The Candice Malcolm Show - The CBC is guilty of spreading fake news

00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Candice Malcolm and this is the Candice Malcolm Show. Today on the program, I want to

00:00:09.660 bring back an old segment that we used to do. We haven't done it a while, but given the current

00:00:14.000 media climate and everything that's going on in the country, I think it's important that we bring

00:00:17.620 this segment back. So it is called This Week in Fake News. It's a segment where I go through and

00:00:23.060 I find some of the most egregious examples of the media just getting it wrong, the media

00:00:27.580 misrepresenting who they are and the media just really botching a story and there's so much of

00:00:32.340 that today in Canada among the legacy media. So, you know, the legacy media are out there and they

00:00:38.260 pretend that they're these sort of champions of truth and that they're completely non-biased and

00:00:43.720 indifferent and they're just out there trying to report the facts. We all know that that's not true.

00:00:48.060 Every single reporter in Canada has their own biases and it's just a simple fact that most of

00:00:53.740 those biases lead them towards the left. Most journalists in Canada are left-leaning and that

00:00:59.260 bias does come through. They're not honest about who they are, so they pretend to be these unbiased,

00:01:03.880 impartial arbiters of facts and knowledge, but the reality is that they have their own agenda,

00:01:08.560 they have their own ideas and opinions, and that does come through. Here at True North,

00:01:13.500 you know exactly who we are and what you can get. We don't hide our biases. You know, for instance,

00:01:19.280 that our editorial position is conservative, that we see the world through the sort of right-of-center

00:01:25.040 prism of things, and that our news reports are fact-driven, straight facts. So you're not going

00:01:31.020 to see our opinions seep through in our news pieces, but when it comes to the editorial position,

00:01:35.620 we are open about the fact that we are conservative. Whereas, for instance, the CBC,

00:01:40.800 they're not open at all about their biases. They pretend to just simply be representing the views

00:01:45.980 of Canadians. Of course, we all know that the CBC is far left, that most of their reporters lean left,

00:01:51.140 but they don't acknowledge that. They don't say that they're a left-leaning organization. They lie

00:01:55.520 to you and they say that they're straight down the middle, which, of course, they are not. So in this

00:01:59.980 Week in Fake News, we are going to focus on two stories, and the first one does, lo and behold,

00:02:04.500 come from that state broadcaster, the CBC. So I noticed this piece over the weekend, and it really

00:02:09.800 just struck me as being dishonest. So here it is. It says,

00:02:13.100 three strikes and you're outed. Brian Pallister makes another inflammatory comment about Indigenous

00:02:18.740 relations. Now, you can see that this is listed under the term analysis. So back in the day in

00:02:24.100 journalism, there were sort of two camps of the types of reports that you would see. There would

00:02:27.980 be the straight news, which is what I was talking about, you know, the idea that there's no bias,

00:02:32.440 there's no, you know, worldview seeped in there. It's just impartial. Here are the facts. Here you go.

00:02:38.740 And then the other side of the aisle would be opinion journalism. And so this is the people

00:02:43.080 who add context to the stories. They give you your opinion. Sometimes they even tell you who

00:02:47.620 you should vote for and who you shouldn't vote for. But the news side is not supposed to do that.

00:02:51.500 Well, the legacy media has created this sort of third middle sector that's not quite news,

00:02:57.660 not quite opinion. They call it analysis. So this falls in that middle category. It really should

00:03:01.820 be listed as opinion because as we'll see when we go through this piece, it is an opinion piece.

00:03:06.140 But oddly enough, it is written by a reporter. So a person who does straight news, a person that

00:03:11.500 covers politics in Manitoba, presumably he's part of the press gallery there. He goes to the news

00:03:17.800 conferences and asks questions to the premier pretending to just be a straight reporter.

