Juno News - Ezra Levant on Rebel News, independent media, and disrupting the status quo

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:10.700 Coming up, we talk about the era of independent media in Canada, but not so long ago, there was only one, and it was Rebel.

00:00:18.640 We'll talk to the Rebel Commander, Ezra Levant.

00:00:21.560 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:24.800 Hey, welcome along. This is Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show, the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:00:32.320 It is Wednesday, December 28th, 2022, and I hope you're all having a wonderful, wonderful time.

00:00:39.460 This is that weird twilight week between Christmas and New Year's where you don't know what day it is.

00:00:44.600 You are in a sugar coma every step of the day. You've got turkey bursting your fridge at the seams.

00:00:51.100 You've got leftover chocolate. It's just, it's terrible, and you are listening to this show,

00:00:55.700 so I hope you are in the midst of trying to seek and preserve sanity throughout this weird sort of inter-holiday twilight period.

00:01:03.540 We are going to be back next week with regular programming, but we're taking advantage of the holiday season

00:01:09.900 to talk about some of the big picture issues and go in-depth with some of the favorite guests we have on this show

00:01:16.460 through the year that we oftentimes are talking about in shorter segments and for a very specific purpose.

00:01:22.920 And today, I want to speak to Ezra Levant, who I've known for many years.

00:01:26.700 I used to appear on his show back in the Sun News Network days, and I also followed him as a blogger years earlier than that.

00:01:34.120 Read his book, Shakedown, which chronicled his fight for free speech in Canada,

00:01:38.720 which, as current news indicates, is a fight that very much still needs to be waged.

00:01:44.040 But I thought it would be a useful opportunity here to talk about the side of Ezra you don't often see,

00:01:50.380 and a little-known fact, he was almost on the track to go into politics,

00:01:55.460 and his seat that he was going to run in ended up getting Stephen Harper as the candidate.

00:02:00.960 So, Ezra, again, I think could have been in a parallel universe prime minister,

00:02:06.600 but we'll talk about that in a moment here.

00:02:09.780 The rebel commander himself, Ezra Levant.

00:02:12.780 Ezra, good to talk to you again. Thanks, as always, for coming on today.

00:02:16.300 My pleasure.

00:02:17.580 Now, I wanted to go back.

00:02:19.120 One of the big things that I find comes up is that we have, both Rebel and True North,

00:02:24.160 I think, seen fairly significant audience expansions in the last year.

00:02:27.740 And there are a lot of people that I've known that have come over that actually have no idea who we are,

00:02:34.400 and they've, you know, somehow stumbled upon stuff that we do.

00:02:37.720 And it's interesting, so I thought I would take this opportunity with the holiday season upon us

00:02:42.340 and not having too, too much happening news-wise to delve into how you and Rebel got to where you are.

00:02:50.160 Because, you know, in like a parallel history, you could have been prime minister right now.

00:02:54.680 Like, people forget that you were standing for a seat at Parliament at one point.

00:02:58.960 Well, I think that's overstating things.

00:03:00.780 I mean, I likely would have been a backbench Conservative MP.

00:03:04.860 At least I was on that course.

00:03:06.520 I was running in a by-election about 20 years ago.

00:03:09.160 And then, as the quirk of history was, I stepped aside a little bit grudgingly

00:03:13.240 for Stephen Harper in Calgary Southwest, and he became PM.

00:03:17.860 So that's the whole thing, though.

00:03:19.880 The magic might have been that seat.

00:03:21.160 Well, you know, I had political ambitions.

00:03:26.120 Obviously, I was running for office, but those didn't come true.

00:03:29.260 But, you know, when one door closes, another opens.

00:03:32.140 And I was always interested in the media.

00:03:35.180 Even in high school and university, I wrote for the college papers.

00:03:39.300 When I was in my early 20s, I started writing for the Sun chain of newspapers.

00:03:43.980 And, you know, I wrote books.

00:03:46.340 I started the Western Standard magazine when Alberta Report went out of business.

00:03:50.660 So I was always interested in the media.

00:03:52.860 And I always knew, even though I dabbled in politics, again, since I was a teenager,

00:03:57.660 whenever I was in politics, the challenge seemed to be the media.

00:04:02.360 They were the filter.

00:04:03.500 They were the real political arbiters.

00:04:06.780 They were the biased lens.

00:04:10.260 And so whenever I was on the political side of the divide,

00:04:12.960 I felt like the battle was on the media.

00:04:15.140 And so when I was ejected from politics 20 years ago,

00:04:19.420 I set my sights on media work that I always felt was the most important part.

00:04:26.080 Western Standard, Sun News Network, Sun Newspapers,

00:04:29.640 and now, finally, Rebel News Network.

00:04:33.260 And I suppose one of the differences is politics can be about power.

00:04:38.740 If you're a cabinet minister, if you're a prime minister,

00:04:41.060 you have the ability to actually do things.

00:04:43.020 The media can't do things.

00:04:45.840 They don't have the power, but they have the influence.

00:04:48.020 They shape the battlefield of ideas.

00:04:50.380 They shape what people know about.

00:04:53.280 And so although my political ambitions, I have not returned to them in 20 years,

00:04:58.800 what we're doing on the journalistic side,

00:05:00.840 and we're also activists over here at Rebel News.

00:05:02.800 We get involved sometimes.

00:05:03.960 We don't just report the news.

00:05:06.300 Every now and then we stop and fix something.

00:05:09.680 I feel like it's been very similar work to what I would have done had I become an MP,

00:05:15.940 with one difference is I have more independence.

00:05:20.680 Unless you're the top dog in a political party, you really must be obedient.

