Rebel News Podcast - CBC’s investigation into “misleading YouTube video” was an unethical smear

00:00:00.000 Hello, my rebels. Today is, I take you through a very weird story of the CBC. I know that doesn't

00:00:05.760 narrow it down, but this one's special. They have this huge, rambling, thousand-plus-word rebuttal

00:00:11.700 of some video on YouTube. I mean, it had 50,000 views, whatever, but it was such a nothing,

00:00:18.740 but because it dared to criticize the precious one, Justin Trudeau. Oh, my God, did the entire

00:00:24.760 CBC go to work rebutting it? The crazy thing is, they spend thousands, over a thousand words

00:00:30.380 rebutting it, but they never actually show you the video itself. I will. So you've got to watch

00:00:35.520 today's. You're listening on a podcast, but you know you can watch these podcasts, too. I mean,

00:00:40.380 it's a TV show, and it's eight bucks a month to subscribe, but you get a show every day from me,

00:00:45.940 and you get one once a week from Sheila Gunn-Reed and David Menzies. It's eight bucks a month,

00:00:50.280 sorry, eight bucks a month, or that's 80 bucks a year if you buy it all in advance, and you even

00:00:54.260 get a bigger discount if you use the coupon code PODCAST. So, I mean, especially today when we're

00:01:00.040 showing you the vid, you really got to see it with your own eyes. So please go to therebel.media

00:01:05.220 slash shows to subscribe. Okay, here's the podcast.

00:01:10.540 You're listening to a Rebel Media Podcast.

00:01:13.740 Tonight, the CBC rolls out its election war room on behalf of the liberals. They're turning the

00:01:19.140 propaganda up all the way. It's July 23rd, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.

00:01:24.260 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:01:29.540 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.

00:01:33.640 The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody

00:01:38.520 right to do so.

00:01:44.780 Once upon a time, oh, right until the moment Stephen Harper stepped down as Prime Minister

00:01:49.840 in 2015, once upon a time, the media party knew what its job was, hold the government

00:01:54.780 to account, speak truth to power, balance the mighty resources of the governing class by

00:02:00.300 shining a light of public scrutiny on them. Dissent was positively patriotic, and no form

00:02:05.660 of criticism of power was too rough. When an extremely rude bigot drove around in Alberta

00:02:12.380 with a truck with an extremely rude sign about Stephen Harper, the CBC championed him as

00:02:18.360 a free speech hero. Gee, they don't do that a lot with Trudeau, do they? They even told

00:02:22.900 people how to chip in to that guy's legal defense fund. And when not enough people were disparaging

00:02:28.120 Stephen Harper crudely enough, naturally, the CBC did it themselves. Remember this rant?

00:02:33.000 Stasi Steve, Hare Harper. That's implying that Stephen Harper was a Nazi. But hey, it's okay

00:02:40.340 because journalism or something. Remember this?

00:02:42.580 So, help save poor Stasi Steve this season. God knows Hare Harper doesn't have enough sense

00:02:50.580 to save himself.

00:02:51.680 So that's what the media used to do when Stephen Harper was Prime Minister, and the media was

00:02:56.240 even worse with Rob Ford, the late mayor of Toronto. I remember when the homepage of the

00:03:00.360 Toronto Star had a cell phone picture snapped by a source of Rob Ford walking into a Kentucky

00:03:06.580 fried chicken to buy lunch. That's all it was. He was just walking into a KFC. But this was a huge

00:03:12.020 gotcha moment for the Star because Ford had said he was trying to lose weight. And the Star's massive

00:03:17.880 network of informants caught Ford going to KFC. He's a liar! Resign, liar! The Star literally paid

00:03:24.640 cash to Ford's friends to record him secretly on their cell phones in private homes, in private

00:03:29.700 conversations. It was an absolute invasion of privacy. Nothing to do with this public conduct.

00:03:34.960 But hey, it was about holding government to account so the grubbier the better. That was then.

00:03:40.520 But under Justin Trudeau, the media has flipped sides. Now they hold the public to account on behalf

00:03:46.900 of the government. They hold independent media to account like us. The CBC, the media party demonize us

00:03:54.160 and any independent media. But really, it's you they want to regulate. Let me show you a bizarre

00:03:59.000 story on the CBC. Now that they've formally launched their pro-Trudeau election war room,

00:04:05.160 look at this. How a misleading YouTube video is stoking fears about Sharia law before the federal

00:04:12.300 election. And the sub-headline, video posted to Facebook groups that spread disinformation.

