Juno News - May 02, 2022


The Trudeau government wants to decide what you see on the news


Episode Stats

Length

24 minutes

Words per Minute

192.37138

Word Count

4,724

Sentence Count

238


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 What are qualified Canadian journalism outlets and why has the Canadian government put itself
00:00:04.840 in charge of deciding what you get to see for your news? I'm Candice Malcolm and this is the
00:00:08.720 Candice Malcolm Show. Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. So we've been
00:00:24.440 talking in recent days and weeks about the new legislation being put forth by the Trudeau
00:00:29.380 government and how it restricts our ability to speak freely as Canadians. It impacts our free
00:00:34.920 speech as well as freedom of the press and today I wanted to look specifically at Bill C-18 and
00:00:41.560 discuss how it impacts the news that you see. So it's called the Online News Act and part of this
00:00:48.380 legislation is designating certain journalism outlets as qualified Canadian journalism outlets. So in
00:00:55.180 order to be approved by the government, we've learned, you have to be approved by a small board
00:01:00.460 put together by the Trudeau government. So I want to go back to a Twitter thread put out by Jesse Brown.
00:01:06.060 Jesse Brown is the publisher and editor-in-chief over at Candleland. We put out a request to Jesse
00:01:11.060 to see if you'd want to come join the podcast and discuss what he's found. He hasn't gotten back to
00:01:15.940 us. If he does, I'd be happy to have him on the show. But Jesse Brown writes this. He says,
00:01:20.380 in 2020, the Trudeau government started paying ongoing subsidies to newspapers. It was a trip
00:01:26.320 into the unknown. How did government decide which papers to bail out and which to let die? What about
00:01:31.760 independence of the press? Big questions. Now there are two years of answers threads. So this is a
00:01:37.500 thread that Jesse put together back on April 4th. So he continues. He writes, meet the five people who
00:01:42.860 decide which news orgs are qualified Canadian journalism outlets, which are known as QCJOs. It's a
00:01:50.160 board of news experts, academics and retired journalists paid by government to read articles
00:01:55.320 from every news organization that applied and decide which are up to the snuff. So here we see the five
00:02:01.160 people who are appointed to this Trudeau government board. And as you can see from this map, we have
00:02:06.600 four people from eastern Canada. Looks like two from Quebec, one from Ottawa, which is almost basically
00:02:12.440 Quebec, and one from the Maritimes. You have no one from the entire center of the country, no one from
00:02:17.940 the from the prairies, no one from the west, one person from Vancouver. So really not a very balanced
00:02:24.880 organization here regionally, if you ask me. But these are the people who determine whether or not
00:02:30.640 you are qualified. So Jesse continues, he says, in year one of the media bailout, the board passed
00:02:36.200 judgment on 159 news organizations. In June, they released their first annual report. So how many news
00:02:43.080 orgs from the 159 got in? Which ones? How much money did they get? Also, who got rejected and why? And so he
00:02:51.060 shows a screenshot from the annual report shows the statistics. So between March 2020 and March 2021,
00:02:57.060 the board has received and returned to the CRA, a total of 159 requests for recommendation. Of those 157
00:03:04.860 recommendations were QCJO designated applications, and two were rejected. Okay, so so two were rejected, 157 were
00:03:14.300 approved. But as Jesse continues, he says they aren't telling. The names of the news organizations currently
00:03:19.360 funded by taxpayers is a secret. The amounts they receive are a secret. The names of those rejected are a secret. And
00:03:25.740 the reasons why they were rejected are a secret. The board meets in secret. There are no videos online of their
00:03:31.940 meetings. No minutes can be read. Canadian newspapers said that they would die without government aid.
00:03:37.060 This board decides which ones qualify for it. Their rulings could mean life or death for a news org. And
00:03:41.960 it's all kept a secret. And he says, don't blame the board. It wasn't their choice. Governments chose to
00:03:46.360 put this under the CRA, where tax laws conceal the names of the beneficiaries. This broke an explicit promise
00:03:52.920 of transparency that Minister Pablo Rodriguez made to Evan Solomon. So here is a clip from CTV with Evan
00:04:00.920 Solomon, the journalist, asking the heritage minister, whether it be secret. And you can see Minister Rigo's response
00:04:06.920 right here. Here is that clip. Will you promise to make every decision this advisory group makes and the next group
00:04:14.160 makes transparent in terms of how your government decides who is what your government calls a qualified
