07:01.920 And the legacy media sort of act as like pack animals.

00:07:06.080 When one outlet or one reporter has an idea for a story, it's like they all follow suit.

00:07:09.780 That's why Ezra Levant calls them the media party because not only are they completely anti-conservative and their just innate bias is that they hate conservatives, they're also completely unoriginal, very dull, very boring, and they just follow what the other one does.

00:07:22.680 So this is a perfect example of that.

00:07:24.380 They all decided that Bernier's real base, you know, Maxime Bernier is a libertarian.

00:07:29.300 He expanded his coalition in this past election because he really appealed to the anger and frustration that existed over really overzealous lockdown policies.

00:07:38.620 So I would call him a pro-freedom, libertarian, anti-lockdown, just a pro-freedom guy that was able to attract people from a broad spectrum of Canadians across the ideological spectrum, but also from diverse backgrounds, more so among people who come from more of a blue-collar background, I would say.

00:07:56.220 And for the mainstream media, they just don't see it that way.

00:07:59.640 They can only see it in this like very linear way that the conservatives are like the center-right party, even though they're more center or even center-left these days.

00:08:07.780 And so the PPC must be to the right, and therefore they must be far-right.

00:08:12.180 So they just come up far-right.

00:08:13.840 Okay, if you're far-right, it means you're racist, it means you're probably a Nazi, and they kind of just like do this paint-by-numbers thing. 0.95

00:08:19.260 So apparently a whole bunch of them reached out to Maxime Bernier asking if Maxime Bernier was courting Nazis, like seriously, straight up, the dumbest kind of thing, the worst insinuation about a person. 0.94

00:08:30.720 You have Maxime Bernier, a freedom-lover libertarian, and you're accusing him of being a fascist. 0.97

00:08:35.820 So for stupid journalists out there who don't know the difference between a libertarian, basically the concept of being a libertarian is that you don't want big government. 0.96

00:08:44.060 You want very limited government, very small government, very controlled government. 0.99

00:08:47.600 Whereas if you understand properly what a Nazi is and what a fascist is, they're on the other end of the spectrum in terms of authoritarians.

00:08:55.720 They believe in big, all-powerful government, social control, controlled order, order at the threat of violence, which again is on the opposite end of the political spectrum from Maxime Bernier.

00:09:05.660 So to the journalists who just don't understand this, maybe you should try reading a book.

00:09:09.400 Just read one book about history and try to understand what a libertarian is versus what a far-right fascist is.

00:09:15.440 I think it would serve the entire country very well. 1.00

00:09:17.820 Regardless, Bernier got a whole bunch of requests basically asking the same idiotic question. 0.99

00:09:23.100 And so what did Maxime Bernier do? 1.00

00:09:24.700 He took screenshots of these idiotic questions. 1.00

00:09:27.360 He posted them on social media. 1.00

00:09:29.260 He said,

00:09:29.480 Which is exactly right.

00:09:44.020 Maxime Bernier is correct in this observation.

00:09:46.240 These are not journalists.

00:09:47.140 These are left-wing activists masquerading as journalists.

00:09:50.040 And then he took the screenshots and shared the questions.

00:09:53.020 I'm going to read a couple because they're just so steeped in left-wing ideology and woke ideology. 0.97

00:09:58.140 And also you can kind of get a glimpse for how stupid reporters are because half these questions are incoherent and the people writing them are like illiterate or something. 0.98

00:10:06.140 So this is a request from Global News. 1.00

00:10:08.160 It says,

00:10:08.480 So BIPOC is an acronym, a new acronym, another new acronym among the left.

00:10:18.220 And it means Black, Indigenous, and people of color.

00:10:21.400 So basically just not white.

00:10:22.900 That's what BIPOC means.

00:10:24.060 So he says,

00:10:25.040 I'm contacting you regarding a story about BIPOC voters and their feeling toward the PPC.

00:10:32.920 They fear the PPC is pushing far-right extremism and allowing people who have xenophobic in the public to run as candidates.

00:10:41.540 I just read it as it's written.

00:10:42.780 You can tell that it's not very, it hasn't been proofread.