00:03:22.680 But then you have this weird analysis piece that really is just an opinion piece from this reporter

00:03:28.280 who basically is calling for the premier to be removed from office, which is a pretty strong call

00:03:35.000 from the state broadcaster, from the public journalists who received billions of dollars

00:03:39.440 in tax money. So as I said, the headline is three strikes and you're outed. I don't even really know

00:03:44.520 what that means. The sub headline here says Brian Pallister's latest gaffe and reluctance to acknowledge

00:03:50.340 it further illustrates his unusual leadership. So again, because it's an analysis, he's not taking

00:03:55.720 a really strong opinion, even though it's kind of buried in there. And instead it just says,

00:03:59.780 oh, this is unusual leadership, while the headline itself calls for him to be removed

00:04:04.920 from office. So I'll read from the report itself so we can get to these three supposed gaffes made

00:04:10.780 by the premier. So he starts by saying during five years as Manitoba's premier, Brian Pallister has

00:04:16.960 made a trio of statements his critics can fairly describe as impediments to reconciliation. Again,

00:04:24.000 you can see what this journalist's bias is, you can see what his opinion is, but he hides it behind

00:04:29.000 this language. So instead of just saying, this is my opinion, he says these statements, his critics

00:04:34.580 can fairly describe as being an impediment, which again, is just him hiding his own opinion.

00:04:39.480 So what are these three trio of gaffes? Well, the first one here, it says, so in 2017,

00:04:45.720 Pallister characterized divisions between indigenous and non-indigenous people fighting over illegal

00:04:50.520 night hunting as the markings of a race war. According to this piece, he later walked back those

00:04:56.380 comments as the wrong choice of words, but he did not apologize for them. So it sounds like in the

00:05:02.920 heat of a moment, he said this was a race war, which I don't really know much about this 2017

00:05:07.220 event. I'm sure the premier probably shouldn't be using terms like that, but really it's not the end

00:05:12.900 of the world. I mean, it's probably what a fairly accurate description of what was going on. And then

00:05:18.040 he later said, look, upon consideration, these were the wrong choice of words. So this reporter is kind

00:05:23.380 of being a stickler for whether or not someone apologized for really just, you know, saying

00:05:27.760 something that was true and then realizing, oh, it's probably politically incorrect and saying it

00:05:32.420 was a wrong choice of word. It looks like he did acknowledge it, whether or not he specifically said

00:05:37.120 the word, I'm sorry. Again, you know, this is four years ago now. I don't know why this is something

00:05:42.500 that the CBC needs to write about now, but let's go on to the second supposed gaffe by Premier

00:05:48.660 Pallister in Manitoba. So the second one, he said in late 2020, the premier suggested that the need

00:05:54.800 to prioritize the indigenous population for COVID-19 vaccinations puts Manitobans at the back

00:06:01.020 of the line for doses if the province does not receive the greater proportion, proportionate share

00:06:07.480 of shots. So the implication, this according to the CBC reporter, is that indigenous people are not

00:06:14.020 not Manitobans. In spite of that rhetoric, the province went on to partner with the First Nations

00:06:18.840 pandemic response team on what is widely regarded as a successful effort to ensure vaccines made their

00:06:25.120 way to indigenous communities. So this is kind of interesting because his complaint is the language

00:06:30.440 that the premier used, which admittedly isn't that great, but it ignores the actual actions of the

00:06:36.080 premier. So here we have in Manitoba, a success story, a story of the premier prioritizing the

00:06:42.300 indigenous population, ensuring that they did get their COVID vaccines. And that was successful.

00:06:46.880 And the author even confirms that in this piece saying that, well, yeah, his words were bad, but

00:06:52.860 his actions were great. And so again, it kind of negates this entire point. Sure, he said something

00:06:58.300 that maybe he shouldn't have. It seems again, like he probably just misspoke. And then the actions were

00:07:03.620 what matters. So CBC is pointing out that it doesn't matter what you do. As long as you say something

00:07:09.100 that's slightly politically incorrect, then we're going to go after you for it. Okay, let's find out

00:07:13.680 what the third statement was. So here he says, here the piece goes on to say, the third statement

00:07:19.080 arrived on Wednesday when the premier issued a plea to Manitobans who remain angry about the discovery

00:07:24.720 of the remains of hundreds of children at several Canadian residential schools. If you've been following

00:07:29.360 my reports, you know that this statement that he just wrote here isn't exactly true. It's not

00:07:33.940 confirmed. And to say that the remains are of children at residential schools is just

