Juno News - September 07, 2019


MALCOLM: This Week in Fake News


Episode Stats

Length

21 minutes

Words per Minute

181.7461

Word Count

3,820

Sentence Count

187

Misogynist Sentences

16

Hate Speech Sentences

5


Summary

In this week's episode of This Week in Fake News, host Candice Malan uncovers some of the most biased news stories of the week in Canada, and unpack some general trends in biased news and fake news reporting in Canada.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hi, and welcome to another episode of This Week in Fake News. I'm your host, Candice Malcolm,
00:00:15.100 founder of True North and a columnist over at the Toronto Sun and with Post Media. Welcome to
00:00:20.740 another episode. This is a show where I go through and point out some of the most biased news stories
00:00:26.000 of the week in Canada, unpack a little bit and talk about just general trends in biased news and
00:00:32.680 fake news reporting in Canada. So thanks so much for tuning in. Again, if you like this video and
00:00:38.120 you like what we're working on here, please like the video, share it, help us distribute it to reach
00:00:44.200 more and more Canadians. So with that, let's jump right into a few of the top stories that I chose
00:00:50.220 this week. You know, it's really interesting because we are gearing up for the federal election here in
00:00:55.320 Canada, kind of getting more and more stories related to the election. And, you know, if you
00:01:00.480 just followed the mainstream media and listened to the reports that they put out, you would really
00:01:05.320 start to get the picture that the two main issues facing Canadians, the two most important things
00:01:10.700 in Canada facing Canadians in this election cycle are feminism, the state of feminism in Canada,
00:01:17.260 and global warming, the state of sort of alarmism when it comes to climate change and with global
00:01:23.460 warming. That's what the media want you to think. So many journalists who lean left in Canada, who
00:01:28.660 are themselves activists and left-wing advocates, want you to believe that feminism and global warming
00:01:34.800 are the two top, most important issues in Canada. I would argue that they are not even in the top 10.
00:01:40.860 But as you have it, you see more and more of these stories popping up. So the first one I want to
00:01:45.580 point your attention to is this story put out by Canadian Press. Here it is in the Huffington Post,
00:01:51.120 but the Canadian Press is a wire service. So this story will appear in newspapers across Canada.
00:01:57.740 The headline, what role will feminism play in the federal election? And the story basically goes,
00:02:04.060 starts off by just highlighting Justin Trudeau. Justin Trudeau received a lot of attention with
00:02:08.960 his line about the calendar year when asked why he named an equal number of men and women to cabinet
00:02:14.240 after his newly elected government was sworn in. That was back in 2015. Now, of course, that was an
00:02:18.780 idiotic response. There was a question, you know, why did you choose to base your cabinet not on the
00:02:24.640 people's skills, not on the top qualities, the top candidates, not based on people's career and
00:02:30.300 their service and their work, but you chose to appoint your cabinet, some of the highest ranking
00:02:34.740 positions in Canada based purely on gender. And of course, Trudeau didn't have a good answer. He
00:02:40.280 didn't have a good reason as to why he disproportionately chose women. Remember,
00:02:44.720 only 26 percent of MPs are women, and yet 50 percent of his cabinet were men. So he he elected twice as
00:02:52.260 he put a point twice as many women into position of power as there were women in cabinet. He didn't
00:02:57.660 have a good answer. So he just said, because it's 2015, which I guess that was impressive to some
00:03:02.720 people, some people on the left and people in the media swooned over that. But, you know,
00:03:07.800 to people who actually wanted to know why he chose to do that, it was completely a ridiculous answer.
00:03:13.300 It didn't provide any insight into his decision making other than just that he didn't really
00:03:17.460 think much about it. It's 2015. That's why I did it. So according to this story, that was a brilliant
00:03:22.780 answer, and Trudeau received a lot of attention for it. And then, you know, the story kind of goes
00:03:28.000 on to list some of the liberals, you know, things that they've done to push for so-called gender
00:03:34.820 equality in government. And then we hear from an expert on feminist policies saying, you know,
00:03:42.320 the problem with pushing for feminism is that there's two camps of people, one camp who don't
00:03:48.000 want to see that kind of stuff. They don't want, you know, positions being chosen based on feminism.
00:03:53.140 And then there are other people who are the feminists themselves who always say that not enough
