Pierre Poilievre’s campaign is experiencing a popularity surge that could remind us of Justin Trudeau’s “Trudeaumania 2.0” tour from his 2015 landslide, with thousands packing Pierre’s Canada First rallies and roaring so loud they drown out the Conservative leader midspeech—many losing their voices by night’s end. Yet, good luck finding this spoken about positively in the mainstream media, who seem hell-bent on ignoring or downplaying the phenomenon; at this writing, you’d hit page 6 of Google before finding anything in the way of a positive mention that isn’t coming from social media. Simply put, the elitist-serving legacy media is doing everything in its power to bury or diminish the power of this populist surge.
The media’s fear is understandable: due to the popularity of social media and online-only news outlets eating into people’s free time, legacy media has had to rely on taxpayer-funded government handouts the Liberal Party refers to as “media subsidies” to stay afloat. The worst of them – the CBC – relies on $1.2B in annual funding to operate, despite enjoying every other privilege available under the Canadian sun that other outlets don’t enjoy, such as “state broadcaster” status. Despite selling commercial time and ad space at levels matching or exceeding other major players, the outlet simply refuses to stay within its means, and committee attempts to rein in executive bonuses as the broadcaster was laying off staff were met with contempt.
Still, Canadians expect news outlets to report the news, not propaganda, and certainly not news that only benefits the hand that feeds them. If the Liberal Party and the Eastern Canadians keeping them in power insist on Canadians being forced to continue to fund the legacy media and reward it for its inability to fund itself, the least that media can do is give fair, equal, and unbiased coverage of news that is relevant to Canadians of all political stripes.
At the time of this writing, Poilievre has packing crowds as large as 6,500 people into warehouses and aircraft hangars on every stop he has made, and in the case of his rally in Penticton, BC – overflowing the parking lot as well. 2 weeks into the campaign since this election was called, lineups for his rallies that stretch down streets and around corners have become normal sights at his rallies. The people attending these rallies have brought enormously positive energy and a lot of hope, that the mainstream media is doing everything in its power to diminish.