00:04:16.580 It's a huge story. I think the reporter must have worked on this for weeks. It goes on and

00:04:22.500 on and on. To do what? Holding some Facebook users to account for watching a video that they

00:04:33.500 have watched too? What, for having the wrong point of view or something? Here, let me read

00:04:37.220 this story. A short, grainy YouTube video circulating on social media purports to show evidence of

00:04:45.880 an imam claiming that if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is re-elected, he will institute Sharia

00:04:51.080 law, the legal code of Islam based on the Quran. So that's news? You know there are one billion

00:05:00.960 hours of YouTube watched every day, right? I mean, it is endless. It is unlimited. There

00:05:08.120 are lies and there are truths. There's jokes and satire. There's lonely people talking to

00:05:13.680 nobody. There's surprise celebrity stars. There's animal videos. There's a billion hours

00:05:19.000 a day. I'm not sure how that's even possible, but it is. And the CBC found something on the

00:05:24.580 internet they disagreed with. It's like that cartoon I showed you last week. Come to bed.

00:05:30.000 I can't. Why? It's important. Someone on the internet is wrong. It's a laugh when you or

00:05:35.480 I say that. It's fun for you and I to talk about things on the internet. That's what the

00:05:39.240 comment section is for on YouTube or Facebook or Twitter. It's just a big comment section.

00:05:44.620 We can mouth off if we like, but for a government journalist at the state broadcaster to spend

00:05:50.580 a week going deep on rebutting some video she didn't like very much. How weird is that?

00:05:57.820 Like I say, a normal journalist might want to, you know, hold powerful people to account

00:06:03.580 on behalf of citizens. Not in Canada. In Canada, the state broadcaster holds powerless people

00:06:10.600 to account, hold them to account for the government. The CBC is really a species of snitches, to be

00:06:18.000 honest. They're hall monitors. But let me read a little bit more. But the video was taken out

00:06:23.120 of context, according to the man featured in it. And it was created by Sandra Solomon,

00:06:28.580 known for her anti-Islam views. Oh, well then, if Sandra Solomon is known for her anti-Islam

00:06:35.660 views, then the video must be wrong.

00:06:38.620 I met Sandra Solomon once. She is known for her anti-Islam views. And I think she comes 0.99

00:06:44.940 by them honestly, though. She was born a Muslim and grew up in Islam. I wonder why the CBC never

00:06:51.980 mentioned that in this huge article. Don't you think it's relevant? Don't you think it's

00:06:56.580 important? It's like those women in that amazing video who were freed from ISIS. The first thing

00:07:01.560 they did, they all ripped off their niqabs to feel freedom, to feel the sun on their face. 0.98

00:07:08.140 It's relevant that they were under the yoke of radical Islam. Why would the CBC leave that part 0.99

00:07:14.960 out about Sandra Solomon? She grew up as a Muslim woman and has rejected Islam and especially its 1.00

00:07:20.420 treatment of women. Why would they hide her Islamic nature from viewers? Is it because they're trying to

00:07:26.060 paint her as some, I don't know, white supremacist or something? I put it to you that Sandra Solomon

00:07:32.020 knows more about Islam than anyone at the CBC does, both about Islam in theory, but more importantly,

00:07:37.320 Islam in practice, especially if you're a woman. They have a story about her being harassed by police.

00:07:47.580 Let me read that part. Sandra Solomon was investigated by Peel Police in March of 2018 for ripping out pages 0.98

00:07:53.700 of her Koran and placing them on windshields of cars parked outside an Islamic centre in Mississauga,

00:07:58.960 Ontario. At the time, police investigated behavior as possibly hate-motivated, but they did not lay

00:08:04.440 charges in the case because it was determined that no criminal offense has taken place,

00:08:08.860 Peel Police spokesman said. Again, why does the CBC keep it a secret that she herself was born Muslim

00:08:14.840 growing up on the Koran? Obviously, she's rebelling against it like some Catholics rebel against 0.83

00:08:20.180 Catholicism. Just for an example, why is she cast as a hate criminal when obviously she's railing 1.00

00:08:25.820 against what she thinks is a hateful book that choked her for however many years? Why would the

00:08:31.160 CBC even say she was investigated if no charges were ever brought? Why the smear? Because they're the

00:08:37.160 CBC. They're a smear machine. This will be a regular feature in the run-up to the election. So back to the

00:08:42.500 video that the CBC was correcting. What's funny about this extremely long article is that they never

00:08:47.660 actually show the video to you? I'm curious about it now. Aren't you? I mean, normally if something is

00:08:53.120 fact-checked, whoever's doing the fact-checking, they show you the thing and then they check it.

