00:00:00.000A legacy media outlet took a bailout from the federal government to protect journalism and
00:00:05.420then they turned around and fired the journalists anyway. It's Fake News Friday, I'm Candice
00:00:09.120Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show. Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into
00:00:17.780the show. It's a favorite day of the week here at The Candice Malcolm Show. It's Fake News Friday
00:00:21.780where we go through the legacy media, we dissect and pull out some of the examples of the most
00:00:27.260egregious journalism and we just generally talk about the problem in Canada when you have a legacy
00:00:33.540media by and large that is subsidized and funded by the federal government. There are so many so
00:00:39.400many inherent contradictions and conflicts and ethical issues with this structure and yet they
00:00:45.940all kind of carry on as usual but of course so much malfeasance comes out of that structure and so
00:00:51.060we dedicate the Friday edition of The Candice Malcolm Show entirely in just focusing in on this problem
00:00:56.880and talking about the very many ways that it manifests. So if you're watching this video on
00:01:00.820YouTube, I'm going to stop you right now. I'm going to ask that you please like this video. Don't forget
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00:01:26.200It really helps us out in the discoverability of the show and don't forget to subscribe to The
00:01:30.980Candice Malcolm Show so that you never miss an episode. So before we get to this ridiculous story
00:01:35.240of a media company, a major media company taking taxpayer dollars and then turning around and firing
00:01:39.920journalists anyway, I want to talk about the major political development of the week with regards to
00:01:44.840the Conservative Party, the infighting that we have been focused on so much on the show this week and
00:01:49.460just talk a little bit about how the media has covered it. So usually with a Conservative leader,
00:01:53.120be it Doug Ford, Jason Kenney, Scott Moe, Stephen Harper, Andrew Scheer, whoever it is, usually the
00:01:58.880media do their best to demonize the leader, to point out all their flaws, to make them seem like
00:02:03.620a scary right-winger and to really make them repulsive. But Aaron O'Toole has done everything
00:02:08.220he can. He focuses all of his attention on winning over those media skeptics, making sure that they
00:02:12.600like him, that they know that he's one of them. He's part of the team, he's progressive, he's liberal,
00:02:17.100he's left-wing on the social issue so they don't have to be afraid of him. So this has led us to a place
00:02:21.100where the media sort of has this like sympathetic view of Aaron O'Toole, where they sort of feel
00:02:25.380sorry for him, they don't think that he could beat Justin Trudeau, but they don't want him to be
00:02:29.420replaced because they fear that whoever replaces him could be a scary right-wing Conservative. So
00:02:34.420they kind of treat him with kid gloves and you see a lot of editorials saying, you know, making the
00:02:38.940case as to why Conservatives should leave him in power. All of these liberal and left-wing columnists
00:02:43.900who would never in a million years vote for the Conservatives are trying to give advice to
00:02:47.420Conservative members to keep the more sort of left-wing party leader in place. So then at this
00:02:53.200point, when someone in the Conservative Party does come out to criticize Aaron O'Toole, we see the
00:02:57.280media sort of shift and try to portray and paint that person in a negative light and demonize them.
00:03:02.820And that is what we're seeing with Senator Denise Batters, who came out this past week and launched
00:03:06.960a petition to ask for a leadership review of Aaron O'Toole. Now, it should be noted that Denise Batters
00:03:11.780is an eminently reasonable person. She came forth with a very calm, very reasonable, very logical
00:03:18.140position. And it should be noted that Senator Denise Batters came to the Conservative Party from the
00:03:23.900Progressive Conservatives. So she didn't come from the Reform and the Alliance, the more right-wing
00:03:27.600part of the party. She came from the more left-wing part of the party. So she is not a right-wing
00:03:32.460figure. She's more on the center-left of the party, of the Conservative Party. And she backed Peter
00:03:37.240McKay in the last leadership race. He was the Red Tory candidate. He was sort of the standard bearer
00:03:42.040of Red Toryism. So it's not like Denise Batters is from the sort of more Conservative side of the
00:03:47.820party. She isn't. So this was a headline over in CP's Canadian Press. It's the wire service. So they
00:03:52.760write the news stories that go in most of the newspapers. Most of the news websites are all based
00:03:56.800on this wire service. And this was the story. This was a headline. It says, Expelled Conservative
00:04:01.580Senator Denise Batters' defense position lashes out at O'Toole. Lashes out, we're told. She's lashing
