Veteran journalist Jo-Ann Roberts says she’s upset by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s attempts to undermine the legitimacy of professional journalism both before and during the federal election campaign.
“It really breaks my heart, to be honest, because I think it is very much a campaign to discredit one of the elements of education,” Roberts said after signing copies of her new book Storm the Ballot Box earlier this month at Tidewater Books in Sackville.
“When you attack mainstream media, media that have a code of conduct and a code of ethics, you lose something the public’s not terribly aware of. You lose that credibility factor.”
Roberts was referring to Poilievre’s claim that mainstream media are biased and unreliable, especially those that get funding from government sources, including the CBC and media outlets that receive local journalism initiative (LJI) grants to hire local reporters.
During a stop in Niagara-on-the Lake last August, for example, the Conservative leader told a journalist for The Lake Report, that the Liberal government of then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was trying to use the LJI grants to turn news media into outlets for Liberal propaganda.
“It’s terrible…how local journalism has done under nine years of Trudeau,” the newspaper quotes Poilievre as saying. “He’s tried to take it over and basically wants everyone to work for the government so that he can have regurgitated propaganda paid for by taxpayers,” he added.
On August 15th, The Lake Report published a blistering editorial accusing Poilievre of pandering to supporters by misleading them and telling lies.
The paper, which receives LJI money, ridiculed Poilievre’s suggestion of Liberal bias as “insulting” and “out of touch with reality” adding: “Does he think that if he keeps the program running, news outlets are going to magically turn Conservative because we are so grateful?”
Defending or defunding CBC
Roberts writes in her book that in 2014, she left her job as host of CBC Radio’s afternoon show in Victoria, B.C. to fight Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s long-term plan to eliminate the public broadcaster after he had cut the CBC budget by $115 million over three years.
She ran unsuccessfully for the Green Party in Victoria in the 2015 federal election.
Now, to her dismay, Pierre Poilievre is promising to “defund” the English-language CBC if he becomes the next Conservative prime minister.
“I’m going to do it,” Poilievre told a Toronto Sun columnist in December, and when asked how quick that would be, he replied, “Very quick, very quick,” then continued:
“I’m going to defund the CBC. That’s my commitment. My commitment has been the same since I first said it at my very first leadership rally in Regina. I said, ‘We will defund the CBC to save a billion dollars.’ That was my commitment then, it’s my commitment now.”
Roberts says a national public broadcaster is essential to democracy and that cutting it would be a devastating blow at a time when mainstream media are laying off professional journalists while misinformation and half-baked opinions spread across social media.
“If we lose our independent journalists in this country, we will have lost something that will hurt our democracy and will hurt our way of life,” she says.
“We’re watching it south of the border now. We’re watching it in other authoritarian governments.”
Conservatives break with tradition
For the first time in modern history, the Conservative leader is not allowing reporters to accompany him on party buses and planes as he campaigns across the country.
And, at daily news conferences, his aides select which of four reporters can ask one question each with no follow-up questions allowed.
Local Conservative candidates are not taking part in all-candidates’ events including broadcast roundtables or forums such as the one scheduled for tonight, April 15th, at the Church by the Lake in Middle Sackville.
Bruce Wark worked in broadcasting and journalism education for more than 35 years. He was at CBC Radio for nearly 20 years as senior editor of network programs such as The World at Six and World Report. He currently writes for The New Wark Times, where a version of this story first appeared on April 14, 2025.
