The best news providers are the ones that give it to you straight.  Of course in a polarized, propagandized, politicized, partisan-filled media landscape (where the public's disdain for paparazzi has proliferated to the press en masse) it's pretty hard to find any credible new source that holds truth as its primary principle.

I could now veer into an existential philosophical tangent on the news media's identity crisis, but I'd rather just surgically slice the bogus Canadian coverage of this American election.

The Canadian media was doomed to fail in covering American politics from the very beginning; our generally left-leaning populace and peripheral viewpoint made it inevitable.  But none of that should excuse the blatant or foolish omissions and overstatements committed by our Canadian press during this US election cycle.

For brevity's sake, I'll only recount some of the most recent Canadian offences to journalistic integrity by the CBC, but the rest of the major players are just as guilty.

Earlier last week the media was reporting that an investigation into the Trump Foundation was underway by the NY attorney general, and the CBC rightly reported it.  However, when searching the CBC for the Clinton Foundation's horrendous record of only 10 per cent of donations actually going to charitable work, there is scant a word.  The Clinton Foundation has been a slush fund for the Clintons and their crony friends, and is being investigated on a much higher level than Trump's foundation, but the CBC wouldn't dare report this massive story.  The CBC also loves documentaries, and aired one on Trump's shady business practices.  So it would have made a lot of sense for the network to air or at least report on the hugely popular Clinton Cash documentary, but not a peep.  The documentary even had a Canadian connection as it covered how a Canadian billionaire in the mining industry and other Canadian corporations had contributed to the Clinton Foundation or giving the Clintons' exorbitant speaking fees for favours.

Later in the week, while listening to CBC radio, a news report went in-depth debunking Trump's latest economic speech, and then shortly after cut to a segment where the host and a guest discussed how it was sexist that Clinton was being criticized for withholding informing the public of her "pneumonia."  If they'd only done a cursory glance at the latest DNC emails leaked the night before, or the original leaks from the summer, the CBC would've realized Hillary's health has been a problem for years and that her "pneumonia" and/or "allergies" could be a far more serious ailment than the Clinton Campaign is letting on.  Amazingly, the leak wasn't even reported by the CBC that day, even though it has a goldmine of quotes from Colin Powell, such as Bill Clinton is "still dicking bimbos" and Hillary is power-hungry and wouldn't be a good president.  When the CBC finally did get around to reporting on the leak, they focused on Powell's negative comments on Trump, despite there being far more damning evidence of illegal behaviour by Democrats, Hillary's running mate Tim Kaine, and the Obama administration.

Since Hillary Clinton collapsed (or "stumbled" if you agree with the mainstream media and its silly semantics) on the anniversary of nine-eleven, her poll numbers have also taken a downward trajectory.  Since most of the flunkeys in media are #NeverTrump operatives, they've been trying to build a dominant negative narrative on Trump to quell his surge.  So in the past week, they've been hounding him to renounce his "birther" conspiracy theory.  The media hacks thought they had the perfect story.  Trump smearing—not the unpopular and utterly corrupt Hillary—but the beloved Obama by claiming he was born in Kenya.

Trump, a builder of skyscrapers and spectacular narratives — "I build things, that's what I do" — hoodwinked all the major networks into carrying live his love-in speech at his "under budget and ahead of schedule" new hotel (a short jaunt from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue) because his campaign told the press he'd address the "birther" matter.  Instead, in horror, the partisan press realized Trump was erecting a narrative of his business prowess and had veterans and military leaders declare their support for the brash billionaire.

After twenty minutes of incredibly positive Trump coverage from all the major networks, much more valuable than millions of dollars in campaigns ads, the humiliated American media cut the feed.  Had they stuck around fifteen more minutes, they would've witnessed the clever billionaire demolishing their narrative.

"Hillary Clinton and her campaign in 2008 started the birther controversy.  I finished it.  President Barak Obama was born in the United States, period.  Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again."

