The Critical Compass Podcast - How to Beat Regime Media ｜ Derek Fildebrandt, Jason Lavigne, & The Critical Compass

00:00:00.000 I think having our guerrilla war style, decentralized model actually works pretty well for us.

00:00:09.020 The right or non-regime media is at its strongest right now in Canada than it's probably ever been.

00:00:18.040 People describe like, oh, you're part of a foreign-funded shadowy network of like, first of all, if there is foreign money, where is it?

00:00:25.300 because we've been volunteering a lot of hours

00:00:27.320 and we would love to get some of that shadowy porn money.

00:00:32.640 To our mind, that's the greatest benefit of unaffiliated media

00:00:37.020 is that there exists a record.

00:00:41.220 It isn't colored.

00:00:42.960 It isn't editorialized.

00:00:44.500 It isn't meant to be sold to an audience

00:00:46.260 who's expecting to be told what to think.

00:00:48.460 It's just presented without comment.

00:00:50.880 So I do think Alberta independence could be part of the solution

00:00:54.920 if there's no more funding for regime media in that,

00:01:00.180 it changes the playing field a little bit

00:01:02.280 in a way that we haven't really seen

00:01:04.180 that experiment in Canada.

00:01:06.060 So maybe that's part of the solution.

00:01:14.860 Well, everybody, thanks a lot for joining this panel here.

00:01:17.560 And I'm pretty excited about this one

00:01:19.080 because this is probably one of the bigger questions

00:01:20.600 I didn't answer, is how do we beat regime media?

00:01:24.040 because $1.6 billion for CVC.

00:01:27.580 They're all having other sources of income,

00:01:29.320 and they also have their marching orders

00:01:31.160 and potentially some narrative-driven a little bit higher up.

00:01:35.800 So it's a big beast.

00:01:37.800 I'm going to start here with Derek,

00:01:39.240 who is one of the few in Canada successfully taking on the regime media.

00:01:44.920 And by the way, I love that title, regime media.

00:01:47.300 Derek, go ahead and introduce yourself

00:01:48.600 and let us know why you are working on Western Standard.

00:01:54.040 uh thank you well uh i did a tour duty in the alberta legislature as an alberta uh wild rose

00:02:02.200 mla uh when done that i needed something to do and i had a lot of experience adjacent to media

00:02:09.720 in my career the canadian taxpayers federation before politics and during politics i looked 0.98

00:02:14.360 around at the people running media companies and figured those guys are pretty stupid i 0.99

00:02:19.080 think I could figure it out. And it really isn't rocket science, at least it wasn't. 0.99

00:02:27.000 So we are coming up on our seven-year anniversary for the re-founded Western Standard.

00:02:32.200 Thank you. We were in a fortunate position where we were new and independent media,

00:02:39.000 but we were able to lay claim to some lineage. The Western Standard print magazine that existed

00:02:43.240 from 2003 to 2007, and the Alberta Report print magazine from 1973 to 2003, and we were able to

00:02:52.240 tap into an old brand, a brand that had been gone, so my generation didn't know it as much,

00:02:58.140 but older generations did, and it meant something to me. I remember reading the Western Standard

00:03:01.780 magazine while I was in university, and so we were able to tap in kind of at the last wave,

00:03:09.060 I think, of when someone could come in and start a successful media company. Independent media

00:03:17.460 continues to bloom, but now it takes the form of pretty much podcast or influencer citizen

00:03:26.440 journalist and where we draw the line at what's a journalist and what's not. I don't actually agree

00:03:31.820 that anyone who just covers public events is a journalist, but I also don't believe that

00:03:38.180 there should be a self-selected group of people who get to determine who's in the club and who's

00:03:44.000 not. So I'd have no good answer about who's a journalist and who is not a journalist.