00:05:27.040 And I suppose if you're a critic on a particular file,

00:05:29.660 you can put your mark on things, but you have to really operate as a political team.

00:05:36.120 And if you're not the boss of the team, sometimes that means you're reading talking points you don't really agree with.

00:05:41.620 I mean, I remember when Andrew Scheer decided, I think it was Andrew Scheer,

00:05:47.520 decided that the party wasn't going to dispute certain things.

00:05:52.040 Aaron O'Toole was when he basically signed on to the carbon tax.

00:05:57.200 Well, if you were a conservative MP, you had to nod along and read those talking points,

00:06:01.540 or you would be ejected.

00:06:03.300 That's just not in my DNA.

00:06:05.720 So running Rebel News and doing our activism, I can express myself journalistically.

00:06:11.080 We can do things as activists.

00:06:13.680 We don't have the strictures of a party.

00:06:16.380 But we can assist true conservatives in politics by helping shape the battle of ideas.

00:06:25.500 Well, that's such an important point because politics is fleeting in a lot of ways,

00:06:31.280 in a way that culture isn't.

00:06:32.700 And I even look at going back into Canada.

00:06:35.520 I've got some frustrations with certain aspects of the Harper legacy.

00:06:39.940 But let's just take for granted that we had 10 years of a conservative government.

00:06:44.360 We had four years of a majority government in which theoretically there was nothing stopping

00:06:49.320 Stephen Harper from doing anything that was on the conservative wish list.

00:06:53.320 And, you know, whatever I think should have been done that wasn't done, there were some

00:06:57.160 victories in that period.

00:06:58.520 You had, for example, the repeal of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

00:07:02.900 You had a rollback of some firearms restrictions.

00:07:06.040 You had tax reductions.

00:07:07.920 And you fast forward less than a decade from that point.

00:07:12.740 And a lot of those victories are completely gone.

00:07:16.200 I mean, sure, the GST is still at 5%, but more gun control is coming in now than ever existed

00:07:21.340 before Stephen Harper rolled back some of these measures.

00:07:24.600 Section 13 is coming back in a supercharged way.

00:07:27.980 C-11 wasn't on anyone's radar.

00:07:30.020 And it's probably going to be the law of the land.

00:07:32.140 And so politics is always going to have this back and forth.

00:07:35.660 And I think, you know, just as the left has the bureaucracy, which tends to just keep

00:07:40.180 its agenda going, I think the right has always been absent of in that fight of what do we

00:07:46.280 have that is lasting between conservative governments?

00:07:50.440 You know, I think Stephen Harper was an excellent prime minister.

00:07:53.240 But if I had to list his two greatest failings from my point of view, one of them was he

00:07:58.240 did not take advantage of the opportunity to appoint truly conservative judges to the courts,

00:08:04.660 especially to the Supreme Court.

00:08:06.600 I mean, he actually appointed most of the judges on the court, and yet it continued its

00:08:12.480 hurtling journey to the left.

00:08:14.820 He just didn't care about it enough.

00:08:16.800 And he could have even been bolder than Donald Trump was because we don't have the same Senate

00:08:22.540 advice and consent committee system.

00:08:25.620 The second thing I think he did, it was actually something he did not do.

00:08:30.460 He did not uproot the dominant government propaganda device, namely the CBC.

00:08:37.520 And he did not, when he had the chance, protect a nascent rival, the Sun News Network.

00:08:43.480 And I don't just say that because I'm an alumnus of that place.

00:08:45.980 I know that a private investor, a Quebecor, run by Pierre-Carl Pelletot, put tens of millions

00:08:53.400 of dollars into an excellent all-news channel, just like CTV's news channel, just like CBC's

00:08:59.400 all-news channel.

00:09:00.380 I think he spent 50 million bucks on it.

00:09:02.740 So the quality was there.

00:09:03.840 There was 200 of us.

00:09:05.480 And Stephen Harper sat by idly as the regulator, the CRTC, euthanized it, killed it.

00:09:12.680 A regulator whose board is appointed by the government of the day.

00:09:17.060 Yeah.

00:09:17.300 And I mean, there is no way any liberal prime minister would have allowed some board to

00:09:24.260 kill a left-wing TV station.

00:09:27.060 He was the only truly conservative media outlet in Canada.

00:09:30.380 And literally on the eve of an election, he let the CRTC kill it.

00:09:36.260 And he didn't lift a finger.

00:09:37.240 You think Jean Chrétien would have done that?

00:09:38.640 You think Justin Trudeau would have done that?

00:09:41.000 I'm not talking about giving grants to the Sun News Network.

00:09:43.960 He let it be devoured by the lobbyists and bureaucrats of the CRTC.

00:09:48.820 Imagine if he had set Sun News Network up on equal terms to CTV News Channel or CBC's News

00:09:55.200 world, imagine if he had done what conservatives always claimed that they would do, is not

00:10:01.180 abolish the CBC, but privatize it, sell it.

00:10:03.980 Air Canada was privatized.

00:10:05.680 It was a source of money for the government.

00:10:07.620 And it actually set that airline free.

00:10:09.360 If Stephen Harper had allowed a balanced, objective private sector media in this country,

00:10:18.760 we would be in a much stronger position.

00:10:20.900 Those are my two biggest quarrels with Stephen Harper.

00:10:23.260 I would add leaving the Senate vacancies as well, because the Senate could have been a

00:10:29.720 real check and balance against the liberals had Stephen Harper filled those seats.

00:10:33.940 Yeah.

00:10:34.580 And that was a purist idealism that was absolutely devastating.

00:10:40.880 I mean, Trudeau instantly packed the Senate.

