Elite Media Are Worse Than You Think

In Defense of Drea Humphrey, Ezra Levant, Rebel News, and "Right Wing" Independent Media

The Rebel News Crew

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By

James Pew

There is nothing wrong with being right wing. And further, there is nothing wrong with running a right wing news platform like Rebel News. When a news outlet is not characterized as right wing, it’s because it’s left wing. Are there any issues when news agencies are left wing? Not at all. People hardly even say left wing media, let alone lose their minds over it. The left wing is the default, and purveyors of the left want to keep it that way, in spite of the illiberal and post-truth landscape they are engendering. In part the problem, as I see it, is that left wing media people speak about right wing things as if they were some disease that must be avoided at all costs. The left-wingers are not just disgusted by the right-wingers and their media platforms, but they are disgusted with the stories the right wing media dare to cover. And they are furious with the viewership that right wing outlets garner: Rebel News has 1.7 million subscribers.

In 2025 the left wing media are not objective. They are entirely narrative based. And worse, the narratives they base their analysis on, are establishment narratives pre-approved for discussion by various layers of Canada’s elites – from indigenous neo-tribal elites to the Laurentian elites. By them, the left wing media discourse is set. This means they also set the national discourse. The unmarked graves at a former Indian Residential School in Kamloops BC, is a perfect example of the narrative-centric post-truth paradigm Canada’s left wing media and elite class have cultivated. The unmarked graves narrative illustrates that while it is entirely possible to retain one’s objectivity even when strong polemical right wing views are held, this is not the case for the left (where objectivity goes to die).

The other night at the federal leaders election debate, Rebel News journalist Drea Humphrey asked NDP leader Jagmeet Singh about the false claim of unmarked graves in Kamloops. Rebel was the only media outlet to bring it up. Humphrey prefaced her question with the fact that no remains have been uncovered, and explained her concern over the hundreds of Christian churches that were burned down or vandalized in the wake of the Kamloops band’s false claim. She asked the NDP leader what he would do to protect Canadian Christians if elected . Even though this was not just a relevant question, one of urgent national import, and one that no legacy media has the interest or courage to ask, Singh, with characteristic elite arrogance, would not deign to respond. He claimed that Rebel News was guilty of spreading misinformation.

All that a political leader needs to do is invoke one or two of these dreaded terms – “right wing,” “misinformation” – in order to preclude themself from answering the Canadian people. They should not get off so easily. But left wing media virtually demands that they do. Right wing media asks important objective questions about evidence and the known facts concerning a fake story that absolutely deflated national pride when headlines first circulated the globe back in May of 2021, but the left wing establishment does everything in its power to both block and discredit not just the questions, but the questioners as well.

In 2009, the late great Rex Murphy proclaimed that Rebel News founder Ezra Levant “is the No. 1 advocate for, and defender of, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of thought in modern Canada.” Since then, Levant’s Rebel News has vastly expanded its viewership and doubled down on Levant's advocacy for liberal principles. There is a serious shortage of this kind of thing in Canada, so whatever one's opinions may be of the tactics of Levant and his Rebel News reporters, recognition and credit should be granted for the dogged determination they regularly demonstrate when pursuing the truth of some of the most contentious stories in the nation.

Murphy goes on to write, “Now, some people do not like Levant's style. They say he is too aggressive, too noisy and assertive, that he courts controversy and publicity.” Indeed, nothing has changed. If anything, the dislike of Levant and Rebel News by the legacy media and elite class has only increased. But where is it written that journalists must be likeable? Concerning Canada’s human rights commissions, which are used by the elite class to reign in unlikeable dissidents like Levant and quash free speech and open discourse, Murphy quipped that Canadians do not “realize that anyone less ‘aggressive’ or ‘noisy’ (than Levant) would have long ago been suffocated by the remorseless, inequitable, taxpayer-funded, bureaucratic grinding of Canada's human rights tribunals and commissions.”

Indeed. What Murphy described about Levant in 2009 can now be applied to several other independent Rebel News journalists who similarly formulate questions and pursue stories which hold dire implications concerning the liberal and democratic principles routinely stepped on by the post-truth elites of Canada. I will not attempt to conceal that my favorite is the excellent Drea Humphrey, who is not just a principled truth-seeker, but a highly likeable media personality as well. She has it all! A dedicated investigator who manages to maintain a smart, friendly, attractive persona. She plays no games, and her tactics depend on facts and evidence.

