Sue Ann Levy joins me on the Fake News Friday hot seat to talk about the latest in fake news, Elon Musk's new rule change, and the Blue Checkmark freakout that's going on on social media.
00:04:05.000Ian Hannamansing of CBC, his was a bit tamer.
00:04:08.000His was a bit tamer. He said, I don't know how this will end for now, but let's hope good, thoughtful people can overcome the noise.
00:04:15.000So he's taking a bit more of a hopeful approach.
00:04:17.000David Aiken of Global News, where I used to work, says, once again, Elon has it backwards.
00:04:23.000Pay us blue checks, $20 a month, and maybe we'll stay.
00:04:27.000Every ad agency and media organization has the analytics.
00:04:30.000There's no business case to be made to pay for a blue check.
00:04:33.000So David Aiken is saying that he is providing such a critical and pivotal public service to Twitter users that he should be paid $20 a month for the privilege of his voluntary tweeting.
00:04:44.000Would you pay $20 a month to see David Aiken's tweets?
00:04:56.000So, you know, the blue checkmark, it should come with some conditions.
00:05:00.000First of all, if you're going to have to pay for a blue checkmark, and I don't suspect that's going to happen.
00:05:06.000But, you know, there's a lot of anonymous trolls on Twitter who take great stabs that I know at me, and I'm certainly, I'm certain at you as well, and say some pretty horrific things.
00:05:18.000And they do that from behind their veil of anonymity.
00:05:22.000And, you know, if the blue checkmark ends that, I mean, I've always stood up for what I believe in.
00:05:29.000And, you know, my name is out there and yours is as well.
00:05:32.000And so, you know, if it gets rid of those anonymous trolls, so be it.
00:05:41.000And the other thing is, as we said, David Aiken has blocked me.
00:05:45.000Anybody that they don't like who criticizes him or says something that, you know, he's well known for blocking people who criticize him.
00:05:53.000As I do INDP politicians, I have a whole host of them who have blocked me.
00:05:58.000So if you want to be on Twitter and you want to have your blue checkmark, you're not allowed to block people.
00:06:03.000So I think it's not a bad idea if, you know, under those conditions.
00:06:09.000Yeah, I mean, the idea and I don't even know if it's serious or if he's just so offended by the concept of having to pay that it's just his natural response.
00:06:15.000But it's like there are people with blue checkmarks who are the reporter for a newspaper that has a circulation of, you know, a few hundred or a few thousand in a smaller town.
00:06:26.000And I'm not begrudging them. I'm just saying that they aren't hugely influential Twitter users.
00:06:30.000And then there are like, you know, the Kim Kardashians and the Justin Beavers who have millions.
00:06:34.000So the idea that like any one of them is providing an equivalent service that should be, you know, they should be compensated just for being on the on the Twitter machine is, I think, a bit bizarre here.
00:06:44.000And I think there's a tendency in general and this is not about David Aiken by a lot of people in media now to confuse Twitter with working and Twitter with reporting.
00:06:55.000And it's not to say that live tweeting proceedings isn't a key event, but there are some people where it's like I'm not sure they're doing much more than just sitting on Twitter all day.
00:07:03.000And I think that's the mindset here is that so many of them just view it as this, this basically this part of their existence.
00:07:10.000Yeah. And I, you know, when I, I was in the business for a long year time or I've been in the business for a long time, 32 years.
00:07:18.000When I started out, we didn't have social media. We didn't have it till 2000.
00:07:22.000I think it was, I first went on Twitter in 2009 when I ran for the conservatives.
00:07:27.000And so I used it to tweet my stories to promote them.
00:07:31.000It was one more forum, but you're right. A lot of them do use.
00:07:35.000I can think of one particular TikTok star in Ottawa.
00:07:39.000He uses Twitter a lot to promote whatever.
00:07:42.000Now, I mean, I, I do say the odd thing controversial on Twitter, just the odd thing without writing a story.
00:07:50.000Without writing a story. However, I'm not full time in the mainstream media anymore.
00:07:56.000And I think you're right about that, that that has become their way of conveying what is going on, whether it's covering a hearing as you are, the Freedom Convoy or anything else.
00:08:06.000Well, and it raises the question. I mean, I'll you, I don't want to pick on David Akin, but I'll, I'll raise the, the David Akin scenario here.
00:08:13.000So let's say David Akin with his blue check mark is tweeting away while he's doing his work.
00:08:18.000Who gets the $20 a month that he thinks he's owed David Akin, the individual or global news.
00:08:24.000And you know, who's the owner of the account. It's him personally, I presume.
00:08:27.000But like, are we talking about just making this part of the mainstream media content platforms?
00:08:34.000And that is why I think a lot of these people that are demanding that they be paid for tweeting are like, I feel like they're almost trying to do an end run around their, the outlet that they work for when they say, no, no, no, I want to get my salary there.
00:08:44.920But I also want to get a check from Elon Musk for, for tweeting.
00:08:48.900Well, in a lot of media now, I know we had post media, we had a social media policy, conduct policy.
00:08:56.660So you're still considered a member of whatever media platform you're writing for.
00:09:14.700I mean, it just, it just conveys, you know, the, I guess the absolute arrogance of some of these people who think they are so important that the whole world wants to hear what they have to say.
00:09:27.740Yeah, and you've got some conspiracy theories emerging too.
00:09:31.140Rachel Gilmore, who's also with Global, Global's winning the Elon Musk freak out discussion here.
00:09:36.800Rachel Gilmore has said, it would be great if Elon Musk could clarify whether there will still be any criteria for verification beyond having $8 a month.
00:09:44.880So she's saying like already, no, no, no, you shouldn't just be able to pay, you need to be able to earn it.
00:09:50.300You need to be, you know, at that elite level, I guess is how I read it.
00:09:53.920And then she also writes, if Twitter becomes a platform where anyone with $8 can impersonate a president with a blue tick next to their name, that would be dangerous.
00:10:01.780So she's interpreting the policy as if I could pay $8 and say, I want to be Sue Ann Levy with a blue check mark and then go out and feed all these.
00:10:12.200No, your career will never recover if my words are put into your Twitter account, I assure you.
00:10:16.780But it's like, I don't know how you get there.
00:10:19.300Like Parler, for example, which I had when it when it first came out before the whole January 6th thing happened and they pulled it offline.
00:10:27.860And Parler had a thing where you could get a red badge on your account if you submitted proof of who you were.
00:10:35.260So you had to, I think, like scan your driver's license.
00:10:37.980And it was a way that you were verifying your account was real in the sense that it belonged to you.
00:10:56.400And I think that needs to be a condition because and there are people who will just form fake account after fake account after fake account.
00:11:04.660And just to come after specific people, I know I have.
00:11:08.140Or they'll do a fake Sue Ann Levy account.
00:11:32.420But having said that, you shouldn't be able to be definitely, if you have a blue checkmark, able to attack people using some anonymous name that people never know.
00:11:53.080I mean people that are a lot more courageous than I am that stick their necks out at great risk.
00:11:57.620And, you know, when someone just lobs their grenades from the comfort of, you know, rando 17925, it's like there's a bit of injustice there.
00:12:05.160But let's turn to the Public Order Emergency Commission.
00:12:09.820Now, this is where I think Twitter journalism does have value because there's so much happening.
00:12:13.580You've got to look to sometimes the live tweeting to keep up with it.
00:12:17.880But the convoy organizers were testifying this week.
00:12:22.380And Tamara Leach just started her testimony Thursday evening.
00:12:25.660And this is, again, her first time being able to speak her mind because of the bail conditions that she's under since the convoy ended.
00:12:32.500And there is a little bit of an odd narration going on by some of the mainstream media journalists.
00:12:38.420And in some cases, it's proof that they haven't really followed along with the story too closely.
00:12:45.560Like there was one, for example, David Baxter, who is a videographer.
00:12:50.720I think he's actually with Global, too.
00:12:52.400This is like Global is featuring very heavily in our program today.
00:12:56.760So it's not like we're not doing it deliberately.
00:12:59.060This is not like my revenge for them firing me.
00:13:22.700And I was in the room when the testimony took place.
00:13:25.540And I've also literally wrote the book on the convoy.
00:13:28.140And I was like, well, that's, I mean, that's not, that's an example of how something can be, as Dan Rather would say, fake but accurate.
00:13:34.760Like it's, the words are technically true, but when you string them together like that, they're not.
00:13:40.120Because what actually happened was they didn't have a not-for-profit account set up yet.
00:13:44.920So Tamara Leach had a dedicated personal account to receive the money.
00:13:49.140She added Chris Barber as a joint account holder so there would be accountability.
00:13:53.620And when he says he doesn't know what happened with all the cash, they're talking about entirely different money.
00:13:58.380They're saying when people showed up and handed cash to convoy organizers or to truckers, he said, I wasn't overseeing that, so I don't know how it was distributed.
00:14:09.340And it's amazing how much of an incentive there seems to be for so many in the media to build this very sinister narrative when the facts just don't support that.
00:14:18.200Well, I think, and I've been watching, you've been watching it a lot more closely, and you wrote a damn fine book, by the way.
00:14:27.320And I think watching from afar, not in the depths of Ottawa, I think there's a tremendous, tremendous push by the mainstream media, the legacy media, to prove that they were right.
00:14:43.360And some of the testimony, or a lot of it has come out, you know, showing that the emergency didn't have to be declared, and that, you know, it wasn't with the bouncy castles and all kinds of stuff.
00:14:59.240It wasn't, you know, the protest that it was made out to be.
00:15:02.820And I think the mainstream media will grab at any shred, any shred, like you say, and twist it and manipulate it.
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00:15:56.080And they're going to be damn concerned.
00:15:58.940I mean, they're going to make sure that they, you know, there's never an apology, never an admission of being wrong.
00:16:05.960So they're going to manipulate the truth again to make it seem like they're, you know, that they were right all along.
00:16:12.520Yeah, and that's a tremendously astute observation, Sue Ann, because it's a lot like some of the politicians and their COVID measures.
00:16:22.380Now that, you know, so much we've learned about the science has refuted everything they said early on, they've still invested themselves in this one thing and really can't admit they're wrong without shattering all their credibility.
00:16:32.880And, you know, you look at the media coverage of the convoy, it was, there were Russians behind it, it was a foreign influence campaign, it was violent, they were white supremacists.
00:16:41.240When all of those things crumble, those stories still exist.
00:16:44.780And it's like they have to keep fueling that idea that this thing happened.
00:16:50.440And, I mean, an example of this, David Akin tweeted again,
00:16:53.500Convoy lawyer Wilson's public order emergency commission testimony pointing so far to three potential reasons to invoke the Emergencies Act.
00:17:00.600So it's like he's trying to make the case for the Emergencies Act, oddly.
00:17:04.620Law enforcement leaking info, many groups attended the protest, no single point of contact or control,
00:17:09.940even Freedom Corp types could not convince the Rideau Sussex group to move.
00:17:14.180I don't know how you get from those three things to, yes, the Emergencies Act was justified.
00:17:21.040It's like, I don't even think one of the government of Canada's lawyers would try to make that direct leap in the way that David Akin did in the tweet there.
00:17:28.180And didn't they also, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, didn't they also talk about the fire hoax again,
00:17:34.800and it's been proven wrong that somebody set arson, that they were still trying to raise that, the specter of that?
00:17:41.380Yeah, I mean, that was like, that's probably one of the most incredible examples of not just media malfeasance,
00:17:48.580but political malfeasance, because those false reports, which was completely erroneous, completely shattered,
00:17:54.580were cited on the floor of the House of Commons and committee by politicians who, to my knowledge,
00:17:59.600none of them have apologized or recanted now that that story has crumbled.
00:18:04.260Yeah, it's just, and as you say, it's just like COVID, because we're hearing more and more stories of people having these sudden heart attacks,
00:18:12.180these sudden strokes, and yet I'm still getting those stupid texts from Shoppers Drug Mart,
00:18:18.200from the drugstore, saying, come and get your booster, come and get your booster.
00:19:26.520Welcome, welcome to my world, Andrew, because I spent so many years covering city hall and I'd sit through council meetings and then, you know, somebody would cover some shred.
00:19:36.260They, they talk to a politician about some stupid little thing, meanwhile, ignoring the obscene spending on a huge project.
00:19:43.980So, you know, this is the, the situation with the legacy media in Canada today, unfortunately.
00:19:52.040That's why everyone knows until the end of time, $16 orange juice, but could anyone tell you the deficit of that same year or something like that?
00:19:59.940So, uh, this one is, I'm interested in your take on, it's, uh, goes back to Ontario politics.
00:20:05.060A lot of the same journalists who I think were cheerleading or certainly running interference for the federal government's crackdown on the convoy protesters are all about charter rights.
00:20:16.380It's when it comes to the, uh, decision by the Doug Ford government to invoke the notwithstanding clause to impose a contract on educational workers in Ontario.
00:20:26.340Now, again, I mean, say what you will about the notwithstanding clause.
00:20:33.580And if you don't like that it's a tool available to provinces, then deal with the constitution that Pierre Elliott Trudeau, uh, imposed on the country back in, in 1982.
00:20:42.060But it's been interesting seeing just how much of a pretzel people are twisting themselves in on this issue.
00:20:48.400They totally miss the, you know, they are totally disconnected from what Justin Trudeau did with the emergencies act.
00:22:27.860Um, they, you know, they're fighting not just for the CUPE workers, but they're fighting for teachers' contracts and they're fighting for, I mean, everything is a ripple effect.
00:22:53.080And I also think that it's a little cute, all the pearl clutching about, oh, kids must be in school, from some of the same unions that were the most outraged by governments trying to eventually ensure that schools stayed open.
00:23:04.880And I think, trust me, my primary frustration on that is with the Ford government for locking down and shutting down schools as much as they did.
00:23:12.920But at the same time, you also have to look at the unions and a lot of the people that are, again, getting very pearl clutchy about it right now, saying you actually weren't as concerned about kids being in school back when so many jurisdictions were saying it was safe to do so.
00:23:25.640But now that it's politically convenient, that's the tack you take of, oh, how dare you, you know, push us into a situation where kids have to, where schools have to be shut down.
00:23:37.280I mean, I've heard, I've seen tweets where they said, how dare they, how dare they impose this notwithstanding clause, because kids need to learn that they have the, you know, that they will have the right to strike when they get older.
00:23:50.200Well, they're not going to be able to strike, they're not going to be able to get a job if they can't read and write.
00:23:57.600They've got to be in class and they've got to, you know, they've got to be subject to, you know, some in-class instruction, serious in-class instruction.
00:24:07.060And this is all political theatre, I feel, from the CUPA unions and from all the activists, mostly the NDP in Ontario who are screaming and clutching their pearls or whatever they wear.
00:24:20.000I don't know, some beads, worry beads, whatever they wear.
00:24:23.260Some of the media response to this has been amusing.
00:24:27.360Andrew Coyne, who I think is always going to be the one to find, like, the most obscure angle or connection to a story, which sometimes we need.
00:24:34.280I mean, he, like, dusted off the, like, old-school constitutional lexicon here and had in his Globe and Mail column,
00:24:41.840what Ottawa should say to the provinces, I see you're notwithstanding clause and I raise you disallowance,
00:24:46.740which to my knowledge has not been used in, like, 106, 107 years.
00:24:52.280And this is, like, antiquated section of the Constitution that technically allowed the federal government to veto provincial legislation.
00:24:59.680So he wants to have, like, federal veto authority over the provinces when they use their veto authority over the charter.
00:25:07.440And it's like, eventually, it's like, well, who has the veto here? Everyone but the children.
00:28:04.600A Winnipeg-based writer and activist who practices witchcraft, which in fairness, I think is the only way you can survive a life in Winnipeg.
00:28:13.400But she says, every Halloween, we have the witch talk.
00:29:17.480It sounds a little bit raunchy if I, if I, I don't want to Google it just in case.
00:29:21.820But she says she uses the word witch as an act of reclaiming and says it's important to remember the near genocide of witches in the 16th and 17th centuries.
00:29:31.460Now, this was like the only thing Justin Trudeau has not apologized for is the near genocide of witches five, 400 years ago.
00:29:38.720Well, I think he's going to have to apologize for that Broadway show then wicked because, you know, green witches.
00:29:47.640So let me, let me just to put a pin on this.
00:29:51.120When Pierre Polyev says he wants to defund CBC and the media freaks out, he should just pull this story up on his phone and hold it to the camera and say nothing else.
00:30:02.740Like this is like case in point in 600, 800 words, the case for defunding CBC.
00:30:08.020There are so many cases, but this is a good one.
00:30:11.480I have to say, well, maybe we could put a spell.
00:30:14.140Maybe we could, you know, boil, boil, cauldron, trouble, you know, the whole thing, throw in a few toads and all that.