00:08:59.640 Why didn't that happen here? Again, it's very weird to fact-check some private citizen on a private

00:09:04.720 YouTube page. That's not the CBC's mandate. That's the Liberal Party's war room mandate. So Sandra

00:09:10.460 Solomon had no voice in the story. She's not quoted in the story. Her video has no voice. It can't speak for

00:09:16.280 itself. But the Muslim man featured in her video has a voice. Here, let me put some more of the CBC

00:09:23.060 propaganda to you, the rebuttal. And then I'm going to end actually by showing you what the CBC

00:09:27.820 doesn't show you, what they're correcting. The video itself includes a short section from a speech

00:09:34.080 about Islam delivered by Mufti Asim Rashid in Kamloops, BC in October 2017. It also features a

00:09:41.460 picture of Justin Trudeau praying in a mosque and ends on a clip of Trudeau championing diversity,

00:09:46.900 which is then covered up by a photo illustration of a small child wearing a Make Canada Great Again

00:09:51.380 hat. Okay, this is a really weird story. It sounds like a goofy video, but the CBC spent a week on

00:09:56.840 this. Here, here's some more. Reached by phone, Rashid was surprised to find that a clip of his speech

00:10:01.820 was circulating. I had no idea that someone would use that clip in that way, he said. Rashid told

00:10:06.360 CBC News that his comments on arbitration referred to the Ontario government, which had allowed

00:10:10.260 religious-based arbitration from 1991 until Premier Dalton McGuinty said in 2005 there will be no

00:10:15.720 Sharia law in Ontario. There will be no religious arbitration. The Liberals then passed an amendment

00:10:20.780 to the province's Arbitration Act. In fact, the CBC said, nowhere in the video does Rashid mention

00:10:28.160 Trudeau or the 2019 federal election. In fact, during the portion of the speech used in the

00:10:33.580 misleading video, Rashid said he was actually referring to the former Stephen Harper conservative

00:10:38.360 government. Okay, it's a bit of a ramble there, but the point is, according to the CBC, Sandra

00:10:44.460 Solomon is full of hate. She's a liar. I mean, the Muslim imam himself explained things, just accept 1.00

00:10:50.540 his explanation. And even if she is telling the truth about Sharia law, this Sandra Solomon liar, 0.90

00:10:56.500 well, it's Stephen Harper who was going to bring in Sharia law, people. Yeah, no, no, no. Sharia

00:11:03.020 courts, that was a project of the Liberals in Ontario that was thankfully stopped. Now, what

00:11:09.960 we're talking about here is a YouTube video. That's it. But you're not allowed to see it

00:11:15.060 because the CBC doesn't trust your ability to make up your own mind correctly. They want

00:11:20.160 to give you a thousand plus words of rebuttal, but they won't show you the actual video.

00:11:24.340 But, of course, they're going to take a run at Maxime Bernier. They hate him because he

00:11:30.760 talks about immigration and Islam and things like that. And it's also a warning to Andrew

00:11:34.620 Scheer, if you dare talk about immigration or Islam, we'll treat you this way too. Here's 1.00

00:11:39.700 what the CBC says.

00:11:41.860 Just this week, People's Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier accused Trudeau in a tweet of

00:11:46.440 having room in his party for people who want to institute Sharia law. In another tweet this

00:11:50.920 week, Bernier accused both Trudeau and conservative leader Andrew Scheer of pandering to people

00:11:55.500 who promote Sharia law.

00:11:58.280 I'm sorry, Maxime Bernier has nothing to do with this video other than the CBC hates him,

00:12:04.420 so they're just going to lump him in. Oh, and the Yellow Vest movement? This is quite a conspiracy

00:12:09.220 theory the Liberals are making here. I mean, they're tying together a YouTube video and Maxime

00:12:16.980 Bernier and the Yellow Vest and Stephen Harper. That is quite a theory. Some might even call

00:12:24.380 that fake news. But here's my favorite part of the story. You see that photo there? Here's

00:12:29.700 a poster. That's what they call it. Whereas it's obviously just a printed piece of paper

00:12:34.940 in a plastic sleeve. It's not a poster, but the CBC includes it. And here's how they caption

00:12:41.120 that. They say, this poster spreading disinformation about Trudeau was passed out during a Yellow

00:12:46.680 Vest protest in Alberta in January, named withheld by a request. But hang on, hang on, hang on.

