The Candice Malcolm Show - Fake News Friday ｜ True North fact-checks Reuters fact-check

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to you all. It is another Friday, which means it's time to swim through

00:00:16.420 the swirling whirlpool of lies and misinformation and media untruths and bias and surrendered

00:00:24.580 objectivity, all of these things, and curated in a neat little fun package for you. I think

00:00:29.560 it's fun anyway, that we call Fake News Friday. I am Andrew Lawton, joined as always by Harrison

00:00:35.920 Faulkner, host of the fantastic show Ratioed on True North. Harrison, big week. Obviously,

00:00:42.100 we had some changes in UK politics. We had the Public Order Emergency Commission in Canada,

00:00:47.320 but even so, we can always rely on the constant of Canadian mainstream media freakouts.

00:00:52.840 Well, exactly. We've always got that going. Of course, we've got the amazing testimony we're

00:00:57.480 hearing now from the Emergencies Act Commission. It's only been week one, Andrew. We haven't even

00:01:00.700 gotten to the good part yet, but it seems as though it's really starting to heat up. And of course,

00:01:05.840 we're going to leave with this story, but it's the fact checkers, the mainstream media fact checkers

00:01:10.760 have swooped in to try and clean up their narrative. And somehow, somewhere along in this whole process,

00:01:16.520 True North gets sort of lumped into this fact check. So we're going to get into that. It's a pretty

00:01:20.640 interesting story, but I think it speaks to just this insistence from legacy media, from mainstream

00:01:27.120 media to fact check things that, to use a fact check to really just push their narrative, push

00:01:34.860 their opinion. So it's an interesting story, and I'm looking forward to kind of dissecting it a little

00:01:38.700 bit. Yeah, let's jump right into that now. So last week, True North shared this exchange from the

00:01:44.880 European Parliament between Dutch MEP Robert Roos and Janine Small of Pfizer.

00:01:52.500 So a question then for you, Ms. Small, where I would like a clear answer, please.

00:01:57.260 So there are no misunderstandings. Was the Pfizer COVID vaccine tested on stopping the transmission

00:02:07.320 of the virus before it entered the market? If not, please say it clearly. If yes, are you willing to

00:02:16.740 share the data with this committee? And I really want a straight answer, yes or no. And I'm looking

00:02:23.520 forward to it. Thank you very much. Regarding the question around, did we know about stopping

00:02:30.320 humanisation before it's entered the market? No. These, you know, we had to really move at the

00:02:38.080 speed of science to really understand what is taking place in the market. And from that point

00:02:42.860 of view, we had to do everything at risk. I think our Dr. Boodla, even though he's not

00:02:49.060 here, would turn around and say to himself, if not us, then who? Dr. Boodla actually felt

00:02:55.740 the importance of what was going on in the world. And therefore, as a result of that,

00:03:00.300 we actually spent $2 billion at risk of self-funded money from Pfizer to be able to manufacture as

00:03:10.760 well. First of all, research, develop and manufacture at risk to be able to make sure that we were

00:03:16.300 in a position to be able to help with the pandemic. And I think that's why I feel very good when a recent

00:03:23.360 paper from the Imperial College stated that in the first year of the rollout of vaccines,

00:03:30.200 we saved 4 million people. So from that point of view, I feel that actually we were there when

00:03:38.280 the world needed us to be able to make sure that we were able to help people around the world

00:03:43.080 with vaccination as well as now oral treatment. I would hate to imagine what situation we would

00:03:50.780 be in in the world right now if companies like us did not take those risks, did not do clinical

00:03:57.380 research and developments at scale in order to make sure that we could have a vaccine that we

00:04:01.780 could roll out to the world. So I really I understand your frustrations. I really do. But I also hope at

00:04:08.200 some point somewhere, you also do appreciate what pharmaceutical companies have done in order to be

00:04:13.480 able to roll out and deliver vaccines at such speed and scale.

