Front Burner - Pierre Poilievre confronts Canada's media

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

Pierre Poilievre does not hide how he feels about Canadian mainstream media. His numerous, testy exchanges with reporters earn lots of online traction.Is the relationship between Poilievre and the media different from politicians that came before him? When Poilievre takes on reporters, who is he talking to?Today we explore those questions with journalist and author Paul Wells.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. I just want to play for you off the top a few viral clips that have really been making the rounds lately of conservative leader Pierre Polyev versus reporters. There's going to be three different exchanges here, starting with last month. So here he's being thrown a bunch of questions from reporters about the carbon tax, and he really turns the tables on them. I'm just curious, can you explain to me why there is a carbon tax in the agreement? No, but the question is why? No, I asked you a question.

You keep asking me the questions. We're the journalists. We ask the questions. I have the freedom to ask questions if I want to, and I've just answered. I've been answering your questions all week. All right, here's another one. The government's introducing a better tax credit. You're not changing the subject. I know you want to change the subject. No, I want to ask the question.

And from around the same time, here he is speaking directly to a Canadian press reporter shortly after the news that Bell Media had to cut thousands of jobs. And they asked a question about some of the financial relief that media companies have gotten from the government and the conservatives' history on that issue. So, of course, you are a tax-funded media outlet and spreading Justin Trudeau's message. And so you're interrupting me again. A hundred million dollars in regulatory relief to the mainstream media. Your question is false. So if you can allow me to correct your falsehoods,

then we can answer the question directly. So, false. Canadian Conservatives do not believe in giving tax dollars to media outlets. That's Justin Trudeau. That's Justin Trudeau. That's Justin Trudeau. Okay, if you don't want me to answer the question, I'll move on to someone else. You're a tax-funded mouthpiece to the PMO.

That's the reality. Now here's one from back in August when Polyev was out in PEI during the question portion of a news conference. A number of your own comments and actions have been characterized as dog-whistling to the far right. By who? By a number of different... By who? I think it's been characterized by that way but are you trying to court are you trying to clarify sorry i just need to clarify

by who by a number of different experts and a number of different people who work who are the experts so these back and forths that were circulating online, there were a lot of comments accompanying them, cheering Polyev on. And we wanted to spend some time talking through what's going on here. Is the relationship between the current frontrunner to be the next prime minister and the media different from politicians that came before him? When Polyev takes on reporters, who is he talking to and how big is that group? Polyev takes on reporters, who is he talking to and how big is that group? And in a country of newsrooms dealing with cuts and layoffs, what could our media look like in the future, including the not-so-distant future? Not a simple conversation, I know, but we're going to give it a shot with veteran Parliament Hill journalist and author Paul Wells. He also writes a newsletter on politics

and culture, and you can get it through Substack. Just look up Paul there. Paul, thank you very much. Welcome back to FrontBurner. It is always so great to have you. Thanks for having me. So you have covered Parliament Hill and politicians for a while now. And I just want to say, like, obviously there are tense relationships between politicians and the media all the time. Peter Mansbridge was on the show earlier this week, and he was kind of alluding to some moments between him and former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. So I wonder if we could start by talking about how you've seen some of the more recent governments and opposition parties and leaders treat reporters.

I think it's fair to say that over the last 20 years, there's been a progressive estrangement between journalists and political figures, which plays out in a bunch of ways. We used to socialize more. We don't socialize as much. They used to kind of meekly go along with the press gallery's assumptions about how the relationship should work. So, for instance, journalists can ask any questions they want to ask, as many questions as they want to ask, and they can use whatever bits of the clips that are produced from those interactions that they want,

and politicians just have to put up with that. That package of assumptions used to be pretty broadly accepted on Parliament Hill. And these days it's, you know, much more frequently rejected than accepted by all players. When do you think that started to shift? 2007. It's a very specific date. Yeah. It went off a cliff with the invention of the iPhone and the rapid spread of all your favorite social media platforms. All of which gave any organization, but certainly politicians, a plethora of ways for getting message out that had nothing to do with a reporter standing between them and their target audience. Yeah.

And so I just think the world changed to an extent that most people in my line of work haven't really thought hard about, but it changed, it changed real fast and it's not going back. This idea that, that, you know, the media politicians could criticize the media more. Um, how, how do you think that has evolved over the years? And, and do you think it's been more pronounced in any one party? over the years? And do you think it's been more pronounced in any one party? Different regimes at different times have pushed back against journalism. And so during Nixon's first term in office, his vice president, Spiro Agnew, ran a sort of a constant cultural campaign against the Eastern Seaboard, Harvard-educated elites in the press gallery.