00:03:56.940 is being done. That's actually pretty accurate observation there. I would probably agree with that.
00:04:02.180 You know, interestingly, we then, you know, then the story goes on to quote someone from the
00:04:07.020 Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The story doesn't mention, but that is a far left
00:04:12.380 organization. It's a left wing organization, which is not in this story. You know, if you're going to
00:04:18.320 name an organization, as they usually do when they say, you know, the Fraser Institute, they'll usually
00:04:22.680 mention that it's a conservative organization or a free market organization, more like a classical
00:04:28.580 liberal organization in the traditional definition of the word. Anyway, leaving out the fact that this
00:04:33.300 is a left wing organization is a little shady. So, so far, we have talked to two people in this story,
00:04:41.140 and they both offer a left wing perspective. You know, this woman's going on to applaud the Trudeau
00:04:46.860 government for a bunch of stuff. And then they talk to a third person who is a chief executive of a polling
00:04:51.780 firm, who talks about sort of, you know, what, what the Conservatives have done, what the NDP have done,
00:04:59.280 and what the Liberals have done for so-called feminism or to advance feminism. Interestingly,
00:05:05.140 though, this entire story goes through, interviews several people, goes through a whole bunch of the
00:05:09.960 different policies of the parties, and kind of applauds the Trudeau government for their so-called
00:05:16.960 feminism. But interestingly, they don't mention any of the problems that Trudeau has had with his
00:05:24.600 feminist shtick. I mean, most people would accuse Justin Trudeau of being a fake feminist. I've written
00:05:30.060 columns about that, that so much of his, you know, talk about feminism is just empty rhetoric, complete
00:05:37.080 virtue signaling. What about the fact that he's been accused of groping a young reporter at a music
00:05:42.900 festival when he was in his 20s? And then he said that he would have never done it if he had known
00:05:47.860 she was reporting for a national newspaper. That's sexual harassment, what he's been accused of doing
00:05:51.940 there. You think that that might be worthy of just mentioning in the story that he's been accused of
00:05:57.500 sexual harassment? And he actually admitted to it back in 2000 and apologized. So there's something
00:06:03.420 like an admission of guilt. Wouldn't that be sort of something that you might want to mention in the
00:06:08.280 story? Or how about the fact that two of his high-ranking strong women in his cabinet were
00:06:14.120 removed, were removed and are no longer there? There's no mention in this story whatsoever of
00:06:20.020 the whole Wilson Rabel, Judy Wilson Rabel affair and the fact that Jane Philpott left. You know,
00:06:26.180 the fact that two strong women were pushed out of the liberal caucus, pushed out of cabinet for
00:06:32.800 standing up to the prime minister. I mean, what does that show about the character of this prime
00:06:37.340 minister? And we're supposed to just read this article, believe that he's a feminist and just
00:06:41.460 take that as face value. I mean, really not mentioning those two pieces of information,
00:06:47.020 which I think are key when thinking about Trudeau and his policy towards women and whether or not he
00:06:52.620 actually is a feminist, you know, missing those points, I think, again, is pretty dishonest if we're
00:06:59.140 going to be having a conversation about feminism. Now, of course, the idea that somehow feminism needs to
00:07:06.500 be a top issue and story in this election, that there'll be Canadian voters who are actually
00:07:12.020 voting based on who's the biggest feminist of the political parties is total nonsense. I mean,
00:07:17.880 if you look at the Canadian government as it is, it's already ridiculous in how much it over-emphasizes
00:07:23.180 the need to help women. There's an entire department dedicated to the status of women,
00:07:28.960 which I find could be completely condescending. The fact that there needs to be a special government
00:07:33.560 department just to make sure that somehow women are being treated properly. It assumes that women
00:07:39.840 are inferior, that we need special government programs and special government help just to make
00:07:45.720 sure that we're treated fairly and equally. I find that completely paternalistic and condescending
00:07:52.220 towards women. I think that that department should be completely done away with.
00:07:56.980 And one thing that I will mention that I like, I hadn't talked about this before, but the
00:08:03.320 Conservatives this summer made a pledge to introduce non-refundable tax credits to new