00:04:17.560 That was a pretty explosive clip. It was Janine Small talking about how Pfizer moved at the

00:04:23.260 speed of science, which I believe is faster than the speed of sound, not quite as fast as the speed

00:04:28.720 of light, a little bit slower than Superman when he's had a heavy meal even. But the executive was

00:04:34.700 saying that Pfizer did not test against transmission. So there was no scientific basis for the idea that

00:04:41.120 the vaccine that Pfizer was putting out for COVID would protect you against transmission,

00:04:46.600 which means that the basis for vaccine passports, which was that we need to make spaces more safe

00:04:53.960 because we need to only ensure that the vaccinated are able to access them. It meant that that was a

00:05:00.120 big, huge lie from politicians. So we share this clip. Now, this is about as official as it gets. This is a

00:05:07.480 an elected official interviewing in an official capacity, an official from a company that has done billions of

00:05:14.560 dollars worth of work on the vaccine file around the world. All of this is to say there is very little

00:05:20.620 about this that is misinformation because we're sharing someone's own words. But that didn't stop

00:05:26.460 Reuters from pouncing by putting a fact check here. And not just that, but saying that True North

00:05:33.400 specifically sharing this clip, we weren't the only outlet that did, was a bit misinformed, perhaps.

00:05:39.960 And so Andrew, it's important to just kind of go through this process. First off, True North often

00:05:45.140 will not share content videos that are not specifically Canadian news related. But when

00:05:50.940 this video did come up originally, it was first posted by Rob Roos, that MEP, as you said. And

00:05:56.700 that video has over 13 million views on Twitter. And immediately we realized that this kind of blows

00:06:02.660 the lid off of the justification for the mandates placed on Canadians. The idea that the vaccine would

00:06:09.460 stop transmission, that idea that we are told constantly this is to stop the spread of the

00:06:13.920 virus. Well, this testimony from the Pfizer executive in Europe kind of makes the case as

00:06:20.480 though actually no one really knew that to be the case. Politicians didn't know that. So we posted it

00:06:24.480 and I even went through, I posted it myself and I went to great lengths to make sure that I wasn't

00:06:29.440 just copying Rob Roos' video. We went to the original source, the European Parliament sort of media

00:06:34.760 center to get this clip, making sure that what we were getting was 100% accurate. And we don't just

00:06:39.960 throw things up on social media. We do make sure this is accurate stuff. And of course, along comes

00:06:45.320 Reuters. And the Reuters fact check is important to go through. You would think that a company like

00:06:50.400 Reuters with a fact check team like they have, they would put together a, you know, if they were going

00:06:56.080 to attack this video, they would try and show the biggest video, the biggest tweets of the video,

00:07:01.260 the tweets that got the most traction. But it was strange, Andrew. They didn't do that. They

00:07:05.860 shared the original Rob Roos video. Then they shared our video from True North. They embedded

00:07:12.400 the video into the article. And then they shared a tweet from someone with 18 likes copying our video,

00:07:18.840 which I just thought to me was very, to me was very strange. Like they're trying to make the case

00:07:23.300 as though True North was somehow involved in this. We basically did our own fact check of the fact

00:07:28.320 checkers, which I think is quite required these days, especially what we're getting from Reuters.

00:07:32.140 We did this and we could- Hang on. I've got to call out your misinformation there, Harrison. It's

00:07:35.880 important to deal with this in real time. He has 21 likes on that tweet as of the time we're recording

00:07:40.940 this. Exactly. So you're a Reuters. I'm sending Reuters to your front door for that. You were three

00:07:46.600 likes off. Who knows what else you're getting wrong? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Now we have to go

00:07:50.880 through everything else. But the, so in our, in our fact check of the Reuters fact check,

00:07:55.900 what we found was that actually immediately upon Reuters trying to basically label True North

00:08:02.260 video as misleading, Andrew, Twitter users from all across the world descended on that Reuters tweet

00:08:07.840 and basically started sharing videos of Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, saying exactly that,

00:08:13.640 saying that this was going to stop the transmission of the virus. This was going to

00:08:17.200 stop the spread of the virus. And in one tweet, he said the, the, the booster vaccine had a 100%

00:08:22.620 effectiveness in South Africa at stopping the spread. And then of course, Pfizer themselves

