Juno News - Has the CBC always been this terrible？ (Ft. Trish Wood)

00:00:00.000 Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Rupa Subramanya show. I'm Rupa Subramanya.

00:00:21.720 So everyone's probably heard of Elon Musk labeling the CBC as government-funded media.

00:00:28.240 Previously, that tag was used in countries like Russia and China, where the state broadcaster is directly under the control of the government and doesn't really have any editorial freedom.

00:00:40.120 However, the new Twitter has branded the BBC, NPR, and PBS, and most recently the CBC as government-funded media.

00:00:49.780 Following the lead of their American counterparts, the CBC has decided to, according to them, pause their activity on Twitter and felt that their editorial independence was questioned by this tag.

00:01:03.580 To talk about what's been happening at the CBC, I'm joined today by award-winning journalist Trish Wood.

00:01:10.860 She hosts a popular podcast, Trish Wood is Critical, and used to host the Fifth Estate on the CBC for nearly 10 years.

00:01:17.900 I've been on Trish's podcast a few times, and it's my great pleasure to have her on my show today.

00:01:23.680 All right, so welcome to my show, Trish. It's a great pleasure. It's a great pleasure to have you here with me to talk about the CBC.

00:01:31.600 That's what's been buzzing right now. As you probably heard, the CBC was labeled as government-funded media, and they decided to pause their activity on Twitter for that reason.

00:01:46.020 What do you make of this decision and their reaction to it?

00:01:49.340 Well, I must say that as somebody who was there, I mean, I can probably characterize it as the good old days, back in the day when we were practicing a much different kind of journalism.

00:02:03.940 When I look at the CBC now, especially covering two things, one of them was the Russia hoax, which they were all in on, and the other one, of course, was the convoy, which, and you know that as well as I do.

00:02:16.600 I mean, you were out in the convoy every day doing great stuff, and I could see that they weren't reporting what was actually happening.

00:02:23.520 So for me, the controversy now, in a sense, is over the wrong issue.

00:02:29.360 Like, I'm not sure it matters where the money comes from. It's probably not great that it's government-funded, but it did exist as a government-funded organization when I was there, and the problems didn't exist.

00:02:43.460 And I have a theory about why that is, if you want to know.

00:02:46.360 Sure. Yeah.

00:02:47.680 I don't want to go on too long, but I'm trying to be long-winded.

00:02:50.140 But I think what's changed, Rupa, is the left, right?

00:02:55.580 The CBC will always be populated by people driven, I think, by what they perceive as public service, kind of a leftward drift.

00:03:05.480 And I was a card-carrying lefty, voting NDP when I was there.

00:03:12.280 And that was not a bad thing in the sense that, in those days, being a lefty meant that you stuck up for the working-class people.

00:03:21.240 You were probably anti-war, which never works out.

00:03:24.280 In our lifetime, wars have never worked out, right?

00:03:26.660 They're always misbegotten in some way.

00:03:29.320 And we felt that our responsibility was to speak truth to power, to use a cliché.

00:03:36.200 You know, we were the bulwark between the working people, the citizens of the country, and the powerful institutions that governed us and regulated products and airplanes and that sort of thing.

00:03:48.380 So that wasn't a bad thing.

00:03:49.780 But I feel that what's changed now is the left has changed.

00:03:52.600 So the left-leaning people, which is to say virtually everybody within the CBC, is captured, I think, by an ideology that is the opposite of those things.

00:04:05.100 They go all in on the Ukraine war.

00:04:08.360 They did not ask hard questions about COVID-19 and regulating the vaccines at all.

00:04:13.780 I mean, it was absolutely shocking to me that they were, for instance, using phrases like safe and effective, which are definitive statements, right?

00:04:21.920 Definitive statements about a pharmaceutical product that had only been tested for seven or eight months or six months or whatever it was.

00:04:28.260 So I think what's happened is that ideology has creeped in to the mindset of the people who work there.

00:04:36.860 I think a generation from now, people might have an answer as to why and how that happened, but it's happened.

00:04:42.900 And I think that that's what's really, I think that they're, I think they may know that they're telling a noble lie for good reasons, but there's no such thing.

00:04:54.880 I mean, you know that too, right?

00:04:56.160 You can't just, yeah.

00:04:57.520 And so I think that's what's happened.

00:04:59.360 I think, you know, when Pierre Pellev says, oh, we've got to defund the CBC, I think we need to look at funding for CBC.

00:05:05.280 I think we need to have a national conversation about how to staff the CBC with people who aren't all like a big blobby mind hive of agreement on things that most Canadians don't agree with, right?