00:04:20.760 journalistic organization and why they got the money? Will all that be transparent and no secrecy?
00:04:27.720 Absolutely. Absolutely. All the recommendations. And so they'll be making recommendations on a lot of
00:04:33.240 things. And some, some will maybe, anyways, 100% of the recommendations, as you were asking, will be, will be public.
00:04:42.120 It is because it's the whole intent of our action, making, making sure that this is done on an arm's
00:04:49.480 length basis, respecting the experts that sit on those panels. You know, the groups are consulting to
00:04:55.800 name experts, can name people in their organization, can name people outside of their own organization.
00:05:02.680 So we'll listen to them, we'll listen to what they say, and we'll definitely make it public. It's really
00:05:07.720 important that we do so and we will. And again, he says 100% transparency, the minister promised 100%
00:05:13.480 transparency. And yet, we know nothing. The only thing we know, as Brown later points out in his
00:05:19.720 Twitter thread, is that the only people who we know what funding they receive are publicly traded news
00:05:25.000 companies who have to disclose their funding. So Post Media got $6.9 million in tax credits. In 2020,
00:05:31.320 the Toronto Star got $6.8 million. But we don't know for other newspapers that were privately held,
00:05:36.120 such as the Globe and Mail. We do know about one organization that was rejected because they
00:05:41.640 themselves made it public. I'm talking about Rebel News. You may have heard the news last week that
00:05:46.120 Ezra Levant, Rebel Commander and Rebel News is suing the government after their outlet was denied to be
00:05:52.760 covered under this qualified Canadian journalism organization status. And so Levant tweeted this out,
00:05:59.640 he said that the board reviewed his content, they looked at a total of 276 news stories, it took them
00:06:07.400 over a year to do that. And the board, this is a quote from Ezra, they declared to get this, that quote,
00:06:13.800 less than 1% of the content meets the criteria for original news. So what a strange world we live in,
00:06:20.360 where the government is the one that gets to determine whether or not you're a journalist,
00:06:25.640 a qualified journalism organization, whether you qualify for funding, and there's a whole bunch of
00:06:30.360 other consequences that come with that. So joining me today on the podcast, I'm really pleased to
00:06:35.480 welcome my friend and colleague, Andrew Lawton. Andrew is a senior journalist here with True North,
00:06:40.920 and he is the host of The Andrew Lawton Show. Andrew, thank you so much for joining us today.
00:06:45.240 Andrew Lawton Hey, always a pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
00:06:47.800 Andrew Lawton So I mean, I don't think that you
00:06:50.520 will be a very big fan of this regime that's being brought in when it comes to the mix of
00:06:55.800 journalism and government. What do you think of this whole secret panel, and a government
00:07:01.320 appointed panel in the first place getting to determine who is and who isn't a journalist?
00:07:05.480 Andrew Lawton You know, I remember when the Global
00:07:09.080 Conference for Media Freedom took place back in July of I think 2019. And the government of Canada
00:07:16.840 was in the UK talking a big game about media freedom in Congo and media freedom in Venezuela
00:07:22.760 and media freedom in Iran without looking in the mirror and talking about its own very dismal record
00:07:27.720 to media freedom. And this isn't just the Liberal Party banning independent journalists from covering
00:07:32.520 its campaign events. But as we see here, it's the government getting into the business of deciding
00:07:38.520 what a journalist is. And this is something that is quite significant because it also means the
00:07:43.960 government is, as in the case of Rebel, also saying what isn't a journalist and that the idea of a
00:07:50.040 government designation, something that doesn't exist in Canada in the form of a license, is now
00:07:55.800 effectively coming in through the back door through this. Because if you're someone that is, let's just
00:08:00.600 look at the convoy as a great example, when you had police questioning people as to why they were
00:08:05.000 walking down the streets of Ottawa, and you could say, I'm a journalist, and they say, well, prove it.
00:08:09.560 And the response that I'd give is, well, there is no national license to be a journalist in Canada.
00:08:15.080 If you want to be a journalist, you just work as a journalist. But now when government is doing this,
00:08:19.880 that they're actually making themselves the gatekeepers. And it's very, very dangerous.
00:08:25.000 Well, I remember you telling the stories about how they were asking for like an official piece
00:08:28.360 of government ID. And to me, that's so Ottawa, that's such an Ottawa mentality that if you're something
