Juno News - January 04, 2020


Elections commissioner’s targeting of Rebel is an attack on free speech


Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

165.51566

Word count

719

Sentence count

24

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

The government is going after a conservative news organization for daring to criticize the left during an election. Again. This latest instance comes from Elections Canada which has launched an investigation into Rebel News over a book that was published by Rebel during the federal election campaign.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 The government is going after a conservative news organization for daring to criticize the
00:00:10.640 left during an election. Again. This latest instance comes from Elections Canada which
00:00:16.480 has launched an investigation into Rebel News over a book that was published by Rebel during
00:00:22.560 the federal election campaign. That book entitled The Lebranos What the Media Won't Tell You About
00:00:29.440 Justin Trudeau's Corruption, as the title suggests, made a pretty stark case against Justin Trudeau
00:00:36.000 and the Liberals. It was a piece of journalism, something that was aimed at producing in a
00:00:41.200 journalistic fashion a list of the arguments you'd see in opinion columns and in fact arguments you
00:00:46.480 did see in opinion columns from a number of publications throughout the election. But
00:00:51.680 because it was published as a book, because there were signs promoting it, Elections Canada is
00:00:56.960 investigating as to whether it was an illegal book. Now if this sounds familiar it's because
00:01:02.960 it's happened already to the Rebel as well. In the last Alberta election, Sheila Gunn-Reed had a book 0.66
00:01:09.520 that took aim at Rachel Notley, had a very similar promotional campaign and was yes investigated by
00:01:16.240 Alberta's elections commissioner. Now in that investigation which was very much targeted to
00:01:22.960 Rebel and Sheila Gunn-Reed eventually they determined there was no wrongdoing, although still released
00:01:28.720 a scathing letter saying that even though you've done nothing wrong you should be very grateful the
00:01:33.520 law is worded the way it is. Well yes that's the point, you didn't break the law, it doesn't matter if
00:01:38.960 you broke a rule that isn't actually law that the investigator wishes were a law. Whether that's going to
00:01:45.120 happen in this federal investigation we don't know, certainly that's what it should be. This is a free speech
00:01:51.200 matter. You don't have to have read the Lebranos, you don't have to like the Lebranos book to understand
00:01:57.520 that anyone should be able to release a commentary or analysis, even a politically pointed one, in an
00:02:04.480 election campaign whether it comes in the form of a blog post, a book, a podcast, or even a message sent
00:02:11.120 by Carrier Pigeon. Who the heck cares? This is an example of the government trying to go after whatever
00:02:17.920 way it can silence voices most effectively. Scouring through the book, if it's anything like the Alberta
00:02:24.080 investigation they'll be asking for receipts, schedules, editors, notes, all of these things
00:02:29.360 that don't really address the fundamental question of whether in fact we protect free speech during
00:02:36.160 elections. Are we going to say that you can release a book of this nature outside of elections but not
00:02:41.680 when it matters the most? Because that is the implication of this, that we are supposed to suspend
00:02:46.960 free speech because there's an election campaign going on when that is the most important time
00:02:52.640 of the year, the time of a multi-year cycle to talk about political issues and yes to even advocate
00:02:59.200 on them or at the very least raise a narrative about one particular party which is what this book clearly
00:03:05.200 did. We don't know where it's going to go in the future but we do know that Rebel is fighting it
00:03:10.080 tooth and nail. Ezra Levant said, we will never stop speaking freely and criticizing Trudeau and any other
00:03:16.320 politicians we like. I think he means we like to criticize not politicians he likes but regardless
00:03:22.160 it doesn't matter. This is going to be a very test case and I hope that other media organizations stand
00:03:28.320 up and realize this is important. You know the media is not a fan of Rebel, the media similarly from the
00:03:34.000 mainstream perspective isn't a fan of many conservatives but we do know that if rights of Rebel or True
00:03:40.480 North or other organizations that might have a political tack that differs from the mainstream
00:03:45.920 are hit by the government it sets a precedent that allows the government to go after everyone which
00:03:51.760 is why press freedom is something that needs to be universally supported. True North is doing this
00:03:56.880 but we need your help we're a grassroots organization if you can chip in to support our honest and
00:04:01.440 independent journalism please do there's a link in the description box or you can head on over to
00:04:06.240 tnc.news. For True North, I'm Andrew Lutton.