00:03:48.540 For some things like press gallery accreditation, a line has to be drawn somewhere. I'm just not

00:03:52.940 comfortable with people who have a self-interest in limiting that club being the ones who get to

00:03:57.480 decide. We came along before the Online News Act, which, very long story short, was

00:04:05.660 advertising used to be the bread and butter of media, going back to Thomas Paine writing

00:04:15.080 Common Sense for the American Revolution. You would advertise, and that was the financial

00:04:21.660 backbone of media forever. The advertising models collapsed, including online, and better

00:04:27.400 products than we can deliver, Google, Facebook, they came along and they're able to target

00:04:32.760 demographics in ways that media companies cannot. And so it was an existential threat to the

00:04:41.660 financial model of modern media. I don't like that the advertising model has collapsed, but

00:04:49.340 what I did like is that when I had a new media company, I was able to put a link to my content

00:04:55.620 on Facebook, and if it was interesting, it might go viral, and it spread to people. It was like,

00:05:01.040 like, my very first job was as a newspaper delivery boy, and I got paid a little bit for

00:05:05.320 delivering the product to the customer. Well, Facebook was our newspaper boy, except we didn't

00:05:10.800 have to pay him. The difference is that the newspaper boy was selling advertising on the side.

00:05:16.280 So the federal government passed this, and Facebook told us, I don't know what the swearing

00:05:22.020 rules are for this panel, but they told us to make love with ourselves. And that is exactly

00:05:30.940 what happened. The Facebook banned Canadian news from Facebook. And so the Western Standard,

00:05:37.460 we lost two thirds of our readership overnight. It almost killed our business. But this means

00:05:44.680 no new media companies can break through anymore. There's other things like the media

00:05:49.040 subsidy programs uh that protects incumbents and you have no choice but to take it essentially

00:05:55.120 you can take it but if you want to be competitive and a big boy you have to because in the last

00:05:59.440 election the conservatives dropped their their opposition to the media subsidies and they now

00:06:04.080 support it every single party political party in parliament all supports the system around regime

00:06:09.400 media uh so if you want to beat it it's going to be tough um but we got we got it under the wire

00:06:17.340 and we're able to continue growing from where we're at. Sorry, that was way too long for an

00:06:21.160 introduction. That's okay. That's okay. And you covered a couple of things I was going to get

00:06:25.760 into, like the Online Media Act, but we'll cover that up as well. So James and Mike, I don't know

00:06:30.360 who's going to speak first. You guys can rock, paper, scissors. But I met you both first at the

00:06:35.060 AGM in Edmonton for the UCP party. And I think it was Mike that came up to me and said, hey,

00:06:40.780 I would like to interview you. I'm like, wait a minute, no, I'm media. He's like, no, I want to

00:06:45.020 interview you. I'm like, whoa, that never happens, but happy to. I hope this is not a setup. That was

00:06:49.560 the first thing that went through my mind, like, who are these guys? But you did a great job. And

00:06:53.000 one of the things that I saw after you released your piece was the production value. You actually

00:06:58.520 raised the production value and what we're used to when it comes to what people would call citizen

00:07:02.280 journalists, maybe Derek wouldn't, but some people do consume their stuff. And it was low quality,

00:07:08.460 shaky camera, yelling at their phone, sometimes in their car, having a smoke, swearing. But then

00:07:13.900 you guys came along and started to kind of elevate it with the production was that a conscious

00:07:17.760 decision or that was just your your talents that you had brought to the table we started our podcast

00:07:23.040 just to explore ideas and that was stress testing ideas and as independence as the movement started

00:07:31.180 to grow we asked ourselves like are we doing enough to cover events to use our skills and

00:07:36.800 but i'm a videographer by trade so it made sense to start filming and then if we're going to

00:07:43.780 film the quality gives credence to the ideas in a way that the higher quality you can capture a

00:07:53.100 speech or a panel um the less barriers there are for somebody to really dig deep into those ideas

00:08:00.620 so quality is really important that way and it does take a certain skill set and does take a

00:08:05.900 little bit of work but i it's funny hearing people describe like oh you're part of a foreign funded

00:08:13.440 shadowy network of like first of all if there is foreign money where is it because we've been

00:08:18.480 volunteering a lot of hours and we would love to get some of that some of that shadowy foreign

00:08:24.000 money so um i think regime media people can't comprehend all it takes is skill a little bit

00:08:31.360 of equipment and a bit of passion to provide something of value to people that are interested

00:08:37.440 and it requires that interest and we're still seeing a shift where people with without a shift

00:08:44.080 of interest what we're filming and what we're putting out there won't land but we are hoping

00:08:50.640 to be part of that shift as it happens and mike um one of the things i noticed for the podcast that