00:10:43.880 He laughed at Harper's do-goodery.

00:10:46.340 But yeah.

00:10:47.460 And yeah, back to Rebel News and True North, and there are a handful of other independent

00:10:51.260 media, Black Locks is one.

00:10:55.280 Let's actually link those Sun News and Rebel here, because I don't even think the sign

00:10:59.580 had been taken off the Sun News building before you started Rebel.

00:11:03.980 And I know famously, Sun's absence left a huge void in the Canadian media landscape for

00:11:09.480 the reasons you mentioned.

00:11:11.160 And I was excited.

00:11:12.100 But I would say a little bit, not leery is the right word, but I was curious about what

00:11:17.920 was going to happen.

00:11:18.620 Because, you know, you've got this big studio, you've got this team around the world, you

00:11:22.480 send people all sorts of places.

00:11:24.260 I've been grateful enough to travel with some of you Rebels on a number of occasions.

00:11:28.520 But when Rebels started, it was you in your living room.

00:11:31.660 Yeah.

00:11:31.780 Well, I had a sense that the end was near at Sun News Network, because I was watching

00:11:37.080 the CRTC slowly slice and dice Sun News, and I saw the valiant effort of Corey Ternank and

00:11:43.380 others in that company to save it.

00:11:45.160 But, you know, it was pretty clear the end was coming.

00:11:48.740 And so I started thinking what would happen next.

00:11:51.060 And I also thought, well, how can I capture the audience I have on TV and take them with

00:11:58.780 me somewhere else?

00:11:59.440 And we started asking our viewers to sign up on a website, typically for petitions or

00:12:06.760 things like that.

00:12:07.480 But I knew that every night I was getting thousands of viewers on regular TV, and very soon they

00:12:13.240 wouldn't be able to find me.

00:12:14.280 So I had to be able to find them.

00:12:15.700 So in the last year of Sun News, I started petitions, and we really did deliver the petitions.

00:12:23.140 But what we were doing is we were building up a customer database of Sun News viewers.

00:12:27.940 So when the Sun News shut down, and people didn't know where to find us suddenly, because

00:12:33.380 we ended without any notice.

00:12:35.960 Well, and TV is a one-way street of communication.

00:12:39.180 Without that petition, you have no idea who's watching you.

00:12:42.460 That's right.

00:12:43.060 So I managed to collect tens of thousands of names of Sun News viewers.

00:12:47.800 So when the lights went out, I was able to email them and say, hey, Sun News is gone.

00:12:53.700 We're going to try something new.

00:12:55.120 I've asked eight of my colleagues from Sun News to come over to my living room.

00:12:59.700 We're going to hammer out a plan.

00:13:01.540 We spent hours searching for a good name.

00:13:05.380 The Rebel was the closest we could come up with.

00:13:09.060 But you know what?

00:13:09.860 I think the name fits.

00:13:11.080 We are rebellious.

00:13:12.140 We're rebelling against the dominant political narrative.

00:13:15.960 We're rebelling against the regulatory structure.

00:13:19.280 We didn't try and get a real TV station.

00:13:21.120 We went on the Internet because we didn't want to be killed just like the CRTC killed Sun News.

00:13:26.020 We were rebelling against the high-cost technology of a million-dollar studio, quarter-million-dollar

00:13:32.100 cameras.

00:13:32.620 We were replacing it with little cell phones.

00:13:34.880 And I used to have five people working in the control room of my show.

00:13:38.600 Now we have one.

00:13:40.380 It was very luxurious working at Sun News.

00:13:42.900 We had satellite feeds.

00:13:44.680 Well, why not use Skype instead?

00:13:46.320 These things sound obvious today.

00:13:48.080 But in 2015, they were not.

00:13:50.300 And I should tell you that when Rebel News launched in 2015, we launched so modestly.

00:13:54.820 You're right to say it was in my living room.

00:13:57.600 And the media party, as I call them, they were so thrilled that Sun News was euthanized.

00:14:02.920 You know, they were popping champagne corks.

00:14:04.280 Ha-ha, they're out of business.

00:14:05.620 So when I started Rebel News, they all sort of chuckled and said, isn't that cute?

00:14:10.520 Oh, he's got a little website on a YouTube channel.

00:14:13.320 Good boy.

00:14:14.220 And in fact, the coverage from the media party was friendly.

00:14:19.400 But it was friendly.

00:14:20.320 Like, ha-ha, he's giving it a shot.

00:14:21.980 Well, good for you, little one.

00:14:24.020 Yeah, it was a very patronizing friend.

00:14:25.200 Yeah, and...

00:14:26.020 You're right, though, just to jump in there for a moment, that the media was, I think,

00:14:30.920 very worried when Sun News came onto the scene because it was a disruptor.

00:14:34.900 And when Sun News, I'll say failed, and I don't mean that in a judgmental way, but when

00:14:39.620 Sun News, for all of the reasons you've mentioned, went off the air, they sort of breathed this

00:14:44.160 sigh of relief because they felt, okay, phew, our little oligopoly is safe.

00:14:50.420 Oh, exactly.

00:14:51.400 And so they thought, ha-ha, Rebel News Network, that's all you got?

00:14:56.000 And for about a year, they paid very little attention to us because they thought we were

00:15:01.300 nothing.

00:15:01.580 And then, I don't know if it was a mistake, but of course, when you're online, as we are,

00:15:06.840 you get a ton of analytics, a ton of statistics from YouTube, from your website, that you really

00:15:12.600 don't have the same statistics when you're in regular TV.

00:15:15.580 There's the ratings.

00:15:18.020 I forget what it was called, Nielsen's or NAD Bank or something.