Painfully predictably the American media pounced on the statement that Clinton birthed the conspiracy, pronouncing it patently false.  But the long-term fact-challenged press had forgotten or ignored that Hillary's campaign had in fact concocted the theory back in the 2008 failed campaign.  Even recently the leftwing Morning Joe show has admitted as much.

But leave it to the CBC et al. to unquestioningly defend Clinton.  A recent headline for the CBC stated Trump "falsely claims Clinton started" the birther controversy.

All of this misinformation due to omission, overstatement and understatement has been prevalent in Canadian media's coverage of Trump since last June.  And the skewed coverage has had its effect on Canadian mainstream journalists and the zeitgeist.  On Twitter you see the most high profile journalists condemn Trump daily and virtue signal by making fun of him.  Trudeau has condemned the man who could very well be the next POTUS.  And just this week a student in Calgary had a meltdown over another student wearing the "Make America Great Again" hat, saying it was a danger to her safe space. One can only wonder what absurdity will ensue if the deplorable man makes it all the way to the White House.

Written by Graeme C. Gordon

A five-day Federal Court case beginning Monday, September 19 will likely be a precedent-setting ruling for copyright law in Canada.  The plaintiff, a digital media company called Blacklock's Reporter, is suing the federal government for copyright infringement.

Blacklock's Reporter, a startup online news source, is seeking $17,816.71 in damages because it claims Finance Canada employees had "unauthorized use and/or of its subscription based content."

Holly Doan, publisher of Blacklock's, says she was surprised when she discovered that Finance had obtained the news provider's copy without paying.  Blacklock's currently has another 14 lawsuits filed against federal government departments and agencies in both Federal Court and Ontario Superior Court.

"The facts in the cases are all different and Blacklock's intends to litigate each one.  We are not a troll suing for quick settlement.  We are litigating to prove that journalism has value and intellectual property ought to be protected under the Copyright Act.  Mainstream media organizations in Canada are struggling.  The Canadian Newspapers Association appeared before the Canadian Heritage committee on the future of media and mused about copyright protection.  But they're giving away product for free.  How do you argue for copyright when you've been giving it away?" said Doan.

Doan says her company has bulk subscribers in ten provinces; large private and public sector unions, university libraries, advocacy groups and industry associations.  The company has also had its work cited by other large news organizations like The New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

In the upcoming case involving Finance Canada, the plaintiffs claim a senior staff member in the communications department contacted Doan for a quote on a bulk subscription for Finance Canada.  (Buying media subscriptions for "media monitoring" is standard practice by departments, and according to documents tabled in the House of Commons in 2014, the federal government spends 20-million-dollars a year on it.)  Months later, the government department used another organization's Blacklock's Reporter account to access articles from the site.  Blacklock's Reporter discovered the department had accessed its content by filing an access to information request.

Intellectual property lawyer and Ottawa University law professor Teresa Scassa has been following Blacklock's litigation. Blacklock's has thus far won one ruling in an Ottawa lower court which has no precedent on the Federal Court's ruling later this month that Scassa and others in the intellectual property academic community are concerned could severely limit fair dealing in the future if the Federal Court's ruling is similar to that of the lower court's on the issue of infringement.

"Copyright misuse relies on an argument that the copyright owner, through its conduct, is attempting to secure for themselves a broader right than it is entitled to by law.  The defence now has a considerable track record in the United States, but remains novel in Canada," stated Scassa.

Scassa noted many copyright infringement lawsuits don't make it to court in Canada.  "First, Canadians are less litigious in general (so fewer lawsuits are filed).  Second, parties with limited resources will settle rather than going to court because they simply cannot afford to fight their case in court."

The lack of copyright infringement cases that go to court in Canada is a main reason why the paywall has yet to be tested in Federal Court.