00:05:18.280 So I think, is there a psychological bent toward the liberal government because they're funding?

00:05:26.180 Yes, but they're liberal anyway.

00:05:27.800 So it's kind of, you know, on one hand, this, on the other hand, that, right?

00:05:32.340 I think it's really the way they think.

00:05:34.380 And they probably think that they're doing wonderful things for the country.

00:05:37.660 Obviously they do.

00:05:38.400 Yeah, no, you make a good point contrasting the old ideology of the left and the new left, which just, you know, doesn't question, basically doesn't question anything that comes from the state.

00:05:54.400 They just buy this narrative wholesale and it's a narrative that they actively promote, as you, as you pointed out in the context of the pandemic.

00:06:04.960 There was really no challenge to that government, to that official narrative.

00:06:10.680 One could say that, you know, there's always the CBC, a public broadcaster is always going to have some kind of a bias, some kind of a liberal bias.

00:06:19.400 And so why is this particular ideology so problematic?

00:06:26.820 Well, I think because, and Glenn Greenwald said it this morning in his latest column when he was writing about this terrible, terrible event of having the Washington Post and the New York Times helping the FBI hunt down the leaker of the Ukraine docs, right?

00:06:43.420 So this kid leaks documents that show that the state has been lying to us, to them, and then us, obviously, as people who are contributing to the effort, and saying that Ukraine is actually losing the war, which most of us knew anyway, right?

00:06:57.680 So what happens here?

00:06:59.100 The Washington Post and the New York Times are supporting the state's position instead of supporting the position of a free exchange of information the public needs.

00:07:14.940 So look at the difference between that and Daniel Ellsberg, right?

00:07:18.020 Daniel Ellsberg, who did the Pentagon Papers, which said eventually the same thing, was a celebrated hero and defended by the news media.

00:07:26.760 And this kid, they've got the news media with the help of Bellingcat, who was a Russia hoax pusher of information, and very, very sort of connected to the security state spooks who are doing bad stuff in America right now.

00:07:42.000 The newspapers were actually hunting down a guy who would be a revered whistleblower any other time.

00:07:47.400 So how does that connect to CBC?

00:07:49.400 It's the same, I think, deference to power.

00:07:52.160 I'll give you, for instance, Trudeau held a news conference, I believe in 2021, where he said that anti-vaxxers, which is a phrase the CBC should never have used, it's hate speech, and it's imprecise, and it's untrue, right?

00:08:10.360 He said anti-vaxxers were going to kill children.

00:08:15.500 We're going to hurt our children. 0.99

00:08:16.680 They were going to kill our children. 0.98

00:08:18.140 Imagine that.

00:08:19.080 And I didn't hear anybody at that news conference challenging him on that.

00:08:25.620 So where's your evidence for that?

00:08:28.020 Children don't die of COVID unless they have comorbidities.

00:08:30.980 What are you talking about?

00:08:32.000 There was no pushback.

00:08:33.700 So these extreme phrases that mischaracterized, there's so much wrong with what he said.

00:08:39.540 I mean, it divided the country.

00:08:41.360 It put a target on the backs of anti-vaxxers who were then not able to get, some of them couldn't even get surgery, right?

00:08:47.140 And it also completely mischaracterized what we knew epidemiologically about children's risk from COVID-19, right?

00:08:55.560 It was awful.

00:08:56.360 And I didn't hear a single pushback.

00:08:59.100 And that was carried out through many of the news conferences by public health and Theresa Tam and the prime minister.

00:09:06.340 So those were the people in power during COVID, right?

00:09:09.780 We acceded all of our whole democracy to public health.

00:09:13.720 And there was nobody in between the power of public health and government and us, right?

00:09:20.740 The media crossed the line, CBC in particular, in order to support the public health narrative, which we know in many cases was completely wrong.

00:09:31.680 Do you think that situation was unique to Canada, especially when it comes to public broadcaster?

00:09:39.300 Do you think that the BBC or NPR or PBS conducted themselves better, more professionally and asked the tough questions?

00:09:48.740 Or is this unique to Canada?

00:09:51.920 It's a really good question, Rupa.

00:09:53.740 And sadly, I will say I think they all did it.

00:09:57.100 I mean, BBC was, their COVID coverage was terrible.

00:10:01.920 National Public Radio were the ones who said, oh, we don't touch stories like the Hunter Biden laptop.

00:10:07.760 That's not even a story, they said, right?

00:10:10.720 So I think they're all guilty of it in some way.