00:08:32.920 official, you have some kind of an ID card. And basically what they were asking for was a
00:08:37.720 parliamentary press pass, which True North doesn't have. I mean, we can apply for temporary ones.
00:08:43.960 But this is really formalizing it. So what else? So if you become a qualified outlet, I know you
00:08:51.320 can apply for government funding. True North has chosen not to, because we don't want government
00:08:56.040 funding. We're not interested. So we haven't even bothered putting an application in. What else
00:09:01.160 is this qualification? What does it do? Aside from just government funding, does it have any other
00:09:08.360 powers? Does it have any other ability to, you know, prevent or enable journalists from practicing
00:09:15.080 in Canada? Well, not directly, but you have to look at the broader package of what the government is
00:09:21.480 trying to do here. And in the last parliament, there were three bills that significantly regulated
00:09:27.400 the internet. And a couple of those have come back already. Bill C-10 has come back as C-11.
00:09:32.200 One of the other ones came back as C-18, which is what we're talking about now. And then there was
00:09:36.920 also an online hate speech bill. And all of these combined basically expand the purview of the
00:09:43.720 government to regulate the internet and regulate internet content providers. And one of the things
00:09:49.000 that Minister Stephen Gilboa has said is that, well, we're not going to regulate news providers.
00:09:53.720 But the definition of what a news provider is, is now something that the government gets to decide.
00:09:59.720 So if they say, well, we don't recognize you as a news agency, all of a sudden the government is able
00:10:05.160 to regulate someone. So the government could regulate someone like Rebel News, for example,
00:10:09.880 as a group the government does not recognize as a legitimate journalism organization. And the reason
00:10:16.280 this also is significant is one of the things they're trying to do is force social media companies like
00:10:22.120 Facebook and Google to pay for news. So they want big tech to subsidize news.
00:10:27.480 Now I've got a lot of issues with big tech, but I have to defend the tech companies here
00:10:31.960 because news is a very small subset of what they do. And Facebook has been very transparent or meta
00:10:37.880 rather to its credit about this, as far as the small percentage of their market share
00:10:42.840 that is related to news content. They get a lot more money out of influencers and silly videos and cats and
00:10:49.880 memes and all of that than they do out of news. And what the government is saying that, no, no, no,
00:10:54.120 you need to pay these companies. So it isn't just about the tax credits. It's not just about evading
00:10:58.760 government licensing. It's also about forcing a pipeline of money from big tech companies to subsidize
00:11:05.240 journalism.
00:11:06.360 It's so funny where we're now in the situation where we're defending these tech companies,
00:11:11.320 because usually, you know, we're some of the biggest critics of them. Yeah. But I'm just reading
00:11:15.800 here that Bill C-18, the Online News Act, would ensure that news media and journalists receive
00:11:21.320 fair compensation for their work. So it would require tech giants to make fair deals with outlets
00:11:27.400 for the news and information that is shared on their platform. It just seems, I mean, to me,
00:11:31.240 the idea that somehow the government, the Trudeau government thinks that it is the one that is
00:11:36.200 responsible for ensuring that journalists get fair compensation for their work. Like, I thought that
00:11:42.040 was the job of the market, right? It's like, if you're a competent journalist who is able to get
00:11:47.800 people to pay for your work and encourage people that there's value in your work, that's up to the
00:11:54.040 journalists, that's up to the consumer, that's up to the market. This whole idea that somehow Trudeau is
00:11:59.720 going to like valiantly step in and, you know, be the knight in shining armor to save these media outlets
00:12:06.680 is just sort of, to me, it seems so antiquated and out of touch. Andrew, to your point that most
00:12:12.200 of the people who have huge audiences on social media platforms, it's because they're doing something
00:12:17.560 fun and compelling, not because the government is forcing their hand. I'm just wondering, like,
00:12:27.000 do you think this is going to work? Do you think that somehow this is going to save outlets like
00:12:31.640 Post Media and Toronto Star and Globe and Mail from the fate that they've seen over the last
00:12:36.600 several years of just declining readership and declining profits? I know. I mean, you can,
00:12:42.920 the problem is they need a business model that is going to be modern. And unfortunately, the only
00:12:48.760 alternative that's being offered up by government and also by a lot of these outlets is the subsidy