The defendants in the upcoming case are claiming that Blacklock's is a "copyright troll" claiming more rights than it's entitled to under the Copyright Act.  In the statement of defence, the defendants claim that Blacklock's "employs a strategy of requesting information from government departments, calling persons within for quotes, [and] publishing articles about the department's activities."  They also contest the news site then sends "teaser emails" with cutlines and headlines "designed to interest the department in reading and distributing articles."  The defendants claim some of Blacklock's articles are "incorrect and misleading" and that the plaintiffs use access to information requests "anticipat[ing]" the department would access the Blacklock's articles so that the media company can litigate.  The defendants also claim the articles were only used for "a non-commercial, research purpose."

 

Andrew Gowing, of media relations for the Department of Justice, gave the following comment: "As outlined in the [statement of defence], the Attorney General of Canada has pleaded fair dealing and believes this is an example of copyright misuse."

The case becomes more complicated by the fact that the Copyright Act was amended in 2012 by the Harper government's Copyright Modernization Act.  Within the amendments to the Act, it is now illegal to circumvent a "technology protection measure" (i.e. paywall) to access copyrighted material.  This newer legislation will likely be tested and better defined by this Federal Court case's ruling.  Scassa and other intellectual property academics are concerned that if Blacklock's Reporter wins its case the ruling could give "glorified status to the paywall."  She sees this as an issue for "the right to read" and fair dealing.  She believes that there needs to be a fine balance struck between copyright protection and fair dealing.

Whatever the judge's ruling, the findings of this case should have implications on the extent of Canadian media's rights over its content.

Strengthening of Canadian copyright would definitely be a welcomed development for some players in a floundering industry.  Stronger control over copyright could help publications achieve profitability by combatting a digital age of ubiquitous free sharing.

A report from the American Press Institute researched the top 98 newspapers in America and found that there was a major shift in the market from free online sites to paywall models by the vast majority of the papers in the last five years.  In Canada, it seems there may also be a similar shift towards paywalls as National Observer and other online Canadian publications have recently switched over to paywalls.

Online media startup entrepreneurs Ezra Levant (co-founder of Rebel Media) and Allison Smith (founder of Queen's Park Today) both find that copyright infringement of their intellectual property has been only a minor issue.

"We have free content (on our website and on YouTube) and premium content behind a paywall.  Both generate revenue… Like all broadcasters, we have occasional copyright infringers, but companies like YouTube and Facebook have been good at handling any issues that arise.  It frankly hasn't been a big issue," wrote Levant by email.

Despite the protection afforded creators contributing to large social media companies, other smaller media startups are more dependent on paywalls.

"Niche publications rely more heavily on paywalls because we have a smaller audience base.  I don't think it's about denying the public our information, but about making a living off our work.  I offer free trials to anyone who asks (and probably a few bots).  I believe many/most paywalled publications will sell individual articles to non-subscribers who are interested.  So the info can be freed in small, specific doses, but has to [be mostly] paid for… in order for it to exist," wrote Smith.

Now, with The New York Times expanding into Canada and others in the market switching to paywalls, this upcoming court ruling could inform some Canadian publications on how restrictive their paywalls should be in the future.

Barry Sookman, a Toronto intellectual property lawyer, declined to comment specifically on the upcoming trial but believes that paywalls need to be protected under the Copyright Act.

"Most ordinary Canadians would not in any way find it offensive if it was illegal to hack somebody's security system to get access to content knowing that the paywall was designed to prevent access so as to ensure that the investments made by the creator could be recouped by making the content available for a fee," said Sookman.

He also points out that the copyright misuse as defence to a copyright action doesn't exist in Canada, and that it wasn't adopted in a Canadian Supreme Court ruling.  "There is support in the commonwealth and in the United States that a person cannot rely on a fair dealing or fair use defence where the person has illegally gained access to the content.  In short, obtaining illegal access is not fair."

Sookman believes that the paywall is vital in ensuring content creators are rightfully compensated for their work and the press survives.  "If a paywall is not considered to be a TPM it would theoretically permit anyone to hack the TPMs and obtain content without paying.  This could undermine subscription based services that are relied on extensively by the creative communities including newspapers and other publishers, providers of software as a service, video entertainment subscription services as well as many streaming services, including Netflix and music streaming services.

