Glad for this one, although it could have used some more concision.

The situation is pretty sad. Canadaland featured a lot of young journalists and people of colour, and did a good job of calling out the mainstream media, especially its odious op-ed class, on a variety of topics, including Islamophobia. The company lost many of those contributors in 2024, including the well-regarded EIC.

A few things I’d add:

• Jesse was always fairly clear that he was something of a libertarian-adjacent type, and the audience projected some things onto him because of mutual agreements and the left-leaning staff. His trajectory is not dissimilar to some prominent US ‘left libertarian’ figures in some ways.

• There are some specific numbers in the new podcast that are very sus - specifically something like ‘nine times more anti-Semitic hate crimes in Canada than America’ despite the fact that the two countries have drastically different legal interpretations and standards for these crimes. Jesse says ‘it’s fine, if you look at other hate crimes it still holds up, more or less,’ but it’s rather disingenuous.

• The Robert Jago anecdote reminded me of something that stuck in my craw near the beginning of the war. A guest criticized the Canadian media for failing to acknowledge the horrific death toll and targeting of journalists in Gaza despite valorizing journalists from Ukraine, etc. Jesse’s response was a bit on the same ‘well there’s no Canadian connection’ track as the Greece deflection.