00:10:45.440 Let's just put it that way.

00:10:46.220 Another email from the Hill Times that says,

00:10:48.680 Does the party believe it is supported by white supremacists?

00:11:18.420 So again, they all just jump on the same narrative, pushing vile, vile stuff against Maxime Bernier. 0.69

00:11:22.980 Good on him to hit back.

00:11:24.400 The problem is Bernier goes probably a little too far with this one.

00:11:27.760 And he retweets his original tweet.

00:11:30.160 And he says this, 1.00

00:11:31.240 If you want to write to these idiots to tell them what you think of their disgusting smear jobs, 1.00

00:11:35.820 here are their email addresses. 1.00

00:11:37.460 They want to play dirty.

00:11:38.580 We will play dirty too.

00:11:39.580 And he provides three email addresses to the three reporters.

00:11:42.500 Of course, this is doxing.

00:11:43.440 This goes against Twitter's rules.

00:11:45.140 So not a good idea.

00:11:46.080 Maxime Bernier to dox these reporters.

00:11:47.720 I will just say most reporters have a public email.

00:11:50.940 So you can find these emails very easily on perhaps a Twitter bio or at the end of the story.

00:11:56.400 Most journalists have a public email.

00:11:58.480 So I don't think that Maxime Bernier was doxing in like the traditional sense.

00:12:02.120 He didn't share any new information that hadn't been out there.

00:12:04.960 But, you know, this idea to like,

00:12:06.960 Hey, these are the three journalists.

00:12:08.420 Go after them.

00:12:09.160 Not the smartest thing.

00:12:10.300 Although I understand the anger that Bernier was coming at.

00:12:13.220 So no surprise, Twitter restricted Bernier's account for 12 hours.

00:12:16.660 And he was forced to take the tweet down.

00:12:19.320 So the problem with Bernier is that even though he's right, he's not very calculated.

00:12:23.740 He's not very, he's not very calculated.

00:12:25.740 He's not very strategic about what he's doing.

00:12:27.440 So he's just kind of acting out of anger on Twitter, which feeds into the journalist playbook because this is exactly what they want.

00:12:33.480 Right now they get to write stories about how horrible Bernier is, about how he's not only is he far right and extremist, but he's dangerous and he's a threat to journalists.

00:12:42.740 And so we saw lots of headlines that looked like this.

00:12:45.820 We'll play dirty too. 0.99

00:12:46.940 Twitter makes Max St. Bernier remove tweet calling reporters idiots. 0.99

00:12:51.200 And of course, the Canadian Association of Journalism says going after reporters for doing their job is unacceptable and dangerous. 0.94

00:12:58.620 Well, I'm old enough to remember what, a week and a half ago, when a handful of reporters from the rebel were ordered by a federal judge to be able to attend the leaders' debates.

00:13:07.980 So these journalists were deemed by a federal judge in Canada to be legitimate journalists and enabled them to attend the debate and ask their questions to the political party leaders.

00:13:19.380 Both Justin Trudeau, the liberal leader, and Jagmeet Singh, the NDP leader, completely refused to engage with them, refused to answer their questions.

00:13:26.620 And Justin Trudeau went on pretty much an unhinged tirade against the rebel media, basically blaming them for all the problems in society, blaming them for the protests, blaming them for a rise in conspiracy theories, and really, really not holding back in his attack and his hatred for right-wing media outlets, right-wing Canadians, and journalists.

00:13:47.900 This is what that looked like.

00:13:48.980 First of all, questions around accreditation were handled by the press gallery, organizations like yours that continue to spread misinformation and disinformation on the science around vaccines, around how we're going to actually get through this pandemic and be there for each other and keep our kids safe.

00:14:12.420 And that is part of why we're seeing such unfortunate anger and lack of understanding of basic science.

00:14:22.340 Your, I won't call it a media organization, your group of individuals need to take accountability for some of the polarization that we're seeing in this country.

00:14:35.840 And I salute all extraordinary, hard-working journalists that put science and facts at the heart of what they do and ask me tough questions every day, but make sure that they are educating and informing Canadians from a broad range of perspectives, which is the last thing that you guys do.