00:10:15.280 Why is it more painful coming from CBC?

00:10:17.600 For me personally, it's because I was there.

00:10:20.160 And I was there during a period of greatness.

00:10:22.420 I was one of the first people hired on a show called The Journal, hosted by Barbara Frum and Mary Lou Finley, who I loved and learned a lot from.

00:10:31.660 So, you know, I was pulled up through, I think the best, I missed the early days of As It Happens, which would have been like the perfect thing.

00:10:39.100 But I was pulled up through a network of really talented people.

00:10:45.620 And I do wonder from time to time what Barbara Frum would say.

00:10:50.120 Of course, her son, David, is one of the worst people in the world right now. 0.84

00:10:54.060 But, I mean, he's terrible. 0.98

00:10:57.340 I mean, he's terrible. 0.98

00:10:58.540 He's a terrible journalist.

00:10:59.460 But I think it's just maybe CBC isn't necessarily worse, although I'd have to really think about that.

00:11:07.200 But it's more painful for me because I expected more.

00:11:10.420 And I know many people there still, you know, who I worked with and admire who are kind of involved.

00:11:16.140 I mean, I think the Wendy Mesley story was pretty indicative.

00:11:20.340 Like, why didn't Wendy fight back? 0.99

00:11:22.080 She should have.

00:11:22.780 It was ridiculous what happened to her.

00:11:24.740 They sold her down the river instantly. 0.95

00:11:26.440 One of the company's senior journalists because she dropped the N-word wrongly, insensitively.

00:11:33.120 But is that worth an explosion?

00:11:35.700 Instead of pulling the young person aside and saying, well, yeah, she shouldn't have done that.

00:11:39.680 And she's going to apologize.

00:11:40.800 Let's move on. 0.96

00:11:41.620 But it was like, it was ridiculous.

00:11:44.180 And the fact that that could happen within the walls of the CBC without any, I didn't hear her professional association defending her.

00:11:53.080 I didn't hear her colleagues defending her, nothing.

00:11:54.580 So I kind of knew then that there were big, big problems in there.

00:12:00.760 You know, so there have been different reactions to this labeling in different countries.

00:12:06.680 Australia's public broadcaster ABC said they were, I think they were, they said they were more or less okay with this tag.

00:12:12.940 Doesn't bother them.

00:12:13.860 Why is the CBC so anguished by this when it's obviously factually 100% correct that the bulk of their funding does come from taxpayers' dollars?

00:12:23.040 I think because they've been soft on the prime minister and everybody knows it.

00:12:29.780 I think that a lot of the criticism, and I'm not talking about, I think there's too much, I think some things they do well still.

00:12:37.680 But I think that they have been too soft on the prime minister.

00:12:40.780 And once that starts happening, then people look for reasons.

00:12:46.220 Most people who talk to me about this, I mean, the average sort of citizen, thinks it's about the money, right?

00:12:53.340 And I think it's maybe about the money, but mostly about the fact that people within the CBC are like-minded.

00:12:59.780 They would have dinner with Justin Trudeau.

00:13:02.880 I likely wouldn't, and he probably wouldn't want to have dinner with me either.

00:13:07.520 But they're like-minded, so that's the problem.

00:13:11.420 So I think this hit close to home.

00:13:13.680 And I think they've failed on a number of fronts, and they're very sensitive right now.

00:13:17.400 I think she is the worst.

00:13:18.620 Catherine Tate is one of the worst leaders of a corporation ever. 1.00

00:13:22.400 You know, she still has a place, $5 million place in Brooklyn. 1.00

00:13:25.620 And I don't mean to be too kind of sociologically imperial about this here.

00:13:34.520 But I mean, somebody who lives in a $5 million house in Brooklyn, New York, which is the hub of woke nonsense, has no business running the CBC.

00:13:45.240 I mean, that's not what it's about, right?

00:13:48.400 I don't think she understands why people are upset.

00:13:53.780 I think they're digging in with a smear campaign.

00:13:57.460 You know, everything's misinformation and disinformation.

00:14:00.600 And, you know, indie journalists are all whites, all the stuff they do. 0.98

00:14:04.640 And my advice to her, not that she'd take advice from me, but maybe she should, is that they need to really wonder why people don't trust them anymore.

00:14:12.300 And they cannot win the argument by smearing their critics.

00:14:17.080 They have to.

00:14:17.680 I mean, indie me, look at you, look at me.

00:14:19.320 Indie me is growing like mad, right?

00:14:21.080 Everybody's got a contribution to make.

