Media
CTV News caught splicing misleading clip of Poilievre
From LifeSiteNews
CTV News has since apologized for airing the doctored footage, but claimed it was the result of a ‘misunderstanding’ during the editing process. The Conservatives have since hit back saying they are ‘boycotting’ the outlet until it is admitted the footage was intentionally manipulated.
Canada’s Conservative Party is livid after one of the nation’s largest corporate media outlets, which gets funding from the Trudeau government, was caught splicing a video clip to make it appear party leader Pierre Poilievre said something he did not.
On Monday, Sebastian Skamski, media relations person for Poilievre, took to X to explain that mainstream media news outlet CTV News ran a doctored video clip of the Conservative leader on television misleading viewers, accusing the news outlet of “propagating” the “Trudeau Liberals’ narrative.”
Skamski explained, and proved, that the news outlet had spliced video of Poilievre talking to make it seem as though he was calling for an election because he opposed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s dental plan, when the real footage was about the Conservative leader’s opposition to the carbon tax.
“Today @CTVNews was caught splicing a clip of @PierrePoilievre to propagate the Liberals’ narrative. This is not only a total fabrication designed to deceive Canadians but also a major breach of journalistic ethics,” wrote Skamski on X.
Today @CTVNews was caught splicing a clip of @PierrePoilievre to propagate the Liberals’ narrative.
This is not only a total fabrication designed to deceive Canadians but also a major breach of journalistic ethics.
CTV must apologize for their flagrant use of disinformation. pic.twitter.com/vshERYeMih
— Sebastian Skamski (@Skamski) September 23, 2024
Today @CTVNews was caught splicing a clip of @PierrePoilievre to propagate the Liberals’ narrative.
This is not only a total fabrication designed to deceive Canadians but also a major breach of journalistic ethics.
CTV must apologize for their flagrant use of disinformation. pic.twitter.com/vshERYeMih
— Sebastian Skamski (@Skamski) September 23, 2024
“CTV must apologize for their flagrant use of disinformation.”
Skamski then shared a clip of the original video footage, compared to the doctored CTV footage.
“Not only is @PierrePoilievre’s quote clearly about the carbon tax (cut from CTV’s broadcast), @CTVNews bizarrely manipulated it,” he wrote.
The real quote by Poilievre was, “That’s why it’s time to put forward a motion for a carbon tax election.”
The “CTV fabrication,” as Skamski called it, had Poilievre saying, “That’s why we need to put forward a motion,” leaving out his talk of the carbon tax and putting it within the context of the Trudeau government’s dental care plans.
The incident drew immediate backlash from Conservative MPs.
“@CTVNews, you spliced three parts of different sentences together to create a new one that Pierre never said. That’s not a misunderstanding during editing, that’s fabricating disinformation. Where is your apology for that?,” wrote Conservative MP Chris Warkentin on X Monday.
Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman ripped CTV News as untrustworthy and an outlet that “pumps” out “disinformation” to protect Trudeau.
“CTV gets caught pumping disinformation to protect the Prime Minister who subsidizes them,” she wrote on X Monday.
After the backlash, CTV News issued an “apology” for the altered news clip, admitting that the clip was presented in an “out of context” manner, claiming the debacle was the result of a “misunderstanding during the editing process.”
“Last night in a report on this broadcast, we presented a comment by the Official Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre that was taken out of context,” said CTV.
“It left viewers with the impression the Conservative non confidence motion was to defeat the Liberals’ dental care program. In fact, the Conservatives have made it clear the motion is based on a long list of issues with the Liberal government including the carbon tax. A misunderstanding during the editing process resulted in this misrepresentation. We unreservedly apologize to Mr. Poilievre and the Conservative Party of Canada. We regret this report went to air in the manner it did.”
The Conservatives did not buy the apology, however, announcing Tuesday that the party will refuse to engage with CTV News reporters until “they explicitly acknowledge their malicious editing & omission of context to undermine” Poilievre.
Yesterday’s so called “apology” from @CTVNews doesn’t cut it. This wasn’t a simple “misunderstanding”.
Until they explicitly acknowledge their malicious editing & omission of context to undermine @PierrePoilievre, Conservative MPs won’t engage with CTV News & its reporters. pic.twitter.com/6UbfdTo1hg
— Sebastian Skamski (@Skamski) September 24, 2024
Yesterday’s so called “apology” from @CTVNews doesn’t cut it. This wasn’t a simple “misunderstanding”.
