The Fourth Estate has always annoyed the other powers and, after all, that’s kind of its role. This does not place the power of the media immune to criticism, however. His detractors know, however, that to give him back his own coin, they must rely, like him, on facts. Some do not care, of course, but when it is a party leader who falls into such an easy way, it is the very foundations of our democracy that shake.
Pierre Poilievre knows full well what he is doing when he calls the CBC “the propaganda arm of the Liberal Party” as he did last week. His animosity towards the Crown corporation is notorious. And paying. His idea of suffocating CBC/Radio-Canada by keeping its French-language programming on a ventilator has often earned him the applause of conservative activists. That it is inapplicable without profoundly changing the law on broadcasting does not seem to bother him the least in the world.
The public broadcaster has the leisure and even the duty to defend its reputation. Its mission is essential to the vitality of our media ecosystem. But by personalizing the debate as she has done on a few occasions, CBC/Radio-Canada President and CEO Catherine Tait has done less to elevate the debate than to play into the hands of the Conservatives.
Of course, Mr. Poilievre is not the first Conservative leader to break sugar on the back of the crown corporation. Nor the first chef at all. Let’s grant him that it is even for many Canadians, of all stripes, a national sport. With the difference that Mr. Poilievre is the one who does it the most openly. And without gloves. This is how he crossed what could be described as a democratic red line by calling on Elon Musk for help.
The strong man of Twitter is far from being a paragon of media neutrality. He demonstrated this again by forcing the adoption of surreal labels and deceptively equating state media such as the Russia Today channel or the China Xinhua News agency, under full state control. , and public broadcasters like the BBC or NPR. Attacked at the heart of their mission, the first succeeded in having its wording changed while the second preferred to leave the network, judging it irrecoverable.
Like CBC/Radio-Canada, these two public channels with an enviable reputation enjoy total editorial independence. That influential men like Musk and Poilievre refuse to differentiate between these two categories of media outlets that receive public funding is already a shame. But that Pierre Poilievre calls for a similar label for CBC/Radio-Canada, specifying without blushing that it is necessary to “protect Canadians against misinformation and manipulation by the state media”, defies understanding!
You have to call a spade a spade, it’s misinformation. Pierre Poilievre has the right not to like the work of journalists and to have a particular grudge against CBC/Radio-Canada. He can criticize their work all he wants, but that’s not what he’s doing here by twisting the facts to his advantage in defiance even of what he claims to be denouncing. In this era of great distrust of the media, his attitude is unworthy of the office to which he aspires.