The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - August 02, 2023


The Liberals Bill C-18 Was Built To Shut Down Independent Media


Episode Stats

Length

7 minutes

Words per Minute

201.49057

Word Count

1,523

Sentence Count

74


Summary

Bill C-18 has effectively shut down Canadian news in Canada, and I'm here to talk about it. I also talk about how Justin Trudeau's greatest asset is having nothing said about him, and why he's actually more popular than most people think.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 After seeing the results of Bill C-18, I hope there's nobody left who thinks that Justin Trudeau's real motivation was to get journalists paid.
00:00:08.400 Bill C-18 is so obviously just about shutting down news in Canada, it's not even funny.
00:00:16.040 It's absurd that we even had headlines out there from places like the Toronto Star who have a financial motivation to supporting Bill C-18,
00:00:23.660 saying that, ooh, Pablo Rodriguez, the former heritage minister, he's taking on big tech, is he going to win, blah, blah, blah?
00:00:30.700 No, that's not the point. He's not trying to take on big tech. They're not trying to get journalists paid.
00:00:35.100 And by the way, big tech does not owe me anything. Facebook and Google are a fantastic platform that I, Daniel Boardman,
00:00:43.100 and everyone else here at the National Telegraph uses to get our news out there.
00:00:46.800 They do not owe me 50 bucks every single time I post a new link to my stuff. That's absurd.
00:00:51.940 But now, on Facebook, we're getting notifications like this, that our content's no longer allowed to be shared in Canada.
00:00:58.120 That we're now, the one good thing, I guess, that came out of this is that we are officially considered Canadian news
00:01:03.840 for all the people out there who say the National Telegraph is not real news.
00:01:07.200 Well, Justin Trudeau and big tech companies seem to think that we are, so I'll take it.
00:01:11.720 But obviously, journalists were never meant to get paid out of this.
00:01:15.960 The big tech companies were never going to be dumb enough to start paying journalists for just posting things on their platforms.
00:01:21.480 Things that big tech never asked them to post.
00:01:23.740 It's just an open forum that you're allowed to post stuff on.
00:01:26.860 But obviously, this was just meant for Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government to demand that big tech do this
00:01:32.700 so that big tech just shuts down news.
00:01:34.980 Because for Justin Trudeau, his greatest asset in terms of the media cycle is having nothing said about him.
00:01:42.080 Justin Trudeau is very much a politician.
00:01:43.760 If people don't hear anything going on with him, they just assume he's probably doing a half-decent job.
00:01:49.480 Because every single time you do hear stuff from him, it's just abysmal.
00:01:53.420 It's just scandals.
00:01:54.400 It's just terrible economic reports.
00:01:56.300 It's just him saying ridiculous things at press conferences.
00:01:58.900 So when you hear nothing, the average person must think to themselves,
00:02:02.200 ah, probably not doing that bad a job.
00:02:04.060 Maybe I'll vote for him.
00:02:04.880 Who knows?
00:02:05.920 So that's why Justin Trudeau is always popular whenever he goes on vacation.
00:02:08.840 Every single time he goes on vacation, except that one time when he went to Tofino,
00:02:12.160 when he had just made the Truth and Reconciliation Day a holiday.
00:02:16.440 Other than that, whenever he's on vacation or he just goes completely radio silence for a while,
00:02:21.860 he's way more popular.
00:02:23.140 Think about it right now.
00:02:24.260 He is absolutely in the dumps right now because he won't shut up.
00:02:27.420 Even though he's not really in the midst of a specific scandal,
00:02:30.440 because he won't stop insulting Canadians and saying they're dumb for supporting the Conservatives
00:02:34.580 or supporting Conservative criticisms of the Liberals.
00:02:37.000 He's driving himself further and further into the floor.
00:02:40.760 And Bill C-18 is effectively meant to remedy the fact that he won't shut up
00:02:44.500 by basically making it so that independent media cannot get their content out on social media.
00:02:49.660 Because the National Telegraph, the Western Standard, Rebel News, True North,
00:02:53.920 all these other places, Westphalian Times, SpencerFernando.com,
00:02:57.520 we all rely on social media to get our content out there.
00:03:02.220 If we cannot post on Facebook, if we can't post it, if we can't be found on Google News,
00:03:07.320 it's going to severely eat into our ability to generate any income and get any viewership.
00:03:14.060 The only place we really have left are just sort of smaller platforms like Twitter,
00:03:18.200 which has far less users than like, you know, Google or Facebook does.
00:03:22.080 And we have like Telegram.
00:03:23.640 But the problem with places like Telegram is you usually have to onboard people through Facebook.
00:03:28.200 So again, Justin Trudeau has basically caused a bit of a win-win.
00:03:32.200 Even if big tech was stupid enough to pay journalists for posting stuff online,