00:12:54.840 model. That's basically it. I mean, when we say find a new model, we don't mean replace
00:12:59.960 advertising and subscriptions with government subsidy. We mean, be innovative, do what True
00:13:04.760 North is doing, do what Rebel is doing, do what Epoch Times is doing. I mean, there's a whole host
00:13:09.080 of independent media companies that have developed new models, yet newspapers have tremendous overhead.
00:13:15.640 They've got these giant, you know, multi-million dollar buildings and downtown spaces. They've got
00:13:20.440 real estate holding. I mean, all of this stuff, and it isn't viable. It isn't working at all. But the
00:13:25.240 answer to that is not to get government to bankroll it, when even that hasn't exactly stopped layoffs
00:13:31.800 for media companies. And interesting thing here about social media is that we are talking about
00:13:39.320 companies here that are not messing around in some ways, and they're bigger than the countries
00:13:45.000 that are passing these. I remember when Australia moved very aggressively to do a very similar thing
00:13:50.680 to what Minister Gilboa was doing. And there was a time when Facebook, in protest of this,
00:13:55.320 banned you from sharing a link to an Australian news website. And I know, for whatever reason,
00:14:01.240 my website had an Australian server. And there was a time until I got it sorted out where you couldn't
00:14:07.320 share a link to my website because Facebook thought I was an Australian, which may have been a
00:14:12.200 compliment. I don't know. But that was a very chilling thing, when all of a sudden you're trying
00:14:16.680 to share a link and you're getting the old New York Post Hunter Biden laptop treatment of like,
00:14:21.080 just the link will not post because Facebook has decided it's not worth the hassle. And I fear that
00:14:27.080 could happen in Canada. Any companies that are saying we want Facebook to subsidize us, I would say,
00:14:33.640 well, are you not posting your content on Facebook? Are you not using Facebook and Twitter
00:14:39.080 to amass an audience? I mean, you need them more than they need you.
00:14:43.000 Well, it's so funny, because we were talking about this, I remember when this,
00:14:47.160 because the media companies, the newspapers have been advocating for this for a long time. And it's
00:14:51.960 kind of funny, Andrew, I know, in the in the early days, when we were trying to get accredited for the
00:14:56.040 liberal campaign, to have you embedded as a journalist there back at the 2019 election,
00:15:01.080 they were saying, No, you guys can't come because you're not journalists, you're activists, right?
00:15:05.000 And you do advocacy or something like that, which we don't, but that's just sort of code,
00:15:10.200 their way of saying conservatives aren't welcome, basically, or conservative news outlets. But
00:15:14.760 anyway, at the same time, the newspapers were doing a real advocacy campaign to the Trudeau
00:15:19.240 government lobbying for them to get this kind of treatment. And, and, and one of the things was
00:15:23.960 that, you know, Facebook, everyone knows that Facebook and Google have sort of eaten the lunch
00:15:27.720 of the advertising company, you can you can, if you want to buy an ad for a small business,
00:15:31.240 you can target your audience so much better on Facebook and Google, you can reach the exact type of
00:15:36.280 person where that you want. Whereas if you put an ad in a newspaper, you know, it goes to everybody,
00:15:41.000 and most of those people won't even pay any attention to your, to your ad, and you're not
00:15:46.200 going to get good bang for your buck. So Google and Facebook do a much better job with advertising
00:15:51.640 than these newspaper companies. But the idea was, oh, you know, people can share our content for free
00:15:57.000 on Facebook, you go to like almost any link shared by the Toronto Star. And it's like the only
00:16:02.600 ones sharing it are the Toronto Star. So somehow the Toronto Star wants to be compensated for the
00:16:08.360 fact that they're sharing their own news story on Facebook. And then it's wild, because that's
00:16:13.560 basically what this, what this bill does is making sure that Facebook and Google pay these companies
00:16:20.120 for every time their link is shared online, even though they, frankly, they don't get shared that
00:16:25.000 much. A lot of the stuff they put out isn't that interesting, people aren't that, you know,
00:16:29.320 interested in sharing this kind of stuff. I wonder, you mentioned the whole Australia thing,
00:16:33.560 and how in Facebook, Facebook kind of just flex their muscles and said, like, we don't have to do
00:16:37.960 this, because all we have to do is shut you down, you have no recourse. Do you think that the tech
00:16:43.960 companies are going to go along with this? Because all of this legislation says we've modeled after