00:15:21.240 There was some, I forget what it was called, but there was a ratings company.

00:15:24.840 Numeris in Canada now.

00:15:26.060 That's right.

00:15:26.560 Numeris.

00:15:26.940 Thank you for the reminder.

00:15:27.680 That they would estimate how many people watched your show at any given time, but it's a guess.

00:15:33.560 It's not exact.

00:15:35.340 That you don't have the demographics.

00:15:36.840 So when you have a YouTube channel, you get a tremendous amount of info.

00:15:41.820 And so about a year into it, I was looking at our stats of how many people watched our

00:15:47.780 stuff.

00:15:48.180 And I was comparing it with what traditional media called their rate card.

00:15:53.480 So for example, if you go to the Globe and Mail's website and find their rate card, and

00:15:57.580 that's where they are selling ads.

00:15:59.520 It's the rate you have to pay for the ads.

00:16:01.460 They give you what they promise is accurate viewership stats.

00:16:06.920 We have this many viewers.

00:16:08.340 They earn this much money.

00:16:09.600 This percent male, that percent female. 0.84

00:16:11.740 So every newspaper in Canada has a rate card that gives you their demographics.

00:16:16.980 And I saw that about a year into it, Little Rebel News, with no money and no big office and

00:16:25.960 no big anything, was larger than many of these legacy media.

00:16:32.760 And maybe it was a mistake to brag about it.

00:16:35.960 But I started posting those statistics, and suddenly the media party that sort of had

00:16:40.960 a, oh, isn't that cute, suddenly said, oh, my God, how did they do that?

00:16:46.620 Where did that come from?

00:16:47.900 While we were laughing at them, they assembled.

00:16:50.760 And I mean, we quickly became the number one news channel on YouTube in all of Canada.

00:16:58.720 That wasn't supposed to happen. 0.75

00:17:00.220 We're supposed to be these, you know, goofy extremists and not cool. 0.91

00:17:06.180 You're supposed to be the reject table of the Canadian media landscape. 0.65

00:17:09.340 We're actually not even part of the Canadian media landscape.

00:17:11.600 You're just like out in the parking lot while they're all in the cafeteria.

00:17:15.340 Yeah.

00:17:15.760 And then they decided, oh, my God, we've got to squash them.

00:17:19.580 And that coincided with Trump's election success in 2016, that all the tech companies said,

00:17:25.260 oh, my God, he did this through social media.

00:17:27.100 And thus came the deplatformings and the demonetizations.

00:17:31.100 We were on track to make a million dollars a year from our YouTube ads alone, the ones that

00:17:35.400 say skip now. 0.55

00:17:36.700 I mean, we could run our company just on YouTube ads.

00:17:40.100 Those were taken down to zero.

00:17:42.480 Now, luckily, we've survived.

00:17:43.820 Like I say, we have the names and addresses of an enormous number of our viewers.

00:17:48.900 But if we didn't, we would be dead, as many other conservative broadcasters were when

00:17:53.760 YouTube canceled conservatives en masse.

00:17:57.100 It put them out of business.

00:17:58.780 If I was a liberal, if I was progressive, I would have such a bigger company because I

00:18:06.220 would be probably making three million dollars a year just in Internet ads that I am banned

00:18:12.060 from taking.

00:18:12.620 And I'm not banned from taking them because we've engaged in obscenity or profanity or

00:18:17.400 anything like that.

00:18:18.440 It's literally because of our ideological point of view.

00:18:21.620 Can you elaborate?

00:18:22.540 Can you elaborate on that?

00:18:23.640 We have a strategic partner manager at YouTube who answers our questions, and she's quite

00:18:31.360 candid.

00:18:33.000 They discriminate against Rebel News because of what we say, not because of anything we

00:18:37.720 do.

00:18:38.740 So we survive based on crowdfunding.

00:18:43.240 And it's a model.

00:18:45.040 I know True North does some crowdfunding, too.

00:18:47.400 No one on the left in Canada has to do that.

00:18:49.900 If you look at where the money for the media comes from in Canada and the U.S., one big

00:18:54.980 answer is from oligarchs.

00:18:57.160 People forget that the Globe and Mail is owned by the Thompson family.

00:19:00.860 David Thompson's worth, I think, $23 billion.

00:19:03.880 It's his blog.

00:19:05.080 It's his lobby firm.

00:19:06.340 It's his way of tilting the political conversation in this country.

00:19:11.680 New York Times is owned by Mexico's richest man, Carlos Sleem.

00:19:15.280 Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos.

00:19:18.000 All these rich oligarchs buy media to throw their weight around. 1.00

00:19:22.260 So that's the Globe and Mail.

00:19:23.860 Well, we don't have an oligarch. 0.90

00:19:26.420 I guess we had an oligarch running Sun News, but we don't have an oligarch here at Rebel

00:19:30.400 News.

00:19:30.620 And in a way, that's good because you don't have a boss who can order you to do this or

00:19:35.080 that.

00:19:35.660 But of course, you don't get the money either.

00:19:37.780 OK, well, what's another way?

00:19:39.140 Well, you can sell ads.

00:19:41.160 Well, like I say, we were demonetized by social media companies that are run by liberals.

00:19:46.620 OK, well, then you can get government funding.

00:19:49.060 Well, again, we're not going to take government funding because then how can you possibly

00:19:54.060 be independent and objective?

00:19:56.340 And the fact that so many journalists take money from the government, do not disclose

00:20:01.980 it and pretend it doesn't affect their judgment, that only makes people more skeptical.

00:20:06.640 And then the new way is that the government is pressuring Facebook, Google, YouTube, Instagram

00:20:12.060 to put money in another fund to give to favored media outlets.