00:04:08.360out. Now when I saw that verbiage, I was just sort of put off because I watched Denise Batters. I saw
00:04:14.560what she wrote. I saw what she put on Twitter. Lashing out. Let me just read you the definition of
00:04:19.680what it means to lash out. To lash out is to suddenly attack someone or something physically or to
00:04:25.420criticize him or her in an angry way. Okay, so we're told that she's lashing out, which implies
00:04:31.560sort of physical violence or at least lashing out, criticizing someone in an angry way. When I
00:04:37.860looked at what Denise Batters was saying, I didn't see an angry lady. Again, I saw a reasonable, logical,
00:04:44.680calm, clear-headed plea for the party to review this leader. And so the fact that the media is
00:04:52.360painting this as her lashing out. Now, even if you read the story, read the article that's attached,
00:04:58.100it's a very short one, and nothing in there suggests that she's lashing out. Okay, let me
00:05:01.880just read the news story. It's really short. And again, nothing in here suggests anything close to
00:05:08.000lashing out. Okay, so it says, Senator Denise Batters is taking off the gloves in her fight
00:05:12.780with conservative leader Erin O'Toole. Okay, again, this sort of builds it up and implies that
00:05:16.600by taking off the gloves and that she's engaging in this fight with Erin O'Toole, that maybe there's
00:05:21.660like a war of words or she says something harsh. But as we'll see, that's not the case. Let's go on to
00:05:26.260see what Canadian press is writing about a fight, taking off the gloves and saying that
00:05:30.300Denise Batters is lashing out. So it just says this, O'Toole announced late Tuesday that the
00:05:35.900Saskatchewan senator will be expelled from the Conservative caucus after she launched a petition
00:05:39.380calling for a referendum on his leadership within six months. A leadership review is currently
00:05:43.400scheduled for the party's national convention in 2023, though MPs did vote in October to give
00:05:48.060themselves the power to potentially host him earlier. Okay, so that's just all background,
00:05:51.660nothing about Denise Batters yet. Now it comes on to tell us what Batters is actually
00:05:56.240doing and it says this, Batters in a statement this morning says she is and will always be a
00:06:00.880Conservative and says members deserve to have a say on the leadership and direction of the party
00:06:05.900after an election loss. So how is this lashing out? How is this taking off the gloves? How is this
00:06:11.420fighting? She issued a calm statement just saying that she's still a Conservative and she believes
00:06:15.660that members should have a say on the direction of the party. How is that lashing out? How is that
00:06:20.540fighting? How is that taking off the gloves? Give me a break. Okay, the story goes on. It says,
00:06:24.040she goes on to question why she's being singled out. Another Conservative senator, Michael McDonald,
00:06:29.060urges Tories ahead of the October vote to give themselves the power to hold an early
00:06:32.480leadership review. And Batters says if a tool is truly confident in the direction he's taking the
00:06:36.760party, then he should have no fears about an expedited leadership review. And then that's it.
00:06:42.340That's it. Then the story just goes back to explaining the background of the story and saying
00:06:46.540that Batters is kicked out of the party before the caucus, the Conservative caucuses meeting in Ottawa.
00:06:51.320And again, that's it. That's the whole story. It's like, it's like a 10 line story and that's it.
00:06:56.280So nowhere in there did we see anything like the headline was saying. So much so they've actually
00:07:00.480have changed the headline now. But this was the initial headline that was out for the first day
00:07:04.280of the story was up and across the internet. Again, the media just love creating a narrative.
00:07:09.120They love trying to create conflict, trying to make it seem like Denise Batters here is just like
00:07:12.940crazy unhinged bad guy villain. Really, she's just being very reasonable. And the media just can't help
00:07:18.860but demonize and create these really, really ridiculous caricatures of the Conservatives.
00:07:24.420Okay, going on. This is actually pretty amusing. So as so as the MPs were heading into go into this
00:07:29.900meeting, journalists were sort of camped out and again, trying to exploit this division,
00:07:33.680trying to drum up the drama and asking MPs what they thought about Denise Batters petition and where
00:07:39.660they stand on Aaron O'Toole. Now, let me just pause from the show for a moment to just say that things
00:07:44.940in British Columbia are absolutely horrendous. I know my parents are out there. Most of my family
00:07:49.260lives in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver, and they are dealing with a catastrophic flood. It is
00:07:54.060unbelievable, probably will end up being the most costly natural disaster in Canadian history.