00:08:56.320 you guys host is you do take the time to try and have conversations or debates with both sides and

00:09:01.680 you bring people on to have that conversation um what's the attraction for you on that one and how

00:09:07.120 difficult is it to get people to participate in that unfortunately it is pretty difficult um we've

00:09:13.920 had a couple opportunities to interview some people who are either either self-described as leftists

00:09:19.120 or um describe themselves as conservatives but against the independence movement for for various

00:09:25.280 reasons um one of the things like james was saying that we've found in our kind of adventure in this

00:09:32.640 in this realm is that when you're trying to have discussions about higher order ideas and you're

00:09:38.600 trying to actually have you know philosophical and political discussions that aren't tribal in

00:09:43.960 nature and are more just an earnest search for the truth people find that difficult to grasp

00:09:51.200 they they find that that it's and when I say people I mean regime media people because and

00:09:57.260 there are even there may potentially I'll never tell but there may even be people in this room

00:10:01.140 who are representatives of that media

00:10:04.000 who have characterized...

00:10:05.500 And they're welcome here.

00:10:06.560 Yes.

00:10:07.220 But they've characterized us as,

00:10:10.260 that we must be, like James said,

00:10:13.200 foreign-funded or bad-faith actors in some way

00:10:15.420 because they have shown themselves

00:10:18.860 to be not interested in having discussions.

00:10:21.560 Like, they're...

00:10:22.460 I shouldn't say that,

00:10:23.640 that they're not interested in having discussions,

00:10:25.200 but they're more interested in framing everything

00:10:27.760 through ideological lenses

00:10:29.340 and through identity politics lenses, rather than trying to truly understand your political

00:10:36.960 opponent, so to speak, or truly understand the other side so that you can actually engage in

00:10:41.320 fruitful discourse between, you know, there's a not insignificant portion of the conservative

00:10:46.640 base in Alberta who is actually against Alberta independence. And they need to be reached because

00:10:54.300 they are an important voting bloc. And we share probably 90% of the same ideas about most things.

00:10:59.340 and if you can't have um a friendly and and high level and intelligent discussion with them well

00:11:08.540 then you're you're you're missing a great opportunity uh so derek so i was doing a round

00:11:14.040 table over there one of the questions that came up was along the lines that the left side seems

00:11:18.860 to be quite coordinated and they work together and they don't really fight amongst each other

00:11:22.600 It seems like it's a big machine. But you would say the counter to them is a bunch of organizations like yours and then smaller doing their own thing. Do you think that there's a competitive advantage against taking on the regime that we're all kind of in our own lanes doing our own thing? Or do you think it would make more sense if somehow we all came together to work to take on the regime media?

00:11:47.920 i mean i guess what we define as media is is nebulous to begin with uh some things are very

00:11:55.940 clearly media uh you know the big independence that'd be rebel juno western standard i think

00:12:03.560 it's fair to say those are the three big independents and then and then there's a lot of

00:12:07.820 solo uh practices or it might be war two-man shows you know there's there's an army there's

00:12:13.260 there's a bunch here tonight um and some might call themselves media some might just say content

00:12:19.440 creator it's it's fuzzy for the most part you know we all try to at least not engage in friendly fire 0.99

00:12:28.540 we understand generally who the opponent is there's exceptions to that there are some jerks 0.97

00:12:33.580 as there is in anything and i try to put my own jerkish instincts aside but i i don't think 0.95

00:12:40.780 you know one big conglomeration is likely to succeed we did try that already it was the sun

00:12:50.560 news network and that was an honest to god attempt with major capital behind it uh they brought in

00:12:59.940 uh actually there's there's an interesting uh clip from stephen harper on a panel or in some

00:13:05.280 interview somewhere at one point not that long ago where he says that helped destroy the rest of

00:13:09.980 the conservative resistance in the legacy media because they took all the good ones out of

00:13:13.720 everywhere and they brought them into one spot. And then Sun News Network didn't make it. There's

00:13:18.520 reasons for that. It was largely the government did not treat them equally and TV licensing as

00:13:22.840 all the other competitor networks. Oddly enough, it was the Harper government that didn't treat them

00:13:27.180 fairly. And it collapsed. And then from there, it broke into a million pieces. And Rebel News