00:08:27.340 in their official Twitter account, they also were telling people that the, the, the virus was

00:08:32.360 stopping transmission of the virus. The vaccine was stopping transmission of the virus. Contradictory

00:08:37.000 to what the Pfizer executive said, uh, in European parliament. So this all just, I think, goes to show

00:08:42.720 you that for so long, for the past two, three years, Andrew, we've been getting fact checks from

00:08:48.100 Reuters from AP. They also got in on this. We've been getting fact checks from them, which only

00:08:52.660 really uphold a narrative. They don't actually tell us or tell, tell, tell people what was,

00:08:57.840 what, what is wrong about a video. Nowhere did they say True North was wrong. All they do is say

00:09:02.140 this is misleading. So to me, it's actually very sinister that we have fact checkers coming in that

00:09:07.460 are pushing a narrative and aren't actually just telling us what's true and what's false. I don't

00:09:11.320 want to hear narratives. I want to hear the facts from a fact checker. Turns out maybe, maybe Andrew,

00:09:15.640 we should start doing our own fact check. I brought this up. Maybe we should hire our own fact checker

00:09:20.200 at True North to do exactly this. Yeah. But then you end up in like an endless cycle of fact

00:09:26.400 checking. I want to show a, a tweet here. Alexandra Marshall, who's a great writer with the spectator

00:09:33.040 in Australia. She wrote a column in which she took aim at fact checking. And she said, our fact

00:09:39.020 checkers liars. And it was an opinion piece in which she talked about the, uh, errors and

00:09:44.480 misinformation that we see in the fact checking process. And just like clockwork on Facebook,

00:09:49.580 she gets the fact checking sticker on their missing context. Independent fact checkers say

00:09:55.460 this information could mislead people right above the headline of the article, which is our fact

00:10:00.600 checkers liars. So you can't fact check the fact checkers because then they fact check your fact

00:10:04.900 check of the fact checking. And eventually we're just all fact checked, uh, endlessly until we die.

00:10:09.820 It's like the police in Canada doing the daily background check of gun owners. Now we're just

00:10:15.400 going to get like the daily fact check and, uh, people on the right are going to be accused of

00:10:19.900 misinformation. People on the left are going to get a pass, but it's been particularly insidious on

00:10:25.920 the COVID file because as we've seen, and I've, I've joked about this in some ways, yesterday's

00:10:31.320 misinformation is today's government press release. So the thing that's misinformation now,

00:10:36.920 we're kind of flipping it a bit because now they're saying, no, no, no, no, no, no one ever

00:10:41.400 claimed it prevented transmission. It's like this big, huge gaslighting of the population here when

00:10:47.020 that was the entire basis of the government's mandates of vaccines. Exactly. I mean, we, how many

00:10:53.740 times Andrew, did we hear Justin Trudeau during the federal campaign, for example, using this issue

00:10:58.960 to wedge Canadians, to divide the unvaccinated and to specifically say multiple times, for example,

00:11:04.780 when he famously said, if you don't want to get vaccinated, that's your choice, but don't think

00:11:08.880 you can get on a plane or a train beside vaccinated people and put them at risk. Now you would assume 0.88

00:11:14.460 that because of that, that would mean that the, the vaccine stops the spread of the virus. If

00:11:18.600 you're vaccinated, you won't put others at risk because you're not, you're going to stop the

00:11:22.700 spread of the virus. That's just, that just exactly points to this idea that, you know, we can,

00:11:28.140 we can be led a narrative, Andrew, for a whole year. And then immediately when it starts to crumble,

00:11:32.720 fact checkers can come in and totally shift the window and basically say, no, no,

00:11:36.880 it was actually never required. The, the manufacturers were never required to test the

00:11:41.240 vaccine for stopping transmission before politicians told us it would. And before politicians

00:11:45.920 enacted these horribly divisive policies. And we write in the fact check, because it's important

00:11:51.140 to just make it clear that I think, of course, without being, of course, we are biased ourselves

00:11:55.740 to our own, to our own, uh, to our own company, but our fact check kind of labels it clearly

00:12:00.420 what's, what's been going on here. So we write this Reuters assertion that Pfizer never claimed

00:12:04.540 that their original submissions to regulators included tests for transmission appears to be

00:12:08.820 accurate, but their own fact check is misleading because it entirely ignores the fact that political

00:12:13.280 and public discussions about the vaccines were often driven by the incorrect assumption that the

00:12:17.740 vaccines would halt transmission. Exactly. That's exactly what we're talking about here.

