Juno News - January 30, 2019


Liberals don't want ＂misinformation＂ to influence election. But who defines it？

Hosted by
Andrew Lutton
Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Mark Gerritsen Catherine McKenna Candace Malcolm Ralph Goodale Harjit Sajjan Karina Gould Gerald Butts David Akin
Justin Trudeau's carbon tax goes on trial this year Protesters demand justice for Marissa Shen

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

172.81

Word count

713

Sentence count

34


Summary

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

With nine months to go until the federal election, Justin Trudeau s cabinet has finally unveiled its plan to combat the possibility of foreign influence having a role in this year s election. Social media companies are also being told they have a role to play here, and that is to put in a platform that reigns in misinformation.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 With nine months to go until the federal election, Justin Trudeau's cabinet has finally unveiled
00:00:07.140 its plan to combat the possibility of foreign influence having a role in this year's election.
00:00:14.180 The announcement was made this week by Ralph Goodale, the Public Safety Minister, Karina
00:00:18.620 Gould, who runs the Democratic Institutions Department, and Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan.
00:00:23.860 A number of protocols and policies being put in place were announced, and most of them
00:00:29.580 were unobjectionable, in fact quite good and I would argue long overdue policies to implement
00:00:34.880 to safeguard Canadian elections.
00:00:37.780 For example, the government will be putting a task force together that is specifically
00:00:42.320 designated as the body responsible for investigating and preparing for these things.
00:00:47.320 Senior party leadership officials across the spectrum are going to get classified security
00:00:52.020 briefings about potential threats, foreign and domestic.
00:00:55.120 Social media companies, however, are also being told they have a role to play here, and
00:01:00.460 that is to put in a platform that reigns in misinformation.
00:01:05.340 And this is where I have a healthy dose of skepticism about what the federal government is trying
00:01:09.900 to do here.
00:01:10.980 Namely, who gets to define misinformation?
00:01:14.620 You see, Justin Trudeau's government has a long history of lambasting anything remotely
00:01:19.680 critical as being fake news.
00:01:21.840 Gerald Butz loves taking aim at coverage he doesn't like on Twitter as fake news.
00:01:26.740 Catherine McKenna calls it fake news whenever anyone disagrees with her on climate change.
00:01:32.040 In fact, she actually went after a column my colleague, Candace Malcolm, wrote, calling
00:01:36.500 it fake news for saying that the carbon tax was a tax.
00:01:41.380 And then we have Mark Gerritsen, a Liberal member of Parliament from Kingston, who was in
00:01:45.760 a Twitter exchange with David Aiken, a global news journalist.
00:01:48.820 And they were talking about the budget, and Mark Gerritsen called something fake news.
00:01:53.940 He later walked it back, but this is the go-to response now from the Liberals to just throw
00:01:59.540 away anything they don't like and dismiss it as misinformation or fake news.
00:02:04.240 Now, this isn't to say that a few throwaway comments on Twitter are indicative of something
00:02:09.280 more potentially subject to abuse.
00:02:11.740 But let's look at the M103 report.
00:02:14.420 The report that came about from the anti-Islamophobia motion had a significant chunk of it that was
00:02:19.840 devoted to what it called misinformation, and the need to ensure that no misinformation is
00:02:26.080 being spread about policy.
00:02:27.940 Well, the Liberals were calling pretty much anyone who criticized M103 out for fake news
00:02:34.120 when people like me were sounding the alarm about parts of it that were very concerning.
00:02:38.000 This was now dismissed in an official government report as being a misinformation campaign.
00:02:44.180 So if the Liberals are trying to make sure that the election is free from influence by
00:02:48.320 foreign actors, I think that's a good idea.
00:02:50.480 If they're putting pressure on social media companies to make sure no misinformation is
00:02:56.220 seeping in, I think they need to do a much better job of explaining what something would
00:03:00.580 have to do to be called misinformation, and more importantly, who gets to make that determination.
00:03:05.140 You see, there is a wide range of opinions, perspectives, and analyses that are going to be offered
00:03:10.800 in an election.
00:03:11.620 People are going to criticize different parties.
00:03:13.820 People are going to hopefully put some news reports out that go right down the middle.
00:03:17.520 But we can't have people that are loyal to a particular government deciding what's
00:03:21.860 misinformation and what's not.
00:03:23.460 And we can't be strong-arming social media companies in putting an editorial perspective
00:03:28.400 on their platforms more than they already do to favor one particular government.
00:03:33.020 And even though I think it's paramount that we protect our democracy, we can't do it in
00:03:38.020 a way that threatens free speech.
00:03:40.300 For True North, I'm Andrew Lutton.
00:03:42.700 Right up until the next election, we're going to be sounding the alarm about any misinformation
00:03:46.560 we see, any examples where the mainstream media is missing the mark on coverage.
00:03:52.040 We can't do this alone, though.
00:03:53.440 We need your help.
00:03:54.860 Lend us a supportive hand by joining the Andrew Lutton Heritage Club over at www.truenorthinitiative.com
00:04:02.060 For just a few dollars a month, you can keep your mind filled with what the mainstream
00:04:06.280 media doesn't want you to see.