00:13:36.000 came directly out of there. And a lot of others kind of picked up the ball, some of them returned

00:13:42.180 to the legacy media. I think having our guerrilla war style, decentralized model actually works

00:13:49.980 pretty well for us. The right or non-regime media is at its strongest right now in Canada

00:13:58.480 than it's probably ever been. And it's good because when you say, remember the height of

00:14:05.520 fox news in the united states you know we're talking you know right post 9-11 and everyone

00:14:10.040 got their talking points from bill o'reilly that was bad its consumers didn't know it but they

00:14:16.160 were consuming a just a different kind of regime media uh and one of the scary things that's dawned

00:14:24.720 on me in the last few years was without my knowing without with me believing quite explicitly the

00:14:33.740 opposite, that I'm this brave, independent opponent of the regime media, I realized

00:14:39.760 there's times where I was a part of the regime media and I didn't even know it.

00:14:45.380 Even at times where I explicitly thought I'm fighting the good fight, I was a part of it

00:14:50.680 because I had been propagandized. And I think of myself as a free thinker. I think of myself

00:14:56.240 as someone who just doesn't take the party line and the government line. I think outside that.

00:15:02.320 And for the most part, I do. But everyone's got those few sacred cows. Every one of us have got sacred cows. And I look back and I think, I look back at some of the coverage we did when I was thinking we were brave and independent. And I look back at that and I'm like, that's the regime media. And it's my own words. And that broke my heart.

00:15:25.440 So just to jump in here, it seems like our sense-making machine, our sense-making apparatus

00:15:33.420 has been broken and regime media is, it does not make sense because it's not a truth-based

00:15:40.940 machine at this point. So I think the hunger for independent media in many different domains and

00:15:47.740 you describing the different facets of different media is part of its strength because it speaks

00:15:53.820 to different things that people will be interested,

00:15:58.260 let it be event coverage,

00:15:59.560 let it be all the live streams going during the trucker convoy,

00:16:02.940 which fueled somebody's sense-making of that event in real time.

00:16:08.860 And that's something that will continue to grow

00:16:11.600 outside of the regime media because the demand is there.

00:16:15.960 I think people are more and more skeptical of any regime media.

00:16:20.620 Well, there's still people who aren't fully convinced, but I think it's starting to grow because people realize that the world doesn't make sense and they're looking for different perspectives.

00:16:32.700 Even if they don't agree, they're looking for different perspectives.

00:16:36.640 They're looking for, let it be, long-form discussions.

00:16:39.160 They're still looking for kind of news highlights of things.

00:16:42.200 They're looking for, well, is what was said at this event actually what was said?

00:16:46.940 Maybe they quote something out of context and maybe now they want proof of any of this to keep the record clean that people can reference.

00:16:58.320 So there's different ways that people will interact.

00:17:02.160 I've noticed quite a few times now, one of the ways to build audiences, and this is not even a left or right thing, is to get into more of the entertainment side of things.

00:17:11.820 The rage, the outrage, the clickbaiting, all that kind of stuff.

00:17:16.740 And I got to commend you, Derek, because a lot of work that I've noticed from Western Standard doesn't go down that road, but you also bring the other side and sometimes it's in a favorable light.

00:17:28.240 And then people will be like, wait a minute, why are you providing a platform for that?

00:17:31.780 Or why are you adding that, well, it's the truth, but not a twist to it.

00:17:37.000 We'll start with Mike on this one.

00:17:38.660 When you guys started getting into this, was there a temptation to kind of sensationalize this, build an audience, get those clicks, get those YouTube dollars? Because if you look closely, that seems to be what a lot of people want. They want to be entertained, not necessarily receive journalism.

00:17:55.180 Well, I'll say that the only temptation exists in once you figure out how the YouTube algorithm works and what words it likes to see capitalized in titles and, you know, what...

00:18:09.700 Can you share those secrets?

00:18:13.220 Aggressive verbs.

00:18:16.020 Smashes, owns, you know, things like that.

00:18:20.240 It unfortunately works.

00:18:21.780 And, I mean, we're, I suppose we're guilty of that a little bit.

00:18:24.240 But we never wanted to be sensationalist in any way.

00:18:29.140 We just wanted to present a complete and compelling case for, you know, whatever it is that we were passionate about.