00:12:51.280 What's the disinformation? Let's read that poster. What's the falsehood in it? Remove sovereignty.

00:12:59.740 That's what the UN does. Create divisions in Canada. Yeah, every pollster will confirm that's

00:13:05.980 happening, not just regionally. Trudeau demonizing Alberta in the West, but along grievance lines,

00:13:11.340 exacerbated by Trudeau's identity politics. Mass Muslim immigration. Yeah, that's happening. 0.99

00:13:18.300 If you look at the proportion of Muslim immigration, 50,000 from Syria alone. Obvious example. 0.99

00:13:24.740 Ruin the economy. Yeah, check. He's destroyed the oil patch and $100 billion worth of projects.

00:13:32.140 Canceled all the pipelines. He's done that. Massive debt.

00:13:35.980 Check. Money to the UN. Check, check, check. I'm sorry. I'm going through this. And not only is it

00:13:41.100 pretty factually accurate, but most of these things aren't even true or false. They're just

00:13:47.100 matters of opinion. They're conservative opinions, but they're opinions. And that's what the CBC hates.

00:13:53.320 It's like the anti-CBC, this little poster. How pitiful it is that the mighty state broadcaster with

00:13:59.120 $1.5 billion a year is going to war against some poor schmo on the street who printed out like a 1.00

00:14:05.700 poster and carefully put it in a plastic sleeve. Total cost of that, I don't know, 10 cents?

00:14:11.620 Cost of living rent-free in the CBC's minds? Priceless. What a strange story this is. But the

00:14:17.680 strangest part is the video itself isn't in there. No link to it, even with warnings. Now,

00:14:23.960 I found it fast enough by myself by Googling. I'm sure Trudeau will try to get it taken down from

00:14:28.500 YouTube. I want to show it to you in full. It's only about two minutes long. Most of it is that

00:14:33.880 speech by the imam in BC. No edits. It was a speech in 2017. And the last part of the video

00:14:39.980 is some opinions about Trudeau dressing in Muslim desert garb and saying the shahada. That's a Muslim

00:14:47.860 prayer that is actually the only requirement to convert to Islam. You say the shahada. The prayer

00:14:52.480 basically says there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger, his only messenger. 0.91

00:14:58.460 Trudeau has said that prayer. He says it. I don't believe he's a Muslim. I don't believe Trudeau has 1.00

00:15:03.760 any religion. I think he only worships himself. But I know that he said the shahada. It's a bit of a

00:15:10.480 dress up. I mean, he dresses up for everything. He's like an actor who actually means nothing. He just

00:15:15.220 loves the costume. So here's the video in full. This is by Sandra Solomon. This is not by me.

00:15:20.160 I wouldn't even show it to you. I don't I don't even think it's that that interesting or that well

00:15:26.040 produced. But my God, the CBC is obsessed with it. But they will not show it to you. So

00:15:30.640 here I will. Here's what we're talking about in full.

00:15:34.200 And what I said about the Canadian government, the Canadian government wanted the Muslims to be able

00:15:44.840 to regulate their own issues of marriage and divorce and set up systems of mediation and

00:15:50.960 arbitration to solve their problems amongst themselves through Sharia law so that it's not a 1.00

00:15:57.160 burden on the court system which is already so fall down. The Canadian government wanted people

00:16:04.040 like myself to sign off on custody cases where there was an allegation of parental abduction to verify

00:16:14.040 that is the parent who has taken the child off to that country. Are they Islamically authorized to do so or not? 0.76

00:16:22.680 Because there are many Muslim countries that would need to see that from a Muslim scholar.

00:16:27.960 That's what Sharia law is. And the government told us that we would like you to have this system and we would like to work on these initiatives.

00:16:38.760 At the Montreal mosque, Trudeau was photographed participating in a prayer ritual reserved for practicing Muslims

00:16:47.400 or those seeking admittance to the Islamic faith, the Maghreb Salah. Part of the prayer is called the

00:16:54.520 Sha'ada, which in Arabic means to testify to the truth that Allah is the one true God and Muhammad

00:17:02.120 is his one true prophet. We are a place that has figured out that diversity can be a source of strength,

00:17:10.680 not just a source of weakness.