00:12:21.840 That's really where the fact checkers should be coming in on this, but it seems as though

00:12:25.580 there's some sort of, there's some sort of collected interest, they want to try and defend

00:12:29.840 the manufacturers against what is, what is explosive testimony to use that word again.

00:12:35.000 This was, this, this took the internet by storm because people were rightly upset. And I think,

00:12:39.960 you know, it, it, it ends up falling on true North. It ends up falling on other media companies,

00:12:44.780 Andrew, to try and get these videos out there because it appears as though Reuters,

00:12:48.740 they're supposed to be a wire service. They're not going to, they're not going to write news about this.

00:12:51.780 Yeah. And that's why we share the raw footage as often, because I want, I mean, for my own benefit,

00:12:56.440 but also for everyone else to see the source of it, to see where we're getting the information. So

00:13:00.600 you don't need to filter your version of reality through, through someone else's filter. So in any

00:13:06.420 case, I got to really segue naturally into speaking of filters, the public order emergency

00:13:12.080 commission. Now you've been covering this on ratio. And I've been covering it on the Andrew Lawton

00:13:16.240 show. Rupa Subramania has been covering it on her show, our news coverage. So for the next six

00:13:21.620 weeks now, there's going to be a lot of public order emergency commission content, but I think

00:13:26.800 there's a particular level of interest that I have about the way the media is approaching this.

00:13:33.700 And sometimes two people can look at the same story and come up with wildly different conclusions.

00:13:39.940 And I'll give you one example here before we get into it. CBC has a headline,

00:13:44.520 OPP intelligence warned of potential Ottawa mass protests two weeks before convoy.

00:13:50.380 So what they're saying is that the intelligence bureau flagged a mass anti-government protest.

00:13:56.460 So that was fair enough. We know there was a protest. I don't know if it was accurate to

00:14:00.860 call it anti-government. I think it was anti the liberal government, but then you look further and

00:14:06.020 the story that they've buried in there is that OPP intelligence found for the entirety of the convoy,

00:14:12.640 no evidence of violence, no evidence of extremism, no evidence of insurrection,

00:14:17.900 no evidence of any of these things. Shouldn't that be the story rather than the OPP learned about the

00:14:23.500 protest two weeks before it happened? I guess not.

00:14:26.460 No, Andrew. And we've seen this, we've seen this so often. And again, this, this speaks exactly to

00:14:30.940 why I think True North and other media outlets who are covering this, why people go to our coverage,

00:14:36.740 because they know exactly what they're going to get from the CBC, from the Toronto Star.

00:14:40.920 You took that headline from the CBC regarding the OPP intelligence officer's testimony. Well,

00:14:46.500 just take a look at this. This is the, this is the way that the Toronto Star wrote about

00:14:50.880 revelations that CSIS told the government from the very beginning, there was no intelligence that

00:14:57.340 the convoy was being foreign funded, right? There was no, there was no idea that there was no

00:15:02.320 intelligence that said there's foreign interference in the, in the donations of the convoy. The Toronto Star

00:15:07.820 took that information. And of course, in their usual way, they sculpted and architected this,

00:15:12.900 this, this, this, this ridiculous headline that basically goes on to just say that it doesn't 0.89

00:15:16.840 matter. These, these guys were horrible already. That it doesn't matter. There's no, there's no 0.99

00:15:20.920 information that can convince us. Otherwise, the Toronto Star headline was this freedom convoy

00:15:24.900 didn't need help from foreigners to overwhelm Ottawa police inquiry told October 18th, Andrew,

00:15:31.580 it's, it's actually a skill. I have to take my hat off to some of these legacy media reporters for

00:15:36.920 finding, you know, for seeing information that is so damaging to their narrative. So, so it's so

