FILDEBRANDT: The CBC hits a new low in its pro-Trudeau media control propaganda

It takes a lot for pro-Liberal CBC propaganda to stand out from the herd, but they sure managed it with an over-the-top fluffer this morning."Federal money's kept hundreds of journalists employed in Canada. But the program's set to expire" reads the headline of Senior Writer Brishti Basu, who according to the CBC has worked at Marxist and eco-radical publications like the Tyee and Narwhal before her current government gig. .The headline gave it away, and I love to hate-read the CBC, Toronto Star, and similar company. My doom-scrolling was richly rewarded by a suck-up article so undisguised in its agenda that it would take half a can of WD40 to lube up a spatula to pry the CBC's lips off of Trudeau's ass. In the roughly 3,000 word spread, Basu makes her case that government funding of the press is good. So very good. She quotes uniformly leftist publications and associations that depend on federal funding, and — shockingly — want more of it. But, in this entire space, the CBC does not mention the word "Liberal" once. No mention that the decision for the government to fund the media was made by the Liberals, and was a Liberal political decision. Instead, the CBC goes out of its way to imply to the reader that decisions on future government funding of the media is made by objective, faceless bureaucrats. "'We cannot today announce anything,' a spokesperson for the federal heritage ministry told CBC in a statement when asked about their future plans for the Local Journalism Initiative set to expire March 31."No mention that this is a decision made by the Liberal Minister of Heritage Pascale St-Onge and Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. It is a purely political decision that will be merely administered by bureaucrats. But the CBC would have Canadians believe no politicians are involved in these decisions. In fact, the CBC makes not one single mention that there is even a single critic of government funding of the media. Not one. Not Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. Not former Calgary Herald Publisher Peter Menzies. Not the Western Standard. Not one. The CBC cites only friends of the government that are dependent on its cash. The fluffer hails the "Online News Act" as a historic step forward for the media, noting that Google will now have to hand over $100 million to the media. It fails to note that this is a small, small fraction of what the Liberals promised it would pay, and that the Online News Act directly resulted in Meta kicking the entire Canadian news industry off Facebook and Instagram, costing hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and lost investment to the industry, and causing untold damage to independent media outlets that relied upon it for content distribution and marketing. Not. One. Word. Because it doesn't fit the CBC's narrative that an independent media can exist without direct taxpayer sponsorship. It hails the "Local Journalism Initiative" used to underwrite reporters for leftist publications, which it claims was "created by the Canadian Heritage ministry", not as it was, by the Liberal government. It claims "The initiative was launched because at that time, the national media landscape was already dire." Not a single critical thought given to the possibility, that perhaps the federal government wanted to endear itself to the press it relies upon. Not a single sentence given to the very possibility that somebody, somewhere in Canada, might not buy the government's official line for direct financial control of the press. It doesn't fit the CBC's narrative. It only quotes federal bureaucrats — who do not give their names — and Jenette Ageson of Press Forward, which claims to represent "independent media", most of which appear to be hard-left and federally funded. For the record, the Western Standard gave brief consideration to joining Press Forward some time ago, but decided against it when we learned of their requirement for us to abandon our strictly merit-based hiring processes in favour of having "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion." It was a non-starter for me and the blacks, gays and Muslims working at the Western Standard. We lost all interest right there and then in being their token non-leftist publication. The CBC's headline itself is highly subjective and biased at best, or outright misinformation at worst."Federal money's kept hundreds of journalists employed in Canada. But the program's set to expire". In the time since the federal government started funding the media in 2019, many thousands of journalists have lost their jobs. This likely would have happened with or without massive federal encroachment into the newsrooms of the nation, but it's undeniable that propping up the legacy media has had a hugely distorting effect in the market of retarding the growth of innovative new competitors, like our humble Western Standard. While PostMedia, TorStar, CTV and most other legacy media have been laying journalists off by the hundreds, we were steadily growing and hiring new journalists. That is at least until the Liberals forced the Online News Act down our throats. As I told the Senate when it was debating the Online News Act, "If there is anything that Ottawa can do to help independent publishers, the innovative ones — the guys who are selling lightbulbs, not candles — it is to stop funding the candle industry. Stop trying to advantage our competitors with our tax dollars, and let nature, let the market sort it out."But not a word that somewhere out there — far from the CBC's downtown Toronto headquarters — a single publication might exist that doesn't support the Trudeau government's control over the media. To the CBC, they don't. To the CBC, only the government-funded media are media. The CBC has some genuinely talented journalists that I'd be interested in hiring once Poilievre shuts them down in a few years time, but as an institution, it is corrupt to the bone. So corrupt, that it probably doesn't even know that it is a Liberal propaganda machine.

FILDEBRANDT: The CBC hits a new low in its pro-Trudeau media control propaganda

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