Leading Canadian newspapers like The Globe and Mail rely on paywalls as a basis for obtaining revenues to offset the massive declines in paper-based sales.  Even with the paywall, newspapers like The Globe, are suffering declines in revenues, as evidenced by their announcement this week offering voluntary layoffs because of declining revenues.  If people could hack their paywall, and thereby avoid paying for content, this could further damage The Globe.  This would reduce its capacity to continue to employ its many authors that the public relies on for accurate and comprehensive news.  If this were to happen, the public at large would also suffer as would the democratic principles and government accountability that newspapers foster.  Therefore, while it may superficially appear to be appealing that there is no harm in bypassing paywalls, the reality is that laws protecting paywalls serve a vital public policy purpose."

The upcoming Federal Court case, Blacklock's Reporter v. AGC, will certainly be one to watch. The judge and courtroom for the hearing should be announced early this week.

Written by Graeme C. Gordon

If I'm being generous, I would measure in microseconds the time it took for Ontario's opinion makers to go from declaring that Patrick Brown's series of reversals on Ontario's sex-ed curriculum had cost him the riding of Scarborough Rouge River to praising him and his PC Party team to the skies for their historic GTA breakthrough.

Despite laying out the facts in my last column showing why the Liberals seemed fated to lose the riding a fate that they accepted all too quietly for my liking and despite my prediction being seen through (AGAIN) it's apparent that clearer heads are not going to be prevailing anytime soon.

The fact that PC Party advisors allowed themselves to get entangled in this issue yet again demonstrates how conflicted they are about differentiating themselves from the Liberals in any meaningful way.

Even when they're winning, they seem to be losing it somehow.

Perhaps the most baffling thing about the party's sex-ed shuffle is how inconsequential the issue turned out to be to the by-election's outcome.  The margin of victory suggests voters had made their minds up fairly decisively already.

There was no need for Brown or whoever actually wrote the initial letter promising to scrap the curriculum to jump at this shadow and there may have been no need for him to recant after the fact.

And if the PC's are going to beat the Liberals in the general election, they have got to resolve this existential anxiety somehow.

Simply put: are the PC's a "modern and inclusive party" or aren't they?

If they are "modern and inclusive" if they are truly trying to advertise their squishiness to voters then that means they have to get comfortable with talking out of both sides of their mouths sometimes the way Liberals do.

The Liberals accept that they are a brokerage party, unbound by "ideology."  That means they are happy to take whatever position will earn them votes.  That could have been what Brown was trying to do on sex-ed, but he did it so abruptly that it was impossible to tell.

It's far more traditional for Conservatives to pay lip service to the idea of being principled and spend an inordinate amount of time rationalizing why their leaders have to compromise on pretty much every one of those principles to get into and stay in power.

Brown, for his part, has never seemed interested in excusing his own deviations with the kind of knowing smiles and nods that were commonly employed by senior members of the Harper government he was a part of.  His explanations for reversals are quick and pointed, with no space for letting disappointed defenders of conservative dogmas down easy.

He may have grown used to changing his tune quickly as an elected member of the CPC, but he appears to have forgotten that some of the more experienced hands still prefer to pretend.  Kathleen Wynne, for her part, always takes care to behave as though she is acting in accordance with the people's views before she leads her party, and the province, towards some disastrous new scheme.

Liberals are not completely without scruples.  They chafe at being asked to sell the left-field ideas and explain away the sleazy odours currently emanating from the Premier's Office.  But their leader is so practiced at making it seem like she's doing it all for Ontario's own good, and so careful to play the sympathetic grandma whenever her party gets their back up that they always get over their reservations.

Brown provides no such mothering to his party faithful.  He may have grasped the essential lesson of Canadian governance tell the people what they want to hear, principles be damned but he has neither the gravitas of age nor the soft touch of diplomacy.