00:18:37.680 It was honest, you know, it was our true thoughts about, you know, what we think about those things.

00:18:42.000 And then, you know, when the Alberta independence movement really started to kind of take off after the last federal election,

00:18:47.820 And that was, I think, when we kind of found our, maybe our voice, but the audience followed

00:18:53.320 because we got to meet, you know, lots of great people in Alberta.

00:18:56.140 And, you know, the content is, it just comes, you know, the views will come when, I think

00:19:02.500 people have an inherent ability to detect when they're being misled or when they're

00:19:09.300 being fed a cooked story.

00:19:11.420 and uh so we never no i don't we never really you know considered being sensationalist for

00:19:17.720 clicks we just we just tell interesting stories have you been tempted derek to put the uh we

00:19:22.680 smash we own or anything like that in caps and of your stuff yeah i mean the uh that's what the

00:19:28.280 algorithm rewards uh and those who follow down that and i i also as i said i uh i i don't uh

00:19:38.260 I don't engage in friendly fire, even with my competitors, I consider them friendly competitors, I generally want them to succeed. So I don't I won't name names, but you know, some will do that, engage in that a bit more. My instructions to my editors and my journalists who are writing a story, I say, when you're coming up with your headline or a video title, go somewhere if Buzzfeed is at one end, and a really well written

00:20:07.860 but dry as the Sahara Frazier Institute report is on the other, be somewhere in between.

00:20:15.380 Be somewhere in between. It's got to be factual. It can't be overly sensationalistic,

00:20:21.000 but it's got to be interesting. If you write a story and you don't have a good headline on it,

00:20:24.880 it is like a tree falling in the forest and no one heard. And Drew Barnes is here. I serve with

00:20:31.740 drew drew knew me in my political career when i was in the analogy of the old bull and the young

00:20:38.220 bull at the top of the hill looking down at a field of cows i was the young bull i wanted to

00:20:44.760 find the first cow and um you know i'm a bit older more more seasoned now you know everyone you know

00:20:52.280 the story you know the young bull says let's run down there and have a cow and the old bull says

00:20:59.180 let's walk down the hill and have all the cows um and so that's that's the attitude i've taken

00:21:08.560 towards uh the journalism we do is we're walking down the hill it builds our credibility it builds

00:21:18.080 trust in our brand uh and you know those on the left are never going to like us anyway we're not

00:21:24.120 trying to be the Calgary Herald circa 2002 where everybody left the right the hard left the hard

00:21:32.160 right everyone can read it um and and be somewhat satisfied everyone's going to find something in

00:21:37.420 it for them we're not in that media environment we're never going to go back to that environment

00:21:40.780 we are siloed so I know who our readers are they extend from the center right to the hard right

00:21:48.380 And we're not going to make everyone happy in there, but we are for them, but we're going to pay them the respect of not bullshitting them and not overtiring their algorithm.

00:22:01.720 And so, yeah, we're not going to have trust with a left-wing reader.

00:22:04.940 We're not for them, but we want to not abuse the trust of our core readers.

00:22:11.280 And that's why I take the approach now of the old bull walking down the hill when we're running a headline.

00:22:16.580 well the knees catch up to that old bowl so there's no more running at that time um now

00:22:23.420 that we're taking on the the larger media so ctv's global cbc's there's kind of like four

00:22:30.640 different paths in my mind uh to be a competitor to kind of take them on the regime fight fire

00:22:36.060 with fire to kind of just do the same thing uh fight fire with water try to extinguish them

00:22:42.860 throw some gasoline on that fire or just let it burn out on their own because maybe they're on a

00:22:49.500 path where they're going to kind of just fizzle out because people don't trust them anymore there

00:22:54.180 was something like eight percent of people now still watch the cbc and that's it um so we'll

00:22:59.720 start with james on that one uh do you think there's a path or maybe multiple paths to fight

00:23:04.320 the regime if you try to develop a parallel institution and it does well you may have the

00:23:10.960 traditional like the regime media trying to emulate what is working on that yeah what also

00:23:18.560 might happen is you might have them just becoming the dominant institution that people say like well

00:23:25.960 this is better we trust it more and it fizzles out both of those may happen but you also may

00:23:32.400 still have the state intervene and or try to prop up or try to squash the competition so i i do think

00:23:40.580 Alberta independence could be part of the solution if there's no more funding for regime media in

00:23:47.840 that. It changes the playing field a little bit in a way that we haven't really seen that

00:23:52.720 experiment in Canada. So maybe that's part of the solution. Mike? You know, there's that old phrase

00:24:00.260 of sunlight is the best disinfectant, right? And so what we try to do when we come to these events

00:24:06.720 where we know that there will be people present

00:24:10.480 who are maybe not the best faith actors.