Until they explicitly acknowledge their malicious editing & omission of context to undermine @PierrePoilievre, Conservative MPs won’t engage with CTV News & its reporters. pic.twitter.com/6UbfdTo1hg
— Sebastian Skamski (@Skamski) September 24, 2024
The Liberal federal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has pumped billions into propping up the mostly state-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as well as large payouts for legacy media outlets including CTV, ahead of the 2025 federal election. In total, the subsidies are expected to cost taxpayers $129 million over the next five years.
Tomorrow, the Conservatives will be voting on a motion of non-confidence in the House of Commons. If successful, it would trigger an election.
The motion is likely to fail, as even though NDP leader Singh pulled his official support for Trudeau’s Liberals two weeks ago, in recent days he has been mum on whether he will vote for or against the Liberals when a vote occurs.
As for the Trudeau Liberals, it is widely accepted that they are floundering, having lost two recent byelections, one in Quebec and the other in Ontario, in what were considered “safe” Liberal ridings.
The most recent loss suggests that Trudeau’s Liberal government is indeed hanging on by a thread, as all recent polls show that Poilievre’s Conservative Party is set to win big when the next federal election takes place.
Business
The CBC gets $1.4 billion per year, but the Trudeau government wants to give it more
From LifeSiteNews
A Heritage Committee report is recommending “that the Government of Canada provide a substantial and lasting increase in the parliamentary appropriation for CBC, allowing it to eliminate its paid subscription services and gradually end its reliance on commercial advertising revenues.”
The Liberal-run Heritage Committee is demanding millions more in funding for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation despite the fact it already gets roughly $1.4 billon from the government annually.
According to information obtained and published December 16 by Blacklock’s Reporter, a Heritage Committee report is recommending “that the Government of Canada provide a substantial and lasting increase in the parliamentary appropriation for CBC, allowing it to eliminate its paid subscription services and gradually end its reliance on commercial advertising revenues.”
While the report did not suggest an amount, CBC CEO Catherine Tait previously testified that the outlet required funding in the “$400 million to $500 million range.”
While the report suggested throwing more taxpayer dollars at the failing outlet, Conservatives wrote a dissenting report, arguing the media platform should be defunded.
“The CBC cut hundreds of jobs while awarding lavish bonuses,” Conservative MP Kevin Waugh said, referencing CBC managers taking $14.9 million in bonuses this year while cutting 346 jobs.
“This disgraceful abuse of taxpayer dollars when Canadians are struggling for financial survival has contributed to the ‘defund the CBC’ movement,” he continued.
Waugh’s comments echo those of Canadian Taxpayer Federation Alberta director Kris Sims, who called on Parliament to abolish all taxpayer funding to the CBC, arguing that propping up the media outlet is not only a waste of money but also creates a conflict of interest for journalists.
Indeed, not only has the CBC’s network audience plummeted, but many have pointed out that the outlet has become nothing more than a mouthpiece for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government.
“A free press means journalists free from government,” Sims explained. “A journalist who is paid by the government is in a direct conflict of interest. You cannot hold the powerful government to account when you’re counting on the powerful government for your paycheck.”
In seeming confirmation of Sims’ concerns, in October, Liberal Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge’s department admitted that federally funded media outlets buy “social cohesion.”
Additionally, in September, House leader Karina Gould directed mainstream media reporters to “scrutinize” Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, who has repeatedly condemned government-funded media as an arm of the Liberals.
Gould’s comments were in reference to Poilievre’s promise to defund the CBC if elected prime minister. Poilievre is a longtime critic of government-funded media, especially the CBC.
There have also been multiple instances of the CBC pushing what appears to be ideological content, including the creation of pro-LGBT material for kids, tacitly endorsing the gender mutilation of children, promoting euthanasia, and even seeming to justify the burning of mostly Catholic churches throughout the country.
Despite this, beginning in 2019, Parliament changed the Income Tax Act to give yearly rebates of 25 percent for each news employee in cabinet-approved media outlets earning up to $55,000 a year to a maximum of $13,750.
The Canadian Heritage Department since admitted that the payouts are not even sufficient to keep legacy media outlets running and recommended that the rebates be doubled to a maximum of $29,750 annually.
Last November, Trudeau again announced increased payouts for legacy media outlets that coincide with the leadup to the 2025 election. The subsidies are expected to cost taxpayers $129 million over the next five years.
Similarly, Trudeau’s 2024 budget earmarked $42 million in increased funding for the CBC in 2024-25.