00:16:48.440 Australia, when I hear that, I kind of laugh, because I think the Australia legislation was a failure,
00:16:53.640 like, they introduced this legislation, Facebook flexed by just completely shutting off all the
00:16:58.920 news stories, like you mentioned. And then Australia had to go in and rejig and rewrite
00:17:03.480 their legislation, so that it wasn't as aggressive, because Facebook slapped it down so hard. So
00:17:08.360 I have a hard time imagining that the big tech companies in Silicon Valley will go along with
00:17:14.040 a government kind of trying to meddle in their business metal with their algorithm,
00:17:17.720 tell them they have to pay. Once they do this, it sets a precedent that they're going to have to do
00:17:21.560 this for all kinds of other governments. What do you think?
00:17:24.280 Yeah, that's certainly the concern is that all of a sudden, and again, these companies
00:17:28.040 have invested considerably in government relations and lobbying. So they are engaging with government
00:17:33.800 on this. And I know they're probably trying to exact concessions behind the scenes here.
00:17:38.280 And again, how powerfully they're going to be able to do that, we don't know. Governments
00:17:42.120 are committed more to ideology right now. They want to be able to say they're saving local news and saving
00:17:47.640 journalism in all of this. But the result of it is that you have a journalism industry that is
00:17:52.520 entirely dependent on government. And even if, I mean, this is why it's so brilliant, because
00:17:57.640 government can pass a bill that makes Facebook and Google and Twitter and whatever subsidize
00:18:03.720 news outlets, but it's government that's claiming the credit. It's government that's doing it without
00:18:08.600 actually having to shell out the money. And they're saying, no, no, no, we're not subsidizing,
00:18:13.000 we're not paying, but we're saving, we're saving media. And in doing so, that is going to be very
00:18:19.480 difficult for the next government to take away. And we even saw in the last election in September,
00:18:25.560 Aaron O'Toole, and we can have a different discussion about the why, but Aaron O'Toole was
00:18:29.720 very reticent to say, we're going to rip up the $600 million media bailout and CBCD funding, because
00:18:35.800 it becomes very difficult once government has decided to establish some pot of money for something
00:18:41.080 for another government to go in and take that away. Which is why you never see the rollback
00:18:45.720 of government policies and that you're right. I mean, I hate to give Trudeau any credit,
00:18:50.040 but it's the brilliance of his campaign. And you can go back because in 2015, Andrew,
00:18:54.680 the Trudeau government pledged to quadruple the cut that had been made by the Harper government. So,
00:19:01.080 so I think Harper cut 150 million and Trudeau came back with like 500 million or something like that
00:19:08.600 in additional funds. So he basically won that election in part by bribing the CBC saying,
00:19:13.640 if you elect me, you'll get all this money. If you elect the other guy, you won't and you could
00:19:17.640 lose your job, which puts a journalist in a direct conflict of interest where their,
00:19:21.880 their livelihood could potentially be at stake. That was, they were so successful in 2015 doing
00:19:26.840 that. They brought out the same playbook in the 2019 election, but made it much, much broader with
00:19:32.360 the newspaper bailout because Andrew Scheer, the conservative leader was opposed to it. So,
00:19:36.760 so all of a sudden, you know, you have journalists covering an election where their jobs could
00:19:41.800 potentially be at stake. How could anyone be fair in that scenario? How could you provide fair coverage?
00:19:46.680 And, and, and then now we're in a situation where they're all on essentially the government dole. I
00:19:51.240 mean, to me, it's wild. It's such a conflict of interest. There is no free press in Canada when you
00:19:56.760 have the government this entangled in it. I mean, Andrew, you've worked in newsrooms,
00:20:01.560 you've worked in legacy media, uh, in the past. Why is it that so many journalists are just sort
00:20:07.880 of complacent and they barely cover this and they don't think it is seem to think it's a big deal.
00:20:11.640 Um, they're allowing a government takeover of the free press in this country.
00:20:15.800 Yeah. And, and I think a lot of them are, I mean, there are good people I've worked with in mainstream
00:20:21.640 media newsrooms that, that I think, no, well, I'm not affected by this. I'm not going to, uh,
00:20:27.320 subsidize. I'm not going to, you know, write favorably about the government because they've
00:20:30.760 done this. So they don't see the broader implication. I mean, in every other space,
00:20:33.960 the illusion of a conflict of interest is just as dangerous as a genuine conflict of interest.
00:20:39.400 And, and I think there's a challenge in, in how the newsrooms themselves are. I mean,
