Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and senior figures in his government — including Minister of Democratic Institutions Karina Gould — and several of his principal political operatives have been hounding Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg with appeals to censor a newspaper this week.
The Trudeau government repeatedly demanded that Zuckerberg remove The Buffalo Chronicle’s coverage of the Canadian federal elections from his social media platform. The Buffalo Chronicle is a New York-based newspaper owned by a Haudenosaunee businessman who is indigenous to both sides of the border and extensively covers indigenous politics in the United States and Canada.
Zuckerberg refused to remove The Chronicle’s content from his social media platform — but he has imposed technological restrictions on The Chronicle’s use of his platform.
In effect, Facebook is systematically discriminating against this publication — presumably for its center-right political views — by restricting our page’s functionality and access to tools that left-leaning publications enjoy with impunity.
These restrictions on The Chronicle’s Facebook functionality significantly reduce the organic reach of our content, make it more difficult for our audience to grow, and mitigate our ability to distribute content relative to other publications — who have more left-leaning political views.
When Trudeau officials pressured Facebook earlier this year to restrict the distribution of American news content in Canada, Facebook succumbed to the pressure. Zuckerberg has banned The Buffalo Chronicle from utilizing for-pay content distribution tools for political news journalism related to Canada’s federal or indigenous politics.
Both The New York Times and The Washington Post are still able to distribute such content into the Canadian marketplace utilizing those tools.
The Chronicle is considering a lawsuit.
In recent months, Trudeau has been furious that The Chronicle has published a series of jawdropping articles on his government. That series has called attention to the pervasive anti-Conservative and pro-Liberal media bias that exists in Canada, where the media industry is heavily subsidized by taxpayers. Trudeau has expanded annual funding and subsidy programs for ‘news journalism’ to more than $1.6 billion annually.
The Chronicle has never been sued for defamation in our operating history. The publication has never received a cease-and-desist letter, from Mr. Trudeau or anyone else. We stand by our reporting and are confident in our sources. That’s particularly true as it relates to our coverage of Canadian politics this year.
Trudeau is on record stating “I admire China’s basic dictatorship”. here he is trying to emulate them
Also said that he admired Cuba’s dictatorship. Seems that the old saw ‘Apples don’t fall far from the tree.’ is the truth.
Happy to have found your website.
This article followed by a compendium of articles that I can reference no matter what Facebook, Trudeau, or the whole damned corrupt Liberal Party throws your/our way is very worthy of a bookmark. For my own benefit The Buffalo Chronicle exposed the one crook who needs the most publicity regarding the SNC-Lavalin scandal…Frank Iacobucci !! The man who may hold dirt on Trudeau in order to influence the “little potato head” in dealings of governmental scope. Thank you Buffalo Chronicle for ALL your coverage of Canadian affairs.
Mark Steyn: Trudeau = “a shallow over-promoted nitwit who can’t even be left alone with a tub of shoe polish” 🙂
Jokes aside, my fellow Canadians: please please THINK before voting this time! We cannnot afford this moron a 2nd term. He will dismember and ruin Canada. We will be Venezuela of the North if this idiot or combination of him + socialist Jagmeet + environmentalist-socialist E May get their paws on power.
It’s starting, our media has cried wolf for so long that no one believes them already, so like China the only way to make state media number one is to eliminate all other media one way or another.
Trudeau is a criminal.
After 4 years of Justin Trudeau I would believe anything about him and his antics.
Thank you for posting links to the articles. It appears my browser stopped receiving Canadian related articles from the Buffalo Chronicle (BC) as of April 2019. Not impressed! Luckily, another user on a different site posted a link to one of BC’s articles. Went to BC homepage, and Canada news this morning and was surprised to see how many articles were written of which I never saw before. Censorship is not just with FB (I don’t use FB).
The amount of political corruption we are experiencing in Canada is appalling. Disinformation is running amok. The MSM is so biased, the news is misleading or not shown at all. Sad I have to rely on foreign news sites for what’s going on in my own country.
Thank you to all those who helping to get the truth out!
Keep up the great reporting on both sides of the news, the facts, and telling the truth unlike most of the other CDN and US one sided socialist news networks.