The likely next Canadian PM is a master at showing how to deal with news media who aren’t interested in asking questions on behalf of the viewer but are more interested in pushing their own narrative. It also happens here in NZ. We look at some examples from Poilievre and also ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson, and then we give you a test to see how well you would do.
A Media Masterclass From Pierre Poilievre
I’m not sure if you’ve heard of Pierre Poilievre. In a previous episode, we celebrated the resignation of current Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
Canada’s Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre is the favourite to replace Trudeau as prime minister as soon as new parliamentary elections can be held.
But he has already won fans – not only because the legacy media don’t really like him because of his conservative views, but because he doesn’t like the media and really gives them a hard time.
And there’s a lesson to be learnt. A masterclass from Pierre.
Quoting from the rabid left-wing paper The Guardian, it says
He is the abrasive leader who has taken his party from the conventional right to the populist flank. He paints a dark vision of a “broken” nation and promises to put his country first. He is fond of hurling insults at his political opponents; says he wants to take back control of the border – and Elon Musk loves him.
Good start – not for The Guardian – but probably for you!
Poilievre was born in 1979 in Calgary, Alberta. His 16-year-old mother gave him up for adoption, and he was raised by two schoolteachers in the city’s suburbs. Although he hails from the Canadian west, where the vast majority only speak English, he grew up bilingual because his father is Fransaskois, Saskatchewan province’s small French-speaking population…
Poilievre was the youngest member of the House of Commons when he won election at 25 in 2004 and earned the nickname “Skippy” for his precocious debate-club energy. “He is a nerdy-looking guy, sharp tongued, and very effective in parliament,” (a Guardian reporter) Leyland said.
Yes – The Guardian interviews their own reporters as experts! ☹
“And he is primarily an advocate of the low-tax politics of his region.”…
The crucial period in Poilievre’s rise came in early 2022, when he allied himself to the “Freedom Convoy” – a blockade of Ottawa in protest at vaccine mandates for truck drivers that metastasized into a wider-ranging populist movement.
The Freedom Convoy was criticised, including by some conservatives, as a badly behaved partisan mob that combined protest over the handling of the pandemic with conspiracy theories and racist extremism
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it
– but Poilievre recognised the potency of their attack on Canada’s liberal establishment.
“It was very risky for him to support them,” [The Guardian reporter] said. “They were widely condemned. But he went and met with the leaders and treated them as proud, honest Canadians whose voices weren’t being heard. He saw the opportunity.” By the end of the year, he had been elected as leader of the Conservatives, easily defeating an opponent, Jean Charest, who said Poilievre’s support of the truckers should be disqualifying.
But here’s why the legacy media and left wingers hate Poilievre.
Poilievre attacks Trudeau’s policies as “authoritarian socialism”, calls him a “wacko”, and deploys tried and tested rightwing talking points on crime, immigration, and the Liberals’ carbon tax. After Trudeau’s resignation speech, he said that he would “cap spending, axe taxes, reward work, build homes, uphold family, stop crime, secure borders, rearm our forces, restore our freedom and put Canada First”.
But it’s his dealings with the media that are the most attractive aspect.
Let me show you a couple of examples – and then show how this is also present in NZ.
In October 2023, an interview of Pierre Poilievre went viral showing him chomping down on an apple while chiding a local journalist
Have a watch
See what he did there? Whenever the reporter used a loaded term, a label – “populist”, a negative description “page out of Donald Trump” – or made some wild accusation “a great many Canadians”,
Pierre pushes back on the nonsense with “give me a page” “who are the Canadians” “what do you mean by populist”.
He doesn’t allow the negative label to rest on him.
But the strategy of many in the media is to associate that label with the person and for the audience to make that association.
Then in April last year, Pierre Poilievre schooled a reporter who asks about public funding to news outlets in Canada.
As you watch this, he could be referring to Jacinda Ardern’s taxpayer funding to media also. Same principle.
Once again, he pushes back on the loaded question by revealing the source of the question – a taxpayer funded media outlet which has a vested interest. And then exposing the false statements.