In short, if Brown wants to convince people that he and his party are an acceptable substitute for the Liberals instead of a bunch of ideological wolves in sheep's clothing, then it will not do just to talk the centrist talk on a few key issues.  He must soothe the weary consciences of the people he seeks to govern, and slowly ease their grasp on those pesky principles they hold so dear.

Written by Josh Lieblein

Anything is possible in politics, but it's probably best to bet on tradition. A particularly solidified custom of Canadian political life is that first-term majority prime ministers do not generally lose their second election. History nerds can correct me, but I'm fairly certain it's never happened at all, in fact. The only majority governments that go down to defeat are headed by PMs like Stephen Harper or Mackenzie King — who have already been in power for multiple terms — or ones like Kim Campbell and John Turner, who inherited their majority governments from someone else.

Assuming Justin Trudeau decides to run for re-election — as, again, I believe every single first term Canadian prime minister in history has — the federal Tories face a task that sits somewhere between extraordinarily unlikely and unavoidably impossible. Canadians tend to be generous with their leaders. Prime ministers always claim they need more than four years to deliver their promises. Most of the time they're given it.

Fatalism should not overtake Conservatives as they pick their next leader, but humility and historical self-awareness should certainly be present. If the man or woman tasked with unseating Prime Minister Trudeau in three years is more likely than not to fail at their defining mission, it may be worth pondering what sort of defeat the party could tolerate in 2019 that would not unduly damage it for 2023.

When a party is out of power, the failings of its defeated leaders tend to be overdrawn, with their flaws unfairly exaggerated in order to create a tidy narrative of Canadians "decisively rejecting" this-or-that wild alternative in the face of the calm, stable, moderate incumbent. If the Tories elect Maxime Bernier, for instance, a man who has shaped his brand around dramatic calls for the abolishment of various big-government totems — the CRTC, Canada Post, supply management, etc — the press would almost certainly describe his defeat as a "decisive rejection" of hard-edged libertarianism, thereby spooking a generation of Conservatives away from such ideas. If Brad Trost, a tireless foe of abortion and pride parades gets the job, expect his loss to prompt a further scramble from anything that sniffs of social conservatism.

Likewise, since the press consistently views the defeat of any conservative candidate in any election, anywhere, as a sort of divine punishment for drifting "too far to the right," consider the damage that could be done by a leader like Peter Mackay or Michael Chong, who are barely conservative at all. Even if they ran on platforms virtually indistinguishable from Trudeau's, their loss would still be attributed to some imaginary hard-right edge they never abandoned, forcing the next leader to "distance" himself from this imaginary legacy, thereby creating a monstrous feedback cycle of endlessly insecure, ever-leftward drifting leaders. This is basically what killed the old Progressive Conservative Party at the federal level, wherein each post-Mulroney leader possessed steadily more contempt for the right, until they wound up with… well, Peter Mackay. Tim Hudak in Ontario was perfectly moderate, but he got tarred with the "too right wing" brush and now his poor successor is spiraling into incoherence, petrified with fear he may have some contagion of conservatism left in his system.

More useful is the opposition party with the caution and self-awareness to not overplay its hand when history is not on its side. Michael Ignatieff and Stephane Dion, for instance, were such obviously uninspired seat-warmers it was hard to view their back-to-back losses to Prime Minister Harper as reflective of anything beyond voters' predictable disinterest in two bland personalities. No one remembers anything about what 70s-era Tory boss Robert Stanfield believed one way or another because the self-evident claim that he was too lame to be prime minister overshadowed all other criticism.

Bores tend to be fundamentally decent, competent people, and in the case Justin Trudeau proves unpopular beyond all historic precedent, I'd much rather have a mild-mannered, cookie-cutter Tory replace him than risk the damage to both the Conservative Party and conservatism that could occur if a splashier personality loses spectacularly.

Elections are a gamble. Conservatives should check the odds before raising the stakes.

Photo Credit: CBC News

 

Written by J.J McCullough