Bruce Dowbiggin
Snobs & Yobs: How Canadian Media Made Themselves The Convoy Story

In case you missed it, the most compelling story to emerge from the #Convoy2022 was the disrespect shown to Canada’s media covering the event. Just ask them. While the stalemate dragged on, heart-wrenching stories of reporters scorned and told to “get lost” dominated the feed of the Media Party. One Radio-Canada stalwart was actually shoved live on-air. Gasp.
It was poignant to hear how people supported by government handouts bravely did the jobs reporters have done for ages without complaint. They were the stars of their coverage, and we were going to hear about it. (Right on cue the hapless Toronto media lifted the flag of Press Infallibility, calling the harassment a national disgrace. pace G & M TV critic. )
No one had had the heart to tell the ladies, gentlemen and others of the press before the event that a large portion of the population now dismisses them as mouthpieces for the prime minister and his coterie of WEF followers. Even though their ratings had cratered and their influence disappeared it was business as usual in the minds of CBC, CTV, Global and the titans of the printed word.
They were brave, intrepid warriors wandering like Diogenes, searching for the flickering light of truth amongst the protesters. Doing a dirty job for all the world to see their courage. Even as they carried #PMJT water about swastikas, white power, KKK and national threats they took a bow at their own courage. It’s hard to think how this could be more out of touch, but we’re sure they’ll find a way.
This just in: They hate you. No one cares. Do your job.
Sarcasm aside, the descent of the media’s credibility— already crumbled— plunged faster than the bobsleighs at the Beijing Olympics. They ignored the PM’s salvo against truckers that started the debacle— “‘antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, homophobia and transphobia that we’ve seen in display.’ “— to concentrate their scorn on the horn-honking rabble who came to sully the Glebe, Centretown and Sandy Hill. They were, the words of Andrew Coyne, “Yobs”.
The crisis moment arrived when the police advanced on protesters on Friday. CBC and CTV locked off their cameras to focus solely on the fray. Former police officials from across the nation were deputized as “experts” to cover the clashes. They pronounced the police reluctance to use force— in the words of Liberal MP Mark Gerretson— as the “gold standard”.
Then the damned New York Times broke the spell. The Parnassus to Canadian journalists reported that police had advanced with guns drawn. Immediately CBC grandee Carol Off denounced the Times’ story. Then video appeared showing—oops— a squad of cops arresting a man in a van at gunpoint. The Times then lectured their “see no evil” junior cousins on how to cover a riot. How embarrassing.
Okay, it happens. Anyone can get a story wrong once in a while. But, we were assured by Canadian media, the rest of the police work was impeccable. Sadly, CBC and its colleagues forgot that this is the age of citizen journalists. Despite police attempts to keep prying eyes away from the “battle zone” the police gold-standard myth was exposed by private citizens and Rebel Media.
Footage showed police viciously kneeing and assaulting a Romanian immigrant driver as he lay trapped on the ground (only Fox’s Tucker Carlson interviewed him). Video showed cops using similar WWE tactics in other parts of the lines. In another segment heavily protected cops shoved a woman and tossed her phone to the ground as they threatened her with arrest.
Most egregious, an indigenous woman, run over in her wheelchair by a formation of mounted police, was taken to hospital for her injuries. (Remember #PMJT said this was a white-power protest) This assault only came to light as a denial of rumours she’d died. Which was made worse when an RCMP private chat room showed Mounties laughing at the woman being ridden over and promising to do the same when called up for duty. With no rebuke from #PMJT.
The point is not did cops have physical encounters with demonstrators. These things happen when cops engage unarmed but unruly demonstrators. The point is the snow job performed by CBC/ CTV/ Global and their colleagues on any of this, instead interviewing and congratulating friendly cops and themselves on escaping danger.