00:07:59.720And of course, if something like this was happening in Central Canada, if something like this was
00:08:02.900happening in Quebec or Ontario, it would be all the news. It would be everything wall-to-wall coverage,
00:08:07.880nothing but. But in our country, because it's happening out in Vancouver, barely anyone's paying
00:08:12.280attention, barely anyone's talking about it. And this is a sad reality of the sort of regionalism
00:08:16.480in our country that that anything that happens out West is kind of an afterthought. And anything
00:08:19.940that happens in British Columbia is even more than an afterthought. It's almost like a different
00:08:23.260country out there. It's a sad state of affairs. And this MP, this conservative MP rightfully points
00:08:27.780it out. So as these conservatives are walking in, this is again, Wednesday afternoon, right in the
00:08:31.600the height of the flooding and the chaos in British Columbia. So we have conservative MP Brad
00:08:37.340Vese, who is the MP for Mission, Matt Squee, Fraser Canyon, and a unidentified reporter jumps in to
00:08:44.080ask him about the air neutral drama. And to him, it's like he is completely focused on this crazy
00:08:49.820disaster that is happening in his writing, in his constituency, completely worried about the lives
00:08:54.200of his constituents, the lives of Canadians. And that is where he's focused. And he just sort of
00:08:58.120takes the media to task for asking sort of like a dumb political partisan question instead of really
00:09:04.500asking the more pressing question at that moment in that time about his writing and the people in
00:09:09.380his writing and how he's acting to represent them and to help them. So here is a BC conservative MP
00:09:15.700just sort of smacking down the media. Do you support Erin O'Toole's decision to remove Senator Batters?
00:09:20.340You know what, the most important question needs to be, why aren't you asking me about Mission,
00:09:24.500Matt Squee, Fraser Canyon, and the devastating flooding that's taking place in Chilliwack Hope,
00:09:29.860Abbotsford, in the Okanagan in Dan's riding. I want to thank Minister Blair for meeting with us this
00:09:37.940morning to discuss the dire situation on the ground. Our constituents, 7,000 people were evacuated
00:09:46.100in Dan's riding. All of the major roadways in British Columbia are destroyed. We don't have rail
00:09:52.580infrastructure right now. Our country is facing an unprecedented situation in the province of BC.
00:09:58.100Do you think Batters should have been kicked out of caucus? Right now my only focus is on supporting
00:10:02.900the people of Mission, Matt Squee, Fraser Canyon in British Columbia. There's no time for partisan
00:10:07.380politics. Right now there's only time to support British Columbia and get people safe. That should
00:10:14.820be your only question right now. Keeping British Columbia safe. The people need our help. They don't
00:10:19.860want to hear about a senator. They want to hear about what we're doing here today to help our province and to
00:10:25.540help our country. Do you attribute this to climate change? How do you prevent this from happening again?
00:10:29.540Well, right now we need to focus on the safety of British Columbia. How do you prevent this from
00:10:34.420happening again? You've talked about the fires. You've talked about the flooding. How do you prevent this from happening again?
00:10:37.540Ed, why don't you comment? It's Barrow Towns in your riding. Listen, there are many things that are going to have to take place going forward to rebuild all the infrastructure that has been damaged. There's infrastructure that needs to be upgraded to seismic standards.
00:10:43.540There's a lot of work that has to be done going forward. These are long term fixes that won't be resolved overnight.
00:10:59.540And you can just see how completely tone deaf these journalists are. He makes a passionate plea about his writing and how dangerous it is and how worried he is. And the journalists can't even compute that. They don't even care. They just go and ask the same question.
00:11:13.540But do you think batters should have been kicked out of caucus? It's like so tone deaf and so unbelievably callous of these journalists. They don't actually care what somebody has to say. They don't care about the Canadians that he represents. They don't care about the real challenges that are being faced out there. They just care about the drama.
00:11:27.540They just care about the soundbite. And they just want to possibly exploit this drama even more to get even more news out of it.
00:11:35.540And then finally, once he really just schools them and says, look, this is not my priority. I don't care about the partisan infighting. I'm completely focused on this flood and saving my constituents.
00:11:43.540And then, of course, they pivot to, well, do you attribute this to climate change, like trying to sort of like trap him and again, turn it into a partisan wedge trap manufactured by the liberals to say, well, if you care about this flood, then how can you not admit that it's climate change?
00:11:58.540And therefore, don't you want a carbon tax? Like it just again just shows how out of touch and bad these journalists are at their job.