The purpose of my remarks tonight is to focus your attention on this little group of men who not only enjoy a right of instant rebuttal to every presidential address, but more importantly, wield a free hand in selecting, presenting, and interpreting the great issues in our nation. And he called them at one point, in the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. Usually he used quite a bit saltier language than that. And it was not only a critique of the journalism's manner, but it was a cultural critique. And it was essentially, these swells think they have a right to run the country. And we've got news for them. Us

ordinary folks are going to run it now. And that leads straight to Pierre Polyev, who takes Nixon as one of his models for how he does what he does, and I believe has absolutely studied the case of Spiro Agnew and Nixon 50 years ago, and is to some extent updating it for a new time. Well, when you talk about updating it for a new time, what do you mean when you say that? Like, do you see Polyev doing things that are different than maybe some politicians that have come before him? I mean, to some extent, the vocabulary of modern communications is universal and needn't be belabored. Preferring social media over interactions with reporters, preferring social media over interactions with reporters, preferring friendly reporters over skeptical reporters,

and collecting email addresses full-time through various techniques. Sign here if you agree with me on issue X, so that they can then push out their message through automated email lists to millions of people without worrying whether I feel like quoting them or not. He's done all of that. And of course, shooting and editing sometimes quite elaborate video pieces, essentially short documentaries, although people who hate what's in them also hate when I call them documentaries. So, you know, pick your own vocabulary, but like, like the stuff he did on housing policy, some of the stuff he's done on drug policy so that, uh, it's a fun night of TV watching Pierre Polyev on, on, on X or on, uh, Instagram.

And, uh, and, and he, he gets out precisely the message he wants to push out without worrying about whether reporters are going to quote the right parts. We listened at the top to some of the interactions that he's having with reporters. And how would you describe those interactions? And what do you think is going on there when you watch them? Where Polyev is different, I think, from a lot of his predecessors and a lot of his contemporaries, is the open hostility that he shows. We're used to a lot more passive aggression, frankly. The aggression-aggression is a bit new, or at least we haven't been seeing it as often before Polyev started running for the leadership. That comes from a few things. First of all, the decline in trust in almost all of the standard institutions of modern life. So there's

declining trust in politicians, declining trust in business, declining trust in the church, you know, and to say the least, journalists aren't exempt from that rising tide of skepticism. Secondly, there's a class thing and a sort of a geographical thing. He is simply correct to say that more journalists have university degrees than ever before. More journalists come from big cities. They're renters. They're public transit users. before, more journalists come from big cities. They're renters. They're public transit users.

They are the sort of people who wind up voting liberal and NDP if they vote. And they're much less likely to be like the kinds of people who vote conservative. And that sure gets noticed by people who vote conservative. Not all of them. a lot of them are very upset when he picks fights with journalists. But I would say they're outnumbered by the people who think it's hilarious when he picks fights with journalists. Yeah. How big do you think that group is though, right? Like. So probably it's not 10 or 15 or even 20% of the electorate that's going to vote based on whether they think a party leader has the correct tone in their interactions with journalists.

But like most people are voting on something else like pocketbook issues. But I'll say this much. I think journalists tend to badly overestimate the amount of sympathy that we get from observers when these little confrontations are going on. Right. I don't think the next election is going to be won or lost based on anybody's scrum etiquette, but I do believe it's a net gain for polio. Do you think, though, that there is a point where it tips into not a net gain, you know, when there's an accumulation of these kinds of interactions or clips, right. Uh, where you're just seeming quite ornery, uh, you know, like just take the journalist out of it for,

you know, where you're, where. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so, uh, I'll, I'll extend your point, take the journalist out of it and insert some other member of society yeah uh the thing that conservatives polyev and his entourage should be very concerned about is when people start to say you know hey look if this guy can be this randomly hostile to someone whose question today sounds perfectly legitimate, how are they going to behave when I've got a problem with this government? Or transport this thing 18 months in the future, once they are government, if they get elected, is this stuff going to wear as well? So I've got in front of me a tweet, excuse me for using the old vocabulary.

