Who Are the Real Grifters in Canadian News Media

Regime media in their meltdown over indie media called them grifters, is that the pot calling the kettle black?

Having recovered from their initial meltdown over young indie media upstarts cutting their grass at the French leaders debate, some of the ‘esteemed icons’ of the Canadian media cartel are still not quite over their outrage. After probing how ‘this happened’ and then blaming it on the Debates Commission, who let independent media participate — they then wrapped themselves in more self-righteous indignation. To that end they doubled down on their assertion that these upstarts — who asked questions cartel should have asked, but never would — are not real journalists, and decided to paint them as grifters.

For those unfamiliar with the term, according to several dictionaries a grifter is: someone who gets money dishonestly by tricking people, or a person who swindles another out of money by fraud. So your might know where we’re going with this.

The Globe and Mail’s Andrew Coyne who also has a side line stumping for the CBC as a commentator on The National’s “At Issue” was the first to decide they were nothing but grifters, among other things.

Just listen to this buffoon, who calls himself a journalist, somehow delude himself into believing that his left wing bias in his reporting, or that of the rest of CBC news, doesn’t exist at all, but that these ‘bully boys and grifters’, they are the only ones with a bias and God forbid a right wing one. Gas lighting at its finest, and self-awareness at its lowest. It would be funny, if it wasn’t so infuriating.

Bob Fife the Ottawa Bureau Chief with the Globe, didn’t come out and actually call them ‘grifters’ but he kind of put the icing on the cake by saying their actions, or in his words ‘stunts’ were all about ‘raising’ money’.

These are not journalist, says Bob Fife, these are right wing agitators…..

So it’s all about raising money, is it Bob? Well, actually it is. These news organizations — which the courts have said they are, by the way — keep their lights on and pay their staff through subscriptions. That’s right, there are people who are actually willing pay to read and watch their news. Unlike the cartel media they don’t take a dime from the federal government to keep them afloat — imagine that. Unlike you Mr. Fife and Mr. Coyne etal, they don’t take money from taxpayers, many of whom would never subscribe to your news organizations if they had the options. Yet you, sucking on the teat of the Liberal government, have the nerve to look down your noses at independent minded journalists and call them names because they upstaged you?

Something you might not understand given the lap of luxury you enjoy, is that these news organizations are also businesses. These businesses, in order to make money to run their operations, have to work to expand their audience and their subscriber base by raising their profiles. Sometimes they may resort ‘stunts’ as Fife seems to think they are. “Stunts” like taking advantage of a highly watched leaders debate to ask the potential leaders some tough questions. That’s not not a ‘stunt’, Bob, that’s journalism and it is something you even might have done to further your budding career decades ago.

Independent media in Canada is not just made up of True North Media, Juno News, Rebel News, and the Western Standard. They are part of a growing number of independent podcasters, newspapers, videographers, and journalists, who have sprung up across the country over the last decade and they are surviving and in some cases thriving, on the subscriber based business model. Instead of wasting energy and airtime hurling abuse and insults at them, as these ‘barons of bunk’ have, they might want to look in the mirror and ask themselves why? Is it because they are filling a void that members of the cartel media really no longer do anymore, because they’ve lost their objectivity in reporting on both sides of the story and indie media subscribers want more than biased leftist leaning reporting on an issue or story?

It’s been an uphill battle for these independents in the past few years thanks some ‘media legislation’ the Liberal government have passed that has been a blow to them. Take for example Bill C-18 which was aimed at forcing tech giants like Facebook and Google to pay media outlets for content shared on their platforms. Facebook, rather than agreeing to shell out any money at all for this decided to block all Canadian news that would normally appear on its Facebook pages, and Google followed suit announcing links to all Canadian journalism would disappear from is search engine and news applications. So, essentially, Canadian news was censored by Facebook and Google, because they refused to pay for something, that really should essentially be free — but it was really the Liberal government’s that resulted in this censorship.

It was the big comfy cartel media, who were already receiving government subsidies, that were more than happy to see these big tech operations pay to post their news on their platforms.They viewed it as form of ‘theft’, even though it likely expanded their audience reach for free. Independent media, on the other hand, found Facebook and Google news sharing capabilities to be one of the best on-line ramps in helping to both launch and sustain their news sites and podcasts. In other words it was a mechanism that helped them increase their profiles, reach larger audiences and increase their subscriber base. The Trudeau government, it would appear, purposely stifled the growth and financial stability of independent media— who tend to be more critical and scrutinize its policies far more than the cartel media. So, with that avenue for growing audiences and their subscriber base cut off with the passage of Bill C-18, it left some of the indies resorting to other attention getting tactics — which again Mr. Fife seems to think are — stunts — or for Mr. Coyne to label them as grifters?

But one has to ask the question, who are the real grifters? The independent media rely on subscriptions from people willing to pay for their news. Readers can cancel subscriptions at any time if they aren’t happy with what they are getting. Is that grifting? The cartel media, on the other hand, get millions from the Liberal government in the form of tax dollars. Yet, if you look at surveys, Canadian’s trust in the ‘legacy’ news media has dropped off tremendously in the past number of years. And, yet these same Canadians who aren’t watching or reading legacy media, don’t have any choice and can’t cancel their ‘subscriptions’, they still must pay for it through their tax dollars — like it or not, so who are the real grifters…?

The cartel media’s over the top reaction to this ‘incident’ with the indie media makes one wonder that, with all the clout, money and reach they have why are they so defensive? Are they so fragile and threatened by a few indie journalist that they have to publicly squash and demean them with their oversized boot full of government money. How shameful, but they have no shame. Once again, look in the mirror Bob Fife, Andrew Coyne, CBC etal and all of the rest of the cartel media… what you see isn’t pretty, but it is pretty petty and pretty pitiful.