00:14:23.240 There are fringe indie people, too, for sure.

00:14:27.220 But the CBC has, it's time for, as they say, a reckoning.

00:14:31.960 And the CBC's got to try to figure out why Canadians don't trust them anymore.

00:14:35.420 And it's because of what they're doing.

00:14:37.080 Yeah.

00:14:37.200 You said that the CBC actually does some good stuff.

00:14:41.680 What are some examples of what you think, you know, some good content?

00:14:46.980 What is some good work from the CBC?

00:14:48.920 What are its strengths right now?

00:14:50.760 And we obviously know some of its weaknesses.

00:14:52.900 But what are the CBC's strengths?

00:14:55.560 Well, the radio service, for me, is the big thing.

00:15:01.240 I worked at As It Happens and loved it there.

00:15:05.980 And I think the fact that it is designed to be a voice that stretches out into Kuzhuac and Haida Gwa, you know, it's, we have this huge and vast country.

00:15:19.440 And we're all really different.

00:15:21.980 And I think the mission of the CBC, there's still a kernel of it left that people in remote places deserve quality journalism.

00:15:29.000 I'm not sure we're getting enough of it.

00:15:30.580 But that part of it, the idea of it, is still good.

00:15:35.840 And, you know, I think investigative journalism within the CBC, there are a lot of people there who know how to do it.

00:15:43.500 Are they doing it in the right way and covering?

00:15:45.480 Are they, you know, I'll give you, for instance, on the convoy, that photograph of the Nazi flag, that was a classic Fifth Estate story back in my day. 0.59

00:15:54.840 You'd look at it and say, that's weird.

00:15:56.940 Why have they just got the one photograph?

00:15:58.860 Why are they standing beside the Chateau Lurie?

00:16:00.960 Who are those guys?

00:16:02.000 What are they doing there?

00:16:03.260 And like that great documentary about 9-11 called The Falling Man, where they took a picture and they said, what story does this tell?

00:16:11.560 That's a classic documentary investigative technique.

00:16:13.920 That would have been great for them, but they didn't touch it because believing, I don't know this, I'm assuming, believing that the convoy was full of Nazis was more comfortable for the people who work at the CBC than believing that probably they weren't, right?

00:16:29.080 So it took Rebel News to do that great story, saying there's something hinky, there's something fishy.

00:16:36.760 So to answer your question, CBC does investigative journalism as well as anybody in the world, better than most places in the world.

00:16:46.140 But figuring out who they should be investigating and how they should do it is, I think that's something that's been lost because of the ideology.

00:16:56.420 Let's just say one more thing.

00:16:59.080 The Jillian Finley story, right, which I'm sure you've been following.

00:17:03.820 She quit after 30 years over a remote work dispute.

00:17:07.960 I didn't realize when that story first broke that she remote works from Nova Scotia.

00:17:14.580 So she's mad that they don't want to, like, is this about flying her back and forth from Nova Scotia?

00:17:20.400 I mean, how tin-eared do you have to be to demand that?

00:17:25.540 She says, you know, I think Bob McEwen is the guy she's talking about.

00:17:28.820 She said he works remotely and it's funded, and I think he's in Quebec.

00:17:32.940 And yes, the CBC could be a lot better with women. 0.99

00:17:37.720 The male hosts, I think, have always been treated a little bit better.

00:17:41.140 But is this the time, is this the hill to die on when the bread line at the church down the street from me is now around the block?

00:17:50.840 People are literally starving in this country, going to food banks.

00:17:54.680 And you've got hosts at the national broadcaster complaining and quitting, in fact, retiring over the fact that the CBC doesn't want to fund their travel from Nova Scotia.

00:18:07.080 I mean.

00:18:07.580 Yeah, extraordinary.

00:18:09.060 That is just, yeah, what can one say?

00:18:12.880 It's just, yeah.

00:18:16.640 I wonder if the CBC could become a wedge issue in the next election.

00:18:22.020 You know, the liberals are committed to funding it generously.

00:18:26.980 The conservatives under Pierre Polly Ever would like to defund the CBC.

00:18:31.920 Given that you've been inside and outside the beast, what do you think is the right way forward as far as funding the CBC is concerned?

00:18:39.640 Should it rely more on private money than taxpayers' money?

00:18:44.480 That's a really good question.

00:18:45.980 My view of the CBC is that as long as it is taking taxpayers' money, it needs to be squeaky clean.

00:18:54.120 And that means that it cannot be as bad as everybody else.

00:18:57.220 So the privately funded guys, who sometimes used to be pretty good, are now egregious.