00:24:14.940 We welcome them, of course, like you say.

00:24:17.180 But we have two cameras running from start to finish,

00:24:20.540 capturing every speaker, every word that they said.

00:24:24.640 So that when, and not if,

00:24:27.540 when it happens that you see in the coming days

00:24:30.340 a CBC piece or a global or a CTV, whatever,

00:24:34.160 you know foreign national brings american lawyer to calgary to discuss gun rights and why albertans

00:24:44.100 need to own more guns when you see that you can then go to the critical compass and watch the

00:24:50.060 whole speech and see oh actually this was a much more nuanced and higher or like i was saying

00:24:55.120 higher order discussion or when they uh clip james saying he got foreign funds that's right

00:25:00.420 and only clip that part yeah yeah and so i mean that's to our mind that's the that's the greatest

00:25:07.700 benefit of unaffiliated media is that there exists a record um it isn't colored it isn't editorialized

00:25:16.820 it isn't meant to be sold to an audience who's expecting to be told what to think

00:25:20.980 it's just presented without comment and and people can interpret it as they will

00:25:25.780 So, and Derek, is there a way to take that on one of those paths?

00:25:29.920 And which one do you think works for you?

00:25:32.820 I'd propose another path.

00:25:34.940 Look, I used to be well-known as a strict libertarian, less government in everything we do.

00:25:45.160 I no longer am convinced of that because if we look at times where libertarian-style conservatives are in power,

00:25:53.420 the size of the state at best peters off it we we slow the growth of its trajectory maybe we even

00:26:02.220 peel it back a point or two and so when it comes to the media and just and dealing with the regime

00:26:08.560 media the final straw for me was the last federal election where the conservatives remember

00:26:13.100 pier poliev went around from his leadership race on uh all the way through the first half of the

00:26:18.420 election. And who here has been to one of his rallies? Yeah. And who here remembers him

00:26:24.020 promising to shut down the CBC? Yeah, he quit that halfway through the campaign when he realized,

00:26:31.020 oh, the polls are tanking and maybe I could use a nice story from the CBC. He also went around

00:26:36.520 promising to get rid of all the media subsidies. He dropped that about halfway through the federal

00:26:41.120 campaign as well because he hoped it would buy him some better headlines. It didn't, but it shot

00:26:46.480 their credibility. We've tried building parallel institutions. That partially works, but then the

00:26:52.980 regime tamps down on us. We get the Online News Act. We get media subsidies. We get now increased

00:26:59.960 funding of the CBC. And I don't believe if you can't beat them, join them. But if you can't beat

00:27:05.900 them, take them over. So what I'm proposing is a, I'm going to call it authoritarian libertarianism

00:27:13.900 strategy and you might understand why in a second that's going to be clipped oh yeah oh i i know

00:27:21.580 this one's going to get out there um the next conservative government should not get rid of the 0.93

00:27:27.200 cbc they should make me the president of it or one of the other lunatics in this room 0.51

00:27:34.620 and we turn it into like you you don't like fox news well wait till you see what we're gonna do

00:27:42.340 with it you didn't like sun news network you know wait till you see you know the western standard

00:27:47.440 broadcast corporation whatever the hell we take it and we just do exactly what we accuse the left 0.96

00:27:54.220 of doing and we just do it ourselves because no conservatives ever gonna have the balls to get rid

00:27:58.860 of it uh no conservatives gonna have the balls to get rid of the media subsidies that try and push

00:28:04.080 the media you know they it doesn't dictate things but it nudges them in a direction well then we're

00:28:08.680 going to do it on the other side we're going to use the powers of the conservatives never use the

00:28:14.140 powers of the regime for good they try to not use the powers and as soon as they're out of power

00:28:18.000 our enemies come along and use it and we always lose we win a little battle and we lose the war

00:28:24.180 we win a battle and we lose the war that's because we're fighting with the geneva convention and our

00:28:29.620 enemies are not so it's time we commit some media war crimes here and we do exactly uh what we accuse

00:28:36.280 our opponents of doing when we're in power. You've given them lots of clips, Derek, for sure.