00:15:41.880 destructive to this narrative they've tried to craft for the whole year and then find a way to

00:15:46.500 still spin it to make themselves, you know, put themselves in the right position to find a way

00:15:51.420 to still spin it, to make these truckers, these protesters who now we know had no, there was no

00:15:57.020 intelligence of violence from the very beginning. So these, these peaceful Canadian truckers,

00:16:01.740 the media are so skilled at finding ways to searchlight pictures presents in the blink of

00:16:07.420 an eye on Hulu on Disney plus a sweeping science fiction drama spanning the stone age, the present

00:16:13.400 day and the distant future about the essence of what it means to be human, regardless of our place

00:16:18.820 in history. The film is directed by Oscar winning filmmaker, Andrew Stanton and stars Rashida Jones,

00:16:24.260 Kate McKinnon and Daveed digs stream in the blink of an eye. Now only on Hulu on Disney plus sign up

00:16:30.880 at Disney plus.com to, to maintain that narrative that they'll never give it up. Andrew, there's no,

00:16:38.260 I don't think there's really any piece of evidence that will come out from these commission hearings

00:16:42.400 where we'll get, we'll get global news. We'll get Globe and Mail or the Toronto star to write that,

00:16:47.760 to write this, to write this basically accurately. They're always going to stick to their narrative.

00:16:52.620 You know, and, and Globe, the Globe and Mail to their credit, they just took, they just took that

00:16:58.460 information and wrote the headline. I think accurately, CSIS found no foreign actors funding

00:17:03.620 the convoy protest, according to inquiry evidence, right? That's how you should write the story. But

00:17:08.420 of course, the Toronto star, we know what we're going to get from them. They're going to spin it

00:17:11.240 religiously. They are, they are absolutely stuck to this narrative, no matter what comes from the

00:17:16.480 commission hearings. I should say like, there's nothing inaccurate about what the Toronto star wrote

00:17:21.940 in its headline. Freedom Convoy didn't need help from foreigners to overwhelm Ottawa police. Well, 0.87

00:17:26.980 no, that's technically true. I mean, the headline could also be, you know, Freedom Convoy didn't

00:17:31.260 murder 17 people in the street. Like, so it's the place it's coming from that I find is noteworthy 0.99

00:17:37.080 because they're the ones that implied there was foreign influence. They're the ones that implied

00:17:41.760 there was foreign funding. So when they're saying they didn't need the help, it's like there were a

00:17:45.620 bunch of Russians on Sussex street that were like offering their assistance. And then the Freedom Convoy

00:17:50.640 said, yeah, we're all good. But, but no, it's like, it just didn't exist and it just wasn't there.

00:17:55.180 So it is fascinating. And, and it's becoming a bit of a Rorschach exercise where everyone's

00:17:59.880 looking at these commissions and somehow just drawing their own sort of narrative affirming

00:18:04.840 conclusions from it. And the Toronto star is, is one example here. And I think just interestingly

00:18:11.900 enough, when Jim Watson talks about this, everything he says is just bordering on, on unhinged,

00:18:19.820 if not going straight beyond into that. And one particular one here, he talks about losing

00:18:25.140 control. He talks about similar to Zexy Lee from last week, the purge like mentality. He

00:18:31.840 talks about just how dire things were.

00:18:34.700 And so you recall, you had a discussion with the prime minister on this day.

00:18:38.700 Yeah. I'm just looking for my notes. It's February 8th.

00:18:41.120 You can zoom into that. Yeah. February 8th. Yeah. Thank you.

00:18:44.360 And we'll go down to the, to the kind of the meat of it. Yes. A little bit down more.

00:18:52.240 There we go.

00:18:53.640 Sorry. I'm not seeing it on the 8th on my chronology, but if you have it, I'll leave you.

00:19:00.220 Yes. It should be on the screen there. February 8th.

00:19:02.980 Yeah.

00:19:03.640 A call read out of the call with the prime minister. And if we go to the second page.

