This would be proof that the press is at the heels of power, because bought by those who govern them. A short decontextualized video extract of a speech by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is all the rage in conspiratorial circles at the start of February 2022.
We see the Canadian leader, all smiles, congratulating himself on being spared by the media, especially those on the left:
“Lately, we sometimes hear about progressive biases in the media, how they leave our government alone, spare us for no reason. Frankly, I think that’s insulting. It is clear that they spare us for a very good reason, because we pay them 600 million dollars”.
The short passage of about twenty seconds ends with a static shot showing Justin Trudeau delighted. “The mainstream media? I bought them », can we read in English. The video has been viewed over 200,000 times.
On Twitter, the quote was roughly retranslated, and accompanied by outraged comments: Mind-blowing statement from Justin Trudeau: “How could the journalists have hit us in the back knowing that we paid them $600 million!” »
Shared several thousand times, the tweet has notably been taken over by the very followed Idriss Aberkane. This essayist and lecturer, already known for several years for having inflated his CV, and became, thanks to many untruthsone of the new darlings of the anti-restriction sphere, pro-Raoult, hostile to anti-Covid-19 vaccines and porous to conspiracy theories.
Why this video is misleading
Justin Trudeau made these remarks, but, specifies the CBCCanadian public channel, it was part of a joke during the annual dinner of the parliamentary press, in May 2019. However, the video is cut just before the fall of the joke.
In this case, Justin Trudeau’s speech continues with newspaper headlines, which appear on the screen. But these are not favorable to him, on the contrary: “Justin Trudeau falsifies the Canadian brand” for the Toronto Star ; “Justin Trudeau and the zero degree of reflection”, for the political scientist and columnist of the Montreal Journal Loic Tasse ; “Trudeau has lost the moral authority [nécessaire] to govern”, according to Globe and Mail. The Canadian Prime Minister then ironically: “You don’t get such admirable titles without greasing your paw. »
The fall of the joke can be found in the original recording, from the thirty-ninth minute of this video:
In short, Justin Trudeau was ironic about the cliché that public subsidies to the press would make it possible to control it. And in an exercise in self-mockery, he noted the criticism he had received from the media. Or the opposite of what the truncated version circulating on Twitter tries to make believe.