00:12:05.540OK, so I want to move on to this story about the media company taking taxpayer money and then firing its ploy because this in a nutshell is the problem with Canadian media.
00:12:13.540So this comes to us from our friends over at Blackhawks Reporter, also reported by us at TNC.News, and it's about a newspaper company called the Halifax Chronicle Herald.
00:12:22.540So the media company, the Halifax Chronicle Herald, took taxpayer funded media rebates, but then they ended up firing employees.
00:12:29.540So according to Blackhawks Reporter, the media outlet, which is part of a broader company called Salt Wire Network Inc., they ended up firing 111 employees on September 1st, 2020.
00:12:39.540In the same year, the company received an undisclosed amount of taxpayer COVID-19 funding and was also benefiting from payroll rebates passed by the liberal government.
00:12:47.540So they're getting the $600 million newspaper bailout.
00:12:51.540The whole idea was that these all of these media companies couldn't compete with the CBC, the Trudeau government was giving the CBC money and then the newspapers couldn't compete with them.
00:12:59.540So they went hat in hand and asked the Trudeau government for money as well.
00:13:04.540The purpose of that was all under the guise of protecting local journalism to make sure that in all of these markets across Canada, these companies could still employ local journalism because the role of a local journalist was so important to democracy.
00:13:16.540And it was so important that we had these reporters on the ground to keep our democracy strong, to hold politicians accountable.
00:13:22.540Never mind the contradiction there about the government paying journalists to investigate them, which, of course, doesn't happen in the way that it should.
00:13:29.540But regardless, the idea is this media company is taking our money, taking taxpayer dollars to protect journalism jobs.
00:13:35.540And then on top of that, when the economy crashed, when the government forced us all into lockdown, the idea behind the COVID rebate was to keep things afloat,
00:13:43.540was to make sure that people didn't lose their jobs, to make sure that companies didn't go out of business.
00:13:47.540So here is a company, a media company that's basically double dipping.
00:13:50.540They're getting a bailout from the government for the newspapers, for local journalism.
00:13:54.540And they're also getting a bailout from the government for COVID.
00:13:57.540And yet on top of this, they still fire 111 employees.
00:14:02.540So here it says under the Rebit program, the company could have received up to $13,750 per employee.
00:14:09.540Court records show that six former employees pursued legal action with regards to their dismissal.
00:14:14.540Saltwater contends in March 2020, its business was significantly impacted by COVID-19 pandemic revenues were substantially reduced.
00:14:21.540So that's all justification as to why they were taking taxpayer money.
00:14:24.540What we still don't understand, though, is why they took taxpayer money and then turned around and fired a whole bunch of people, 111 people.
00:14:31.540Well, some of them are now suing the paper, regardless, you know, it's going to be stuck in the legal court battles for a while.
00:14:37.540But again, what a sad state of journalism where you have these big, big companies taking all this money, basically part of their business model now to just lobby the government.
00:14:44.540Rather than go out there and try to find a more successful business model, rather than try it, go out and try to build your audience or try to find new revenue streams.
00:14:51.540These media companies are part of the revenue. Part of their business plan is spending money on lobbyists, spending money on consultants and going hat in hand to the government.
00:14:59.540That is part of the revenue stream. And you see it across the spectrum in the media.
00:15:03.540So another example is the FP Newspaper Inc., the Free Press newspapers, including the Winnipeg Free Press, which is one of the most left wing papers in the country.
00:15:12.540As of May of this year, the company had received $6.2 million in taxpayer funds, majority of which were the COVID subsidies, federal grants.
00:15:20.540They make up 54% of the company's revenue. So more than half the money that this newspaper and this media company are bringing in every year is from the government.
00:15:28.540I can't imagine, you know, we talk a lot about the CBC and how they get billions. Well, more than half of the money that this, I mean, it might as well be a state broadcaster as well.
00:15:36.540They're taking so much money from the government. They're so beholden to the government and the governing party.
00:15:41.540It's just absolutely wild. The landscape in Canada, it deserves to be criticized because you're not going to get a situation where opposition parties and other politicians get a fair shake.
00:15:50.540When these newspapers that are so influential in telling the stories and reaching Canadians are so beholden to Justin Trudeau and the governing Liberal Party.
00:15:59.540It is a huge problem in Canada. It's all the more reason why we need independent outlets like True North.
00:16:03.540It's Fake News Friday. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.