00:20:17.240 They're called QCJOs, Qualified Canadian Journalism Organizations.

00:20:21.500 It's basically a government license for news.

00:20:24.080 If you have that license, you get a pot of money, if you want it, from Trudeau.

00:20:29.220 And now you'll get another pot of money from big tech.

00:20:32.600 Well, oh, my God, if you are a news source like the Globe and Mail, which is already owned

00:20:37.680 by a billionaire, and now a third of your money comes from Justin Trudeau and a third of

00:20:42.780 your money comes from big tech, what are you other than a stenographer for power?

00:20:47.460 So if you are, you know, just there to massage power and be an insider, this is the time of

00:20:53.640 your life.

00:20:54.020 But if you actually believe in independent journalism, curiosity, skepticism, telling both

00:20:59.340 sides of the story, this is the worst time for journalism in Canadian history.

00:21:02.960 I can count on one hand's fingers the number of independent news sources in this country

00:21:07.300 that are not on the government payroll.

00:21:08.620 And that maybe is why we have such a viewership.

00:21:12.120 You know, this last year, the month of February alone, Andrew, we had 400 million views and

00:21:20.260 impressions, 400 million.

00:21:22.940 That's as many as we had in the entire previous year.

00:21:26.240 By contrast, the CBC, their rate card says that on any given month, they get 320 million

00:21:32.140 impressions.

00:21:32.660 So for the month of February, we had as many impressions as the CBC claims they get on any

00:21:39.620 given month.

00:21:40.260 It was our trucker coverage.

00:21:42.440 And that was a time when our motto, telling the other side of the story, really meant something.

00:21:47.640 And citizen journalism, just go out there with a camera, point it at what's happening, and

00:21:52.060 just show people, whereas the media party were staying in their offices, I'm afraid to go

00:21:57.080 down.

00:21:57.500 It's an insurrection. 0.99

00:21:58.320 I'll be beat up by these racist, misogynist, you know, no, they're friendly people. 0.99

00:22:04.580 There's a hot tub. 0.99

00:22:05.280 There's a dance party.

00:22:06.200 And they refused to come down and see the truckers.

00:22:08.600 And so we were just there with cameras, just live streaming.

00:22:12.000 I mean, we had reporters, Alexa, Lavoie, Lincoln, Jay, literally walking the streets of Ottawa

00:22:17.280 with a bunch of battery packs, just streaming the whole time.

00:22:21.160 Those would get hundreds of thousands of views.

00:22:24.380 And around the world, not just conservative media like Fox News or things like that, but

00:22:29.840 Deutsche Welle, Sky News, would talk to our young citizen journalists because we were on

00:22:35.640 the street.

00:22:36.120 They didn't want to talk to CBC or CTV who were too scared to come down.

00:22:40.120 So 2022 was the year we proved the citizen journalism model, proved that the name rebel

00:22:47.060 was a fit.

00:22:47.940 We rebelled against the dominant ideology.

00:22:49.680 We rebelled against the system, the funding, the we rebelled against official journalists

00:22:56.120 in favor of citizen journalists.

00:22:58.380 And it was the best year in our company's existence, the best viewership year.

00:23:02.680 One thing I should say about rebel, you've actually like spawned another organization.

00:23:07.100 When you mentioned that activism that you've done of trying to get involved in some of these

00:23:11.100 stories and help people, this has actually birthed an entirely new project of yours.

00:23:15.860 Not that long ago.

00:23:17.300 And we started with one case, Pastor Arthur Pawlowski, he was our first client we crowdfunded

00:23:21.740 lawyers for.

00:23:22.740 And then another church came forward and said, we were bullied by police too.

00:23:26.680 And then another, and then we had 50, and then we had 100.

00:23:29.300 And we spun off a completely new charitable organization.

00:23:34.020 It's now completely separate from Rebel News.

00:23:36.720 It's called the Democracy Fund.

00:23:38.060 It has its own board, its own bank account, its own staff.

00:23:40.760 But basically, that whole crowdfund the Civil Liberties lawyers is now its own charity.

00:23:47.620 And it represents 2,100 people, 2,100 people, 1,300 of whom are in Ontario alone.

00:23:55.100 So that's that second part of what Rebel News does.

00:23:57.720 It's sort of the activism part.

00:23:59.640 So we do the journalism, but every now and then we step in and join the fight.

00:24:03.780 And that's happening through the Democracy Fund and some of our activism.

00:24:06.700 So the last year, Rebel News, and I know True North has as well, we've filled a lot of gaps

00:24:12.320 left by the establishment.

00:24:14.020 Let me just throw one more thing at you.

00:24:16.520 During the lockdowns, during the pandemic, the opposition parties did not oppose.

00:24:22.440 The media lost its curiosity and skepticism.

00:24:25.640 The law professors suddenly went silent.

00:24:28.260 The ones who were there to argue for Omar Khadr's charter rights suddenly didn't care about

00:24:33.340 the charter.

00:24:33.820 They went silent.

00:24:34.380 All the traditional Civil Liberties groups, like the Canadian Civil Liberties Association,

00:24:38.500 they went on a two-year vacation.

00:24:41.240 The Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on any lockdown infringement.

00:24:45.020 So I guess they've been busy with other things.

00:24:47.340 The College of Physicians and Surgeons, rather than supporting a second opinion, suspended any

00:24:53.260 doctor with a second opinion.

00:24:55.800 All the institutions of civil society failed at once.

00:24:59.540 And so it fell to True North and Rebel News and others to fill that gap, not just journalistically,

00:25:05.020 but the Democracy Fund on the Civil Liberties side, the JCCF in Calgary did a great job.