00:08:09.440 mothers and fathers. So when you're in maternity leave or parental leave, you get benefits from the
00:08:15.020 government. Currently, they're taxable. So the Conservatives will make those non-taxable,
00:08:19.080 which is helpful. As a new parent myself, as a new mom myself, I think that every dollar helps.
00:08:24.540 And so the idea that you wouldn't be having to pay taxes on those benefits is definitely something
00:08:29.720 that can help a lot of moms and dads out there. The new Democrats have also released something about
00:08:37.260 what they would like to do for women. This year, once again, they are promising universal,
00:08:43.580 affordable non-profit health care right across the country, sorry, child care across the country. So
00:08:48.160 the NDP wants to set up government-run daycares, which I would not be for. Just personally,
00:08:53.660 I would never put my child into government daycare. And, you know, it doesn't really work for a lot
00:09:00.920 of Canadians. It only really works if you live in a big city where there is a child care facility
00:09:06.660 nearby and that you happen to work like regular nine to five hours. So it really only helps people
00:09:11.840 who live in big cities and people who work office jobs, nine to five jobs, which I imagine that many,
00:09:17.580 many, many mothers out there across Canada and fathers don't fit into that mold. So it's kind of
00:09:22.440 like a one-size-fits-all approach that doesn't really work for a lot of parents. Whereas the
00:09:26.660 conservative plan here would help everyone because everyone gets those tax-free benefits,
00:09:35.040 which just puts more money into the pockets of mom and dad. So there's another story here.
00:09:42.380 I'll just quickly go through on Radio Canada, which is the French CBC. And again, it says,
00:09:48.440 why, set up to fail, why women still don't win elections as often as men do in Canada. And then
00:09:53.560 they just have a whole bunch of sort of people analyzing and trying to figure out what it is.
00:09:59.200 You know, of course, the reason for this is just simply that the women who go into politics might
00:10:04.780 not have the same kind of electability as the men. It's almost like random. It just depends on
00:10:12.220 what women are running, what men are running, what riding they're in. I think that just looking at it
00:10:17.040 a hole and saying that men do better in elections than women is just missing so much of the picture.
00:10:22.280 And it's like watering people down to just one characteristic. I'm a woman. Nothing else
00:10:28.500 about me matters. My experience, my background, my ability to speak publicly, to talk about public
00:10:34.660 policy issues, my electability, my likability, all these things are ignored. And it's just boiled down
00:10:40.200 to man, woman, which is just really silly and nonsensical. All right, let's move on to the
00:10:46.060 next issue here. Again, like I said, the Canadian media want voters to believe that the two most
00:10:50.460 important issues in this election are feminism and climate change. So here's another story in the
00:10:56.460 Canadian press here. It's in the HuffPo again, but the story, it's a wire service story. So it's
00:11:01.920 going to appear in newspapers all over Canada. And here's the headline here. Canadian voters must
00:11:08.380 treat climate change as if it's a war, leading activists say. Okay, here we go. So we have David
00:11:15.500 Suzuki and Stephen Lewis, who are planning to do campaign events across Canada during the election
00:11:21.400 this year. And they are trying to raise the alarm bell, ring the alarm bell, get people nervous,
00:11:27.180 you know, create this sort of urgency, saying that Canada needs to confront climate change,
00:11:34.840 and they need to treat it as if, treat the situation as if Canada were at war against greenhouse
00:11:40.720 gases. Now, just right off the top, I find this story super ironic, because keep in mind that it's
00:11:46.520 left-wing advocates, it's people like David Suzuki and Stephen Lewis, it's people like NDP members,
00:11:52.280 who are always against war, they always lead the anti-war efforts, they were against the war in Iraq,
00:11:56.980 they were against even the bombing of ISIS. NDP was advocating that the Conservatives at the time
00:12:02.040 withdraw its bombing campaign against ISIS. So they don't even want us to go to war against a
00:12:08.600 group as horrendous as ISIS. And yet now they want us to pretend that we are at war against greenhouse
00:12:14.380 gases. So when Canada's in a real war, they don't like it. But then they want to create this like
00:12:18.720 fictitious fake war against greenhouse gases and against basically our own society. And we're supposed
00:12:25.420 to get all excited about that. So I don't know, the story is just sort of nonsense about how
00:12:30.740 they are, you know, treating, they want, they want to treat Canada. Basically, they want us to pretend