00:17:15.400 And that's it. That's the whole thing. The first and most obvious point is the CBC seriously spent a thousand

00:17:23.080 plus words rebutting that. That wasn't even the thing. It was a clip of a speech and then a brief comment

00:17:29.400 about Trudeau dressing up like he's in Aladdin and saying the Shahada. The production value of the video,

00:17:35.160 very low. It was clearly homemade. True, 50,000 people have seen it, but so what? People watch a billion hours a day.

00:17:42.440 First off, what was actually false about the video? The Imam said what he said. Trudeau dressed how he dressed.

00:17:48.680 And he did say the Shahada. That's sort of all that's in there. What's disinformation about that?

00:17:54.040 What do the yellow vests have to do with it? What does Stephen Harper have to do with it? What does Maxine Bernier have to do with it?

00:17:57.960 Nothing, nothing, nothing and everything, because this is what the election campaign is going to be like.

00:18:02.840 Panicky, crazed left-wing activists pretending to be journalists screaming at ordinary Canadians for

00:18:08.680 discussing things they're not supposed to be discussing. This is the journalist behind this,

00:18:13.720 Andrea Belmar, but she's not really a journalist. I mean, she's a government journalist, but that's

00:18:19.640 more she's a hall monitor, telling other people what they can or can't do,

00:18:24.280 tattling on you if you say something she doesn't like. That report on Sandra Solomon was

00:18:29.640 journalistically unethical. It didn't quote Solomon herself. It misled viewers by hiding the fact that she was

00:18:34.600 actually born and raised a Muslim. It said she was investigated for a hate crime when, of course,

00:18:39.080 she wasn't charged at all. It's clearly a political setup. That's a smear. It smeared others, too.

00:18:43.800 Basically, the Trudeau CBC hate list. I'm shocked they didn't mention the rebel.

00:18:49.480 It wasn't journalism. It was politics paid for by taxpayers and laundered through the CBC.

00:18:54.120 Expect a lot more of it. That video by Sander Solomon on YouTube, it wasn't particularly

00:18:59.880 persuasive. It wasn't particularly newsworthy. It was pretty unobjectionable. I mean, the imam said

00:19:05.880 what he said. That video contained no hate, no call to violence, nothing really. It was just amusing,

00:19:13.800 just a point of view. And the CBC condemned it because you're only allowed one point of view,

00:19:21.000 just in Trudeau's. And as far as Sharia law coming to Canada goes, maybe Andrea Beaumont might want 1.00

00:19:27.960 to do some real journalism and actually report on the tens of millions of dollars Trudeau recently

00:19:32.760 announced that he's going to shovel into the enforcement of M103, the anti-Islamophobia motion.

00:19:39.240 But that would be too much real journalism, too much real work. And more to the point,

00:19:43.880 it doesn't help Trudeau in this election, does it? Maybe in that way, maybe Sander Solomon's right.

00:19:54.120 Stay with us for more.

00:19:55.000 Welcome back. Well, the last time we saw our next guest, it was an old blighty. Andrew Lawton of TNC.news

00:20:17.320 joined Sheila Gunn-Reed and me at the UK-Canada Media Freedom Conference. He joins us now via Skype.

00:20:23.960 You're back in London, Ontario. It's nice to see you. We've talked a little bit about that UK

00:20:29.000 experience. And we're back in Canada, which has more press freedom than the UK. But I think the

00:20:35.160 threat to our press freedom, Andrew, is as much from the stick of censorship, but it's also the

00:20:40.520 carrot of bailout money. Tell me the latest with, I understand there's a new bailout scheme,

00:20:46.440 an additional bailout fund that's being offered to Canadian journalists. What's the details?