00:20:43.080 when the national news media council or whatever it's called has advocated for this,
00:20:47.400 they have had coordinated campaigns where the front pages, literally the front pages of all
00:20:52.520 mainstream media newspapers are instead a letter to the government saying, do this,
00:20:57.560 implement this policy. And again, if, if you were to have to go back to our previous exchange about
00:21:03.640 a party wanting to roll that back, if you were to have a party in you, let's say 2025 or 2029 or
00:21:09.880 whatever saying we're campaigning on, on rolling this back. Well, how are those newspapers going to
00:21:14.520 respond during the election? Is there going to be a, a big letter on the front page of newspapers
00:21:20.200 telling people why this policy is wrong? So the, the newspapers themselves have become the advocates,
00:21:27.000 even if the individual journalists aren't, and that can't not, uh, filter down to the coverage that
00:21:32.360 people are reading. Well, that's why I find it so funny and amusing that they would call us,
00:21:37.000 you know, activists. And they would say that we engage in advocacy when they literally,
00:21:41.080 you know, that they're pushing for specific legislation. True North would never do that
00:21:45.800 kind of stuff. And for sure. I mean, who knows what kinds of stories are buried or killed or,
00:21:51.320 or what, you know, I mean, just as an example, uh, it was a U S publication,
00:21:56.840 Time magazine that first reported that Justin Trudeau was wearing blackface and almost immediately
00:22:01.480 a bunch of Canadian outlets put out follow-up stories that they had other pictures. So they were just
00:22:05.560 holding, it was like the middle of an election. I think it was CTV and maybe the global mail or
00:22:09.720 something. Global had another one that they had not done anything with. Global. Yeah. They were,
00:22:14.200 and they were just holding it. And so it's like, okay, well, we might as well release this now to
00:22:17.960 someone. It's like, what, what else do you have that you're not reporting? Because for whatever reason,
00:22:23.240 you've justified to yourself that it's not in the public interest. Again, I think we're, we're heading
00:22:27.640 down a pretty, I mean, we're already there. We're already in this weird dystopian world where independent
00:22:32.760 journalists are deemed to be activists like the rebel, like true north. Um, whereas the actual
00:22:39.320 legacy media outlets are doing advocacy, successfully lobbying the government, getting
00:22:44.120 money from it. And then they create this club where they, they lock themselves out. So I guess,
00:22:48.760 final question here, Andrew, uh, what does this mean for all that's like true north? What does this
00:22:52.760 mean for organizations like the independent press gallery? I think it means, well, I mean, for the
00:22:58.120 independent press gallery, I think it means there needs to be a counterbalance to this. And I've
00:23:02.200 always been very, very impressed, not just as a counterbalance to the parliamentary press gallery,
00:23:07.000 but even to the national news media council and to these institutions that are advocating for more
00:23:12.440 of a relationship between government and the press and more of a financial relationship. And I think
00:23:18.040 for outlets like true north, it means that we have to be able to just continue doing what we're doing.
00:23:23.240 I mean, what government is trying to do is, as you mentioned earlier, Candace, manipulate the market.
00:23:27.960 They're trying to create a business model to keep these things going, but they're only doing that
00:23:32.920 because these outlets are, are in a very bad place otherwise. And I think the fact that we are growing
00:23:39.000 and hiring an independent journalist, I mean, the Western standard has been on a hiring spree in the
00:23:43.800 last couple of months. And while they are a competitor in some way, I'm actually quite pleased to see
00:23:48.440 growth in independent media in general. So I think eventually it may take some time,
00:23:52.680 but the audience is going to have the final say on this.
00:23:55.400 Well, you're right. And, and the idea that during an election, you know, if, if the conservative
00:24:00.120 leader comes out and says, we're not going to renew this. And all of a sudden you have front page
00:24:03.800 ads in newspapers. I just think that that, you know, further drives people away from legacy media.
00:24:09.000 It'll drive people to independent media. Cause it's like, how can you trust these guys are not
00:24:12.840 even pretending to be objective anymore? Well, Andrew, I always appreciate your perspective and your
00:24:18.360 opinion. Thank you so much for joining the show.
00:24:20.280 Thank you.
00:24:21.320 All right. That's Andrew Lawton host of the Andrew Lawton show here on true north.
00:24:24.680 I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is the Candice Malcolm show.