Justin Trudeau says “conspiracy theorists” and “social media drivers” are to blame for the declining trust in legacy media.
Trudeau made the comments in an interview on Real Talk with Ryan Jespersen, an Alberta talk show.
“There is out there a deliberate undermining of mainstream media. There are the conspiracy theorists, and there are the social media drivers who are trying to do everything they can to keep people in their little filter bubbles to prevent people from actually agreeing on a common set of facts,” said Trudeau.
“The way that the CBC and CTV, when they were our only sources of news, used to and Global News used to project across the country, at least a common understanding of things.”
A University of Oxford report on global media last year painted a bleak picture of the Canadian media landscape, with a significant erosion of trust in traditional news sources.
Data showed a staggering decline in trust towards traditional news outlets, with only 40% of Canadians expressing confidence in their reporting.
This skepticism is particularly pronounced among English-speaking Canadians, where trust levels plummeted to 37%, compared to 49% in French-speaking regions.
Furthermore, concerns about government intervention in media regulation have exacerbated the crisis, with many questioning the impartiality and independence of publicly-funded outlets like the CBC and others that have received government funding.
As reported by True North, there’s growing anxiety within news organizations over the uncertain fate of government funding. The expiration of the Local Journalism Initiative, a flagship program introduced by Trudeau’s government in 2019, threatens the livelihoods of over 400 journalists hired under the initiative.
The Liberal government has yet to indicate whether it would renew the funds. Trudeau’s term is also up next year and Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who is currently leading in the polls by a wide margin, has said that he would end media subsidies.
