FILDEBRANDT： Trudeau’s media approval board agree, the Western Standard are ‘qualified journalists’
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Summary
It's official, Justin Trudeau's Official Media Approval Board agrees that the Western Standard is a qualified Canadian journalism organization. You read that right, but let me explain a little bit for you. The Liberal government's $600 million Big Media Bailout Program has a hand-picked board of journalists and publishers. That panel includes several openly liberal supporters and the publisher of the Winnipeg Free Press, who awarded his own paper a pile of taxpayers' cash. This board is charged with determining which media are worthy of the federal media bailout money. The first step for looters trying to get in on the cash is to apply for the official Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization status. That sounds creepy because it is. The federal government through the Canada Revenue Agency gets to determine who are real journalists and who are not.
Transcript
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It's official, Justin Trudeau's Official Media Approval Board agrees that the Western
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Standard is in fact a qualified Canadian journalism organization. You read that right, but let me
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explain a little bit for you. The Liberal government's $600 million Big Media Bailout
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Program has a hand-picked board of journalists and publishers. That panel includes several
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openly liberal supporters and the publisher of the Winnipeg Free Press, who awarded his own paper
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a pile of taxpayers' cash. This board is charged with determining which media are worthy of the
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federal media bailout money. The first step for looters trying to get in on the cash is to apply
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for the official Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization status. That sounds creepy, because
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it is. The federal government through the Canada Revenue Agency gets to determine which media
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companies in Canada are real journalists and which are not. I've always been clear that the
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Western Standard will never accept media bailout bribes. That position has not changed. In fact,
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93% of our surveyed members told us that our refusal to take the cash is either very important or somewhat
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important to them. And it's important to our team as well. But just for fun, I decided to submit an
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application to the federal government's board that decides who are real journalists and who are not.
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Let me emphasize, I just did this for kicks. In the final phase of our application, a nice woman
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working for the Canada Revenue Agency informed me that everything looked to be in order and that our
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application was headed for clear approval. Then she asked me if I would like any help with the next step
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applications for the bailouts that would now be available to us. I politely declined. She asked why.
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I said that the Western Standard does not accept government media bailouts. She asked me why I would
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go through this drawn out process just to do nothing with our privileged new status. I said that I was
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just doing it to see what they would do. She was not amused. Fast forward to today and the federal
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government's official letter confirming our privileged new status arrived in the mail. Well, I called our
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director of operations, James Finkbeiner, into my office so that we could read it together. And boy,
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it didn't disappoint. Firstly, we got to relish a group of government-sanctioned journalists
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being forced to admit in an official government document that the Western Standard, in all our
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self-righteous anti-billout fury, is a qualified Canadian journalism organization.
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It's not a feather in our cap that means anything to us, but we sure got a chuckle out of knowing
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that it's the official position of the government of Canada. But we know it must have been painful
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for them to write the words, so they had to get their shots in at us. We met every single one of
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their silly, government-imposed criterion that determines if we're a legitimate media or not,
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but they had to point out why they didn't like us. Let me go through just a few of their missives.
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Quote, however, the board has serious concerns with the organization's, that is the Western
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Standards, journalistic process and principles, particularly with regard to its coverage of the
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COVID-19 pandemic. Well, in the letter, the government goes on to cite a number of stories
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produced by Western Standard reporters quoting people who are experts in virology and respected
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doctors facing termination of their jobs for refusing mandatory vaccination. The government
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claimed that these stories were incorrect or misleading. That is, of course, bollocks. Let's go
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through a few of the official government condemnations point by point. The government
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medial approval board expressed its disapproval of the Western Standard for quoting an Alberta doctor
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who rejects the, quote, forcing of experimental mRNA vaccines on the public.
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As incorrect or misleading. This is a valid opinion expressed by a doctor clearly marked in quotation
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marks by our reporter, Melanie Rizdin. In fact, the government of Alberta and every major government
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in Canada has forced vaccinations on the public through mandates, job terminations, and passports.
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The federal government's view that these measures somehow don't constitute forcing is a matter of
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opinion. And it's a bad one at that. The federal media approval board also took issue with the
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Western Standard quoting a University of Alberta public health professor who said that his studies
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showed that vaccinated Albertans were contracting the COVID-19 Delta variant as often as the unvaccinated.
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They claimed that this was incorrect or misleading. But since this report was published on September 29th of 2021,
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this has become established fact and even accepted, however grudgingly, by the federal government.
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COVID-19 vaccination is still proven to lessen the severity of COVID-19, but the Delta and Omicron
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variants are just as transmissible through the vaccinated as through the unvaccinated. This is no
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longer a controversial statement. But the Western Standard quoted a doctor saying it before it was cool
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and became the opinion of the government itself. But after publishing that story, the government
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of Alberta belatedly responded to earlier requests for comment from our reporter, claiming that the
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public health professor's study was nonsense. Well, the federal media approval board claims that this
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late response from the government of Alberta meant that the Western Standard should have retracted or
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rewritten the entire story instead of including the government official's response in that story.
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In effect, the federal government told us that if the government says something is contrary to what
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anyone else says, we must always assume that the government is correct. This is a terrifyingly
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authoritarian statement. The federal media approval board also took issues with the Western Standard
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publishing stories that rely upon sources from other media outlets. Now, this is good stuff if you're
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still with me at this point. The most common complaint from the federal media approval board is that the
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Western Standard publishes stories originating from Black Locks reporter. For those not aware, including the
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federal government who is suing Black Locks reporter for stealing their content, ironically, Black Locks is an
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independent wire service. In fact, they cited as their first example of a story that they did not approve of,
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a report on November 15, 2021, headlined, newspaper chain took bailout cash, but fired staff anyway.
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Media companies like the Western Standard pay an annual fee to Black Locks reporter for the right to use
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their excellent investigative journalism in our stories. In fact, the federal government itself does this
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every single day when the CBC runs copy, a news copy produced by the Canadian press, Associated Press,
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Reuters, and other mainstream wire services. It goes on and on from there. The federal media approval board
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has no choice but to approve our phony application. We clearly met their phony criterion to be considered
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a Canadian qualified journalism organization, but they're just not very happy about it. For our part,
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this vainglorious approval form will go into my file cabinet and slowly collect dust. The Western
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Standard will not be applying for the bailout subsidies that we are now eligible for. Instead
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of spending my time filling out subsidy applications like some Bombardier bureaucrat, I'll spend my time
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continuing to build the Western Standard into a market disruptor, aiming to become the new mainstream.