00:19:03.220 I mean, they're terrible, right?

00:19:04.460 So, you know, I think that for the CBC to survive and fulfill this very, very high-minded and laudable mandate is going to require a whole rethink and a redo.

00:19:18.700 I would rather, I think I would rather see a redo, but I'm not sure that we have in the institutions in this country enough clear-headedness to do that.

00:19:32.960 We're so divided as a culture right now.

00:19:35.760 If you put someone who thinks like you or me or many of the journalists I know who are indie into the mix at the CBC, it would be probably, they'd be shunned.

00:19:46.340 I mean, it would probably be awful, right?

00:19:48.240 So how do you, you know, never before has the country been so divided, I think.

00:19:55.520 And so how do you have a national broadcaster that facilitates that kind of interesting editorial tension in a way that works?

00:20:05.400 If they can't do that, then forget it.

00:20:08.200 Then I would say shut it down.

00:20:09.940 I would say that.

00:20:10.880 But I still believe in journalism and I believe journalism is expensive and doing it well costs money and it shouldn't be left to the vagaries of how much advertising you're selling.

00:20:23.060 But at the same time, when you have a group of like-minded people who are failing editorially as the CBC is, that's a real, it's a real problem.

00:20:32.020 I mean, it's heartbreaking for me to see this.

00:20:34.320 Well, I'll give you a personal example.

00:20:35.980 I used to be called to come on the CBC fairly frequently, actually, before the protest, before the Freedom Convoy.

00:20:45.220 And then all of those invites just magically stopped once they, you know, read what I was, once they started reading what I was saying on Twitter and my National Post column.

00:20:57.960 And then, of course, my story for Barry Wise.

00:21:00.560 It just stopped.

00:21:02.280 And I was a little taken aback by that because I've experienced this kind of, it's just very unintellectual.

00:21:09.460 You know, it's the closing of the Canadian mind in a sense.

00:21:12.120 You only speak to people that you agree with.

00:21:14.880 It's very unfortunate.

00:21:16.580 And I would have been very happy.

00:21:18.320 I think it would have made for a great conversation.

00:21:20.960 I think it would have reflected really well on the CBC to invite someone who had a very different perspective on what was happening there, but they chose not to.

00:21:28.600 And, yeah.

00:21:29.680 Well, they were all kind of attached to, you know, there was a certain language around COVID and certain ways of talking about things that seemed to be being proscribed.

00:21:45.080 I don't know where that came from.

00:21:46.940 I'm not a conspirator.

00:21:47.820 I mean, Rodney Palmer told me last week that that stuff, or already implied anyway, that stuff may have come from the Trusted News Initiative, which they all kind of signed on to.

00:21:56.860 But when journalists are repeating the same phrases, something's gone terribly wrong.

00:22:03.620 And when the phrases are epithets, something's gone terribly wrong, hasn't it?

00:22:07.960 Could you tell us what the Trusted News Initiative is?

00:22:10.860 This is something that was actually, you know, while I was researching for the show, I came across this.

00:22:17.040 And I believe this is something that the government floated this idea a couple of years ago, just before the pandemic, I believe.

00:22:24.880 My understanding of it is that it's an organization that public broadcasters signed into to be members of, right?

00:22:36.580 And it was to kind of push the idea that these were trustworthy organizations.

00:22:43.640 And what's interesting about it is that I really shall deep dive it at some point more, although I don't know how much is public.

00:22:50.680 That's the other problem about it, right?

00:22:52.500 But the people who were part of the Trusted News Initiative tended to cover the COVID-19 pandemic in a similar way, right?

00:23:02.680 So, yeah, I mean, this leads me to my next question.

00:23:09.180 There's a widespread feeling among conservatives, among conservative-leaning people that the CBC has always had a pro-liberal bias.

00:23:18.660 And it doesn't really represent the conservative side of the spectrum, either small c or conservative, or for that matter, the conservative party,

00:23:27.780 with whom the CBC has had a very hostile relationship.

00:23:31.680 Do you think there's some truth to this suspicion?

00:23:34.940 And, yeah.

00:23:36.800 Yeah, well, I do.

00:23:38.040 I mean, I think that that's absolutely true.

00:23:42.460 I think part of it is that I would guess that most of the people who work at the CBC don't vote conservative.

00:23:50.600 Like, I would just, I would say, I'd be really surprised if they did.

00:23:54.400 So there's that part, there's the human part of it.

00:23:57.340 And I think that that, certainly back in my day, that tension was always there.