Even after video rebutted the narrative of brave reporters and heroic cops, it was repeated— without media correction— by Liberal MPs in the parliamentary debate the networks ignored for almost three days. Liberals seemed to conflate defiance in the face of @CBCNews / @CTVNews interviewers with assault.
Journalistic assault is reporting the Liberals’ fake stories about swastikas, condo fires, Putin influence, cenotaph clearing and property destruction without corroboration. Or having no recall of previous indigenous blockades of rail lines, the “Occupy” movement in many cities, the never-ending siege of Caledonia, etc. All of which lasted months, not weeks. No ther Convoy was unprecedented.
Media had no curiosity about who was carrying swastikas and Confederate flags among the protesters (anyone interview any of them?)— even after they were kicked out by the demonstrators. Instead the media disgraced itself further when an illegally hacked list of donors to the Convoy was printed by media. The suddenly curious Jimmy Olsens published it, then left no stone unturned to find a lady making a $50 donation in BC.
Make no mistake, the past three weeks were about one thing for MSM journos: covering #PMJT’s fatal error in underestimating the Convoy movement. Everything— enlisting media, inventing alt-right threats, false flags and now martial law— was to protect his leadership and reputation with his globalist cousins.
Example: Did anyone grill him on the real terrorism on the pipeline that weekend? Twenty people with axes? Setting fire to vehicles with people inside them? No? Anyone doing their jobs?
There were some reporters who brooked the urge to go all-in on the narratives. CBC Radio’s Evan Dyer tried to bring perspectives to what’s involved in reporting a riot. David Common kept his cool. And CTV’s Evan Solomon attempted to push back on the size of the threat and ask pointed questions. For the rest, it was demonize the demonstrators, not the PM. Burnish their own halos for surviving an “occupation”.
When you see such Media Party enterprise journalism remember that they’re not writing stories for the public or their bosses or even Trudeau. They’re writing to impress each other. Bragging rights in the morning story meeting is the gold medal. (Just ask Wendy Mesley what happens when you diverge from the party line in story meetings.) Hell, they brag on air about how good they are.
And nothing got bigger props than building up the Liberals now-cancelled Emergencies Act by raking the truckers’ incursion on NIMBY Ottawans. As Kelly McParland of the National Post writes, “The belief that Liberalism is Canada, and any criticism is unCanadian and unacceptable may be the defining quality of this government.”
While Canadian reporters blissfully back-patted each other, their peers outside Canada were less impressed with the comfy-pillow treatment of Trudeau. Here’s the NY Times shooting holes in the media’s demonizing of the truckers’ behaviour: “They have a right to be noisy and even disruptive. Protests are a necessary form of expression in a democratic society, particularly for those whose opinions do not command broad popular support.”
Here’s the Wall Street Journal on Trudeau’s enormous gaffe imposing martial law.. Here’s the Financial Times, the voice of British business, on the faux-Emergency act. “The measures are designed to respond to insurrection, espionage and genuine threats to the Canadian Constitution rather than peaceful protest, no matter how irritating and inconvenient,” Here’s Piers Morgan on Trudeau’s strategy that went unchallenged in his purchased media.
Even the EU took time from its Ukraine threat. Cristian Terhes, a member of the European Parliament, declared that Canada’s prime minister was acting “exactly like a tyrant, a dictator. If you raise doubts about the vaccines, you’re outcast.” Yobs, indeed.
For an independent press this upbraiding of their coverage would be embarrassing. Coming from a press that is fulsomely rewarded by the ruling government it was an existential failure.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author was nominated for the BBN Business Book award of 2020 for Personal Account with Tony Comper. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book with his son Evan Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
Bruce Dowbiggin
Canadians Thinks America Owes Them. Trump Has Other Ideas