00:28:42.420 Western Standard says media law or warfare. Derek, fill the breath. Crazy. War crimes. Here we go.

00:28:49.560 Last one, and then we'll hand it back over quickly here. What can the audience do? How can they

00:28:55.300 recognize good media versus bad media? What is just confirmation bias for them versus what is

00:29:02.840 really true uh journalism or reporting james mike and then we'll finish with derek if he doesn't get

00:29:09.120 us arrested the uh look for who preys on that emotional reaction versus giving you information

00:29:18.400 that's a good litmus test and those who seem to be more like i'll give you props for your calm

00:29:27.760 demeanor and the way that you unpack things even if you disagree with things you're not raging

00:29:32.900 in in your podcast off camera maybe but but you you you try to keep it even keel so i think that's

00:29:41.100 a good litmus test and you set a good example that way so i i i think that's something the

00:29:46.960 audience should look out for so yeah i think maybe building on that i would just say be cautious of

00:29:52.280 um anyone from any side who tries to tell you what to think and not how to think um that's kind

00:29:58.720 of cliche it's kind of a you know very classic philosophical truism isn't it but um yeah and

00:30:05.520 like because we're not our side quote-unquote you know isn't innocent from doing that like

00:30:10.820 you know Derek was saying you know there's it's not all that long ago that you know like isn't

00:30:16.240 it a weird thing that the left in maybe and specifically in the U.S. right now tends to be

00:30:20.360 the party of war. And whereas the rights, maybe 20, 30 years ago was the party of war. And it was

00:30:25.420 the, you know, these things shift over time on what side is committing what atrocity, but the,

00:30:32.000 the, the, the higher ideas don't have to change. So yeah, be, be, just be cautious of people who

00:30:38.100 are trying to manipulate your emotions, tell you how you should feel about a piece of news,

00:30:43.920 maybe even in the headline before you've even read the article

00:30:46.680 and be more, search out media that presents you with information

00:30:53.160 and respects you enough to allow you to determine how you feel about it.

00:30:59.760 In 140 characters or less, Derek, what do you say?

00:31:03.900 Look for media that openly admit their mistakes and their errors.

00:31:10.400 We all do.

00:31:11.620 and the more the more content you do the more errors you're going to make we've got over a

00:31:16.340 dozen full-time employees plus freelancers so we have a lot i don't think we make a ton but we do

00:31:23.260 make them and we've got a section of our site where you can go to and you can see cataloged

00:31:28.080 every error uh correction that we've made um we've got a system for for addressing it um sometimes

00:31:36.180 if we're doing it on a show, we'll actually kind of insert it post-production that, oh, actually,

00:31:42.180 here's a factual correction. One of the bad things that came from the Trump era was that

00:31:51.160 he shows that you are rewarded for not admitting when you make a mistake. He's politically rewarded

00:31:57.640 for never admitting when he makes a mistake. And that's because people would admit to mistakes in

00:32:02.840 good faith and then be crucified for it. And so he, his way around it was, I never make mistakes.

00:32:08.100 That's also not right. Um, so if you're, who, who is trustworthy is look to who can, uh, who,

00:32:15.520 who can fess up to it. And just one little, uh, example of that before I wrap is, uh, I just found

00:32:21.660 a story from 2021 on CTV. So five years ago, and it talks about, they found, they found the remains

00:32:30.240 mass grave of children

00:32:32.960 in Kamloops. Five years ago

00:32:34.900 they've still not corrected it. So that's all you need

00:32:36.900 to know about them. Francis is

00:32:38.880 working on that one. So thank you

00:32:40.800 Francis. Everybody thank you very much for being here.

00:32:42.820 Appreciate that.

00:33:00.240 Thank you.

The Critical Compass Podcast - October 01, 2026

How to Beat Regime Media ｜ Derek Fildebrandt, Jason Lavigne, & The Critical Compass

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