June 3 2024- Free Press Loaded Questions Try To Tip Trustee Election

The Great Canadian Talk Show

Episode 51 of Season 4 is a Lesson In Journalism, about a Winnipeg Free Press attack on two candidates in the LRSD school trustee by-election. It was an obvious hit job timed for the Saturday edition before the June 6 vote.

The powers that be in the Free Press newsroom decided to manufacture a controversy and 'Make the story fit the headline' to fool voters in St. Boniface.

"I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie." George Orwell, 1943

From the first paragraph, the narrative is laid out in a style of "professional journalism" where facts don’t matter and anything challenging the narrative is excluded.

The article, filled with innuendo and outright falsehoods, should be studied in every J-school in the country as a lesson on how a newspaper can influence an election by, as Orwell described, publishing a report with no relation to the facts.

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Part 1- Two candidates seeking to win the vacant Ward 1 seat were singled out over supporting 'parental rights'

LRSD Board members, candidates seeking to join their club, and even the Superintendent were given free rein to invent malicious false claims about the pamphlets, and paint Sandra Saint-Cyr and Marcel Boille as "belligerent, confrontational and anti-inclusion."

Marty Gold knows the facts because as a voter in the ward, he has the election literature the reporter was bashing. He also has the loaded, one-sided questions sent to one of the targets, ⁠Sandra Saint-Cyr, who was interviewed in Episode 46⁠.

The story wanted to divert attention from their in-school practices, and we wondered why.

Hear how Boille is smeared for courting supporters of deposed trustee Francine Champagne and defending her. The substance of his platform- "students do not belong to the trustees or the teachers" and wanting "quality academic and vocational education" was never divulged in the hit piece.

16:56 Part 2- While the LRSD Supt. claimed Saint-Cyr misrepresented the “lived experiences” in the schools, and others insisted parents were fully informed about division practices, we let you compare the candidate's supposedly controversial statements with actual LRSD policy- unlike the Free Press.

The article misled readers about why Saint-Cyr hadn't responded to them - hiding that reporter Chris Kitching gave her only 3 hours to reply.

27.00- The road map of influencing the by-election pivoted on trapping Saint-Cyr with loaded questions built on Orwellian "emotional superstructures" about "banning books", 'safe inclusive' schools, and "Do you consider yourself to be on the right or far-right?"

Did Kitching ask anyone he quoted if they are "left or far-left" for his story, so readers can get context on their bias? Listen to all the questions and the narrative behind them.

34.55- "Political suicide questions" to frame Saint-Cyr as a "child-hater" is how a listener described it, with the Free Press hoping no one reads what she wrote or the LRSD rulebook.

That's because the issues she raised- including keeping "private and confidential" information from parents, biological males competing against girls, and allowing boys into girl's change-rooms - is LRSD policy.

That's the "lived experience" of kids in their care. Are parents who have concerns "hateful"?

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46:59 Part 3- To bolster their web of misinformation, the Free Press trotted out an Ontario 'hate expert'.

They didn't say he's a self-described 'queer activist' who has an avowed hatred of Christians.

56.20 - Justin Trudeau gives the newspaper almost $1M a year, and in return opponents of "progressive" policies are keel-hauled by, as Orwell explained, "retailing these lies."

We offer free advice for the new owners of the Winnipeg Sun on how to compete with the Free Press.