00:24:03.340 But I did feel back then that there was a striving to be fair.

00:24:11.360 Like, we kind of recognized that we were not conservative, mostly because of social kind of wedge issues, right?

00:24:18.240 We were different on those things.

00:24:19.580 And I think arrogantly thought we were better, which I now kind of regret.

00:24:23.600 But I think now we are so entrenched in our siloed positions.

00:24:31.000 And the attacks on each other in the political sphere are also so completely ad hominem and ugly that, I mean, the CBC, I suppose, does reflect what's going on in the culture.

00:24:44.640 And one would hope that it had a leader who could say, listen, people, we are the organization that is going to be so squeaky clean and fair editorially that we are going to lead the country out of this.

00:25:00.000 The problem is that when the phrase Nazi is being thrown around or racist or he's a far right extremist, whatever,

00:25:07.460 if that's how we're going to view people who don't agree with us politically or even culturally on many things, that's not a fixable problem.

00:25:17.400 And then I think the other problem is that social media, people curate their own social media feeds.

00:25:24.460 So people who are watching CBC, people working at CBC, people running CBC are getting fed their biases all day long in their social media feeds.

00:25:37.200 And I'm that way too.

00:25:38.620 I mean, I have to say, oh, I got to get out of my silo and read the New York Times this weekend cover to cover.

00:25:43.900 So I'm back.

00:25:44.660 I always regret it when I do.

00:25:46.240 But you have to pull yourself out of it, right?

00:25:50.700 I get up in the morning and check my Twitter feed.

00:25:52.600 That's the first thing I do.

00:25:53.720 I'm embarrassed to say that, but I do.

00:25:56.100 And I think that as long as we are siloed informationally in this way, there's going to be big problems.

00:26:03.160 And the conservatives are, you know, who, like, I think Ron DeSantis has made a big difference because he was so good on COVID and he's so good on the culture war stuff that if we had a guy like that here, I don't think we do.

00:26:16.600 My personal view is that Pierre Pellev is not that guy.

00:26:19.300 I think he, I was very, very upset with his response about the European MP that came here.

00:26:25.620 And he was instantly out using the word vile, which is a signal that he's pandering to somebody, right, without research being done.

00:26:33.200 So that, I found that upsetting.

00:26:36.060 But we, I don't think we have somebody like that in politics here.

00:26:40.960 I just don't think we do.

00:26:43.780 In your experience of the CBC, did you ever feel there was a lack of editorial independence or that at any rate, the CBC seemed to have a mindset, we've talked about this, that matches more with the left than with the right.

00:26:58.060 But did you ever feel that there was a lack of editorial independence of the CBC?

00:27:02.060 I didn't, interestingly.

00:27:04.680 The one, well, we did the Airbus story that was pretty scary because we were, you know, we were talking about Brian Mulrooney, but we were very fair.

00:27:15.740 And of all the people, when he criticized that story, he didn't criticize us, which was quite interesting.

00:27:21.120 We were so squeaky clean.

00:27:23.560 But one story that there was a bit of balking at was one I did with Michelle Metivier, a producer there who's terrific.

00:27:32.060 About the kind of matrix of satanic ritual abuse, multiple personality disorder, and recovered memory syndrome, which doesn't seem like much, but it was kind of taking over the country.

00:27:47.120 And kind of like some of the trans-extremism stuff that's going on now, the psychological profession that was dealing with these issues had been well and truly captured, right?

00:27:59.260 It was terrible.

00:28:00.000 They were convincing people they had 100 personalities, that they'd been raped by their father for 40 years.

00:28:05.100 And so Michelle and I, after, and this was what was so great about the Fifth State and CBC, we had time to think it through and do the research and talk about it.

00:28:15.180 And we said, yeah, this makes no sense.

00:28:17.320 So we were going off to expose the folly of this.

00:28:21.260 We were completely right about it.

00:28:22.960 But we did, Kelly Crichton, who was the executive producer, bravely let us do it.

00:28:28.360 We did two documentaries about it.

00:28:31.420 She warned us that we were flying in the face of a really important idea.

00:28:37.920 And the idea was that children actually are really raped by people, and as are women, right?

00:28:43.480 So we had to kind of put a disclaimer at the top when I'm introducing the tape and I'm sitting in the studio saying, we had to say, yes, women really are raped and children, et cetera.

00:28:55.100 And I didn't think that was necessary, but I knew what she was doing because so many gains had been made in that area that I think she didn't want it to seem like we didn't really understand there was a real problem, right?

00:29:09.760 But also the opposite can be true.