00:25:11.380 But we had a systemic failure of all our democratic institutions.

00:25:14.520 So, of course, alternative counter-establishment channels like ours succeeded, partly because

00:25:22.900 we did a good job, but mainly because the rest of society completely failed.

00:25:27.400 We had a total system failure of our democratic checks and balances.

00:25:32.220 And we're so self-righteous and condescending.

00:25:34.840 Canada is the best democracy in the world, the best health care in the world, the best civil

00:25:38.440 liberties in the world, our charter is the best in the world.

00:25:40.200 Baloney, it all failed and people noticed.

00:25:45.380 One thing that I find fascinating, and you touched on the business model aspect there

00:25:50.720 and how Rebel came up with an adaptive business model.

00:25:53.460 And interestingly enough, it's funny seeing all of this like really snarky, these snarky

00:25:59.260 attacks on crowdfunding you get from a lot of the legacy media types.

00:26:02.980 They think crowdfunding is dirty or icky in some way, but it's like, how is it any morally,

00:26:08.780 I'd say it's, if anything, it's morally better than advertising because your money is coming

00:26:13.300 from the people that want to engage with your product.

00:26:15.420 But it's strange just how cliquey that mindset is in the media.

00:26:20.980 And Rebel wasn't just innovative on business model, but also on the adapting to how to tell

00:26:27.100 the stories.

00:26:27.920 And just a personal example on this, when Rebel started, I was, I had been appearing on Sun

00:26:32.880 somewhat regularly and I was doing my daily radio show in London, but you know, on the

00:26:37.780 side, you had asked if I wanted to be involved in Rebel.

00:26:40.580 So I started doing a podcast and it was good.

00:26:44.160 People enjoyed it.

00:26:44.900 People liked it.

00:26:45.600 But, but you had actually put, done something which I think is very risky.

00:26:49.140 You put a camera in front of me, which I don't think is generally speaking on the surface

00:26:53.200 a good idea.

00:26:53.840 But in doing so, you said, you know, I bet you're going to have, you know, multiple of the

00:26:58.660 audience for a fraction of the work.

00:27:01.340 And, and, you know, I started doing shorter three, four minute video reports and you were

00:27:05.460 very right.

00:27:06.080 People were engaging with those in a very different way because that's the way the internet

00:27:10.660 was structured.

00:27:11.580 And I think things have sort of come back around to podcasts, but video is still very

00:27:16.400 much king.

00:27:17.020 But that adaptability I think was so key to Rebel's success and to independent media in

00:27:22.700 general.

00:27:23.260 And even when COVID came along and you had all of these mainstream media organizations that

00:27:28.020 were locked out of their studios that are like, uh, how do we get people on zoom?

00:27:31.780 How do we put an iPad and a ring light up, which is stuff that you had been doing for

00:27:36.660 seven years by that point.

00:27:39.220 Well, when you're funded by crowdfunding and our average donation is $58.

00:27:44.920 And I mentioned that because you can imagine how many people need to chip in $58 for us to

00:27:50.320 operate a staff of more than 50.

00:27:53.120 So if we're not listening to our people, we're going to be out of business pretty quick.

00:27:58.800 There's also another benefit of having an average gift of $58, which is there's no one

00:28:04.060 person, no one oligarch like there is at other papers who could call me up and say, Ezra, you

00:28:09.200 fire that David Menzies.

00:28:10.560 He went too far this time.

00:28:11.920 Or Ezra, you stop talking about that.

00:28:13.800 Like, of course, there are people who I very much respect.

00:28:17.040 And I think I sent the one about Menzies. 1.00

00:28:18.820 So you can disregard it.

00:28:19.760 I mean, of course, I would listen to anyone's criticism on the merits.

00:28:22.760 But when you have that diffuse funding, it truly gives you independence.

00:28:29.160 It also means you have to really listen.

00:28:31.960 Whereas if you get a third of your money from Justin Trudeau, and now a third of your money

00:28:37.640 from Google and Facebook, as the mainstream media does, first of all, you're tailoring

00:28:43.120 your coverage to please them, obviously.

00:28:44.980 And second of all, you don't really care what people say, because you're not going to follow

00:28:50.300 the grassroots.

00:28:51.100 They're not important.

00:28:52.140 Really, in Canada, you have an audience of one man, Justin Trudeau.

00:28:55.720 If he's pleased with you, you'll do fine.

00:28:58.100 And so that's why most of the mainstream media missed the trucker story or came in as anti-trucker

00:29:05.340 activists themselves.

00:29:06.320 We understood that there are certain people in Canada who are not represented.

00:29:12.620 I watched recently a panel discussion at the Carleton School of Journalism.

00:29:18.840 Yes.

00:29:19.200 And it was all the big media, CTV, Global, CTV, and there were a few people sprinkled in for

00:29:28.720 diversity, but they were there for racial diversity, not for diversity of opinion.

00:29:35.640 And Marco Mendicino.

00:29:37.180 Yeah.

00:29:37.700 For some reason.

00:29:38.380 And that was the worst part of it.

00:29:39.740 They had a liberal cabinet minister fully embedded in this thing, because, of course, why wouldn't

00:29:48.000 you have a government minister there, given that the government is now the largest funder

00:29:53.580 of Canadian media?

00:29:54.720 So there was no recognition.

00:29:56.640 There wasn't even a flicker that maybe they were doing anything wrong, that maybe their model

00:30:01.660 is wrong.

00:30:02.480 In fact, it was all we...

00:30:03.780 The chief message emanating from that panel was we need more censorship of the peasants who 1.00

00:30:09.180 were clapping back to us on Twitter.

