Ezra Levant is the president of The Rebel News Network Ltd.<\/p>\n

JEFF MCINTOSH\/THE CANADIAN PRESS<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ezra Levant is the president of The Rebel News Network Ltd.<\/i><\/p>\n

It\u2019s become standard practice for the Liberal government to refuse to accredit me or other reporters from my company, Rebel News, at press conferences. Other right-leaning reporters are banned, too. But, at a recent press conference at Ottawa\u2019s National Arts Centre, during a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, there I was, smiling at Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland from the front row.<\/p>\n

I had been smuggled into the room by the former director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.<\/p>\n

Okay \u2013 that sounds more dramatic than it really was. The former director of the CIA is Mr. Pompeo himself. And he didn\u2019t really smuggle me in. But he did let me walk into the news conference as part of his own delegation, which included U.S. journalists. And I doubt he told Ms. Freeland about it.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s just as shocking as if it had really been a CIA operation: The only way I was able to attend a news conference by my own government was with the assistance of a foreign government.<\/p>\n

It happened in the summer, too, when Ms. Freeland co-hosted\u00a0 a media freedom conference in London<\/a>\u00a0along with her then-British counterpart, Jeremy Hunt.<\/p>\n
There, Ms. Freeland gave a speech and invited journalists to a question-and-answer session. But her staff singled out two of the seven reporters who showed up and\u00a0 told them they would not be welcome<\/a>.<\/p>\n
There just wasn\u2019t enough room for all seven, they said. The Globe and Mail, CTV, CBC, Global TV and Al Jazeera could come. But the two conservative reporters could not \u2013 Andrew Lawton, the former Sun newspaper columnist who now writes for True North Canada; and Sheila Gunn Reid, a reporter for my company, Rebel News.<\/p>\n
Mr. Lawton and Ms. Gunn Reid had been accredited by the British government, which organized the conference. Both had crowdfunded their travel from Canada. It was literally a conference about media freedom. But not for journalists with the wrong politics.<\/p>\n
The other journalists waiting to talk with Ms. Freeland \u2013 including the Al Jazeera reporter \u2013 were stunned by her attempt to de-platform Mr. Lawton and Ms. Gunn Reid. And to their credit, they\u00a0 refused\u00a0<\/a>to attend the news conference without them.<\/p>\n
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<\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"j-f-wrap\">\n<div id=\"\" class=\"u-wrapper pb-feature pb-layout-item pb-f-commercial-dfp-ads\">\n<div class=\"\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">Faced with a boycott, Ms. Freeland blinked and grudgingly allowed some media freedom at the media freedom conference. Ms. Gunn Reid got to ask her questions. Why had Ms. Freeland asked the UN to ban Ms. Gunn Reid from their conferences? Why had the Liberals refused to respond to her Access to Information requests?<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">Ms. Freeland\u2019s answer was shocking, especially in juxtaposition to what she had just said in her\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.canada.ca\/en\/global-affairs\/news\/2019\/07\/canada-and-united-kingdom-commit-to-media-freedom.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">official speech<\/a>: \u201cWe all need to defend our independent press \u2013 even, and perhaps especially, when it criticizes us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">That\u2019s the script she read when she was onstage with celebrities such as Amal Clooney. But when it was just Canadian reporters, Ms. Freeland let the mask slip.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">\u201cYou are here asking me a question, and that\u2019s my choice and my decision,\u201d she said. In fact, her choice had been to exclude Ms. Gunn Reid. But do press freedoms really require her permission?<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">\u201cI do also think that it is important for governments, for countries, for multilateral organizations to be thoughtful about media organizations that are truly independent and truly impartial,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">Ms. Freeland didn\u2019t explain that accusation. She had no problem inviting Al Jazeera, the state broadcaster of Qatar. Later that day, she privately welcomed the Foreign Minister of Pakistan to the conference \u2013\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/rsf.org\/en\/pakistan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">one of the most brutal censors in the world<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"j-f-wrap\">\n<div id=\"\" class=\"u-wrapper pb-feature pb-layout-item pb-f-commercial-dfp-ads\">\n<div class=\"\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">Ms. Freeland did not reject censoring journalists. She justified it, if it was \u201cthoughtful.\u201d She ended by accusing Rebel News of being white supremacists.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">It\u2019s standard now.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">Indeed, the Parliamentary Press Gallery \u2013 the reporters\u2019 guild that controls access to many media conferences \u2013 has banned us without notice, explanation or any appeal. China\u2019s state broadcaster, Xinhua, is a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. But we\u2019re banned.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">Not everyone appreciates our point of view. But we clearly speak to many Canadians. Our reporters have been accredited by governments around the world, in places such as Sweden, the Netherlands and India, and even in partly free countries such as Iraq and Morocco. Only Canada has banned us.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">I\u2019m not surprised the Liberals don\u2019t like us. We ask prickly questions. But that\u2019s part of our democratic system. If you need help understanding the problem, imagine if former prime minister Stephen Harper had banned liberal journalists from his government events.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">Ms. Freeland\u2019s conduct is remarkable given her former career as a journalist.<\/p>\n<div class=\"j-f-wrap\">\n<div id=\"\" class=\"u-wrapper pb-feature pb-layout-item pb-f-commercial-dfp-ads\">\n<div class=\"\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text\">Liberals need to know how freedom of the press works \u2013 it\u2019s a gift you have to give to your opponents, if you want it for yourself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Press freedom applies to everyone \u2013 even The Rebel EZRA LEVANT CONTRIBUTED TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 16, 2019UPDATED SEPTEMBER 16, 2019 \u00a0777\u00a0COMMENTS Open this photo in gallery Ezra Levant is the president of The Rebel News Network … <a href=\"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=3364\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1967,1290,48,1539,1968],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3364"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3365,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3364\/revisions\/3365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<br /> <b>Notice</b>: ob_end_flush(): Failed to send buffer of zlib output compression (0) in <b>/home/public/wp-includes/functions.php</b> on line <b>5373</b><br />