Breaking: It’s now being reported that in the 2024 U.S. election, zero Canadians voted for Donald Trump. In fact, zero Canadians voted for anyone on the ballot. They’re not allowed to. And yet rage monkeys in the Canadian media seem to have the idea that Canada is— and should be— an immediate priority of POTUS 47.
Here’s Globe & Mail/ CBC wind therapist Andrew Coyne about ten exits past normal on the idea of Donald Trump on Canadian soil. Okay, on Alberta soil. “We’re going to roll out the red carpet for the wannabe dictator of America at the very moment he is moving to suppress dissent with armed force?” (You mean like the Truckers Convoy?)
Cartoonist Michael DeAdder, who likely cries if you use improper pronouns, says “Hold my kombucha”. His latest etching has Trump asking a veteran what he did in the war. The witty retort is “Fought against people like you”. Get it? Trump murders six millions Jews. But The Hill keeps this guy working, and the laughs just keep on coming. Free speech!

The presumption is jaw-dropping. Even as Trump’s approval rating hits 53 percent, Canadians online were echoing Democrats’ fever dreams of forming a shadow government to take over from Trump via coup. This sense of impunity at a distance is why the Canadian government— along with other drive-by virtue signallers UK, Norway, New Zealand, and Australia— have imposed sanctions on two sitting members of the Israeli cabinet. They know it will rile Trump’s America.
For ordinary Canadians, Trump became a post-it note to justify giving Team Liberal another swing at ruining the nation. “We used to be such friends! He’s a tyrant.!” This just in: Love him or hate him Trump is employed by Americans to do their bidding. He’s not a sentimental buddy of Canada who’ll cut us some slack for old time’s sake. He has no remittance from Canada to please the Laurentian elites. If your defence is non-existent and your military gender-obsessed: you had it coming.
Are his policies jostling Canada? Absolutely. Read Art of the Deal. The 51st state jibe when Justin soiled himself was rude. But it worked on pliant Canadian liberals. Now the The Little Banker is disavowing the dissolute decade of Trudeau while employing Conservatives’ policies on defence spending, inter-provincial trade and border security. Hell, he’s naming longtime Tories to his personal staff.

In the end Carney knows this ain’t mock Parliament. That his dossier begins and ends with satisfying the beast to the south. None of this should be a surprise. Yet Canadians dozed when Trump made clear in his election campaign that the American economy is the greatest in the world. If you want to fish in that pond it’s not going to be for free. That means tariffs for a range of U.S. industries that couldn’t compete in a Biden world.
We can argue how well tariffs work, but Trump wants them to reduce taxes on the people who elected him. Not the Canadians who fly first class but pay economy. And who have pushed his approval ratings into the 50s, higher than ever before. (Likely to spike higher after the No Kings Riot season peters out.)
No wonder Canadians preferred the guy before Trump, the senile sock puppet whose government was run by anonymous figures using the auto-pen. Sleepy Joe let Canada slide into mediocrity and financial peril without any judgement. It was comfortable. Then The Donald had the nerve to expose the ditch Canada was in.
Canada, Trump pointed out, was delinquent on its defence, harbouring Chinese drug lords, printing money like Canadian Tire and its banks were involved in money laundering. That was the nice stuff. Try Organized fentanyl networks operating with impunity in the largest cities of the nation So dumping on Trump in salty cartoons allows Canada’s Mod Squad to ignore the real issues that should have been litigated in the April election.
We have written extensively about the ruse that was played on gormless Canadians in “U.S. Voters Smelled A Rat But Canadian Voters Bought The Cheese” We have catalogued Canada’s drug and money laundering disgrace in “Chinese Gangs Dominate Canada: Why Will Voters Give Liberals Another Term?” We’ve described the real-estate bubble economy created by Trudeau and sidekick Carney that threatens to crash the economy and ruin seniors’ pensions in
In the end, it is still la-la-la-la We Can’t Hear You. Trump-obsessed Boomers more concerned with the equity in their jumped-up bungalows gave the finger to the next generations and blamed it all on Orange Man Bad. In the monotone of Canadian political comment it all seemed so easy. Turn against Trump. Cash another dividend. Cheer on MSNBC and CNN bitch sessions.
The Family Compact don’t get it. Their Antifa heroes down south plan demos and “nonviolent” activity to crater the public resolve. In Canada that still works. But in the U.S. the Covid reverb is hitting the natural governing class of the nation. While they craft fine phrases about democracy the consumers remember them using a virus to stop society.
The appetite for Gavin Newsom blovaitors and Jen Psaki fart catchers is crashing in America. Riots may be coming in the U.S., but it won’t be like George Floyd and Covid and the pussy hats. At some point Canada’s docile classes better wake up, too. America owes them nothing. They need to earn the respect.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Bruce Dowbiggin
Simone Biles Fails To Stick The Landing Going After Riley Gaines

Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them. George Orwell
Or, in the case of Olympic legend Simone Biles, only gymnasts believe in the incendiary issue of trans men competing in women’s sports. Biles, who has made a secondary career as an object of pity, took exception when former swimmer Riley Gaines, an opponent of trans men competing against women, sent a picture of Minnesota softball team that recently won a state title with a pitcher who is reported to be transgender.
“Comments off lol,’ Gaines wrote in response to the post which wasn’t permitting any comments from the public. “To be expected when your star player is a boy.”
That brought Biles into the fray. ‘You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser. ‘You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category IN ALL sports!! ‘But instead… You bully them… One things for sure is no one in sports is safe with you around!!!!!’
She then poked Gaines again, saying: ‘Bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male.” (Gaines husband is 6-foot-4)

The loser reference was to Gaines having lost to a trans swimmer in an NCAA race. Since then Gaines has launched a campaign to outlaw biological males from competing with cisgendered girls and women. She has testified in the U.S. Congress and has appeared in numerous interviews espousing a position supported by the vast majority of Americans.

