Liberals invite anti-Conservative Unifor to journalism panel
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Summary
The media in Canada has a new sugar daddy, and his name is Justin Trudeau. Yes, one of the unintended consequences or perhaps intended consequences of Justin Trudeau's $595 million dollar bailout to the Canadian journalism industry is that now Canadian consumers of news and media have to question whether the government money is in some way motivating or even impacting coverage that is passed to us as impartial or unbiased.
Transcript
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the media in Canada has a new sugar daddy and his name is Justin Trudeau yes one of the
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unintended consequences or perhaps intended consequences of Justin Trudeau's 595 million
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dollar bailout to the Canadian journalism industry is that now Canadian consumers of
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news and media have to question whether the government money is in some way motivating
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or even impacting coverage that is passed to us as impartial or unbiased the federal government
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has now announced eight of the organizations in Canada that are going to play a role in creating
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this supposedly independent committee to advise the government on which news outlets qualify as
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being government approved or qualified in Canada here are the organizations as announced by a
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release from the Ministry of Canadian Heritage this week News Media Canada the Association de la
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Press Francophone the Quebec Community Newspaper Association the National Ethnic Press and Media
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Council of Canada the Canadian Association of Journalists the Federation Professionale des
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Journalistes du Québec Unifor and the Federation Nationale des Communications now what's noteworthy
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about this list is that four of the eight represent Franco-Canadian or Quebec interests half of them
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represent a population that is a minority in Canada the Canadian Association of Journalists
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as per a great story and Black Locks reporter is questioning whether it even wants to be a part of
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this list saying that the government process has been incredibly opaque and that a journalism
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initiative needs to be transparent but the CAJ is to its credit sounding the alarm that this process
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is so far anything but and then there's Unifor now sure Unifor represents thousands of Canadian
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journalists and media industry workers but these workers represent a slim minority of Unifor's overall
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membership of hundreds of thousands Unifor is a political action group and I think that its
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political mandate in many cases trumps its mandate of representing its media employees remember it was
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just a few months ago that Unifor's leadership team participated in this photo declaring itself
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the resistance to Andrew Scheer saying it would be fighting tooth and nail to go up against the
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Conservatives that's not advocating for its members that's taking a very marked political stand against a
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particular party Unifor shares a common enemy with Justin Trudeau and the whole point here
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is that even if Unifor's participation in this is going to be entirely focused on its members Canadians
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have to ask the question does Unifor only have a seat at the table because it's agreed to help the
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Liberals by taking aim at Conservatives and fighting round the clock to do it and by the way that leadership
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team includes a newspaper columnist who has a Unifor political role that seems to trump her role as
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being a journalist for the St. John's telegram so for a government that says Canadians need to learn to
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combat fake news and misinformation now Canadians also have to question whether news is reliable when
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publishers are at risk of the government deeming them not approved or approved are they sucking up to the
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new sugar daddy or are they still going through the process of journalism and journalistic ethics to
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such a point that their content can be reliable remember it was just a few months ago in January
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that Justin Trudeau said a Globe and Mail report was false he actually called the Globe and Mail in effect
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fake news so what happens if the Globe and Mail is given a piece of this journalism slush fund pie is it
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going to be that the government is funding what it thinks is fake news or is it going to be where the
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government denies them funding and all of a sudden we have to question whether that decision was made
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because the coverage was not favorable these conundrums these ethical dilemmas are inevitable
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when there's a marriage between the political class and journalists with money in the middle of it
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Canadians deserve journalism that is fair and impartial and unbiased Canadians also deserve journalism
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that is transparent when all of a sudden we have to question whether government journalism or
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government approved journalism is trumping real journalism we can't say that the federal government
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has actually saved the journalism industry if anything they've made it more muddied and mired
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in ethical questions for True North I'm Andrew Lutton hey thanks for watching my video as I noted a
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moment ago the need for transparent and accountable journalism has never been more present than it is
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right now True North is actually planning to cover I'm planning to cover the federal government's
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proposed press freedom summit in the United Kingdom in July we're almost at our fundraising goal to make
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this coverage happen you can get a tax receipt if you head on over to tnc.news and donate a couple
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of dollars or a couple hundred dollars if you can thanks very much for your support True North is here for you