00:03:36.980 the Liberals also have Bill C-11, which allows the CRTC to basically warp algorithms
00:03:42.140 to like direct people towards good Canadian content, which the definition of is always absurd.
00:03:47.900 So effectively, what it would be is either the big tech companies say,
00:03:51.120 we're not going to let Canadian news on our platforms in which Justin Trudeau says,
00:03:54.900 yippee, because now no one's going to read about all the stupid crap he does.
00:03:58.300 Or the big tech does pay Canadian journalists and Bill C-11 will allow the Liberals to effectively
00:04:06.100 warp algorithms so that the people who are being clicked on are good legacy media journalists
00:04:11.020 who support the Liberal government.
00:04:12.980 So Justin Trudeau, and the great thing, though, is that at least a lot of people kind of understood
00:04:18.480 why Bill C-11 was so bad.
00:04:20.680 So I think, or Bill C-18 was so bad.
00:04:22.920 So at this point, I don't think that this is going to be a win for Justin Trudeau.
00:04:26.340 It's a win in the long run, but I don't think Justin Trudeau's government has long enough
00:04:30.700 to survive in order to actually get all the benefits out of Bill C-18.
00:04:35.040 The problem is, at least in the short run, or at least like two years, if you consider
00:04:39.060 that the short run or the long run, it's going to put the National Telegraph and a lot of other
00:04:43.380 independent media companies at great financial risk.
00:04:46.540 Because even though this was not like a primary income for me and Daniel, it was something
00:04:51.640 that was supplementary.
00:04:52.600 It is something that costs us a lot of money.
00:04:54.640 I've mentioned before, I'm being sued by a Chinese billionaire, and I've already had
00:04:58.140 to pay $15,000 to do it.
00:04:59.780 I do not make a lot of money from the National Telegraph.
00:05:02.580 I barely make anything, but it helps be able to sort of pay some of the bills and be able
00:05:05.920 to support the shows so I can invest more money into what we do.
00:05:09.420 Daniel Boardman, the same way.
00:05:10.600 Okay, so right now, we're in a scenario where we cannot get our Facebook viewership on our
00:05:15.880 articles that helps us drive money through AdSense, and we cannot be found on Google News
00:05:21.060 through people organically finding us because we wrote articles on specific topics they were
00:05:25.780 interested in.
00:05:26.680 Now we're going to have to heavily rely on Twitter and Telegram and use our email lists
00:05:33.220 in order to get our articles out.
00:05:34.460 So that probably means that you're going to see us doing a lot more videos simply because
00:05:38.700 YouTube is no longer, is not restricting anyone because YouTube, I think, they technically
00:05:43.340 pay creators if you can qualify with enough subscribers, so Bill C18 didn't affect them.
00:05:48.340 So what I will probably end up doing, and what Daniel will probably end up doing, is we're
00:05:51.660 going to make a lot more videos to go along with our articles, and you're going to start
00:05:55.020 finding a lot more article links in the description of the videos that we will bring attention to
00:06:00.180 if there is an article that we put out in tandem with the videos.
00:06:04.220 But again, this is just all the stupid garbage we have to do because of Bill C18.
00:06:09.360 Bill C18 is not meant to get us paid.
00:06:11.520 It's obviously not meant to get us paid.
00:06:13.740 We wouldn't be under this much pain if it was actually trying to help us.
00:06:17.840 Justin Trudeau knows how to help journalists, and if he was trying to help us, he would
00:06:21.140 actually end the subsidies to the legacy media because that crowds out good private companies
00:06:26.480 trying to deliver the news.
00:06:27.820 Because when all the media dollars are going to the CBC and to the Post Media and Tourist
00:06:33.800 are, nobody else has any money to really spend on media because taxes in Canada are relatively
00:06:39.500 high to other places around the world where people spend their own dollars on the media
00:06:44.220 and they're not being forced to pay certain media companies through their taxes.
00:06:49.620 Regardless, we will still be around.
00:06:51.640 We'll still be delivering the news.
00:06:52.760 We're just going to have to do it in a slightly different way.
00:06:54.980 Thanks to Justin Trudeau and former Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, who somehow still
00:07:01.100 survived the cabinet shuffle and is now the Transportation Minister, which I guess he can't
00:07:05.880 do much worse than Omar Al-Gabra.
00:07:07.400 So maybe Canada benefited in a microscopic way.
00:07:10.620 Anyways, have a great day, everyone.
00:07:12.760 Donate to my legal fundraiser in the comment section that I'll post in the comment section and
00:07:18.320 the description of this video below.
00:07:20.220 Ugh, I'm already dying on my words at the end of this video.
00:07:23.660 Anyways, click the links, like the video, comment, subscribe, and we'll still be around hopefully
00:07:30.880 after two years once Bill C-18 finally ends.