Juno News - July 18, 2022


James Topp on the media coverage of his march


Episode Stats


Length

3 minutes

Words per minute

145.65141

Word count

556

Sentence count

22


Summary

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

In this episode, I sit down with the founder of a group of journalists and activists to talk about the impact of mainstream media's silence on the protests in Ukraine, and the fallout from the smear campaign against him and his organization.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 So large sections of the mainstream media have either tried to ignore you or they've tried to smear you and your organization.
00:00:07.880 How does that make you feel? Does that bother you?
00:00:11.240 And let's say you'd been marching for Ukraine across the country, for Ukraine's freedom.
00:00:17.600 Do you think the mainstream media would have reacted differently?
00:00:21.140 No, I got to the point where I'm okay with it.
00:00:28.820 I'm not exactly happy about it.
00:00:30.500 Like you said, if I were to have been marching for a different cause, okay, quote unquote, definitely I do believe I would probably have my own retinue in a bus and a number of other perks that I don't have available now.
00:00:45.780 But the fact is that this is not a popular thing to be engaging in in this current climate and the media landscape is not friendly to the things that I'm saying.
00:00:59.020 And of course, this kind of a lot of this is being painted as something negative.
00:01:06.840 And I'm perplexed because nothing that we've done is outside of the law.
00:01:12.280 You know, I haven't been approached and have met with Canadians from all walks of life, from all backgrounds, from all income brackets.
00:01:21.700 OK, and to have, you know, these name calling and the smears, it does it does bother me in a way that, you know, because what have what has the, you know, corporate journalism become?
00:01:37.700 In that there's no attempt at a discussion or an attempt to understand why I'm doing like in the fashion that you're doing as an independent journalist, asking the questions, allowing me to explain.
00:01:50.760 That's not happening at the corporate level, there's just this name calling and no attempt at any sort of investigation.
00:02:00.380 And if the investigation is had, I would say it's not a very good one because I have not come into contact with many reporters at the higher levels at various organizations.
00:02:11.380 So when I say that, I'm not I'm not exactly OK with it, because I think it it's it's very disruptive and harmful to the public mind.
00:02:24.460 Yeah, is this just something that is creating a kind of hatred and a rage in people?
00:02:33.200 And it's not necessary because nothing I've ever said or done is inflammatory.
00:02:37.500 I've not insulted anybody.
00:02:39.040 I've never I've not criticized all I'm trying to do is bring to light the the the issues that are facing federal government workers that have been affected, like I have.
00:02:49.480 So I just find it it's it's irresponsible journalism.
00:02:54.460 It does it does bother me because of the hatred and anger that is generating, which is misplaced and not necessary, I might add.
00:03:03.440 However, when I have had the ability now over the last couple of days to have a couple of conversations with reporters from Canadian press and Ottawa citizen, I have attempted to try to say, look, this is what I am seeing from your organization.
00:03:21.580 Please make some effort highlighting the positive that came out of this, because this is the remarkable story and how, number one, I came together with 11 other people.
00:03:34.060 And over the course of four and a half months, that team facilitated a foot march over forty four hundred kilometers in length.
00:03:43.300 So why this cannot be reported on, you know, I don't understand.