00:07:38.480 flatly, plainly false. I've made this point many times. For instance, the place where the unmarked

00:07:44.800 graves were discovered in Cranbrook, British Columbia was an existing graveyard that predated

00:07:50.100 the residential school by 40 years and also serviced the only local hospital in the area. So the idea

00:07:55.800 that these graves are all belonging to children residential schools is just patently false. But the

00:08:00.460 reporter repeats that myth. And then he goes on to say this, and this is pretty wild. So again, this is to

00:08:06.080 quote the piece in the CBC, during a speech intended to calm the waters, Pallister instead whipped up a

00:08:12.600 storm by suggesting the colonization of Canada was conducted with good intentions. This is a quote from

00:08:19.240 Pallister, the people who came to this country before it was a country and since then didn't come here to

00:08:24.120 destroy anything. They came here to build. Okay, so let's just pause for a second because this shouldn't

00:08:31.100 even be a controversial point. Early Canadians were good people that had good intentions. They came here

00:08:36.300 to build a country. That's true. You can argue about whether the outcomes of their policies were good

00:08:41.180 or bad. A lot of them were really good. We live in a great country. Look at the rule of law in our

00:08:45.460 country, the institutions, the education system, the health system. There are so many things that Canada

00:08:50.540 got right. Canada is a great country in the scheme of things. Early Canadians, yes, they had good

00:08:56.040 intentions. And yes, they came here to build. Did they make some mistakes? Absolutely. Were early

00:09:00.860 governments not as good as governments today? Absolutely. I think you can look at any government

00:09:04.920 in any country in the world and any time in Canadian history and point out things that are bad. But when

00:09:11.080 you compare Canada to any other country in the world, and especially at that time, right, we're talking

00:09:15.680 about the turn of the century from the 1800s to the 1900s. That's what these residential schools

00:09:20.100 were established. And then they were maintained during the 20th century, you know, at a time

00:09:24.760 when evil ideologies like fascism and communism were causing real chaos and reaping havoc all over

00:09:31.620 the globe. You're talking about real genocide, real issues of mass death and suffering and misery at

00:09:38.180 the hands of governments. Over in Canada, we had this school system that had some bad outcomes,

00:09:44.140 absolutely. But again, the intentions, were they good? Were they bad of the residential schools? That's a

00:09:49.020 debate that we can have. But to kind of blanketly say that the intentions of early Canadians were not

00:09:54.520 good. I don't think you can say that. And I don't think that you can say that they've had a negative

00:09:58.840 outcome. But again, the CBC is not interested in nuance or interested in this weird game of gotcha

00:10:04.460 journalism, taking words out of context and trying to use them to haunt someone. And of course, it doesn't

00:10:10.460 apply equally. They would never do this to Justin Trudeau. They would never do this to a liberal

00:10:14.980 premier or a liberal politician. This is just a weird gotcha game that they play against conservatives,

00:10:20.580 parsing their language, taking it out of context, using it against them. It's absolutely despicable.

00:10:25.340 And I think that the CBC should be absolutely ashamed of itself for running this piece. Okay,

00:10:30.220 let's move on to my second article that I'd like to go through in This Week in Fake News. This is over

00:10:36.640 in iPolitics. You may not have heard of iPolitics. It's a small little website, a news outlet that is based

00:10:43.140 in Ottawa and they sort of cover Ottawa-based news. But you probably will recognize the author of this

00:10:48.760 article because Michael Corrin used to be a very prominent, outspoken conservative who was a

00:10:54.480 religious conservative. And he would sort of back every position, even the controversial and extreme

00:10:59.060 ones of the Christian right and sort of defend them. And then all of a sudden, he had this weird

00:11:03.860 180 where he went hardcore in the other direction. And now he's a leftist who openly speaks out about how

00:11:09.840 much he hates sort of the political right and the Christian right in particular. So his piece over

00:11:16.340 in iPolitics is called, Let's Worried About Destroyed People First, Then Destroyed Churches. To scream at

00:11:22.660 violence without realizing its causes isn't an authentic Christian response. So it's a little rich to hear

00:11:28.760 Michael Corrin telling us about what is and what isn't an authentic Christian response, given the fact