00:29:11.740 People do get confused.

00:29:13.180 People do get, children can be convinced to give evidence that's untrue if they're interviewed a certain way, right?

00:29:21.580 So that, I think that was the only time.

00:29:27.200 Yeah, I think that was the only time.

00:29:28.840 So I don't, I think there's a misperception that, you know, Trudeau calls Ms. Tate and says, I don't, and he may, but I have no evidence of that.

00:29:39.440 But I just think that the staff there are ideologically very much in tune with Trudeau right now.

00:29:46.900 And there may be some pressure put on them on some stories.

00:29:50.320 I'm sure there was around COVID-19 because their coverage was extremely uniform.

00:29:54.660 They were all saying the same thing.

00:29:56.100 They all had the same position.

00:29:57.160 And Marion Cloak from Winnipeg, who I interviewed and quit, retired over their COVID coverage, said that they were all of one mind about it.

00:30:08.620 Yeah, I mean, that's the beauty of this, right?

00:30:11.740 Trudeau or a politician or a liberal politician doesn't necessarily have to call the CBC and tell them this is the story that you should be pursuing.

00:30:20.420 Because that's the beauty of buying into a certain kind of ideology.

00:30:26.040 You're just, you don't have to do that kind of thing.

00:30:28.600 Everybody's on the same page.

00:30:31.360 Yeah.

00:30:32.420 So finally, Trish, you know, I know you have to get going.

00:30:35.880 But where do you think, what's the future, and this is a broad question, what's the future of journalism in Canada, given what's happening with the CBC right now?

00:30:45.880 And as you rightly point to the fact that the independent media space is thriving, I'm part of two outlets, the Free Press in the U.S. and True North here in Canada.

00:30:57.280 And I can tell you, you know, they're hiring, they're producing a lot of great content, there's a lot of energy within these outfits.

00:31:07.700 And then you have the CBC, this giant of a corporation, you know, they seem old and worn out and fighting these petty battles on Twitter.

00:31:20.500 And what's going on here?

00:31:23.260 Well, I have more concern about Canada than I do America.

00:31:30.220 And like, you're right about Indy.

00:31:32.300 We've got Taibbi and Schellenberger and David Zweig and Leighton Woodhouse.

00:31:38.440 We've got the whole, the Twitter Files crew who are, you know, Cy Hirsch is writing again on Substack.

00:31:45.640 Yay, I interviewed him on my show.

00:31:47.300 It was so fun.

00:31:50.540 Canada is more... 0.62

00:31:53.260 Regulatory friendly.

00:31:55.720 And I do worry about Bill C-11.

00:31:59.380 I'm afraid of where that's going.

00:32:00.900 It seems to be a transfer of income from us back to legacy media.

00:32:09.480 And that the idea is to regulate us in such a way that it might put us out of business.

00:32:17.680 And of course, the CRTC are, you know, they're unelected.

00:32:20.600 They're appointed.

00:32:21.140 What is...

00:32:21.620 Like, that's a very scary proposition.

00:32:24.060 And Canadians, sadly, are not as...

00:32:28.740 We learned this during COVID-19.

00:32:30.260 They are not as adverse to that kind of informational control.

00:32:39.900 I learned this.

00:32:41.060 Now, Canadians will say, well, I can accept that terrible thing if it's for a good cause.

00:32:45.560 It's like the Milgram experiment, right?

00:32:47.260 Like, I can accept that terrible thing if it's for a good cause.

00:32:49.580 I didn't realize we had that in our national character.

00:32:53.080 And I think that I really believe...

00:32:55.640 And this is the symbiosis.

00:32:57.500 I really believe that Bill C-11 is a sop to legacy media by the government, right?

00:33:04.540 So they say, well, yeah, we're not calling them up.

00:33:07.100 But look what we're doing.

00:33:08.380 We're making it really hard for their competitors to make a living.

00:33:12.160 I mean, they want to shut us down.

00:33:13.560 And I keep saying, listen, you know, stop calling us disinformation and misinformation

00:33:19.220 and all the stuff Ms. Tate does when someone asks her a question about why their audience 0.85

00:33:24.480 is peeling off.

00:33:25.660 That's not why people listen to us, because we're those things, because we aren't those

00:33:29.280 things.

00:33:29.740 People are peeling off because they're failing, right?

00:33:32.720 And I think that Bill C-11 is a way for the government to kind of save, you know, their

00:33:38.780 precious baby who's having a tantrum.

00:33:41.820 And I also think that the Canadian public, who should be horrified by that, might not

00:33:47.080 be.