00:12:37.260 that we're at war against ourselves, because really, greenhouse gases are a outcome of our
00:12:42.720 civilization of our industry of our resources. And every time you do anything from using your
00:12:48.180 smartphone to getting in your car to turning on your lights, everything we do is powered by
00:12:52.680 greenhouse gases. So for us to go to war against our own actions, in order to basically just scare
00:12:58.560 everybody to have everybody just afraid that the world is going to end if we don't completely change
00:13:03.800 our lifestyle. That's the agenda of these far left activists and the mainstream media is
00:13:10.260 legitimizing it, treating like treating it not not like it's something that we should be skeptical of
00:13:14.980 or something that's very absurd. You know, there's not a lot of skeptical reaction in this piece.
00:13:20.100 It's just talking about how it's, you know, a legitimate effort, a legitimate campaign
00:13:24.300 effort. And, you know, we should take it seriously, according to the Canadian press.
00:13:31.680 Really, I think that voters should be a lot more skeptical of this kind of stuff. When you have
00:13:35.140 alarmist people who want us to pretend that we're at war against ourselves, we should be very skeptical.
00:13:41.220 These kind of alarmists, by the way, are often wrong. And actually, there's a story this week that
00:13:45.980 was completely ignored by the mainstream media, not surprisingly. But here it is, climate scientists
00:13:51.760 admit their models are wrong. This kind of stuff happens every now and then, where you have a big
00:13:57.360 UN report come out talking about how, you know, we need to be urgent, talking about weather models,
00:14:03.680 how global warming is worse than ever. And that gets a lot of press, it gets a lot of media attention.
00:14:09.040 And then, like, a couple weeks or months later, they'll kind of quietly put out another report,
00:14:13.820 saying that, oops, we were wrong, our numbers were wrong, the modeling was wrong, and it's not quite
00:14:19.740 as bad as we said. That second news piece never really gets the same attention as the original
00:14:25.000 report. And it looks like that's what's happened again here. So we have some climate scientists who
00:14:31.600 authored a peer review paper that acknowledged that their climate models were wrong. And, of course,
00:14:36.600 the climate models over-exaggerated the temperature changes and the trends. Again, this happens with
00:14:42.540 some frequency, and the media never quite covers it with the same, you know, furiousness as they do
00:14:48.420 the initial reports. And so if we were to just leave it to the media, leave it to people like David
00:14:53.700 Suzuki, they want us to believe that our planet is going to be gone, that the world is going to end
00:14:58.740 in like 11 years if we don't act now. It's complete, you know, alarmism, and we should treat it with a lot
00:15:05.440 more skepticism. And, you know, contrary to what the media are saying, feminism and global warming are
00:15:12.100 not the two most important issues in Canada right now. I would say they're not, again, not even the
00:15:17.200 top 10. You have issues like, I think, taxes and pocketbook issues are the major issues that Canadians
00:15:22.380 are worried about right now. Immigration and illegal immigration, the huge spike in asylum seekers,
00:15:27.720 the number of illegal immigrants in Canada. That's a huge issue I'm hearing. A lot of people talk about
00:15:33.060 the economy in general, Canadian unity, and as well as government ethics, the ethics of the
00:15:39.520 prime minister and his actions and the actions of several high-ranking officials in the government.
00:15:44.620 Those are the core issues that Canadians are going to be voting on. And this idea that they're pushing
00:15:49.200 in the mainstream media that it's really feminism and climate change, I just think that misses the
00:15:54.400 boat and it is wrong. So let's move on. Just one final story I want to talk about quickly here.
00:16:00.680 There were reports, everyone's sort of talking about this on social media right now. There were
00:16:05.440 reports in an Arab newspaper earlier this week that said that Canada was going to take 100,000
00:16:10.460 Palestinians as part of a peace deal that's being negotiated right now in the Middle East.
00:16:16.840 The report said that Canada would receive 100,000 Palestinians from Lebanon and Syria,
00:16:21.620 and that Spain would be taking 16,000 Palestinians from Lebanon. And the story was picked up by the
00:16:30.040 Jerusalem Post, which is a very reputable news source in Israel. And basically it was quoting
00:16:37.000 Palestinian sources, so people within Palestinian factions, so like leaders and officials within
00:16:43.780 Palestinian faction, claiming that this was the case. Now, the Canadian government and Justin Trudeau
