Dealing With MisInformation and Bias In The Media Sphere

One of the bigger takeaways in the 2025 election cycle is the difference between journalism and the partisan slop that is served up by various obviously partisan “news” orgs.  This needs to be brought to heel now.  

The antics of Ezra Levant’s “The Rebel” at the leader debates were disgusting.  They ultimately denied Canadians of the Q&A back and forth that was desperately needed.  

Poilievre’s campaign keeping reporters at specific distances in order to create the false impression of more people in the room than actually were present as a result of forcing photographers to use their camera’s zoom lenses to even see his face (and artificially moving the background “audience” closer to him) was perpetuating a lie - objective news organizations could have, and should have published pictures of the whole room, not just close-up shots of Poilievre when he was speaking. 

All of this is to say I want to see two major changes in our media landscape.  

First, I want reporters and opinion columnists held to ethical standards.  I’m done with the hillbilly “reporters” like David Menzies, Keean Bexte, and others who spout conspiracy theories and generally make a spectacle of themselves when asking questions.  That conduct is unethical, and well outside the bounds of intelligent journalism.  If you want to call yourself a journalist, reporter, or opinion columnist, there needs to be a sandbox around what is acceptable conduct.  Pseudo-news orgs like “The Rebel”, “Western Standard”, etc have destroyed the conventions that used to hold journalists to a higher standard.  It’s long past time for that to change.

Second, I can’t just wave a wand and make organizations like The Rebel go away.  But, I do think it’s time to adopt a practice where politically driven “news orgs” are obliged to publish their political affiliations on the masthead.  In other words, you want to call yourself “Rebel News”?  Cool - knock yourself out - but you’re going to declare what “team” you’re rooting for.  Oh - and unless your people work within the boundaries of the code of ethics above, they can’t call themselves “journalists, reporters, or opinion writers” - they are allowed to call themselves “entertainers”.  In other words, we should be able to tell at a glance exactly who and what you represent. 

Ezra Levant has argued in court that he isn’t a journalist, he’s an “entertainer”. Cool - let’s run with that.  He wants to call himself and his business “entertainment”, that’s fine.  They don’t get to call themselves “journalism”.  Canadians deserve to have a clear distinction between actual journalism and partisan slop that is coloured in a specific way. 

Oh - and if you think this is an unreasonable “infringement” on freedom of expression, it’s not.  I’m not proposing that you can’t say certain things, or whatever - only that you cannot represent yourself as legitimate news if your whole schtick is about taking a story and wrapping a bunch of utter made-up nonsense around it.  Lawyers and other professionals don’t get to run around spouting conspiracy theories that mislead the public (or worse, the courts), and neither should our nation’s news organizations.