00:33:47.700 And that's what scares me.

00:33:49.180 I think the Americans will be fine.

00:33:50.540 Like, Tucker Carlson gets 5 million people a night, right?

00:33:53.560 Yeah, yeah.

00:33:54.200 Great show.

00:33:55.600 We don't have an equivalent here yet.

00:33:58.080 We may, but we don't.

00:33:59.760 Yeah, no, that's...

00:34:00.940 I think you've nailed the problem here.

00:34:02.520 I think we've just become so incredibly compliant.

00:34:05.020 And the pandemic was quite revealing on that front, where we just mindlessly just accepted

00:34:11.800 whatever was told to us.

00:34:13.740 And it's very unfortunate.

00:34:16.980 And it does not, you know, it doesn't really bode well for the future of, at least in the

00:34:26.260 traditional media space.

00:34:27.580 I think independent media will be fine.

00:34:29.520 But Bill C-11 concerns me quite a bit as well.

00:34:33.300 What is Canadian content?

00:34:34.740 No one can tell me.

00:34:35.720 No one's able to define it.

00:34:37.000 And then you have this regulator, which has been given these extraordinary powers to determine

00:34:41.700 what Canadian content is.

00:34:43.180 And as I interviewed Justin Bieber's mother, because he got his start because of the fact

00:34:51.280 that she would post his videos on YouTube.

00:34:54.480 And that's how he got discovered.

00:34:56.800 And she said, you know, she put it, you know, in a way that really resonated with me.

00:35:02.520 She said, it's almost like they feel they're taking pity on us.

00:35:06.860 They think that we can't take the competition, that we cannot, they feel sad for us, that

00:35:13.500 we're not good enough.

00:35:15.080 And that sort of captures the mindset, I think, at least for people who want the government

00:35:21.160 to step in, intervene and promote them over everybody else, like you and I, who work extremely

00:35:27.400 hard to distinguish ourselves from the pack.

00:35:31.180 And nobody's getting rich.

00:35:33.900 Well, some people are getting rich.

00:35:35.060 I'm not getting rich.

00:35:36.020 But I think just, if I could just make this final point, the other problem I think we have

00:35:41.760 now that didn't exist 10 years ago is the idea that people who are indoctrinated into this

00:35:48.160 way of thinking don't necessarily want facts.

00:35:52.180 And that's another thing that we learned in the COVID time.

00:35:55.540 And even I would say when Donald Trump was elected, you couldn't have a sensible conversation

00:36:00.800 with people about him.

00:36:02.600 Facts didn't matter. 0.99

00:36:03.540 No, he's a terrible, ugh. 0.96

00:36:05.540 And the same thing around COVID.

00:36:07.300 You can't say to people, look, here's, kids don't die of COVID-19.

00:36:11.580 Oh, they don't want to.

00:36:12.520 And I think having had many conversations with people who are a little bit captured in this

00:36:18.600 country, that they find comfort in hearing repeated the things they believe instead of

00:36:26.740 things that are true.

00:36:27.860 And that's what we have to break through to get back to a place where our informational

00:36:35.260 streams are not completely corrupted by bias and nonsense.

00:36:41.460 Yeah.

00:36:41.860 Well, thank you so much, Trish, for coming on the show and for this great conversation.

00:36:48.140 And I really hope to have you back soon.

00:36:51.740 You know, next time maybe we talk about something other than the CBC.

00:36:58.560 Likewise.

00:36:59.300 I miss having you on my show, too.

00:37:00.920 So I'm so glad you're doing well, Rupa.

00:37:02.720 You're a real treasure and you changed the world with your Convoy coverage.

00:37:07.860 So that's terrific.

00:37:08.700 Oh, that's very kind of you to say that.

00:37:10.400 And that means a lot to me coming from you.

00:37:12.620 Thank you so much, Trish.

00:37:13.720 And hope to see you again soon.

00:37:16.600 Okay.

00:37:17.180 Bye.

00:37:17.340 All right.

00:37:17.780 Bye.

00:37:18.020 Bye.

00:37:18.080 Bye.

00:37:18.100 Bye.

00:37:18.140 Bye.

00:37:18.180 Bye.

00:37:18.200 Bye.

00:37:18.240 Bye.

00:37:20.140 Bye.

00:37:20.180 Bye.

00:37:20.200 Bye.

00:37:20.240 Bye.

00:37:20.260 Bye.

00:37:21.200 Bye.

Juno News - April 19, 2023

Has the CBC always been this terrible？ (Ft. Trish Wood)

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