Is the right-wing media world...okay?

 

The girls were fighting this week.

See, Juno “News,” a right wing self-proclaimed “news” outlet that for some reason boasts one of the highest politics Substack subscription rates in Canada, decided to platform an interesting guest.

Host Candice Malcolm called it an “immigration debate.”

But her guest was a guy named Daniel Tyrie, a founder of the “Dominion Society.”

This is a guy who, according to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, is a part of Canada’s growing and emboldened white nationalist movement.

Even Malcolm’s former boss, former Conservative cabinet minister and former Alberta premier Jason Kenney, was outspoken about his disgust for the interview.

“Daniel Tyrie is a racist,” he wrote on Twitter.

“Racism is immoral. It is poison. It is not “vitality.” It is not conservative.”

This left many Canadians feeling nervous, because…did we just agree with Jason Kenney?

Anyway, this is part of a broader, long overdue conversation about the conservative media ecosystem.

Because things aren’t just getting weird on Juno News, a platform Pierre Poilievre has generously sat down with several times for one on one interviews.

The party also invited several conservative “influencers” to their convention, which launched a bigger conversation about these TikTok-making, sometimes truth-twisting and often very partisan people who are making up an increasingly large share of the right-wing media ecosystem.

I knew I wanted to talk about all of this, and who better to help me than one of my favourite fellow political journalists?

Luke LeBrun is the Editor of PressProgress. He’s an award winning journalist and very, very good at what he does. He’s also covered a lot of stories that veer into the stranger side of our media industry, from this recent Juno News drama to uncovering the Israeli government money backing a group sending right-wing media personalities to Israel.

In fact, he’s so good, that he’s facing a big money lawsuit alongside CBC News and the Toronto Star that could create chilling precedents that would protect politicians’ secrets from whistleblowers.