00:20:50.520 Well, I'm still trying to sift through the full scope of this, but it appears like an expansion,

00:20:57.320 not just in terms of the dollar figure attached to bailing out media enterprises, but also

00:21:04.440 the definition of who qualifies for it. And this is very much an example of, I think,

00:21:10.360 moving the goalposts and perhaps a very politically motivated example, where you've got a number of

00:21:15.880 outlets from the guidelines that were released by the committee last week, outlets that are saying,

00:21:20.280 oh, we don't think we'd qualify under this. So by even talking about expansion, I think there's

00:21:25.240 a bit of damage control there of, okay, anyone we missed in the first round of defining this,

00:21:30.200 we're probably going to get in the second round. So I'm not optimistic that this is much more than

00:21:36.440 just an attempt at mending some of the frustration that media outlets who don't think they're eligible

00:21:43.880 are experiencing, which unsurprisingly are all of the independent outlets who I think are a lot more

00:21:49.320 deserving and probably a lot more in need of these funds than the big, you know, centralized corporate

00:21:55.240 media. You know, I have in front of me an article from Le Divoire, which is, of course,

00:21:59.720 a French language newspaper in Quebec. And it talks about a complaint by my old boss, and I know you

00:22:08.920 were on the Sun News Network for a bit, Quebecor. They looked at the government grants and said,

00:22:15.000 they said, hey, this benefits our competitor, La Presse. We want more. And so instead of saying,

00:22:21.720 oh, we'll make it more even handed, they're just adding more millions to the pot. And it's,

00:22:27.400 so it's actually new money. And basically, it depends on how connected your lobbyists are.

00:22:33.000 I mean, I like Quebecor, but I don't want my tax dollars going to

00:22:37.480 to pay them off because they're in some welfare contest with La Presse. I don't think any media

00:22:44.680 should be paid by Justin Trudeau. And here's another observation, and you were making this

00:22:48.760 to me just before we turned the camera on. The more and more money Canadian media takes from Justin

00:22:54.040 Trudeau, the more it seems they obsess over Donald Trump and his flaws, rather than inspecting our

00:23:01.320 own leader and his flaws. It's almost like for every hundred million dollars the media gets,

00:23:06.920 they'll drop one story about Trudeau and add one story about Trump. What do you think of that?

00:23:13.560 Well, obviously, the motivation is a bit unclear as to whether it's the bailout causing it. But

00:23:19.960 I do think that the whole problem with the bailout is that it forces, I think, any thinking Canadian

00:23:25.480 to question what impact, if any, that's having on coverage. Because he who pays the piper calls the

00:23:31.960 tune. And when hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing into media coffers, you have to question

00:23:37.080 everything that media outlet receiving the money does. And one trend that I've seen a fair bit of

00:23:42.520 in the last couple of years, but I'd say even more so now, is the media's incessant obsession on

00:23:48.920 Donald Trump, not just covering what Donald Trump says and does, irrespective of any Canadian

00:23:54.600 contact or context, rather, but even asking Canadian politicians what they think about Donald

00:24:01.800 Trump when we are, I think, three months to the day away from an election. And a notable example of

00:24:06.920 this, of course, is Trump taking aim at the so-called squad of Congresswomen in the US saying,

00:24:12.360 if you don't like what's happening in America, leave.

00:24:14.920 And irrespective of what one thinks of his tweet or tweets on that, I don't think anyone could argue

00:24:21.160 that Andrew Scheer's position on it is particularly relevant, nor is Justin Trudeau's. But again,

00:24:27.240 the media was putting to both of them, to Andrew Scheer and then separately to Justin Trudeau,

00:24:32.360 this idea of will you condemn Donald Trump's tweets? And of course, what they say, it doesn't

00:24:37.480 go far enough. So then the media reports on that. And when we're this close to an election,

00:24:42.600 and the stories are, in my view, distraction stories, there's a big problem with the caliber

00:24:48.840 of coverage here. Yeah. And it's not even a responsible question for a politician to ask.

00:24:52.840 You know, that's for pundits to ask an answer if you're obsessed with US minutiae. It was a domestic

00:24:58.360 political matter between two parties, asking the leader of the opposition of Canada, I mean,

00:25:03.360 put the shoe on the other foot, it would be weird if Canadian journalists or American journalists

00:25:08.200 asked Trump to weigh in on a spat between Trudeau and Scheer. It's just, it's just junk journalism.

00:25:13.880 I, um, I want to say I've got in my hand here the Le Devoir article, and it's translated in English.

00:25:19.880 I want to read one sentence from Pierre-Carl Pelletot of Quebec, or he was complaining that the money was

00:25:27.240 going to the pro-liberal press. But here's what he said, and I want to give the guy some credit.