00:11:34.500 that he has himself switched his position so much, it's hard to tell what's authentic with him and

00:11:40.400 what isn't. But the long and the short of it, and I won't spend too much time on this piece because

00:11:44.700 it's really despicable. But the idea is that we're supposed to just sort of accept the idea that these

00:11:50.080 churches are being burnt down, that churches are being vandalized, and that it's all part of the sort

00:11:55.200 of reconciliation process. And I just think that this view is absolutely abhorrent. Look, one of the most

00:12:01.100 important values in Canada is religious freedom, the ability to practice your religion. We all know

00:12:07.540 that if this was happening to any other religious group, if these were Jewish synagogues, or Muslim

00:12:12.320 mosques, or Sikh temples, or any other religious building, this would be a huge, huge national story.

00:12:18.580 The RCMP would be out there on a manhunt trying to find those responsible. And every single liberal

00:12:23.580 and leftist pundit, probably every conservative pundit too, would be condemning it. But somehow because

00:12:28.200 it's happening to Christians, and because of the news with the unmarked graves being discovered,

00:12:34.040 everyone just sort of shrugs their shoulders. And Michael Corrin is sort of the leading example of

00:12:38.780 this. And perhaps the saddest part of this whole story about the churches getting burnt down or

00:12:43.920 being desecrated is that so many of these churches are on First Nations territories. So something that

00:12:48.860 you might not hear many people talk about, and people don't really like to acknowledge, but the

00:12:53.220 overwhelming majority of First Nations people in this country are practicing Christians. Many of them are

00:12:58.080 practicing Catholics. So the churches that are being burnt down are their places of worship.

00:13:02.900 There are places where First Nations go to pray and to congregate. The idea that during this time that

00:13:09.160 is a crisis for First Nations, you know, the sort of wounds of residential schools, the wounds of

00:13:14.420 residential schools are being ripped open by the mainstream media, a lot of times in a very

00:13:18.980 neglectful way, using irresponsible language, exaggerating, sensationalizing the story,

00:13:24.460 and saying things that are flat out untrue, ripping open the wounds for First Nations

00:13:29.340 people. And then they don't have anywhere to go and pray because their local community church has

00:13:34.080 been burnt down. Look, again, Canada is a country of laws. We have the rule of law. And one of the

00:13:39.820 foremost values that we have in this country is freedom of religion. That includes the sanctity

00:13:44.300 of these buildings and the ability of Canadians to go and pray. And having someone like Michael

00:13:49.280 Corrin kind of get out there and champion the idea that it is okay that these are being burnt down

00:13:53.700 and that it's not the same as violence against individual people is just absolutely disgusting.

00:13:59.060 I want to point out one line just because it's a certainly a pet peeve of mine. But Michael Corrin

00:14:04.080 even repeats the lie that these were mass graves that were discovered. So he says,

00:14:09.500 this has all happened since the mass unmarked graves of indigenous children were found on the grounds of

00:14:15.120 former residential schools, which were often run by churches. Okay, so you see here he uses the term

00:14:20.240 mass unmarked graves, which is sort of a sleight of hand trick. They weren't mass graves. A lot of

00:14:24.860 media reported that they were mass graves. Of course, mass graves are the hallmark of genocide. And the

00:14:29.780 idea of a mass grave sort of conjures images of evil done by Nazis and communists and fascists

00:14:36.640 in the 20th century. So to use that term mass graves is incredibly dubious. And it's not true in this

00:14:41.640 instance. And so because it's not technically true, he kind of sneaks in mass unmarked graves so

00:14:47.580 that if you're not reading it very carefully, you might think it just says mass graves, but really

00:14:52.100 he's saying mass unmarked graves, which isn't really the correct language that you would use.

00:14:56.200 So shame on iPolitics for publishing this piece. Shame on the CBC for writing that weird analysis,

00:15:01.980 trying to condemn the premier for things that really weren't that bad. This is definitely your

00:15:06.940 examples of fake news for this week. Thanks so much for tuning in. I'm Candice Malcolm,

00:15:10.820 and this is the Candice Malcolm show.

The Candice Malcolm Show - July 15, 2021

The CBC is guilty of spreading fake news – again

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