Winnipeg Free Press headquarters at 1355 Mountain Avenue in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Fresh off what must have been a crushing election loss by their favoured Conservatives, right-wing media are getting desperate in their quest for any evidence that it might have been a result of large-L Liberal mainstream media bias. They are grasping at straws in their search for any facts they can twist to fit their narrative, which is that government subsidies, including payroll tax credits under the $595 million media bailout announced in 2019, have resulted in a media biased toward the Liberals because the Conservatives threatened during the election campaign to take them away. The true blue Hub has been leading the way in promoting this narrative, with its hyperbolic media columnist Peter Menzies pouncing on any passing item that might suggest a Liberal media bias. He recently spied a piece of news published on the website Blacklock’s Reporter that served perfectly. “Blacklock’s reported that last year, according to FP Canadian Newspapers Ltd, the Winnipeg Free Press earned a net income of $2.7 million,” summarized Menzies. “The value of its federal subsidy through the Journalism Labour Tax Credit was $2.8 million, up $1 million from the previous year. That improvement to the Free Press’s bottom line was due to the tax credit—which was originally due to expire in 2024—being not only extended but enhanced.”

The financial precarity of the historic Free Press, which was founded in 1872 (and by extension the Brandon Sun, which is also owned by FP), brought by its supposedly now razor-thin profit margin could be read as bringing a political bias, argued Menzies. He found evidence for that in the annual report’s carefully worded warning to shareholders that “uncertainty of the political landscape continues to impact the newspaper industry” and that “there can be no assurance the [subsidy] amounts accrued will continue to be available to us in the future or will not be reduced, changed or eliminated.” Quoth Menzies: “Should the subsidy regime be diminished or cancelled—moves to which Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives appeared inclined—shareholders were warned of an ‘adverse effect on our business.’” Menzies was more than happy to give credit for this scoop where it was due. “We know this thanks to a report in Blacklock’s Reporter, which, as with The Hub and a few other holdouts, still refuses out of respect for journalistic integrity traditions to take any benefit from the........

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