Brownstone Institute
A Potpourri of the World’s Unexposed Scandals
From the Brownstone Institute
By
How many genuine, shocking – and unexposed – scandals actually occurred in the last four years? To partially answer this question, I composed another of my List Columns.
The Most Epic of Scandals Might Be…
The world’s most epic scandal might be the massive number of citizens who’ve died prematurely in the last four years. This scandal could also be expressed as the vast number of people whose deaths were falsely attributed to Covid.
My main areas of focus – “early spread” – informed my thinking when I reached this stunning conclusion: Almost every former living person said to have died “from Covid” probably did not die from Covid.
The scandal is that (unreported) “democide” occurred, meaning that government policies and deadly healthcare “guidance” more plausibly explain the millions of excess deaths that have occurred since late March 2020.
My research into early spread suggests that the real Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of Covid should have already been known by the lockdowns of mid-March 2020.
If, as I believe, many millions of world citizens had already contracted this virus and had not died, the Covid IFR would be the same, or perhaps even lower, than the IFR for the common flu – said to be 1 death per 1,000 infections (0.1 percent).
Expressed differently, almost 100 percent of people who contracted this virus did not die from it – a fact which could and should have been known early in the “pandemic.” The fact this information was concealed from the public qualifies as a massive scandal.
Evidence That Would ‘Prove’ This Scandal
Furthermore, one does not need early spread “conjecture” to reach the conclusion that only a minute number of people who were infected by this virus later died from Covid.
After April 2020, a researcher could pick any large group or organization and simply ascertain how many people in these groups later died “from Covid.”
For example, more than 10,000 employees work for the CDC. About 10 months ago, I sent an email to the CDC and asked their media affairs department how many of the CDC’s own employees have died from Covid in the past three-plus years.
This question – which would be easy to answer – was never answered. This example of non-transparency is, to me, a massive “tell” and should be “scandalous.”
To be more precise, if the CDC could document that, say, 10 of their employees had died from Covid, this would equate to a disease with a mortality risk identical to the flu.
My strong suspicion is that fewer than 10 CDC employees have died from Covid in the last four years, which would mean the CDC knows from its own large sample group that Covid is/was not more deadly than influenza.
I’ve performed the same extrapolations with other groups made up of citizens whose Covid deaths would have made headlines.
For example, hundreds of thousands if not millions of high school, college, and pro athletes must have contracted Covid by today’s date. However, it is a challenge to find one definitive case of a college or pro athlete who died from Covid.
For young athletes – roughly ages 14 to 40 – the Covid IFR is either 0.0000 percent or very close to this microscopic fraction.
One question that should be obvious given the “athlete” example is why would any athlete want or need an experimental new mRNA “vaccine” when there’s a zero-percent chance this disease would ever kill this person?
The scandal is that sports authorities – uncritically accepting “guidance” from public health officials – either mandated or strongly encouraged (via coercion) that every athlete in the world receive Covid shots and then, later, booster shots.
Of course, the fact these shots would be far more likely to produce death or serious adverse events than a bout with Covid should be a massive scandal.
More Scandals
Needless to say, all the major pediatrician groups issued the same guidance for children.
In Pike County, Alabama, I can report that in four years no child/student between the ages of 5 and 18 has died from Covid.
I also recognize that the authorized “fact” is that millions of Americans have now “died from Covid.” However, I believe this figure is a scandalous lie, one supported by PCR test results that would be questioned in a world where investigating certain scandals was not taboo.
Yet another scandal is that officials and the press de-emphasized the fact the vast majority of alleged victims were over the age of 79, had multiple comorbid conditions, were often nursing home residents, and, among the non-elderly, came from the poorest sections of society.
These revelations – which would not advance the desired narrative that everyone should be very afraid – are similar to many great scandals that have been exposed from time to time in history.
Namely, officials in positions of power and trust clearly conspired to cover up or conceal information that would have exposed their own malfeasance, professional incompetence, and/or graft.
This Might Be the No. 1 Scandal of Our Times
As I’ve written ad nauseam, perhaps the most stunning scandal of our times is that all-important “truth-seeking” organizations have become completely captured.
At the top of this list are members of the so-called Fourth Estate or “watchdog” press (at least in the corporate or “mainstream” media).
In previous articles, I’ve estimated that at least 40,000 Americans work as full-time journalists or editors for mainstream “news organizations.” Hundreds of MSM news-gathering organizations “serve” their readers and viewers.
In this very large group, I can’t think of one journalist, editor, publisher, or news organization who endeavored to expose any of the dubious claims of the public health establishment.