Comments made concerning Humphrey by CBC’s Rosemary Barton during her debate night commentary, illustrated the exact opposite approach regarding facts and evidence that Humphrey employs. Instead, Barton narrativized, like all legacy media hacks do. She claimed that “right wing” outlets spread “misinformation.” But as she was doing this, Barton herself engaged in a grotesque and egregious, but all too common form of misinformation dissemination. It appears that Barton is not aware of how wrong she is. Left wing legacy journalists are so invested in narratives they cannot countenance that gaping holes have developed and much of the truth has leaked out of them. It is their disdain for the right wing that makes them act this way. They are not journalists. They are narrative advocates, social justice activists, and spokespeople for illiberal elites. For them, nowhere does concern for the truth come into play, and worse, nowhere do they advocate for freedom of the press (because that would mean advocating for right wing independent journalists).

However, Barton is far from alone in her awfulness. It seems there was a sizable contingent of pearl-clutching left wing establishment media who melted down in histrionics at the mere presence of Rebel News and other independent journalists at the debate. A left wing reporter for the Hill Times was caught on camera erupting into hysterics and screaming at Ezra Levant – who remained calm and tried to inform the histrionic idiot that his facts were wrong and his emotions were out of control. The left wing media were disgraceful, most of them seem to have fallen in line around a false narrative that Rebel News were trouble causers responsible for the cancellation of the post-debate media scrum – where journalists would have had the opportunity to ask follow up questions to political leaders.

Climate zealot and former federal minister of climate/infrastructure Catherine McKenna posted the following on X regarding Drea Humphrey’s inconvenient question to Singh about unmarked graves and Christian church burnings:

“This is how you deal with disinformation peddling, rage farming outlets.”

This prompted David Staples, a columnist for the Edmonton Journal, to post the following:

“How to win over undecided, moderate voters?

Jagmeet Singh & Catherine McKenna shun those that disagree with them. They treat them like sub-humans, not good and pure enough to engage with.

Is that a winning strategy?

Or is it why the woke left is now thoroughly discredited?”

Nothing I have seen in the behind-the-scenes video footage shows that Rebel News acted in any sort of unacceptable or unprofessional manner. Nor did I see anything that should have resulted in the cancelling of the post-debate scrum. According to Humphrey, it was Rebel News who were “bullied” by establishment journalists, many of whom were apoplectic at the mere presence of independent journalists at a leadership debate. I have seen nothing which lends any credibility to the legacy elites. It is obvious that they resent independent journalists, who, unlike them, have the courage and wherewithal to ask difficult questions concerning false claims of genocide perpetrated by Christians who ran the Indian Residential Schools.

Since early 2022, when I first began covering the unmarked graves hoax, I have routinely been disturbed by the far too many Canadians who seem to want to believe it. Just like the so-called indigenous knowledge keepers, who claimed that ground penetrating radar blips confirmed what they “always knew” about the Kamloops Indian Residential School, many Canadians are so sure, in fact they are positive, that Canada is guilty of the worst crimes against the indigenous – including genocide. This is not just void of facts, it is morbid and pathetic. Clinging to false narratives which paint such a devastating picture of Canadian history is disturbing and damaging in a way that no serious nation would involve itself in. But in Canada, there exists an entire world of idiotic exceptions to this general rule. Self-hatred is not just accepted, it's encouraged.

Robin Collins has penned an open letter to the CBC Ombudsman regarding the false comments that Rosemary Barton made about Drea Humphrey’s question to Jagmeet Singh. Collins writes:

“Barton said (paraphrased) that this is the problem with these news groups (Rebel News and other independent media), that they give partial truths, ie yes the 200 churches were burned, but ‘yes there have been remains of indigenous children found’…”

It boggles the mind that a CBC journalist could be so allergic to facts and evidence. There is no question that Barton has exchanged truth for narratives, and has risen high up among the ranks of elite Canadian journalism because of it. Collins, who admittedly is no friend of Rebel News correctly admits why they have become so popular:

“One reason, if I might speculate, why right wing news groups like Rebel News are gaining a foothold is because CBC is not doing its job.”

Indeed. However, Collins, like so many others, seems also to insinuate that there is something wrong with right wing news groups “gaining a foothold.” Does Collins, along with the majority of left wing types, honestly think the media landscape in Canada would be better served it no right wing voices were heard? As a right wing polemic (who has no problem maintaining fact-based objectivity), I would not want to silence left wing voices. On the contrary, I want the awfulness of most of their positions to be well known – and I want to comment on those positions. No one is served by limiting the range of acceptable discourse, by claiming that right wing thought is somehow less than left wing thought (quite the opposite in my view). A free press, and a citizenry with free speech is nothing to be feared. Because it means the end of their monopoly and unchecked power, only the elite leftist establishment fear it.

Keep up the great work Drea, Ezra, and all the Rebels and independent journalists with the courage to investigate what the left ones won’t!

To hear Rebel News’ side of the story, watch the following video concerning the post-debate media scrum cancellation, and the unprofessional way establishment media treated independent journalists:

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author read, Tyranny of the Visible Minorities

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