Taxpayers can’t opt out of funding PC fake news site
When premier Doug Ford spoke at this year’s Manning Networking Conference, he delighted in describing how the Progressive Conservative government is using groundbreaking new technology to go around the news media and deliver their messages free from spin.
In a video showing part of Ford’s remarks accompanying a Canadian Press article on Global News, the premier calls the mainstream media far left and says it spins government messages on a whim.
“But, but, guess what?” he said. “Now there’s social media. So we’re circumventing the media through our social media and we have ONN. Go online and look at ONN, Ontario News Now.”
Let’s leave the premier at the Manning Networking Conference for a moment and take a look at ONN. The casual user who followed the premier’s instruction could be forgiven for thinking it’s a real, independent news media site. There’s the Ontario News Now logo in the top left corner, along with the usual social media icons from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube in the opposite corner. These are links to ONN’s accounts on those platforms. While the PC colours are present, there are no PC logos.
Next down the page, there’s a large embedded video accompanied by a headline, date, and a paragraph of text. Beneath this, three more videos line up across the page with associated headlines, dates, and paragraphs. But look closer.
As I write this, the current issue of The Ontarion is prepared for publication at the end of March 2019, the headlines and topic headers on ONN contain phrases like:
- “Job-killing federal carbon tax”
- “Our government is putting people first by…”
- “Open for business”
- “Putting more money in people’s pockets”
This isn’t news. It’s PC marketing dressed up as news and the content is paid for with taxpayer money.
When ONN launched in August 2018, CBC spoke to a number of experts and non-PC politicians who variously described the site and associated content as fake news and an attempt to muzzle the press and undermine democracy. That same month, provincial government staffers at multiple news conferences clapped loudly to drown out questions from reporters, meaning that government officials were able to avoid questions asked on the behalf of Ontario citizens by a free press.
Robert Benzie, a reporter covering the Ontario government for The Toronto Star, told CBC Radio that staff clapping over reporter’s questions started at campaign events while Ford ran for office. ONN grew out of another campaign tool: Ford Nation Live, a collection of news-report-style content produced by the Ford campaign to chronicle the Ford campaign.
Let’s return to the premier, six months later at the Manning Networking Conference on March 23, 2019, where he had this to say about Ford Nation Live: “It drove the media crazy because they want to take what you said and clip and chip and twist it around, but we went direct to the people.”
The premier went on to claim that Ford Nation Live had “18 million 30-second hits,” which he said was more than the mainstream media combined.
Not long after that, the premier said what might be the most quoted soundbite from the premier’s remarks: “The media is always going to take their stance and you know I get along with them one on one, I really do. I like them, but they’re just… It’s like the cheese slipped off the cracker with these guys and they just went far left.”
Ridicule aside, let’s consider the premier’s apparent thinking. He seems to either misunderstand the role of independent news media in a functioning democracy, which would be bad enough, or he does understand, which would be even worse.
If it’s genuine misunderstanding, the premier probably thinks of journalists as little more than incompetent stenographers.
However, if the premier understands the role of a free press in democracy and yet is actively undermining it, journalists aren’t just people he’s poking fun at. They’re part of a long list of the premier’s political opponents that includes universities, university student groups, teachers, and the voters of tomorrow.
The citizens of Ontario need to keep a close eye on this government and speak up when something isn’t right. And when some of us say that this program or that initiative is an example of Ford Nation systematically weakening the institutions and ideals of constitutional democracy and civil society, skeptics should listen.
And it bears noting that the media outlets where you’re going to hear this sort of dissent don’t answer to the premier of Ontario.
Would it be more ethical for this propagandist website if taxpayer money was not used? Barely so, but fingers in the cookie jar seems always the way of the far right. It is why I call this new model Ford the THUGGY.