One might think the proof of this position— unquestioned as recently as a decade ago— would be obvious. But Biles and gender radicals who’ve tried to make trans into the Emancipation Proclamation of the 21st century are not giving up the fight.
Here’s someone named Nancy Armour in USA Today. “There is no scientific evidence that transgender women athletes have a physical advantage over cisgender women athletes, but that hasn’t stopped Gaines from claiming they do..” When legislation banning trans men in girls/ women sports was presented in the U.S. Congress 106 Democrats voted against the motion. The chattering class on CBC, MSNBC and CNN likewise have a cohort of those opposing the ban.
But it was the outburst from Biles that most appalled fans who’d worshipped her as the GOAT of Olympic gymnastics and then sympathized with her victimization by Dr. Larry Nasser. Even when she bailed on her teammates at the 2024 Games they cut her slack. But suddenly a woman who’s preached against body shaming and intolerance was deriding a fellow athlete’s body and mocking her complaints.
Critics were quick to post Biles’ hypocrisy about compassion, citing her own tear-stained testimony about how she was taken advantage by a doctor. Here’s how we described her psychological distress last August during the Olympics. “Prominent among them was gymnast Simone Biles who described the abuse she’d suffered from a male trainer and on social media as the greatest female gymnast in history. Even as she added more golds to her mantle she’d seemed unable to find peace in her accomplishments.
“Due to mental blocks, she’d had to step away from the sport for a time to get her head straight. She had a lot of company from fellow competitors who described sexual harassment and intimidation on social media for their unhappiness. (Hence the constant mental health commercials on the TV broadcasts.)”
Now the same role model is mocking Gaines? It seems unthinkable. As for the claims that men have no advantage against women, it was pointed out that there are zero women who try to reverse the equation, going into men’s sports. They show the hard truths about competitive records of men versus women in a range of sports. They describe the physical risks for women playing against larger, stronger men. Here. Here. And here.
It’s still stunning to see Biles toeing the radical LGBTQ line while asking for traditional pity of a victimized woman herself. Or the amount of support that the cause has garnered from progressives throughout society. When did people became so obtuse about the growth this societal contagion?
We wrote earlier this year about how such notions take hold. MacDonald Laurier Institute fellow Mia Hughes charted a history of similar social contagions such as bulimia and multiple-personality disorder. “In 1972, British psychologist Gerald Russell treated a woman with an unusual eating disorder involving binging and purging. Over the next seven years, he saw a further 30 woman presenting with the same condition. In 1979, he wrote a paper published in Psychological Medicine, in which he gave it the name bulimia nervosa….
“Then something remarkable happened. The illness swept the globe like wildfire… affecting an estimated 30 million people by the mid-1990s, the majority of whom were teenage girls and young women. The explanation for this rapid spread is what philosopher Ian Hacking calls ‘semantic contagion’ – how the process of naming and describing a condition creates the means by which the condition spreads. The epidemic of multiple-personality disorder in the 90s was spread this same way… Multiple studies demonstrate the media’s culpability in the spread of social contagions.”
The new contagion is trans athletes. USA Today is just one example of how influencers try to legitimize campaigns to boost their own self esteem. As the battle to reverse the trans incursion shows, there are only too many willing to play politics in the gender debate. Like the pro-Palestinian movement in North America the trans athlete hoax exists is a bubble where reality and fiction can co-exist, knowing they’ll never be put to the test.
Orwell called it doublethink “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” Biles and the liberal elites have it mastered. Nursing their grievance while finding it a fault in others.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, Bruce is regular media contributor. The new book from there team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin is Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. In paperback and Kindle on #Amazon. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/
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