00:30:11.160 It was an entire panel about mean tweets and how we need more policing of that.

00:30:17.120 And Marco Mendicino, the public safety minister, was nodding along and saying, yes, we do.

00:30:20.840 The irony there is that there actually have been some journalists in Canada who have been

00:30:25.200 violently assaulted over the last five years.

00:30:27.300 I know because I employ all of them.

00:30:31.360 There has been no physical attack on a Canadian journalist in the past five years, other than our

00:30:38.840 Rebel News staff.

00:30:40.320 David Menzies beat up by Justin Trudeau's bodyguards.

00:30:43.280 Alexa Lavoie literally shot with a riot weapon in Ottawa.

00:30:48.380 Drea Humphrey manhandled by Trudeau's bodyguards.

00:30:51.840 Sheila Gunn-Reed punched in the face by an NDP activist.

00:30:55.580 The list goes on.

00:30:57.840 None of our journalists and their violence against them, much of which is perpetrated by the government,

00:31:02.720 has ever been taken up as a cause by the Canadian Association of Journalists, Canadian Journalists

00:31:09.300 for Free Expression, any journalism school, Penn Canada, Amnesty International, Canadian

00:31:14.180 Civil Liberties Association.

00:31:15.480 I've just listed six NGOs that claim to care about protecting the free press, and not a one

00:31:21.200 of them, even put out a tweet in support of our journalists who were beat up on camera.

00:31:27.020 These are not my allegations.

00:31:28.280 And not just that.

00:31:29.360 I wrote a book called The Libranos.

00:31:31.420 I was prosecuted by Elections Canada, claiming it was election propaganda.

00:31:36.980 There were 24 books published at the same time as mine about the 2019 election.

00:31:43.240 There were 24 books on Trudeau.

00:31:45.120 Mine was the only one that criticized.

00:31:47.140 And mine was the best seller.

00:31:48.040 Who dared to advertise it?

00:31:49.560 Like, that was the ridiculous part of that prosecution.

00:31:53.300 I've read the election finance law very carefully.

00:31:55.840 There's a specific exemption to books and the promotion of books.

00:32:00.000 So my book was convicted of being illegal.

00:32:03.380 And there were two senior former RCMP officers, veterans, who were assigned to investigate my

00:32:11.600 case.

00:32:12.380 And they asked me, why didn't you register with the government?

00:32:14.800 And I actually recorded that interaction with them, because I knew going into it, no one

00:32:20.320 would believe me.

00:32:21.440 No one would believe me.

00:32:23.560 And were it not for the video proof, these cops were asking me, why didn't you register

00:32:28.380 your book with the government?

00:32:29.960 They said that to me.

00:32:32.320 And that's the state of things now.

00:32:34.860 And I'm not, I suppose on one hand, I'm glad that the media party doesn't care about these

00:32:43.760 things, because that gives us, and True North, the market.

00:32:47.200 But it actually makes me very sad.

00:32:49.340 I wish that there was no need for rebel news, because I wish that the mainstream media had

00:32:54.200 within them a diversity of views.

00:32:56.240 I saw a panel discussion the other day on the CBC talking about Daniel Smith and the Alberta

00:33:00.900 Sovereignty Act.

00:33:01.600 There were five people on the panel, they were in Montreal, Ottawa, and their western

00:33:06.100 branch was in Toronto.

00:33:07.400 Like, they literally had no one further west than Toronto.

00:33:09.520 That's western Canada, anything west of Toronto.

00:33:11.880 Like, one in Ontario, I think, is western Canada on CBC.

00:33:15.380 I mean, it would be unthinkable that they would have a panel on Quebec nationalism without

00:33:19.980 having a Quebecer there.

00:33:21.120 But that's the media party.

00:33:22.300 I wish they had someone with a different point of view.

00:33:25.220 Yeah.

00:33:26.020 When you mention, you know, basically wanting rebels' obsolescence, you raise, I think,

00:33:31.560 an important point that I think is useful to end on here, which is that you and I and

00:33:35.820 our colleagues are in a very strange place, and that the worst things are for the country,

00:33:39.480 the more we have to talk about, the more we have to do.

00:33:42.260 And it's quite perverse in a way, because on one hand, it's like, I wish I didn't have

00:33:46.920 the last two years to report on.

00:33:48.520 And I wish there didn't need to be a convoy for me to write a book about, because the

00:33:52.100 mandates weren't there.

00:33:53.020 So, to put a bow on this to some extent, do you remain optimistic or pessimistic?

00:34:00.360 Well, the most optimistic thing I have seen in years is Elon Musk buying Twitter and declaring

00:34:10.040 he wants it to be a free speech platform.

00:34:13.020 And he's going about that so far.

00:34:16.040 And not just to allow different points of view, but to, for example, he has suggested

00:34:21.760 that creators like us could actually make some money on Twitter the way we used to be

00:34:26.720 able to do on YouTube.

00:34:28.000 And Elon Musk is a daring doer.

00:34:32.840 He gets it done, whether it's SpaceX or Tesla, or he's involved in so many things.

00:34:38.760 Don't underestimate him.

00:34:40.240 And a guy who musters $44 billion U.S. to buy it is motivated.

00:34:46.400 So, I find that very hopeful.

00:34:48.220 And I see others in the industry are starting to say, well, maybe free speech is not such

00:34:52.140 a bad idea.

00:34:52.660 I saw the head of Netflix come out with a very strong support.

00:34:56.960 And maybe we'll see Zuckerberg say, well, maybe, and maybe we'll see YouTube say, boy,

00:35:00.960 we'd better get back to our do no evil freedom point of view that they used to have a decade

00:35:05.880 ago, or else we're going to lose viewers and creators to Twitter.

