Justin Trudeau’s Sun Media boycott is morally justified
In Wednesday’s National Post, my colleague Tasha Kheiriddin called out both Ezra Levant and Justin Trudeau for letting their political passions get the better of them.
Kheiriddin notes, correctly, that Levant’s Sept. 15 segment on Sun News Network — alleging that Trudeau is some kind of egomaniac sex monster because he obliged a wedding party’s request for a playful photobomb — was hysterical and factually wrong. (Levant sketched Trudeau as a libidinous marauder descending on an ingenue bride — which, according to members of the wedding party itself, is complete nonsense.)
Kheiriddin also calls out Levant for his cruel and vulgar attacks on the sexual mores of Trudeau’s parents. Since we now know that Justin’s mother was battling mental illness at the time of the events Levant describes, Levant’s words seem especially low.
These are the sort of your-momma taunts that high school boys shout at one another to incite a brawl. And it is a complete embarrassment to Sun that Levant was permitted to go on air with such a rant. The rumour is that quality control at the network is so poor that Levant can say anything he wants during his monologues — including vicious and unhinged attacks against identifiable ethnic groups. This episode would suggest that the rumour is true.
Yet Kheiriddin argues that, no matter how vile Levant’s words, Trudeau still should not have taken the step of boycotting every journalist in the Sun chain. “The boycott reinforces the notion that Trudeau shuts down people whose views he does not share,” she writes. “It plays into the current controversy over Trudeau’s refusal to allow pro-life Liberal MPs to speak and vote their conscience on abortion, because he disagrees with their position. Finally, Trudeau’s stance disrespects the public, who rely on the media to hold politicians accountable for their views and acts.” I disagree. Consider Kheiriddin’s stirring words about our shared profession: “Trudeau’s
If the news organization doesn’t care about getting its facts straight, the Liberal leader has every right to look the other way
stance disrespects the public, who rely on the media to hold politicians accountable for their views.” That sounds nice, and it’s generally true. But it doesn’t apply at all to Ezra Levant, who in this case wasn’t holding Trudeau to account for anything except some medieval bridal ravishment fantasy he conjured in his own mind. In fact, as Levant candidly admitted to me when I was on his show a few years back, he doesn’t even refer to himself as a journalist. He is an activist (and an extremely successful one at that, especially on the human-rights commission file) and an entertainer.
Needless to say, the Sun chain employs hundreds of other people who really are well-trained, hard-working journalists — the sort of people who would rather get their facts right than entertain hard-rightwing TV watchers with half-demented, R-rated attacks on the sex lives of a dead prime minister and his elderly ex-wife (who is grandmother to Justin’s children). And indeed, these journalists are the ones who should be most outraged by Levant’s comments, because they tarnish the perceived value of what is reported under their bylines. For many consumers, “Sun” is one brand — whether it’s an ideologue losing it on Trudeau in a Toronto TV studio, or a beat reporter in Edmonton or Ottawa trying to hit deadline.
And here, on the branding front, is where we get to the reason why Trudeau’s boycott of Sun is legitimate: With the corporation as a whole apparently countenancing Levant’s offensive and incorrect Sept. 15 segment (without issuing an apology or a formal correction), and doing so under the explicit banner of the Sun News Network, the message we get from Pierre Karl Péladeau’s operation is this: “We don’t actually know, or care, what ‘news’ is. Our reporters might care. But to those of us who run the whole operation, it’s a matter of complete indifference.”
Given that message, it strikes me that a politician specifically victimized by an ongoing (and, in this case, mendacious) propaganda campaign by a Sun “News” personality has every right to step back and say: You want to make stuff up on your network? That’s your corporate policy? Fine. But do it without me.
From the perspective of mere tactics, it would have been best if Trudeau simply ignored Levant. The number of people who watch Levant’s show unironically is small, and most of that audience is composed of men who already entertain all sorts of odd theories about Trudeau’s religious affiliations and sexual habits. But on a moral level, Trudeau’s move is justified. And it may even have a salutary practical outcome if it helps Sun executives understand that newsmakers will stop treating their underlings as legitimate members of the press if they continue to traffic in nonsense under the banner of fact.
Jonathan Kay is Managing Editor for Comment at the National Post.