Have a watch
Then this January, in an interview with the CP24 news channel (Toronto based), Poilievre was asked about President Donald Trump signing an executive order declaring the U.S. will only recognize two sexes and that they are unchangeable.
Watch the way that he treats the narrative of the media. He even gets the interviewer revealing his own gender identity – with the word “cis” added!
Notice that he’s not afraid of the media – doesn’t lose his rag – but just pushes back on their narrative.
As I was preparing this, I was shown another very good example. From last June.
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson was touring Australia in the middle of last year and took questions from the media after making a speech at the Australian Freedom Conference in the capital Canberra.
A reporter from the Australian Associated Press demonstrated this “negative labelling”. Wong asked Carlson about his immigration views, saying he had “talked” about the “Great Replacement Theory” and how “white Australians, Americans and Europeans” are being replaced by “non-white immigrants”.
Watch the way Wong gets roasted simply by Tucker Carlson pushing back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-iOOLlEB2g
“When a relationship begins with a lie”
“Your slurs are by implication”
Now she should have stopped right there and then. But the media are here to push a narrative – come hell or high water – or the facts.
Now there’s mention of the Buffalo Shooting. This was a horrific mass shooting which occurred in 2022 in Buffalo, New York at a supermarket where a white supremacist murdered 10 African-Americans. Similar to the motivations of the horrific Christchurch Mosque terrorist act. But the reporter wanted to pin that on Tucker’s views.
We’ll stop there – but it didn’t get any better.
Now note in all of this. Part of the game of the legacy media which you’ll often see on the news even here in NZ is that the question is designed to push a narrative that the reporter wants to emphasise. It’s not a question. Its implying how viewers should think.
I showed you one of these just last week where Breakfast on 1 late last year interviewed David Seymour and introduced his bill as “divisive” and that the hikoi would “unify all”. Have a listen.
Apparently if the
Recent example of this was the interview with the new Minister of health
Have a listen to how Jenna Lynch from Stuff / Three News labels him. Is it informative and neutral – or is it pushing a view – a narrative?
How dare he. How dare he!
Despite the fact that polling shows the country is very much split down the middle on the issue, and the majority of NZers actually don’t agree with how radical our abortion law is when they fully understand what it allows.
But Jenna isn’t letting up. She runs off to a radical pro-abortionist group to back up Jenna’s view.
And then this line of questioning.
Now here’s a little test to make sure you’ve been watching this episode and watching the masterclass of not just Pierre but also Tucker.
Here’s the next loaded question from Jenna
“Cast iron guarantee that abortion laws won’t change?” The implication is they must not change – according to the reporter.
The simple answer to this is – Jenna, you don’t understand the way Parliament works. For the law to change, it would take a majority of MPs to vote to protect the unborn child, the most vulnerable of people. I’m just one vote in a Parliament that has 123 MPs voting. I can’t make any guarantee. I’m not a dictator, Jenna.
Hope you got an A for that question.
Let’s try another.
Have a listen to this question
“Can you understand why women are nervous?”
See what’s happening? The implication is that every woman – which Jenna probably won’t even be able to define – every woman in New Zealand is petrified because Simeon Brown believes “all lives matter, old or young. male or female, black or white, born or unborn…”
Here’s a response:
Jenna – how do you know it’s every woman?
Have you counted? Who did you interview?
What are they nervous of given than most women don’t abort their baby so they’re not even obsessed with the law like you are?
Would you like to know what my plans are for Dunedin Hospital, ED waiting times, access to GPs, priorities for nurse and doctor funding?
Or do you just want to push your little hobby horse, Jenna.
That’s why the news ratings are going through the floor. You’re obsessed with the things that normal NZers aren’t.
OK – you can see why the media don’t come near me anymore.
I hope that Pierre and Tucker have helped give you some understanding of how the news media can manipulate the narrative very simply through their questions and labels and even slurs.
Hopefully you will be far more aware of their tactics now.
And if the microphone is ever thrown in front of you, you’ll know exactly what to do.
Do a fact check on the question first.
Facts matter!