00:14:55.920 So wait a minute, why is it okay for left-wing politicians to be deranged and angry and completely non-responsive to journalists if they come from a conservative outlet or a right-wing outlet, but when you have a right-wing party reacting negatively to left-wing journalists who are doing activism journalism the same way as the rebel, somehow it's like this national outrage is a threat to democracy, the Canadian Association for Journalism is chiming in.

00:15:20.780 And this is a completely silly double standard, and it's not just the Canadian Association of Journalism that's saying that.

00:15:26.980 We have this statement that was put out by the CBC.

00:15:29.280 It says, statement, recent online harassment of journalists.

00:15:32.900 We at CBC Radio Canada add our voice in support of all journalists who are subject to online harassment and worse because of the work they do.

00:15:41.600 It should be obvious to all Canadians that this harassment is unacceptable behavior.

00:15:45.480 When the incitement to harass journalists comes from public figures, it is even worse.

00:15:51.140 The work of journalists is vital to an informed public and a healthy democracy.

00:15:55.540 Criticism comes with a job, but online harassment, particularly inciting others to attack someone for doing their job, puts the safety of people at risk.

00:16:04.600 That the worst of this abuse targets women and racialized journalists should make clear just how dangerous this is.

00:16:11.680 So again, remember when Justin Trudeau did that tirade, that was against a female rebel reporter.

00:16:17.240 No statement from the CBC, no statement from the Canadian Association of Journalists.

00:16:21.260 But when it is a right-wing politician doing it against left-wing activist journalists, then everybody is so outraged.

00:16:26.940 They call it harassment.

00:16:28.100 They call it incitement.

00:16:29.420 They say that it is an attack on healthy democracy.

00:16:32.860 Forgive me if I'm a little skeptical that this is all just performative, anti-conservative, woke nonsense.

00:16:38.700 Look, I agree, Bernier probably shouldn't have overreacted.

00:16:41.640 He shouldn't have done what he did.

00:16:42.920 It wasn't right. 0.98

00:16:43.820 But this overreaction is just so silly.

00:16:46.100 And again, that's why Bernier isn't as successful as he could be because he plays into the left-wing media.

00:16:51.040 He allows them to shape this narrative against him and really falls into their trap.

00:16:56.000 So unfortunate to see.

00:16:57.300 But yes, this is fake news, folks.

00:16:59.720 Okay, next story here.

00:17:00.900 Just a reminder that the left-wing media outlets in Canada are obsessed with race.

00:17:04.820 All they want to do is divide us based on race, pit us against each other.

00:17:08.580 All they care about is race.

00:17:09.820 They're obsessed with it.

00:17:10.900 And they're even more obsessed with it when they can use it as a club to bat conservatives, to beat conservatives.

00:17:15.900 And this is what we're seeing today.

00:17:17.360 So both the CBC and the Toronto Star ran with this story.

00:17:20.540 The CBC writes,

00:17:21.640 After Monday's vote, the Federal Conservative Caucus will be 95% white.

00:17:26.580 And then the Toronto Star says,

00:17:27.940 Aaron O'Toole promised to remake the Conservative Party.

00:17:30.340 So why are his MPs so white and male? 0.92

00:17:33.120 Of course, this is what they focus on.

00:17:34.480 Of course, this is what they care about.

00:17:35.840 They don't care about a member of parliament's experience.

00:17:38.520 They don't care about their aptitude, their background, their profession.

00:17:41.100 They don't care about their character and their capabilities.

00:17:44.040 What they care about, all they care about is identity politics, pushing the swedge issue, intersectionality.

00:17:49.560 If you're white and male, you're part of the problem. 0.99

00:17:51.960 Everyone else is accepted and good.

00:17:54.200 And so, I mean, this is just patently obvious that they're trying to divide the country.

00:17:58.060 They don't care.

00:17:58.520 They don't even look at the makeup of the 95% white Conservative Caucus.

00:18:05.020 They don't talk about how many of the MPs in the Conservative Caucus are immigrants or the children of immigrants.

00:18:09.340 They don't talk about the social class.

00:18:11.160 Maybe some of them grew up poor and made something of themselves, became successful.

