“Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pays mainstream media $600 million to report in favor of him.”
Stand up for the facts!
Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy.
We need your help.
I would like to contribute
Justin Trudeau was joking when he suggested he bribed the media
If Your Time is short
- Joking comments from a speech Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave in 2019 have been taken out of context, and some people are wrongly suggesting that he pays the media to report about him favorably.
A Feb. 2 Instagram post claims that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau "pays mainstream media $600 million to report in favor of him."
The evidence? A clip of Trudeau saying just that.
"You sometimes hear about liberal bias in the media these days, how they’re constantly letting our government off the hook for no good reason," he says in a video in the post. "Frankly, I think that’s insulting. It’s clear that they let us off the hook for a very good reason. Because we pay them $600 million."
The video in the post then cuts to an image of Trudeau with text appearing that says "Mainstream media? I just bought it." Meanwhile, he can still be heard saying: "You don’t get stellar headlines like these without greasing the wheels a bit."
This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
The video comes from the 2019 Parliamentary Press Gallery dinner, an annual event at which attending politicians give speeches with plenty of jokes, much like the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Featured Fact-check
About 39 minutes into this video of the dinner, posted on YouTube by Global News, Trudeau makes the comment that appears in the post. It was an allusion to a Canadian government program to help struggling news outlets.
But while the post cuts away from the actual speech and shows a still image of Trudeau, footage from the dinner shows unflattering headlines projected behind the prime minister such as "Justin Trudeau is tampering with Canada’s brand" and "Trudeau has lost the moral mandate to govern."
Later that year, a misleadingly edited video like the one that appears in this Facebook post started to appear online.
"It’s a small tweak that distorts the video’s meaning without sophisticated editing," the CBC reported at the time, "but it’s effective because it plays on very real concerns and criticisms of the government’s so-called media bailout program."
The Canadian government had then earmarked $600 million for tax credits and other incentives to help struggling news outlets, according to the CBC.
But Trudeau was making a joke during the dinner. He wasn’t claiming that he had bribed the media.
We rate this post False.
Our Sources
Instagram post, Feb. 2, 2022
CBC, Journalists question Liberal government's $600M media bailout plan, May 23, 2019
CBC, Misleading Trudeau 'joke' video demonstrates the political power of editing, Sept. 6, 2019
Government of Canada, Canada Periodical Fund, visited Feb. 2, 2022
YouTube, Parliamentary Press Gallery Dinner 2019, May 4, 2019
Browse the Truth-O-Meter
More by Ciara O'Rourke
Justin Trudeau was joking when he suggested he bribed the media
Support independent fact-checking.
Become a member!
In a world of wild talk and fake news, help us stand up for the facts.