I don't even know what you call them now. I've got an X from this fellow, Sebastian Skamsky, who does media relations for Polyev here in Ottawa. Perfectly pleasant fellow in person. And there's a dispute between a conservative MP and a bunch of people over whether mass murderers and serial killers have a hockey rink that they get to play hockey on in their maximum security prison. And a Canadian press reporter quoted some people saying it's not a hockey rink. So here's Sebastian Skamsky, a polyethics media guy here in Ottawa. The lying Canadian press is yet again carrying water for Justin Trudeau and his incompetent liberal government. Instead of performing the most basic function

of journalism, CP protects their liberal masters. Hey, man, that's pretty hot. And incidentally, is this the most pressing issue of the day? And if they respond when one of their candidates is disqualified for reasons that seem a little questionable, or one of their policies ends up not working in power, I think this sort of critique function that Polyev loves to exercise in so many ways, I think that critique function is not going to wear nearly as well when he is the person who would reasonably be critiqued because he's the person who's running a government. I'm going to go. Angel Investment and Industry Connections. That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples.

It does strike me, this isn't new for him, right? Like, how much of it is who he is? Because he's always been, you know, a bit of an attack dog and, you know, incredibly combative. Right. Yeah. Although. That's never been all of them. During the brief period when he was a minister of whatever the hell he was minister of under harper minister for a bunch of social programs under harper he was not notably uh a terribly antagonistic person uh in the house of commons or in his interactions with reporters but he's always

he's he's always been much more interested in marketing uh i talked to someone who knew him when he was 16 years old and campaigning at the writing level for Jason Kenney in Calgary. And he people on the call office had a certain level of calls that they would convert to donations. Kenny's number was higher than anyone else's in the office. And 16 year old Pierre Pauly has conversion rate was much higher than Jason Kenney's. The guy on the call office who was the absolute champion at fundraising for Jason Kenney was Pierre Poiliev, who wasn't yet done high school. And he's been doing that ever

since. So I just want to come back to what you were saying earlier about how he has been producing, you know, these doc, call them documentaries, call them productions, whether or not, and not to, you know, render ourselves irrelevant in this conversation, you think that that work, that is a successful strategy in getting your message out and, and whether, you know, his, his need for the media is even really, really there. Like, you know, how, how much does he need us? Well, um, one of my hobby horses is that nobody needs the media as much as, uh, the media used to expect to be needed.

Like, I mean, um, uh, to me, the surprise is not that Pierre Poiliev shoots 20 minute complex videos with graphics and special effects and text and all that. To me, the surprise is that more politicians don't do stuff like that. And I think the I think the reason is that a lot of politicians have nothing to say. At some levels, they're not permitted to say stuff. You know, at other levels, they're just not that thoughtful. But I mean, if you've got a complex message to push out, social media can be as useful as if you've only got a slogan to push out. And I think there's ego here. I think Polyev doesn't like to be called a guy with simplistic solutions.

I think he wants to demonstrate that his solutions have a lot of moving parts. And that can be comforting for people who worry that he's nothing but a slogan factory, right? So it's reassuring to his own base. It might change some opinions at the margin. I'm amazed that half the cabinet doesn't do stuff like this. Are there moments where you think not doing that, you know, engaging with the media is helpful to politicians? So, I mean, Polyev did just give the Globe and Mail an argument. It's not like every interaction he has with the media ends up in kind of a firecracker moment. I mean, granted, that article was about Arrive Can, which is a scandal that the liberals are really wearing. So I'm sure he was pleased to talk about it.

But, you know, in what circumstances do politicians still want to have a robust media operating in this country? Well, I think Waliev has been starting to realize that there's all kinds of opportunities in more traditional exchanges with reporters. Like it or not, we still, like the couple hundred reporters in the press gallery here in Ottawa, reach an aggregate total of millions of Canadians. And so if you want to reach that audience, giving a scrum is a good way to do it. And he's also become quite adept, I think actually a little too fascinated with the notion of playing at different levels to different audiences. So yes, he gives an interview to the Globe about a policy issue to show that actually a little too fascinated with the notion of playing at different levels to different audiences. So yes, he gives an interview to the Globe about a policy issue to show that he's

competent to talk about policy and to get sort of downtown big city traditional Tories comfortable with the notion that he's their guy too, even though he likes to, you know, announce that he's not a, he's not a, an elite downtown big business type, you know, so he deigns to speak to rich folks as well as to plumbers and electricians. What about the concern? Uh, and I heard this, um, you were on i uh i believe canada land earlier this week and you were talking to um jen gerson who uh is a reporter out west and she you know she was making the argument that without a strong media ecosystem uh politicians uh enter into an information chaos. And like, this is not what you want. You can't run an effective nation state like that. And, you know, I don't know if you responded to her when she said that,