00:18:14.960 None of those things matter.

00:18:15.920 The CBC and the Toronto Star only care about pinning us against each other on race.

00:18:20.480 And it's even more interesting than that because the Toronto Star story talks about how there were a bunch of good candidates for the CBC who were from different backgrounds, who were Chinese or Arab or different backgrounds, but they didn't win their seats.

00:18:34.840 So part of Aaron O'Toole's failed strategy in the last election was that he changed the party.

00:18:40.400 He became a meek moderate.

00:18:42.400 He was trying to appeal to suburban voters who typically vote liberal.

00:18:46.520 And because that failed, the Conservatives ended up losing a lot of seats in and around Vancouver and the 905, the Suburban Belt, around Vancouver.

00:18:53.500 That's where a lot of their ethnic candidates or their non-white candidates were running.

00:18:57.080 So even though the Conservatives had these candidates, they didn't win, which doesn't really say anything about the Conservatives other than the fact that Aaron O'Toole ran a bad campaign.

00:19:05.540 It also says something about Canadians, that they didn't vote for those candidates.

00:19:08.480 They voted for different candidates.

00:19:10.560 So again, just this whole storyline is completely designed to pit us against each other.

00:19:15.360 Canadians should rightly reject this.

00:19:17.540 And the final thing I want to talk about today is after the 2019 election, there sort of became conventional wisdom that was pushed by the legacy media.

00:19:26.140 The legacy media concluded that Andrew Scheer was too much of a right-winger and that was a liability.

00:19:30.840 They said that he was pro-life and that he was a Catholic and those things were very, very bad, we were told.

00:19:36.400 And so the solution to this was that the Conservatives needed to moderate.

00:19:40.020 They needed to run someone who wasn't pro-life.

00:19:42.100 They needed to run someone who was more liberal in their social values.

00:19:45.660 And for some reason, the Conservative Party went along with that.

00:19:48.940 They listened to that.

00:19:49.600 They believed that that was the correct analysis of the 2019 election.

00:19:54.460 I think that following this past election, seeing Aaron O'Toole run as a moderate, run as a left-winger, lose ground in the places that he was trying to win,

00:20:02.540 we can safely say that that narrative that was crafted in 2019, mostly by the legacy media, mostly by people who do not vote Conservative,

00:20:10.180 will never vote Conservative, don't have Conservative interests in mind or in their heart, they were wrong.

00:20:15.940 It was absolutely not the right takeaway from that election.

00:20:18.820 The reality is that Canadians want an alternative to the Liberals.

00:20:23.540 They want a Conservative Party that's actually Conservative.

00:20:26.300 And so I think that while we're doing this whole post-election, post-mortem trying to figure out what went wrong and what we can do to improve the Conservative movement in Canada,

00:20:34.860 we shouldn't start now.

00:20:35.960 We should start in 2019.

00:20:38.480 Take a look at the bad advice that we were given by the legacy media and keep this in mind.

00:20:43.440 That the legacy media is not in touch with Canadians.

00:20:46.520 They're not insightful about Conservative political campaigns.

00:20:49.880 And basically, Conservatives should not listen, should not engage, should not take their advice to heart,

00:20:55.180 because we did that last time and it didn't turn out very well.

00:20:58.220 Now the new narrative that's being formed by the legacy media is that Aaron O'Toole did a great job,

00:21:03.560 he deserves a second chance, and that the country is just more left-wing now,

00:21:06.920 and that we should all just be resigned to that, accepted, and embrace more social progressive wokeism in our Conservative Party.

00:21:15.120 That's the wrong message.

00:21:16.320 That is wrong.

00:21:17.300 Ignore the legacy media.

00:21:18.800 They're not right.

00:21:19.700 They don't understand the country.

00:21:20.880 They don't understand the Conservative movement.

00:21:22.780 And the less the Conservatives listen to the legacy media, the better off we all are, the better off Canada is.

00:21:28.640 Thank you so much for listening, everybody.

00:21:30.200 I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:21:36.920 Thank you.

Juno News - September 24, 2021

CBC admits to pushing out fake news about a Conservative MP

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