00:35:09.800 So, that's the most hopeful thing I see.

00:35:12.140 Other than that, the Canadian, and by the way, you mentioned C-11 and the C-18, and there's

00:35:18.820 other related censorship and regulation bills.

00:35:21.580 I see no hope from within Canada to resist them.

00:35:24.280 But, strangely enough, the Canada-U.S. NAFTA, it has a new name now, a trade agreement, may

00:35:31.980 save us because these American big tech companies who are against Trudeau's censorship and regulation

00:35:38.580 plans, they may actually be able to save us because they're saying, whoa, your laws that

00:35:43.880 would regulate American companies in an unfair way, we're going to go to the trade, you know,

00:35:49.940 we're going to make this a trade battle.

00:35:51.320 I think that Canadian free speech will be saved by big tech in America fighting against

00:35:58.760 Trudeau's demand to control them.

00:36:01.020 It's odd, yeah, it's an odd reversal that these guys who were in many cases the ones on

00:36:06.580 the cutting edge of censorship for much of the last decade might now be the saviors against

00:36:12.120 it.

00:36:12.360 It's a weird, it's that old line about how politics makes for strange bedfellows.

00:36:17.000 And to YouTube, I mean, my hope would be at this point that Elon Musk works video sharing

00:36:22.000 and video hosting in a large degree into Twitter's interface and really make Twitter the all-in-one,

00:36:28.340 although I realize I'm committing them to a multi-year project in that respect.

00:36:33.220 Well, just two nights, sorry, a few weeks ago, rather, Elon Musk had a one-hour sort of rolling

00:36:40.680 press conference on Twitter, and he talked about getting that engineering solution.

00:36:46.440 Twitter, for about five years, has been a censorship organization.

00:36:51.240 The majority of their staff have been working on censorship.

00:36:55.200 They call it trust and safety, but of course they do.

00:36:58.000 He has basically purged them, and he is giving it back an engineering focus now.

00:37:03.240 And I really think that's his strength.

00:37:06.500 I think that he will build Twitter into an everything app.

00:37:10.700 And I don't want to, you know, the Bible says, put not your trust in princes.

00:37:14.180 You don't want to put all your hopes in one guy.

00:37:15.740 He's just flesh and bones.

00:37:17.360 Wise words.

00:37:19.180 But, you know, there is reason for hope.

00:37:22.000 And listen, the fact that so many Canadians support True North and Rebel News and Western

00:37:29.180 Standard, and there's other, you know, there are a handful of others, that's a sign that

00:37:35.620 things are out of balance with the media party.

00:37:39.020 And the fact that they must rely on bailouts from Trudeau and big tech shows you no one

00:37:44.700 wants what they're selling.

00:37:46.260 And the fact that Trudeau is forced to resort to censorship means they can't convince people

00:37:50.940 they're right.

00:37:51.620 They have to silence their opponents.

00:37:53.400 I am constantly impressed by the generosity and the love that we receive from the public.

00:38:01.300 And I know that government media do not have that.

00:38:04.640 You know, I get lots of slings and arrows shot at me online.

00:38:08.440 But it's water off a duck's back because when I go into the world, when I'm on the street,

00:38:12.840 there is nowhere I go where I don't bump into.

00:38:15.540 I was in Melbourne, Australia for one of our reporters who got married.

00:38:19.180 I flew down to Melbourne.

00:38:20.140 The first bar I went into just looking for directions, he said, are you Ezra Levant from

00:38:25.460 Canada?

00:38:25.960 I said, how do you know?

00:38:27.400 He said, well, I watch Rebel News.

00:38:29.000 In Melbourne, Australia, how did he know?

00:38:32.020 And around the world, we've had 2 billion views, 2 billion with a B.

00:38:38.200 When 2 billion people want what you're selling, that's a sign you're on the right track.

00:38:42.920 And I know you guys are in the same way.

00:38:45.560 And that, more than anything, gives me the energy to keep going.

00:38:49.020 We're going to turn 8 years old in a month or two.

00:38:52.600 We've got more than 50 staff.

00:38:54.500 We've made our share of mistakes, but we're still alive and kicking.

00:38:57.640 And I can't say that for all of our critics in the media party.

00:39:01.580 I feel like citizen journalism is a valuable thing.

00:39:05.660 And I know that because people want it.

00:39:07.680 Yeah, that Rebel effect is real, by the way. 0.82

00:39:11.080 I was recognized in Covent Garden in England by someone who saw me on your show around the

00:39:17.880 time of the Tawny Robinson trial.

00:39:19.700 So it is real and it is spectacular for Seinfeld fans.

00:39:23.760 Ezra Levant, congratulations.

00:39:25.580 We'll have to have you back on for the big birthday in a month or so.

00:39:29.420 But I do appreciate it and am so grateful because, you know, whatever people think of

00:39:33.280 Rebel, it's like Rebel has proved that there is a business model for independent media in

00:39:37.420 Canada, which I think is a tremendously important one.

00:39:40.260 And I know at True North, we're grateful for you forging that path.

00:39:43.440 So thank you very much and Happy New Year to you.

00:39:46.060 Thanks.

00:39:46.420 You too, my friend.

00:39:47.520 That does it for me.

00:39:49.180 A big thank you to all of you who tuned in to this program.

00:39:52.800 We will see you next year.

00:39:55.100 This is The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:39:56.400 So thank you, God bless and good day to you all.

00:39:58.900 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:40:01.120 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - December 28, 2022

Ezra Levant on Rebel News, independent media, and disrupting the status quo

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript