Fake News Friday ｜ True North fact-checks Reuters fact-check
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Summary
It's another Friday, which means it's time to swim through the swirling whirlpool of lies and misinformation, and media untruths and bias, and all of these things curated in a neat little fun package for you. This week, we're diving into a story about how the mainstream media fact checked a piece of information that has been circulating around the world for years.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to you all. It is another Friday, which means it's time to swim through
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the swirling whirlpool of lies and misinformation and media untruths and bias and surrendered
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objectivity, all of these things, and curated in a neat little fun package for you. I think
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it's fun anyway, that we call Fake News Friday. I am Andrew Lawton, joined as always by Harrison
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Faulkner, host of the fantastic show Ratioed on True North. Harrison, big week. Obviously,
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we had some changes in UK politics. We had the Public Order Emergency Commission in Canada,
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but even so, we can always rely on the constant of Canadian mainstream media freakouts.
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Well, exactly. We've always got that going. Of course, we've got the amazing testimony we're
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hearing now from the Emergencies Act Commission. It's only been week one, Andrew. We haven't even
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gotten to the good part yet, but it seems as though it's really starting to heat up. And of course,
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we're going to leave with this story, but it's the fact checkers, the mainstream media fact checkers
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have swooped in to try and clean up their narrative. And somehow, somewhere along in this whole process,
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True North gets sort of lumped into this fact check. So we're going to get into that. It's a pretty
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interesting story, but I think it speaks to just this insistence from legacy media, from mainstream
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media to fact check things that, to use a fact check to really just push their narrative, push
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their opinion. So it's an interesting story, and I'm looking forward to kind of dissecting it a little
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bit. Yeah, let's jump right into that now. So last week, True North shared this exchange from the
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European Parliament between Dutch MEP Robert Roos and Janine Small of Pfizer.
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So a question then for you, Ms. Small, where I would like a clear answer, please.
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So there are no misunderstandings. Was the Pfizer COVID vaccine tested on stopping the transmission
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of the virus before it entered the market? If not, please say it clearly. If yes, are you willing to
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share the data with this committee? And I really want a straight answer, yes or no. And I'm looking
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forward to it. Thank you very much. Regarding the question around, did we know about stopping
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humanisation before it's entered the market? No. These, you know, we had to really move at the
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speed of science to really understand what is taking place in the market. And from that point
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of view, we had to do everything at risk. I think our Dr. Boodla, even though he's not
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here, would turn around and say to himself, if not us, then who? Dr. Boodla actually felt
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the importance of what was going on in the world. And therefore, as a result of that,
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we actually spent $2 billion at risk of self-funded money from Pfizer to be able to manufacture as
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well. First of all, research, develop and manufacture at risk to be able to make sure that we were
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in a position to be able to help with the pandemic. And I think that's why I feel very good when a recent
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paper from the Imperial College stated that in the first year of the rollout of vaccines,
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we saved 4 million people. So from that point of view, I feel that actually we were there when
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the world needed us to be able to make sure that we were able to help people around the world
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with vaccination as well as now oral treatment. I would hate to imagine what situation we would
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be in in the world right now if companies like us did not take those risks, did not do clinical
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research and developments at scale in order to make sure that we could have a vaccine that we
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could roll out to the world. So I really I understand your frustrations. I really do. But I also hope at
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some point somewhere, you also do appreciate what pharmaceutical companies have done in order to be
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able to roll out and deliver vaccines at such speed and scale.
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That was a pretty explosive clip. It was Janine Small talking about how Pfizer moved at the
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speed of science, which I believe is faster than the speed of sound, not quite as fast as the speed
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of light, a little bit slower than Superman when he's had a heavy meal even. But the executive was
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saying that Pfizer did not test against transmission. So there was no scientific basis for the idea that
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the vaccine that Pfizer was putting out for COVID would protect you against transmission,
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which means that the basis for vaccine passports, which was that we need to make spaces more safe
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because we need to only ensure that the vaccinated are able to access them. It meant that that was a
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big, huge lie from politicians. So we share this clip. Now, this is about as official as it gets. This is a
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an elected official interviewing in an official capacity, an official from a company that has done billions of
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dollars worth of work on the vaccine file around the world. All of this is to say there is very little
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about this that is misinformation because we're sharing someone's own words. But that didn't stop
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Reuters from pouncing by putting a fact check here. And not just that, but saying that True North
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specifically sharing this clip, we weren't the only outlet that did, was a bit misinformed, perhaps.
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And so Andrew, it's important to just kind of go through this process. First off, True North often
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will not share content videos that are not specifically Canadian news related. But when
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this video did come up originally, it was first posted by Rob Roos, that MEP, as you said. And
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that video has over 13 million views on Twitter. And immediately we realized that this kind of blows
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the lid off of the justification for the mandates placed on Canadians. The idea that the vaccine would
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stop transmission, that idea that we are told constantly this is to stop the spread of the
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virus. Well, this testimony from the Pfizer executive in Europe kind of makes the case as
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though actually no one really knew that to be the case. Politicians didn't know that. So we posted it
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and I even went through, I posted it myself and I went to great lengths to make sure that I wasn't
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just copying Rob Roos' video. We went to the original source, the European Parliament sort of media
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center to get this clip, making sure that what we were getting was 100% accurate. And we don't just
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throw things up on social media. We do make sure this is accurate stuff. And of course, along comes
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Reuters. And the Reuters fact check is important to go through. You would think that a company like
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Reuters with a fact check team like they have, they would put together a, you know, if they were going
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to attack this video, they would try and show the biggest video, the biggest tweets of the video,
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the tweets that got the most traction. But it was strange, Andrew. They didn't do that. They
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shared the original Rob Roos video. Then they shared our video from True North. They embedded
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the video into the article. And then they shared a tweet from someone with 18 likes copying our video,
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which I just thought to me was very, to me was very strange. Like they're trying to make the case
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as though True North was somehow involved in this. We basically did our own fact check of the fact
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checkers, which I think is quite required these days, especially what we're getting from Reuters.
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We did this and we could- Hang on. I've got to call out your misinformation there, Harrison. It's
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important to deal with this in real time. He has 21 likes on that tweet as of the time we're recording
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this. Exactly. So you're a Reuters. I'm sending Reuters to your front door for that. You were three
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likes off. Who knows what else you're getting wrong? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Now we have to go
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through everything else. But the, so in our, in our fact check of the Reuters fact check,
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what we found was that actually immediately upon Reuters trying to basically label True North
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video as misleading, Andrew, Twitter users from all across the world descended on that Reuters tweet
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and basically started sharing videos of Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, saying exactly that,
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saying that this was going to stop the transmission of the virus. This was going to
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stop the spread of the virus. And in one tweet, he said the, the, the booster vaccine had a 100%
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effectiveness in South Africa at stopping the spread. And then of course, Pfizer themselves
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in their official Twitter account, they also were telling people that the, the, the virus was
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stopping transmission of the virus. The vaccine was stopping transmission of the virus. Contradictory
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to what the Pfizer executive said, uh, in European parliament. So this all just, I think, goes to show
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you that for so long, for the past two, three years, Andrew, we've been getting fact checks from
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Reuters from AP. They also got in on this. We've been getting fact checks from them, which only
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really uphold a narrative. They don't actually tell us or tell, tell, tell people what was,
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what, what is wrong about a video. Nowhere did they say True North was wrong. All they do is say
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this is misleading. So to me, it's actually very sinister that we have fact checkers coming in that
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are pushing a narrative and aren't actually just telling us what's true and what's false. I don't
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want to hear narratives. I want to hear the facts from a fact checker. Turns out maybe, maybe Andrew,
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we should start doing our own fact check. I brought this up. Maybe we should hire our own fact checker
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at True North to do exactly this. Yeah. But then you end up in like an endless cycle of fact
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checking. I want to show a, a tweet here. Alexandra Marshall, who's a great writer with the spectator
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in Australia. She wrote a column in which she took aim at fact checking. And she said, our fact
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checkers liars. And it was an opinion piece in which she talked about the, uh, errors and
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misinformation that we see in the fact checking process. And just like clockwork on Facebook,
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she gets the fact checking sticker on their missing context. Independent fact checkers say
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this information could mislead people right above the headline of the article, which is our fact
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checkers liars. So you can't fact check the fact checkers because then they fact check your fact
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check of the fact checking. And eventually we're just all fact checked, uh, endlessly until we die.
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It's like the police in Canada doing the daily background check of gun owners. Now we're just
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going to get like the daily fact check and, uh, people on the right are going to be accused of
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misinformation. People on the left are going to get a pass, but it's been particularly insidious on
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the COVID file because as we've seen, and I've, I've joked about this in some ways, yesterday's
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misinformation is today's government press release. So the thing that's misinformation now,
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we're kind of flipping it a bit because now they're saying, no, no, no, no, no, no one ever
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claimed it prevented transmission. It's like this big, huge gaslighting of the population here when
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that was the entire basis of the government's mandates of vaccines. Exactly. I mean, we, how many
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times Andrew, did we hear Justin Trudeau during the federal campaign, for example, using this issue
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to wedge Canadians, to divide the unvaccinated and to specifically say multiple times, for example,
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when he famously said, if you don't want to get vaccinated, that's your choice, but don't think
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you can get on a plane or a train beside vaccinated people and put them at risk. Now you would assume
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that because of that, that would mean that the, the vaccine stops the spread of the virus. If
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you're vaccinated, you won't put others at risk because you're not, you're going to stop the
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spread of the virus. That's just, that just exactly points to this idea that, you know, we can,
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we can be led a narrative, Andrew, for a whole year. And then immediately when it starts to crumble,
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fact checkers can come in and totally shift the window and basically say, no, no,
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it was actually never required. The, the manufacturers were never required to test the
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vaccine for stopping transmission before politicians told us it would. And before politicians
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enacted these horribly divisive policies. And we write in the fact check, because it's important
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to just make it clear that I think, of course, without being, of course, we are biased ourselves
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to our own, to our own, uh, to our own company, but our fact check kind of labels it clearly
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what's, what's been going on here. So we write this Reuters assertion that Pfizer never claimed
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that their original submissions to regulators included tests for transmission appears to be
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accurate, but their own fact check is misleading because it entirely ignores the fact that political
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and public discussions about the vaccines were often driven by the incorrect assumption that the
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vaccines would halt transmission. Exactly. That's exactly what we're talking about here.
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That's really where the fact checkers should be coming in on this, but it seems as though
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there's some sort of, there's some sort of collected interest, they want to try and defend
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the manufacturers against what is, what is explosive testimony to use that word again.
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This was, this, this took the internet by storm because people were rightly upset. And I think,
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you know, it, it, it ends up falling on true North. It ends up falling on other media companies,
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Andrew, to try and get these videos out there because it appears as though Reuters,
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they're supposed to be a wire service. They're not going to, they're not going to write news about this.
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Yeah. And that's why we share the raw footage as often, because I want, I mean, for my own benefit,
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but also for everyone else to see the source of it, to see where we're getting the information. So
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you don't need to filter your version of reality through, through someone else's filter. So in any
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case, I got to really segue naturally into speaking of filters, the public order emergency
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commission. Now you've been covering this on ratio. And I've been covering it on the Andrew Lawton
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show. Rupa Subramania has been covering it on her show, our news coverage. So for the next six
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weeks now, there's going to be a lot of public order emergency commission content, but I think
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there's a particular level of interest that I have about the way the media is approaching this.
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And sometimes two people can look at the same story and come up with wildly different conclusions.
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And I'll give you one example here before we get into it. CBC has a headline,
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OPP intelligence warned of potential Ottawa mass protests two weeks before convoy.
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So what they're saying is that the intelligence bureau flagged a mass anti-government protest.
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So that was fair enough. We know there was a protest. I don't know if it was accurate to
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call it anti-government. I think it was anti the liberal government, but then you look further and
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the story that they've buried in there is that OPP intelligence found for the entirety of the convoy,
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no evidence of violence, no evidence of extremism, no evidence of insurrection,
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no evidence of any of these things. Shouldn't that be the story rather than the OPP learned about the
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protest two weeks before it happened? I guess not.
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No, Andrew. And we've seen this, we've seen this so often. And again, this, this speaks exactly to
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why I think True North and other media outlets who are covering this, why people go to our coverage,
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because they know exactly what they're going to get from the CBC, from the Toronto Star.
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You took that headline from the CBC regarding the OPP intelligence officer's testimony. Well,
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just take a look at this. This is the, this is the way that the Toronto Star wrote about
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revelations that CSIS told the government from the very beginning, there was no intelligence that
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the convoy was being foreign funded, right? There was no, there was no idea that there was no
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intelligence that said there's foreign interference in the, in the donations of the convoy. The Toronto Star
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took that information. And of course, in their usual way, they sculpted and architected this,
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this, this, this, this ridiculous headline that basically goes on to just say that it doesn't
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matter. These, these guys were horrible already. That it doesn't matter. There's no, there's no
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information that can convince us. Otherwise, the Toronto Star headline was this freedom convoy
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didn't need help from foreigners to overwhelm Ottawa police inquiry told October 18th, Andrew,
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it's, it's actually a skill. I have to take my hat off to some of these legacy media reporters for
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finding, you know, for seeing information that is so damaging to their narrative. So, so it's so
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destructive to this narrative they've tried to craft for the whole year and then find a way to
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still spin it to make themselves, you know, put themselves in the right position to find a way
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to still spin it, to make these truckers, these protesters who now we know had no, there was no
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intelligence of violence from the very beginning. So these, these peaceful Canadian truckers,
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at Disney plus.com to, to maintain that narrative that they'll never give it up. Andrew, there's no,
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I don't think there's really any piece of evidence that will come out from these commission hearings
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where we'll get, we'll get global news. We'll get Globe and Mail or the Toronto star to write that,
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to write this, to write this basically accurately. They're always going to stick to their narrative.
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You know, and, and Globe, the Globe and Mail to their credit, they just took, they just took that
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information and wrote the headline. I think accurately, CSIS found no foreign actors funding
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the convoy protest, according to inquiry evidence, right? That's how you should write the story. But
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of course, the Toronto star, we know what we're going to get from them. They're going to spin it
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religiously. They are, they are absolutely stuck to this narrative, no matter what comes from the
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commission hearings. I should say like, there's nothing inaccurate about what the Toronto star wrote
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in its headline. Freedom Convoy didn't need help from foreigners to overwhelm Ottawa police. Well,
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no, that's technically true. I mean, the headline could also be, you know, Freedom Convoy didn't
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murder 17 people in the street. Like, so it's the place it's coming from that I find is noteworthy
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because they're the ones that implied there was foreign influence. They're the ones that implied
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there was foreign funding. So when they're saying they didn't need the help, it's like there were a
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bunch of Russians on Sussex street that were like offering their assistance. And then the Freedom Convoy
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said, yeah, we're all good. But, but no, it's like, it just didn't exist and it just wasn't there.
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So it is fascinating. And, and it's becoming a bit of a Rorschach exercise where everyone's
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looking at these commissions and somehow just drawing their own sort of narrative affirming
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conclusions from it. And the Toronto star is, is one example here. And I think just interestingly
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enough, when Jim Watson talks about this, everything he says is just bordering on, on unhinged,
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if not going straight beyond into that. And one particular one here, he talks about losing
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control. He talks about similar to Zexy Lee from last week, the purge like mentality. He
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And so you recall, you had a discussion with the prime minister on this day.
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Yeah. I'm just looking for my notes. It's February 8th.
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You can zoom into that. Yeah. February 8th. Yeah. Thank you.
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And we'll go down to the, to the kind of the meat of it. Yes. A little bit down more.
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Sorry. I'm not seeing it on the 8th on my chronology, but if you have it, I'll leave you.
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Yes. It should be on the screen there. February 8th.
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A call read out of the call with the prime minister. And if we go to the second page.
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Yeah. You say, well, the prime minister asks how you're doing. You say a challenge for
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anyone, everyone, still a pretty unstable situation. Nasty people out there that just
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don't represent Canada. Reminds me of the Republican party down south. Can't reason with them.
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So vulgar and hateful, attacking people, ripping masks off, honking their horns. It's not over
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Just, you might slow down a bit for the interpreters. I'm just worried.
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Oh, okay. Sorry. I'm just aware of the time, but yes, you're right. Let's slow down for
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the interpreters. It's not over yet. And I appreciate that I had a really good conversation
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with Marco and Bill. We have a table with the PT this afternoon at 4.30.
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Lawlessness. Well, that's terrible. How does he define lawlessness? As you just heard,
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people were having parties. Yeah, Andrew, like the dance parties. I think at some point also he said
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the dance parties and raves stole the neighborhoods away from Ottawa residents. Now, again, I was on
00:20:09.580
the ground there. You were too. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I only think that there were dance
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parties and raves, so-called dance parties and raves on Wellington Street. And from what I know of
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Ottawa, I don't live in Ottawa, but from what I know- No, don't so-called it. There was dancing
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morning tonight. The dance party was a key part of this. I was inside some of those- You're doing
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the mainstream media thing, so-called, the so-called Freedom Convoy, the so-called dance
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party. No, by gosh, it was a real dance party. You're exactly right. It was a real dance party.
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I'm only trying to return the favor on the media. As you said, they always use the word so-called
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Freedom Convoy. Well, we'll just return that right back. But of course, they were only on
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Wellington Street, I'm pretty sure, Andrew. And last I checked, again, I'm not from Ottawa,
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but last I checked, there are no residents who live on Wellington. It's a non-residential street.
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That's beside the point. But I want to just kind of go back to this CBC article that was published
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on Thursday, talking about the OPP intelligence warning of potential Ottawa mass protests two
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weeks before convoy. That's what they wrote. And True North's article on this said, OPP officer says
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no intel of convoy violence. And I think if you were watching this, anyone would really realize that
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the OPP intelligence officer, Patton Morris, his testimony was the news of the day. That was for
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sure what overshadowed the previous city councilor's testimony. It's just, it is alarming to me,
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Andrew, that the legacy media, like I said before, they are committed to one side of this. And maybe
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you could say that we're committed to the other side of it. But in my opinion, we're filling a very
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important need here. Because like you said, you have two outlets looking at the same story, hearing
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the same testimony, and coming to vastly different conclusions. Vastly different conclusions. I think
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at the end of the day, it's good for the Canadian media landscape that we do have alternative points
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of view on this. But it does speak to me that I don't think we're going to see, in my opinion,
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fair, impartial, balanced coverage from the legacy media throughout this hearing. We have five
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more weeks of this, Andrew. We've got a long way to go. Justin Trudeau still to testify,
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the senior members of the cabinet still to testify, and convoy leadership as well. So
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it's going to be, it's going to be more important as we go further in this process. And I'm just hoping
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that we're going to, we're going to try and get some better coverage here from the legacy media,
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because right now it's been, it's been horrendous. No checks on some of these outlandish
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statements, no real coverage on the fact that the, the city councilors were calling trucks
00:22:37.400
weapons and that the mayor viewed the truckers before they even arrived, right when they first
00:22:42.500
arrived in Ottawa as un-Canadian and as like Republicans from down South. I mean, this guy
00:22:47.840
had it out for the truckers from the very start, clearly. And I think that that is worth coverage,
00:22:53.080
but we're not going to get it. No, I don't think so. But any coverage we do get, we'll have to wait
00:22:57.740
until next weekend because the members of the parliamentary press gallery have a bit of a party coming up
00:23:02.200
on Saturday. They're doing the annual parliamentary press gallery dinner, which is basically Canada's
00:23:08.740
imitation of the gridiron club thing, where you have journalists and politicians that are supposed
00:23:14.160
to kick back and relax and have fun and make fun of each other themselves. This was where that great
00:23:20.060
photo of Andrew Scheer chugging a one liter carton of milk came from making fun of his relentless
00:23:25.420
support for supply management. So it's a decent enough event, but at a certain point you have to decide if
00:23:30.820
you want to just rub shoulders with the people that despise you. And Pierre Polyev, for whatever
00:23:35.620
reason, decided he would break with tradition and not attend the parliamentary press gallery dinner
00:23:40.920
this weekend. So what's happening here is that there's no reason provided. Polyev's office just
00:23:47.840
said, I'm not going to go to, or he's not going to go to it. Stephen Harper went when he was an
00:23:53.400
opposition leader, but didn't go when he was prime minister. So that was a pretty much a 10 year period.
00:23:58.980
Pierre Polyev has had one media availability since he became the conservative leader. And that was when
00:24:05.340
David Akin just started like verbally pummeling him for reasons that I can't even remember. He's not
00:24:11.000
done, to my knowledge, any sit down interviews. He didn't do a lot of legacy media interviews during
00:24:16.420
the leadership race. So he's kind of just sticking to what's been working for him. And we can all sort of
00:24:22.440
raise questions about whether that is the right course of action or the wrong course of action.
00:24:26.780
But I'll say that it's his choice to make. And I don't get this mainstream media freak out
00:24:31.660
about it just because he's not going to play in their sandbox with them.
00:24:35.500
Well, Andrew, I kind of get the mainstream media freak out because they're looking for anything
00:24:39.220
they can get on Pierre Polyev, right? We know exactly that anything that comes, anything that
00:24:43.320
could be even, even the, the, the idea that a headline could be made about it, that a negative
00:24:47.840
headline can be made about it. Well, they're going to write it, right? Any, any opportunity they get
00:24:51.600
to try and slander Pierre Polyev, to try and paint the conservative leader as a, as a negative
00:24:57.400
populist far-right figure, they're going to do it. And remember, at these parliamentary press
00:25:03.160
gallery dinners, that was also where Justin Trudeau made the joke about how he gets such
00:25:08.640
favorable headlines from the media, how he gets, how, because he pays them, what, over 600 million
00:25:12.840
dollars, that number has gone up by now, I'm pretty sure. Because he pays them that much money,
00:25:17.040
of course he gets favorable media coverage. No wonder it's turned out so favorable for Justin
00:25:21.780
Trudeau. No wonder we're seeing the coverage we're getting from the commission hearings after
00:25:25.600
Justin Trudeau basically paid the media off to, to write favorable headlines for him. That's what he
00:25:30.380
said at that, at, at this dinner a few years back. And again, I don't blame Pierre Polyev for not
00:25:36.580
attending this dinner. I think actually, you know, shaking things up with me, with the media in Ottawa is
00:25:41.300
a good thing. They need to kind of realize that conservatives are not just going to pick up the baton
00:25:45.020
and continue this sort of, this sort of, you know, cash, you know, give, give money to the media for
00:25:51.440
favorable headlines that that needs to stop. But I will say, I think that Pierre Polyev can do better
00:25:58.480
with, with, with reaching out to media, specifically independent media. Look, if you're not going to
00:26:03.060
engage with the CBC, Global News, Globe and Mail, I understand that. Clearly when he tried to,
00:26:08.900
David Akin heckled him and acted like a child. So if you're not going to do that, I do think the
00:26:14.180
opposition leader should be speaking to Canadians as much as possible and doing that through the
00:26:18.840
media as much as possible. It doesn't have to be exclusively through the media. He has a larger
00:26:22.360
social media platform than a lot of these other journalists, but I would like to see him engage
00:26:27.540
with like, with independent media more often. I think that would be a, that would be a real shake
00:26:31.840
up to the media in Ottawa. That would really signal to the legacy media that things are changing
00:26:36.680
and a government under Pierre Polyev is not just going to continue this, this sort of love affair
00:26:41.180
with the legacy media. That would, I think that would be a good thing. But again, like I said,
00:26:45.620
this is a, this is a, this is a nothing story. The media will always try and take it because
00:26:49.520
it's an opportunity to bash conservatives. Yeah. I will say just in, in closing on this,
00:26:54.320
I think that he probably should put himself in front of media more. And I think the David Akin
00:26:59.040
situation is great. I think he won that week because I think he really exposed the media and their
00:27:04.400
approach to him. And I think he held his own. And the point that I've made on my show and to
00:27:09.360
people that are working in the orbit of Pierre Polyev of the past is that if you trust your
00:27:13.680
candidate to be able to answer and handle it, I'd put them out there and then get the clip from it,
00:27:18.440
show Canadians what's happening. Because when you don't engage, that becomes the story.
00:27:22.900
Whereas when you engage, they show their hand and you slap back. I think that becomes
00:27:27.300
a much better story, but I'm sure we'll have lots of opportunities for that in the months and
00:27:31.840
years to come. Harrison Faulkner, you can catch him at the show Ratioed every week. You can catch me
00:27:37.380
at the Andrew Lawton Show. And both of us, you can catch sifting through the day-to-day
00:27:41.740
testimony for the next five, six weeks from the Public Order Emergency Commission.
00:27:47.040
This is True North. If you're watching on YouTube, please, please, please do subscribe. We have a goal
00:27:51.820
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00:27:58.620
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00:28:05.160
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