00:19:08.320 Yeah. You say, well, the prime minister asks how you're doing. You say a challenge for

00:19:15.360 anyone, everyone, still a pretty unstable situation. Nasty people out there that just 0.89

00:19:19.800 don't represent Canada. Reminds me of the Republican party down south. Can't reason with them. 0.99

00:19:24.480 So vulgar and hateful, attacking people, ripping masks off, honking their horns. It's not over 0.84

00:19:29.660 yet. And I appreciate.

00:19:30.520 Just, you might slow down a bit for the interpreters. I'm just worried.

00:19:34.320 Oh, okay. Sorry. I'm just aware of the time, but yes, you're right. Let's slow down for

00:19:38.580 the interpreters. It's not over yet. And I appreciate that I had a really good conversation

00:19:45.740 with Marco and Bill. We have a table with the PT this afternoon at 4.30.

00:19:51.280 Lawlessness. Well, that's terrible. How does he define lawlessness? As you just heard,

00:19:55.460 people were having parties. Yeah, Andrew, like the dance parties. I think at some point also he said

00:20:02.960 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

00:20:13.220 parties and raves, so-called dance parties and raves on Wellington Street. And from what I know of

00:20:18.380 Ottawa, I don't live in Ottawa, but from what I know- No, don't so-called it. There was dancing

00:20:22.900 morning tonight. The dance party was a key part of this. I was inside some of those- You're doing

00:20:27.220 the mainstream media thing, so-called, the so-called Freedom Convoy, the so-called dance

00:20:31.180 party. No, by gosh, it was a real dance party. You're exactly right. It was a real dance party.

00:20:36.820 I'm only trying to return the favor on the media. As you said, they always use the word so-called

00:20:41.840 Freedom Convoy. Well, we'll just return that right back. But of course, they were only on

00:20:46.540 Wellington Street, I'm pretty sure, Andrew. And last I checked, again, I'm not from Ottawa,

00:20:49.980 but last I checked, there are no residents who live on Wellington. It's a non-residential street.

00:20:54.140 That's beside the point. But I want to just kind of go back to this CBC article that was published

00:20:58.840 on Thursday, talking about the OPP intelligence warning of potential Ottawa mass protests two

00:21:04.540 weeks before convoy. That's what they wrote. And True North's article on this said, OPP officer says

00:21:10.540 no intel of convoy violence. And I think if you were watching this, anyone would really realize that

00:21:16.640 the OPP intelligence officer, Patton Morris, his testimony was the news of the day. That was for

00:21:22.140 sure what overshadowed the previous city councilor's testimony. It's just, it is alarming to me,

00:21:28.560 Andrew, that the legacy media, like I said before, they are committed to one side of this. And maybe

00:21:35.180 you could say that we're committed to the other side of it. But in my opinion, we're filling a very

00:21:40.100 important need here. Because like you said, you have two outlets looking at the same story, hearing

00:21:45.360 the same testimony, and coming to vastly different conclusions. Vastly different conclusions. I think

00:21:52.040 at the end of the day, it's good for the Canadian media landscape that we do have alternative points

00:21:57.600 of view on this. But it does speak to me that I don't think we're going to see, in my opinion,

00:22:04.360 fair, impartial, balanced coverage from the legacy media throughout this hearing. We have five

00:22:09.960 more weeks of this, Andrew. We've got a long way to go. Justin Trudeau still to testify,

00:22:14.140 the senior members of the cabinet still to testify, and convoy leadership as well. So

00:22:18.440 it's going to be, it's going to be more important as we go further in this process. And I'm just hoping

00:22:23.720 that we're going to, we're going to try and get some better coverage here from the legacy media,

00:22:27.860 because right now it's been, it's been horrendous. No checks on some of these outlandish

00:22:32.920 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 this month of getting to 100,000 subscribers and also raising $100,000. So you can support both of

00:27:58.620 those campaigns by subscribing on YouTube and heading to donate.tnc.news. And you can do that

00:28:05.160 whether you're watching on Facebook too. So thanks very much. Have a great weekend, everyone.

00:28:09.360 We'll talk to you next week.

The Candice Malcolm Show - October 21, 2022

Fake News Friday ｜ True North fact-checks Reuters fact-check

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