A reckoning is coming. As the COVID pandemic hopefully draws to a close, people are going to want answers. How did this happen? Who was responsible?
I suspect when a Royal Commission makes its final report on the COVID pandemic a few years hence, it will be a bracing tale of epic mismanagement from start to finish.
Though the bad decisions were made by politicians and public health bureaucrats, Canada's mainstream media will take some flak for being enthusiastic cheerleaders for all those bad decisions. (I don't think I've ever seen a CBC report about ivermectin that didn't refer to it as a 'horse-dewormer'!)
How is Canada's mainstream media to extricate itself?
Well, first of all, it's clearly better to head for the exits early.
It's also useful to test the waters. How much reality are Canadians ready for?
I've seen a number of newspaper pieces over the past week which give clues for how Canada's mainstream media will try to escape responsibility for its part in the COVID debacle.
Here are three strategies I've seen in the past few days:
Strategy One: Opinion Pieces
I'm not sure why Canada's mainstream media spent most of the pandemic muzzling opinion writers not willing to toe the Party line. That, more than anything else, made me question how 'free' Canada's free press actually was.
Opinion writers are supposed to be controversial and present contrarian points of view. If an op-ed writer expresses a wildly unpopular notion, you print a bunch of letters from indignant readers and put out a press release saying Conrad Black's ideas are his own and do not represent the views of the editors of the National Post. Hell, such controversy often sells papers.
The National Post is now letting their op-ed writers speak their minds.
Friday, it was a cranky Conrad Black, speaking in support of truckers and slamming Justin Trudeau:
Saturday it was a curmudgeonly Rex Murphy telling Canadian politicians not to get their knickers in a twist over the Trucker Convoy:
Opinion pieces are a great way to test the waters of public acceptability. They are also a good way to begin edging away slowly from a slavish support of the official COVID narrative.
Strategy Two: Let Pollsters Do the Heavy Lifting
Here's another way to cut yourself loose from Justin Trudeau's sinking ship. Let a pollster do your dirty work:
You don't have to say directly that Justin Trudeau screwed up big time. Just report that "only 16 per cent of Canadians would vote for Trudeau based on his actions of the last two weeks."
For good measure add: "Forty-four per cent of respondents believed that Trudeau’s statements had 'inflamed' the situation. While 53 per cent have said he 'looked weak in the face of threats to the country.'" No need to mention that the National Post remained silent for months while Trudeau slagged and slandered the unvaccinated.
Strategy Three: Admit the Obvious But Embed It in Official Narrative
When the CBC wanders even a tiny bit away away from fawning adoration of the Trudeau Government, it's clear that 'The times, they are a changin.'
Here the CBC spends 90 percent of the essay doing a full-throated paean to the wonders of vaccines before finally admitting something that has been obvious for months. In the closing paragraphs, they acknowledge that the fully vaccinated are catching and spreading Omicron at the same rate as the unvaccinated so there's no moral justification for vaccine passports for the fully vaccinated:
The CBC has put itself in a terrible position. It's spent the entire pandemic pushing the official government narrative. The only way it can get out of the mess it put itself in is to do what it does here: 90% narrative and 10% reality. Maybe if they let the truth leak out slowly, like pee from an ill-fitted diaper, by the time a Royal Commission reports in a year or two, CBC audiences will have forgotten that the CBC was once Disinformation Central. I kind of doubt it they'll get away with it, but it remains the CBC's best hope.
Strategy Four: Interview the Unimpeachable
Brian Peckford is a former Canadian Premier and the only living signer of the Canadian Bill of Rights. He’s initiated a lawsuit against the Canadian Government, which is an obvious story hook. Here the Victoria Times-Colonist lets Brian Peckford say things the Times-Colonist is not yet ready to say itself:
I’m sure we’ll see several more media strategies to sashay up to the truth as mainstream media's rush towards the exits accelerates in the coming weeks.
There are a number of readers of this blog whose comments make it clear to me they are insightful observers. Please submit your own examples of how the mainstream media is now frantically trying to escape the corner they have painted themselves into.
How many ways can rats leave a sinking ship? Together we can count the ways. I am able to edit my posts, so I can include screenshots of media revisionism that readers suggest; readers in subsequent days can enjoy them.
PS: Here’s a great rant from a feisty journalist and former news director who couldn’t cope with the disinformation put out month after month by Global News. She wasn’t fired for what she did on the job; she was fired for what she did on her own time. That’s how desperate the mainstream media is to control the news. Ditto for corporate Amerika. Jennifer Sey was fired as Levi’s Marketing Manager because she advocated as a parent to keep schools open. Isn’t it called fascism when big corporations and big government work together to suppress the truth?
Sky News of Australia doesn’t mince words in describing the fake empathy of Justin Trudeau. I suspect Sky News isn’t as willing to tell it like it is about what’s happening in Australia as it is about saying what’s happening in Canada. So that’s another strategy the Canadian media could use: Tell us how badly Joe Biden has botched things.