by
(LifeSiteNews) — A newly revealed intelligence report is alleging that China has been pressuring mainstream Canadian media in an effort to manipulate the news via “direct engagement” with “media executives and journalists.”
According to a National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) report tabled June 3, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been interfering with Canadian media outlets by pressuring them to write favorably about the communist regime.
The report found that China has been “interfering with Canadian media content via direct engagement with Canadian media executives and journalists.”
A summary of six redacted sentences, which “were deleted to remove injurious or privileged information,” described how the PRC interfered with Canadian news.
Examples included “paying to publish media articles without attribution, sponsoring media travel to the PRC, pressuring journalists to withdraw articles and creating false accounts on social media to spread disinformation.”
This is hardly the first time China’s meddling in mainstream media has been exposed. In 2021, Canadian Security Intelligence Service Director David Vigneault warned that foreign interference in media had “become normalized,” especially with ethnic media outlets.
“In particular, PRC media influence activities in Canada have become normalized,” the briefing memo stated.
The report followed a March survey which revealed that the majority of Canadians believe that legacy media journalists and government officials are not trustworthy and are “lying to them” regularly.
Chinese interference in government-funded media is hardly surprising considering Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s open admiration for China’s socialist regime.
In 2013, Trudeau praised China for its “basic dictatorship” and has labeled the authoritarian nation as his favorite country other than his own.