When 100 percent of professionals charged with exposing scandals are themselves working to conceal shocking revelations…this too should qualify as a massive scandal.
To the above “captured classes” one could add college professors and administrators, 99 percent of plaintiffs’ trial lawyers, 100 percent of CEOs of major corporations, almost all elected politicians, and, with the exception of perhaps Sweden, every one of the public health agencies in the world, plus all major medical groups and prestigious science journals.
Or This Might Be Our Greatest Scandal
Yet another scandal – perhaps the most sinister of them all – would be the coordinated conspiracy to silence, muffle, intimidate, bully, cancel, demonetize, and stigmatize the classes of brave and intelligent dissidents who have attempted to reveal a litany of shocking truths.
The Censorship Industrial Complex (CIC) is not a figment of a conspiracy theorist’s imagination.
The CIC is as real as Media Matters, News Guard, The Trusted News Initiative, the Stanford Virality Project, and the 15,000-plus “content moderators” who probably still work for Facebook.
Government officials in myriad agencies of “President” Joe Biden’s administration constantly pressured social media companies to censor content that didn’t fit the authorized narrative (although these bullying projects didn’t require much arm-twisting).
Here, the scandal is that the country’s “adults in the room” were identified as grave threats to the agenda of the Powers that Be and were targeted for extreme censorship and punishment.
When people and organizations principled enough to try to expose scandals are targeted by the State and the State’s crony partners, this guarantees future scandals are unlikely to be exposed…which means the same unexposed leaders are going to continue to inflict even greater harm on the world population.
This Scandal Is Hard to Quantify
Other scandals are more difficult to quantify. For example, it’s impossible to know how many citizens now “self-censor” because they know the topics they should not discuss outside of conversations with close friends.
This point perhaps illustrates the state of the world’s “New Normal” – a now-accepted term that is scandalous if one simply thinks about the predicates of this modifier.
It should be a scandal that the vast majority of world citizens now eagerly submit to or comply with the dictates and speech parameters imposed on them by the world’s leadership classes.
The “New Normal” connotes that one should accept increasing assaults on previously sacrosanct civil liberties.
What is considered “normal” – and should now be accepted without protest – was, somehow, changed.
As I routinely write, what the world has lived through the past four-plus years is, in fact, a New Abnormal.
This Orwellian change of definition would qualify as a shocking scandal except for the fact most people now self-censor to remain in the perceived safety of their social and workplace herds.
The bottom line – a sad one – might be that none of the above scandals would have been possible if more members of the public had been capable of critical thinking and exhibited a modicum of civic courage.
As it turns out, the exposure of scandals would require large numbers of citizens to look into the mirror (or their souls) and perform self-analysis, an exercise in introspection that would not be pain-free.
It’s also a scandal our leaders knew they could manipulate the masses so easily.
Considering all of these points, it seems to me that the captured leadership classes must have known that the vast majority of the population would trust the veracity of their claims and policy prescriptions.
That is, they knew there would be no great pushback from “the masses.”
If the above observation isn’t a scandal, it’s depressing to admit or acknowledge this is what happened.
To End on a Hopeful Note
What gives millions of citizens hope is that, belatedly, more citizens might be growing weary of living in a world where every scandal cannot be exposed.
Donald Trump winning a presidential election by margins “too big to steal” is a sign of national hope.
Mr. Trump nominating RFK, Jr. to supervise the CDC, NIH, and FDA is definitely a sign of hope, an appointment that must outrage and terrify the world’s previous leadership classes.
For far too long, America’s greatest scandal has been that no important scandals can be exposed. Today, however, it seems possible this state of affairs might not remain our New Normal forever.
Republished from the author’s Substack
-
Frontier Centre for Public Policy1 day ago
Christmas: As Canadian as Hockey and Maple Syrup
-
armed forces1 day ago
Canada among NATO members that could face penalties for lack of military spending
-
Daily Caller1 day ago
LNG Farce Sums Up Four Years Of Ridiculous Biden Energy Policy
-
National2 days ago
Conservatives say Singh won’t help topple Trudeau government until after he qualifies for pension in late February
-
Daily Caller2 days ago
Shoot Down The Drones!
-
Business1 day ago
Comparing four federal finance ministers in moments of crisis
-
Daily Caller17 hours ago
Former FBI Asst Director Warns Terrorists Are ‘Well Embedded’ In US, Says Alert Should Be ‘Higher’
-
Business8 hours ago
For the record—former finance minister did not keep Canada’s ‘fiscal powder dry’