00:16:49.800 very quickly dismissed it and said it was disinformation, it was not true, not accurate.
00:16:54.780 This Jerusalem Post story has an update quoting a Canadian official, basically just saying that,
00:17:00.740 you know, it's important that people rely on accurate information before starting their
00:17:06.400 journey. There's no special programs currently being considered to resettle people from
00:17:11.420 Lebanon or Syria. So the government of Canada is completely denying this while reports from the
00:17:18.900 Middle East are saying that this is the case. It's all part of a big peace deal that's being
00:17:23.800 negotiated right now, led by Donald Trump. Trump is calling it the deal of the century.
00:17:30.180 And we're supposed to hear more about it later this month. It's really interesting. The government
00:17:35.280 was really quick to jump all over this. There's a lot of people on social media saying anyone that
00:17:42.020 was posting this was pushing fake news. You know, again, the Jerusalem Post is a very reputable
00:17:47.180 source. And you have to wonder, like, what is the origin of this story? Why is it that Palestinian
00:17:52.940 leaders are saying this to be true? And the Canadians are denying it? You have to wonder,
00:17:58.500 you know, what what kind of conversations are going on behind closed doors? Remember,
00:18:02.300 the last liberal prime minister, Jean-Claude Chen, went to Israel to be part of these peace talks.
00:18:09.060 And he kind of spontaneously announced that Canada was going to be taking 15,000 Palestinian refugees
00:18:16.140 at the time. And that had not been previously announced or discussed at all. So these things
00:18:21.700 sort of tend to just come out, you know, quickly. But the Canadians are very much denying that this
00:18:28.180 is the case. You know, part of the part I do applaud the Canadian government for kind of,
00:18:34.500 you know, clarifying the issue right away and trying to correct false stories, because, you know,
00:18:39.760 sometimes people, for instance, if you're a Palestinian living in Lebanon or Syria, and you see the report,
00:18:45.040 you might get the idea that, hey, I should just go to Canada, I should just, like, get on a plane
00:18:49.360 and go, and they're going to accept me. So it's good that the Canadian government is dispelling
00:18:54.240 the rumor. But you have to sit like you have to look at why these kind of misinformation stories
00:18:59.340 get generated in the first place. Someone speaking out of turn? Or is it just sort of the general,
00:19:04.740 you know, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is known for being very welcoming of refugees as part of his
00:19:10.120 image? That's who he's built himself to be. Look at his tweets from January 2017, telling persecuted
00:19:17.380 people to come to Canada, saying Canada would welcome them. Or another tweet that was put out
00:19:21.980 a couple months later by the Prime Minister, basically saying anyone and everyone was welcome
00:19:26.900 to come to Canada, welcome to come to Canada, which is not true. Canada has very strict immigration
00:19:32.060 rules and a very stringent review process before anyone is allowed to come. So the perception
00:19:38.120 that gets pushed around and these rumors and these hoaxes that get spread that people
00:19:42.560 should come to Canada, they do have an origin. I would argue that the origin in this case
00:19:46.860 comes from the Prime Minister's own image and his own insistence on putting these messages
00:19:53.120 out and really making it unclear as to what Canada's actual immigration policy is. Remember
00:20:00.440 after that infamous tweet that he put out in January 2017, there were legitimate news stories
00:20:05.500 all over the world that actually thought that Canada had a policy of accepting refugees.
00:20:11.280 People thought that Trudeau was announcing some kind of a policy change that anyone who
00:20:14.780 was being rejected or deported from the US was welcome to come to Canada. So the origin
00:20:20.440 of that fake news and those rumors was the Prime Minister himself who made it very unclear
00:20:25.400 as to what Canada's immigration policies were. So I think that's something that we should
00:20:29.460 keep an eye on this through some post story. Again, the Canadian government claims, Canadian
00:20:34.640 officials claim it's totally untrue. But I do wonder where that where the origin of that
00:20:39.740 story is and what, you know, what is being said in closed doors, you know, in those in those
00:20:46.140 peace talks over there. So I'm going to leave it at that. Thank you so much for tuning in
00:20:51.240 this week. Again, if you like the video, don't forget to share it, like the page and go check
00:20:55.460 out True North. The website is tnc.news. Thank you so much. Have a great weekend. Bye.