00:25:30.760 He said, in addition to raising serious questions about the ability of journalists

00:25:36.520 to remain independent and free from economic and political influence, this concern is all the more

00:25:42.040 justified because the press has always supported the Liberal Party of Canada and its various leaders

00:25:46.920 since past decades. So I think Pierre-Carl Pelletot, the boss of Quebec Corps, understands the risk,

00:25:52.840 but his solution is just, give me money too. I don't see a lot of people calling for an end to

00:25:57.720 the bailout. Let me ask you about that. I see Andrew Coyne is grousing about this media bailout

00:26:04.360 in the papers, but his paper, the National Post, is going to take it, just like Andrew Coyne takes

00:26:10.440 money from the state broadcaster, the CBC. I don't see any principled objectors out there, Andrew. I

00:26:17.160 don't see anyone who could take the money not taking it. I see most journalists being silent about it,

00:26:22.920 a few of them noisily saying, I'm against this, as they cash their checks. I really think

00:26:29.480 mission accomplished for Trudeau. He's managed to corrupt the Canadian media, not with a stick,

00:26:34.360 but with a carrot. You know, I actually think that they're, I've seen a little bit of pushback

00:26:40.520 from journalists, although to be honest, they should be pushing back to their bosses, to the

00:26:45.560 publishers. And I don't know if these battles are happening quietly. I'm not seeing them unfold

00:26:49.800 publicly because it's their bosses, the media publishers in Canada, that are putting now

00:26:54.520 Canadian journalists in an untenable position where they have to be the ones that are writing.

00:27:00.440 And, you know, if editorial directives are coming down that, you know, go beyond just the typical

00:27:06.200 endorsement offer or editorials we see, then that's going to be an area where their integrity is going

00:27:11.320 to be called into question. And you and I talked months ago about the idea that I had put forward

00:27:16.280 that any journalist who's a member of Unifor should have to disclose that status in stories

00:27:22.680 they write about the election. The rationale for that being that Unifor has declared war

00:27:27.480 on Andrew Scheer and the Conservatives, effectively supporting the Liberals. So anytime there is some

00:27:33.720 connection or affiliation that could call into question the caliber of content, even if it's just

00:27:38.840 an optics one, we need to be asking, what are we doing to avoid that? And I'm not seeing a lot of that

00:27:44.600 here. What I would say is important is that we focus on the overall structure of this and the

00:27:51.960 existence of it as well. I mean, the Canadian Association of Journalists has put out lots of

00:27:56.760 critiques of the process, but critiquing the process doesn't go so far as to get at the real

00:28:04.600 crux of this, which is that this bailout shouldn't exist in the first place. So the discussion shouldn't

00:28:09.160 be, how do we do it? It should be, how do we stop it? Yeah. Yeah. Not enough voices saying that

00:28:14.280 because I think they know what their publishers would say. Publishers would say, well, we're going

00:28:17.480 to lay you off next week. So it's take this money or leave. And, and these journalists, you know,

00:28:23.480 journalists are the ultimate voyeurs. They, they are not the man in the arena. They, they're the critic.

00:28:29.400 As Roosevelt said, it's not the critic who counts. And it's very easy for journalists to be

00:28:35.080 principled when they have no skin in the game. As soon as they get skin in the game,

00:28:38.920 they throw all their principles away. And I say that as a member of the journalistic class,

00:28:42.680 and I'm proud that we don't take dough up from the government. I know you don't either, Andrew.

00:28:46.360 I want to ask you about one last thing, and thanks for letting me pepper you with

00:28:48.920 all these different subjects, but I think they're all a little bit related. Today, I took our viewers

00:28:53.560 through a CBC fact check story of a Facebook video made by Sandra Solomon. It wasn't particularly

00:29:01.080 viral, had about 50,000 views, wasn't particularly controversial. She actually never makes an 0.73

00:29:05.800 appearance in it. It's just a clip of an imam in BC talking about Sharia law. And then like a 30

00:29:12.280 second commentary about Justin Trudeau dressing in desert garb and saying a Muslim prayer called the

00:29:18.200 Shahada. So, you know, I didn't think it was that interesting a video. It was shared a little bit on

00:29:23.800 Facebook and Twitter, but no big deal. And the CBC did this enormous fact check debunking of this

00:29:30.120 private citizens online video. And I just thought the whole thing was really, really weird.

