There is no industry so captivating and yet so universally maligned and polarised than the world of political journalism. As it is with referees in hockey, if they're good at your job you shouldn't be noticed. The point of the referee is to pass judgement upon the competitors while remaining impartial and unbiased. You'll only ever notice a referee or learn their name if they make consistently awful calls to the point that you call their impartiality into question.The same rule is true in political journalism. If you are known, it is more often a testament to your lack of credibility rather than admiration. No one is a fan of referees, no one is a fan of political journalists. .Enter stage right, or should I now say stage left, Mark Slapinski, Canada's self-proclaimed "most popular and trusted journalist".Slapinski's is most well known, and I know that referring to him as 'well known' will just tickle him pink, for his consistent and unrelenting fabrication of news. He has a history of creating, and then promptly deleting, "news" sites such as the now-deleted Conservative Beaver, the Vancouver Times, and Toronto Today, after posting fabricated stories and attributing them to real journalists. The most notable instance of this is when he claimed that Freedom Convoy organiser Tamara Linch was found dead in her cell and had appeared to have been strangled.This article, initially claiming to having been written by respected BC news anchor Jason Pires, was published on the Vancouver Times, a site that Lead Stories said was likely run by Slapinski. .He denied that the page was run by him but, according to Lead Stories, it had a marked resemblance to other similar engagement farming "news sites" that Slapinski had previously run. Slapinski is also known for the time when he called for people who hadn't been vaccinated to be "removed from society," later claiming that the video was satire. .Slapinski is also infamous for having the ideological commitment of a 13-year-old Redditor with an identity crisis. He initially came to online prominence for his constant promotion of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre when it appeared that Poilievre would become the next prime minister. This bizarre promotion came in the form of posting AI-generated, images of a suspiciously buff Poilievre, calling former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's daughter a $20 prostitute, as well as calling Trudeau's son gay. .Ever since it became increasingly clear that Poilievre was not the political force he once was, Slapinski has since flipped and is now portraying himself as the defender of Canadian sovereignty against what he calls the "MAGA-infected Conservative Party."Having now identified himself as a "left-wing patriot," Slapinski giddily posts polls and other "news" rejoicing in the perceived downfall of Poilievre and the Conservative Party..The irony that the man who once posted AI-generated images of a oddly hunky Leader of the Opposition is now denouncing his detractors as "men who publicly jack off the Poilievre's gym videos" is definitely amusing but is now getting to a point where writing this article somewhat feels like bullying a kid in a wheelchair. .And it is that sense of pity that somewhat underlines Slapinski's entire "career".He, like many online political commentators, have built themselves a life in which outrage and controversy are how they make their living, and making sure the furnace of online vitriol is constantly stoked is now the only purpose they serve. Slapinski will likely be thrilled by this article, regardless of his inevitable online meltdown regarding it, because it means more eyes on him and more clicks on his profile. Slapinski is emblematic of the online phenomenon of online political rage-baiters, or what are more fashionably called "grifters". Harkening back to my initial analogy comparing political journalists to referees, I should clarify this point regarding Slapinski. He is not a referee because the decisions a referee makes have an impact on the competition they are observing. Slapinski's decisions and commentary bear absolutely zero weight in the Canadian political community, making him not a referee but a fan yelling nonsense from up in the nose bleeds.