but I'm curious to see, to hear what you have to say about that. I, I, I'm pausing because I'm trying to figure out for myself how much Polyev and the people around him care about an effective nation state as long as they get to run it. And I mean, and honestly, they're not alone. I mean, if effective policy were the highest value in Ottawa, then this country would be a very different place than what it is. It's often a kind of a spoil system. than what it is. It's often kind of a spoiled system.

I do think everyone in our line of work has to guard against a kind of reflexive nostalgia for the time when everybody in Canada who cared about politics had to watch The National on the CBC before they went to bed. And everybody would reasonably be expected to read The Globe at some point during their day and have an opinion on today's Jeffrey Simpson column or whatever. That has gone beyond the ability of any politician to even begin to bring it back.

And we're living in a world right now that is not only more chaotic than you or I could have predicted a decade ago, but it's chaotic, I think, beyond our ability to grasp it today. Paul, this decline in trust towards the media that you mentioned earlier, how much of that do you think the media hear? And this is a bit of a pivot from, you know, Polly. How much do you think we wear? How much of that are we responsible for?

That's a good question. And I'm going to sound like I'm chickening out when I say that's going to be for every member of the audience to decide. But it's just, I don't expect that there could be a consensus opinion on that. I'll tell you one thing. When I became an independent journalist, when I quit McLean's and set up and shop as a newsletter writer, a lot of my new audience was very excited because they saw that as a rejection of the traditional mainstream media. And a lot of my readers honestly expect me to dump on the mainstream media all the time. I'm very reluctant to do it because I know too many journalists. The great majority of journalists

that I know are very conscientious about getting facts correct. When they're found to have made a mistake, they correct their mistakes, which is not only something that Pierre Poiliev never does, it's something that I find is very upsetting. He gleefully criticizes and dismisses reporters for news organizations that have printed corrections as though admitting fallibility was some kind of moral failure. Actually, you're wrong. Are you with CP? Okay, so CP, by the way, CP, just for everyone's knowledge, did have to make three corrections for falsehoods that they put into a single article. I think that might be unprecedented. I'm actually thinking about checking with the Guinness Book of World Records

to see if there's ever been a news agency that has had to issue three corrections for patent falsehoods that they admit they had been made in one single article, and now you've made yet another falsehood in your question. Anyway, I really don't like when he does that. You know, it's not a great time for Canadian media. Bell is cutting 4,800 jobs, selling 45 radio stations. TVA, the big Quebec media company, cut more than 500 jobs.

Global went through layoffs last year. Here at the CBC, our management is pursuing layoffs, some of which have already happened. More are apparently coming. This is, according to them, the result of money issues. When you see these cuts happening, what are you thinking? And what are you thinking about the direction that the media landscape is going in this country? So I find it very upsetting when colleagues get laid off. All the more because I don't see the business model for large-scale journalism in Canada getting any closer to an equilibrium state where that's likely to stop. I think a lot of what the federal government has attempted to do to prop up journalism is misguided at best. But whether it's a good idea or a bad idea,

I think we can all agree that it's basically not working. I mean, we're only a year since the then Heritage Minister, Pablo Rodriguez, said his main priority was to keep the newsrooms open. Just think for a moment that between 2008 and today, 451 news outlets closed their doors in Canada. And I don't know how many dozens of newsrooms have shut since he said that. I just think to the extent people expect the federal government to provide some kind of band-aid solution that makes us look like an extension of the federal government in the eyes of a lot of observers. And because the federal government inevitably has one party affiliation or another, it makes us look like partisans. I think it's about time that we stop pretending that we can avoid that conclusion in the eyes of many people in the audience.

Paul, thank you very much for this. It is always a pleasure to hear you think this stuff through and to hear your thoughts on it. So thank you so much. Thank you. All right. That's all for this week. Frontburner was produced by Matt Muse, Ali Jane, Sarah Jackson, and Derek Vanderwyk. Our sound design was by Mackenzie Cameron and Sam McNulty.

Music is by Joseph Chavison. Our senior producer is Elaine Chow. Our executive producer is Nick McKay-Blocos. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we will talk to you on Monday.