Category: Sleeping With The Enemy

You Won’t Even Notice

Peter Menzies- “The soft, silent takeover of the nation’s press” rolls on relentlessly

It will be a process – a series of nips and tucks to legislation and fund regulations that will continually tighten the bureaucratic grip on the throats of the nation’s once free press. Unless you follow the Canada Gazette or subscribe to The Rewrite, you’ll probably never hear about it. But trust that what Rudyard Griffiths, publisher of The Hub, calls “the soft, silent takeover of the nation’s press” is underway.

The Media to Liberal Pipeline

Peter Menzies- Traditions thrown overboard as media leave unexplained Carney’s redefinition of acceptable conduct during an election

He’s able to do so because at the dawn of this campaign, he got the authority to do pretty much whatever he wants when fresh guidelines for appropriate behaviour were posted. Either no one within our media noticed, or there was a collective decision the changes didn’t amount to a big enough deal to let people know about them.

Your Moral and Intellectual Superiors

Peter Menzies- This is the first election in which media have a direct financial stake in the outcome: does it show?

Welcome to the first Canadian election in which reporters covering it have the incumbent government to thank for showering their bosses with hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies.

Peter Menzies- Gloves are off, elbows are up, media cross swords and accusations of shilling for the Liberals fly

Grits grabbing Globe and CBC content for attack ads supporting Carney’s “positive” campaign while CTV Ottawa drops all pretence of journalism as anything other than a circus sideshow

Up From The Memory Hole

The (checks notes) “independent” media.

The Woodbridge Company- Woodbridge is the principal and controlling shareholder (67.8%) of Thomson Reuters, a multinational media conglomerate.[3] Thomson Reuters was formed in 2008, when the Thomson Corporation acquired Reuters.[4]

In late 2010, Woodbridge sold its 40% interest in CTVglobemedia (a Canadian media company with ownership of the CTV Television Network) to BCE Inc. Woodbridge held an 85% interest in The Globe and Mail newspaper before acquiring the remaining 15% owned by BCE in August 2015.[5]

From earlier today…

Today In The Vote Rich Rapey-Beheader Community

It’s just who we are as Canadians;

Trudeau needed this anti-Israel box ticked to burnish his credentials on the resumé he is building for his post-election career ensconced in some sinecure at the UN. He has no hope for any job with prestige attached in the private sector. Do not think you can shame this man on this file. He doesn’t care about Canada’s image, only his own skin and future. No matter how bad antisemitism gets here, you will see no sliver of daylight between Trudeau and the corrupt, anti-Israel ICC or any other UN entity between now and his election loss.

The Bought And Paid For Press

Blacklock’s- Lib Senator Edits Press Article

A Liberal-appointed senator says the government has a duty to correct media thinking.

Moncion, a former credit union CEO from North Bay, Ont., said she edited the press item as chair of the Senate committee on internal economy. The Senate was told she instructed staff to revise an August 21 commentary in the Ottawa weekly Hill Times that complained of Senate overspending. The Hill Times complied.

Practically Perfect In Every Way

Toronto Star- Being tired of Justin Trudeau is not a good reason to vote him out

The other day I walked into my favourite bagel bakery and made a spur-of-the-moment decision to buy an everything bagel instead of my usual double poppyseed. I guess I was tired of double poppyseed.

Buying a bagel has insignificant consequences, so trying something different for the sake of change was a low-risk choice.

But would you choose a prime minister in the same way?

Independence is Overrated

Sun- Ford gov’t supports Ontario-based news publishers with $25M in advertising

“This is important. Everyone understands the value of journalism and a free press and its criticality to Canada and to democracy,” said Andrew MacLeod, Postmedia’s president and chief executive officer.

“I’m certainly extremely grateful to the leadership of Premier (Doug) Ford and his team. My hope is this will serve as an example, a North Star, not just for other provincial governments, but for the federal government and for major corporations.”

MacLeod said the initiative is something the publishing industry has been lobbying for with the Ontario government and other governments in Canada, including the federal government, and that it “didn’t make sense” that advertising dollars, paid for by taxpayers, were going to Google and Facebook.

The Libranos: Et Tu, Brutus?

Behind The Star paywall;

Steven Guilbeault has been taking the temperature of the Liberal Party caucus as calls for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation mount.

The environment minister was in Toronto this week to meet with Members of Parliament who were awestruck by Monday’s upset defeat in the Toronto–St Paul’s byelection. He spent Thursday working the phones with Liberals across the country trying to take stock of how bad things really are…

UPDATE: Here’s the archived version thanks to reader ADD.

“A Free and Independent Press”

Read the whole thing.

Macdonald-Laurier Institute- The Ottawa Declaration on Canadian Journalism 

Today the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) unveiled The Ottawa Declaration; a public call by some of Canada’s leading independent news and current affairs outlets for the media industry to reject the federal government’s payroll subsidies for journalism.

Since the 2019 federal budget, the government has established multiple programs for digital news outlets to subsidize their journalism. The majority of this support has taken the form of payroll subsidies totalling some $489 million in budgeted funds. Currently, most private digital news outlets can claim up to $30,000 in payroll subsidies for every journalist they employ. With the implementation of The Online News Act (C-18) payroll support could conceivably double and see half or more of the salaries of most journalists working in Canada for private digital news outlets paid for by government coordinated subsidies.

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