00:29:36.440 Instead of fact checking the government, the CBC was fact checking citizens criticisms of the

00:29:42.520 government. That truly feels like a state broadcaster. I mean, it wasn't even that

00:29:47.240 interesting a video. It wasn't that well produced. It wasn't, it wasn't that well watched. I was just

00:29:52.280 thinking, what is going on when the CBC is going after individual private citizens for Facebook posts?

00:29:58.040 What's going on? Well, one of the big problems here is that the word of the day, I think this year,

00:30:04.280 is disinformation. You've got newsrooms that are hiring disinformation reporters. You've got

00:30:09.560 outlets that are starting up these entirely new sections to deal with fact checking in the election.

00:30:15.660 And the problem is that for all we hear about the threat of disinformation and fake news and,

00:30:20.820 you know, this grandiose Russian conspiracy that the Russians have, you know, installed a president in 0.84

00:30:25.160 the US and they're going to come for the Canadian government next, we're not actually seeing the

00:30:29.180 volume of disinformation that you'd think. This is like the Y2K scare all over again. There's all of this

00:30:35.540 sizzle, but absolutely no stake whatsoever. And these outlets now have to justify their own existence. And

00:30:42.260 if you say, find disinformation, well, you know, there's nothing that's getting 50 million views. There's

00:30:47.080 nothing that's getting 10 million views, nothing that's getting 1 million views. Oh, yeah, here's this

00:30:51.160 thing that your uncle shared on Facebook that poor people saw. Let's do a fact check of that. And

00:30:55.640 we're going to see a lot more of that, Ezra, because these people have committed themselves to

00:30:59.900 this narrative that our elections are being upended by fake news. And if there's none there, they have

00:31:05.600 to create it. Yeah. You know, I'm still waiting for the CBC to do a fact check on the fake news about

00:31:12.160 Trump-Russia collusion. They probably published a thousand stories about it. It was debunked and then they

00:31:18.040 just sort of went silent. Listen, Andrew, you're one of the good guys. We love the website you're

00:31:21.880 with, TNC.news. It was great to see out in London. Maybe give us 30 seconds about your plans for the

00:31:27.900 months ahead. What can we expect to see on TNC.news? I know you're there, Anthony Fury, Candace Malcolm.

00:31:34.860 You guys got a great lineup. What else are you up to? Well, we've got a scoop coming tomorrow that

00:31:40.280 actually ties in with what we're talking about now, except instead of the media monitoring what private

00:31:45.560 citizens are posting. It's actually the government. So that'll be coming down the pipeline in the next

00:31:49.600 24 hours. Very interesting. I'm really pleased to see you guys growing and succeeding. And it's great.

00:31:57.700 I feel less alone now to know that there's another independent conservative media group out there

00:32:03.580 besides the rebel. Congratulations. And may you go from strength to strength. Thanks very much. Good

00:32:08.000 to talk to you as always. All right. There's our friend, Andrew Lawton, one of the good guys,

00:32:12.060 that's for sure. And by the way, in addition to TNC.news, there's also that website, The Post

00:32:16.320 Millennial. Our friend Barbara Kay writes for them. I have a little glimmer of hope that there is an

00:32:21.780 alternative set of sources of news besides the media party. And I think the misconduct of the media

00:32:27.400 party is making us all grow. All right. Stay with us. Some final thoughts next.

00:32:32.000 Well, my friends, as you're watching this, I am actually coming home from the United Kingdom. I

00:32:50.120 recorded this and then I hopped on a plane and I went to London to go to Belmarsh Prison to visit

00:32:55.560 Tommy Robinson to see how he's doing in the clink. As you know, he's been jailed for contempt of court.

00:33:01.700 The first journalist in the UK imprisoned in nearly a century for that non-crime. It's not a crime,

00:33:08.680 civil contempt. I'll let you know how he's being treated because he was tortured last time.

00:33:12.320 He was starved. He was thrown in solitary confinement. He was subjected to threats of

00:33:16.100 violence. So as soon as I'm back, I'll give you a full report for those of you who are interested.

00:33:22.920 And then I know not everyone cares about Tommy Robinson. But to me, I see him as a canary in the coal

00:33:27.040 mine. It's Tommy today. It's you and me tomorrow. All right. Until next time, on behalf of all of us

00:33:32.920 here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night and keep fighting for freedom.

00:33:36.600 you

00:33:42.480 you

00:33:44.480 you

00:33:46.480 you

00:33:47.480 you

Rebel News Podcast - July 24, 2019

CBC’s investigation into “misleading YouTube video” was an unethical smear

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