Media is using the Julie Payette Scandal to Distract from Trudeau’s Failures

Former Governor General Julie Payette recently became the mainstream media’s favourite Liberal government distraction. 

This is not to say that the abusive work environment in Rideau Hall does not deserve media coverage, it absolutely does, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should be put under scrutiny for having appointed Payette to the position without proper vetting beforehand.

Trudeau had even refused to apologize to the Rideau Hall staff who had suffered through the stressful and chaotic work environment that he in part had imposed onto them and proceeded to ignore.

But because the Julie Payette Rideau Hall scandal is small potatoes compared to Trudeau failing to procure Pfizer vaccines and lack of pushback on President Joe Biden cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline, the media will be denoting needless attention to it as a distraction. 

It may be an outrage that Payette is collecting a six-figure salary every year for the rest of her life, but the amount of time and attention the media has put on it is nowhere close to the harm caused by the oil and gas jobs lost after the Keystone XL cancellation by Biden.

When you do look up the Keystone XL story you will rarely encounter any criticism from the MSM of Trudeau outside of the occasional mild criticism from Trudeau from one of the more right-leaning publications

Criticism or questioning of Trudeau’s lack of pushback on Biden is not just coming from a conservative perspective, it is holding Trudeau to his own promise to support Keystone, but when the cancellation happened the media acted as if it was all Biden’s choice and Trudeau had no ability to remedy the situation.

Some of the coverage of the Pfizer vaccine is even more dishonest with certain media organizations claiming that the vaccine rollout is “well underway”. 

The media does levy some criticism at the government for the poor vaccine rollout in some cases, but it is never specifically laid at the feet of the Liberal government and Trudeau.

Often the delay is just referred to in a nebulous way as if, like the Biden Keystone cancellation, Trudeau and the Liberals had no role in why the Pfizer vaccine was delayed, even though it is publicly known they dragged their feet in the procurement process.

This is what makes constant coverage and updates about the Payette scandal quite infuriating. It isn’t wrong that it is being covered but it is wrong to see the effort and attention to detail being used to scrutinize a figurehead political figure, and not Justin Trudeau who has had far larger scandals than Payette in the past and currently is bungling his job in ways that affect Canadians far more than Payette’s dictatorial management of Rideau Hall.

Media bias is often envisioned as hard and fast advocating for one political perspective over another, but the situation with Payette shows how the media’s selection bias of stories and the effort in which they put into covering them can be as much of a boon to Trudeau as an open defence of his bad actions.