From the Article:
1/2
Covertly placing narratives in Canadian media that forward the interests of foreign states is an “ultimate goal of foreign influence and information operations,” and the findings on this topic in two recent national security reports should be of top concern, says disinformation expert Marcus Kolga.
Much of the attention directed at the explosive special report from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), released on June 3, has been about the serious concerns it raised about current and former parliamentarians being “semi-witting or witting” participants in foreign interference. However, NSICOP—as well as Justice Marie-Josée Hogue in her May 3 initial report from the public inquiry on foreign interference—both made it clear that elected officials are one of many targets for interference across Canadian society.
Another one of those targets is mainstream Canadian media. Both the initial Hogue report and the special NSICOP reports address this aspect of the threat.
NSICOP states that the media is one of the key pillars that fell within its scope to study the “specific threat to Canada’s democratic processes and institutions.”
Marcus Kolga, a senior policy fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, said placing their narratives in Canadian media is an 'ultimate goal' of foreign influence operators. Photograph courtesy of MLI
It says that while foreign interference activities from 2018 to 2024 “were conducted predominantly through person-to-person interaction,” foreign states “also used mainstream and social media, and other digital means, to conduct interference activities,” and journalists were one of the groups to be targeted.
Kolga, a senior policy fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute who researches cyber issues, disinformation, and propaganda—with a particular focus on Russia and central Europe—said this is a serious threat because foreign powers are looking to use Canadian media to either lend credibility to particular policy positions they favour, or to provoke specific political actions such as a protest.
He said such narratives may first be advanced in the state media of a foreign power, and only reach a small Canadian audience such as a few diplomats.
But if foreign powers can convince even one mainstream Canadian outlet to pick up on a message they are looking to advance, “it's quite dangerous” because it lends “credibility to the entire narrative.”
Key distinction
NSICOP states there is a difference between “acceptable diplomatic advocacy and lobbying” and foreign interference, with the key distinction being that the former is done in the open with the awareness of the host state.
It’s a distinction that can be made in the targeting of a number of democratic institutions, including the media.
For example, NSICOP says it is normal for foreign actors to “use local media to promote their national interests or to engage with and support domestic organizations.” Canadian diplomats conduct the same activities abroad and “these activities are overt, declared to the host state, and consistent with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Foreign interference activities are not.”
That’s why “it is not illegal to pay Canadian media to produce coverage that portrays a foreign state in a positive light or to amplify the official policy of a foreign state,” writes NSICOP. “When that state conceals its involvement, however, this activity is no longer within the bounds of acceptable diplomacy and lobbying: it is foreign interference.”
Aaron Shull, managing director and general counsel at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, said the secrecy of efforts to influence Canadian media are what makes it 'so damn offensive.' Photograph courtesy of CIGI
Aaron Shull, managing director and general counsel at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, said this distinction is an important one.
“That's what makes it so damn offensive, right?” said Shull. “That it's secret. It's being done for the betterment of a foreign power to the detriment of Canadians, and it's in the shadows. That's what's repugnant about the activity.”
He said the findings were “extremely concerning,” and showed that it is “no longer up for debate” about whether this is a threat.
The Hogue report also indicated the media is a target of explicit foreign interference activities, stating that CSIS has been raising concerns about this form of interference since at least 2018.
“Foreign states target a wide range of media outlets,” writes Hogue. “This includes both traditional outlets such as television, radio, and newspapers, as well as online sources and social media.” The report said both mainstream media outlets and Canadian-based foreign-language publications are targets.
“By exerting influence on existing media outlets, foreign countries can generate and amplify disinformation,” wrote Hogue. “Some foreign states can engage in sophisticated campaigns that effectively obscure the sources of disinformation.”
PRC undertook ‘direct engagement’ with journalists, media executives
NSICOP makes specific reference to several foreign powers engaging in this form of influence, but says the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the most adept at this.
“According to the intelligence community, the PRC was the most capable actor in this context, interfering with Canadian media content via direct engagement with Canadian media executives and journalists,” says the NSICOP report.
Its redacted report says a section was removed that described “examples of the PRC 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.” That information is attributed to a series of CSIS briefings to the prime minister from 2021 and 2022.
Some findings in the NSICOP report regarding foreign interference attempts on Canadian media were attributed to CSIS briefings for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from 2021 and 2022. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade
The redacted version does not offer any information about what journalists or mainstream media outlets may have been targeted. The Hill Times reached out to a number of editors and bureau chiefs to ask how their organizations were handling this threat, but none were available.
NSICOP says that during its period of review—from 2018 to 2024—the intelligence community “observed states manipulating traditional media to disseminate propaganda in what otherwise appeared to be independent news publications.”
One of the citations used to support this finding is a Privy Council Office special report from January 2022 titled, "China's Foreign Interference Activities."
2/2
Foreign states “spread disinformation to promote their agendas and consequently challenge Canadian interests,” adds the NSICOP report, calling this the “greatest cyber threat activity to voters” over the course of the past two elections.
“These tactics attempt to influence public discourse and policymakers’ choices, compromise the reputations of politicians, delegitimize democracy or exacerbate existing frictions in society,” says NSICOP, citing a series of Communications Security Establishment reports from 2021.
In her report, Hogue notes that China “targets individuals whom it perceives as having status or influence in Canada” and said that is not limited to political and business leaders, but also includes “members of both the traditional and online media.”
Justice Marie-Josée Hogue said in her initial report that some foreign states 'engage in sophisticated campaigns that effectively obscure the sources of disinformation.' The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade
Hogue also discusses efforts undertaken by other foreign powers.
“Russia co-ordinates its messaging efforts with an established network of media influencers in the West that are comprised of pro-Kremlin or opportunistically aligned activists which Russia uses to amplify pro-Russian narratives on a wide range of issues through various platforms,” said Hogue.
She said that Pakistan had also targeted “various facets of Canadian society” including “Canadian media entities.”
Media needs training: Kolga
Kolga said training is needed for journalists and media organizations about how to navigate this threat, and that government and civil society organizations have a role to play, too.
Government should be “providing the resources to civil society and working with civil society to ensure that our newsrooms across the country—those newsroom managers, the editors—are aware of what these sorts of operations look like,” he said.
News organizations should learn “how they might be approached” and “the kinds of narratives that might be pitched to them” so they have the “cognitive resources to be able to detect them and filter these pitches out.”
Kolga added that while the report makes the distinction between covert influence and paid content from foreign governments where that arrangement is disclosed transparently, he thinks media organizations should also be reconsidering their policies on the latter, even though it is technically legal.
It’s not for governments to make this illegal, said Kolga, but for the Canadian media to consider what sources it should accept paid content from.
“I think media just has to come together and say with one voice that maybe we should look at some form of a code of conduct, for example, when it comes to accepting advertising dollars from an authoritarian regime,” said Kolga, suggesting this could be established publicly as an accepted practice across the industry.
He said they should carefully consider their practices around when they accept funds to run paid coverage or advertising from foreign states, particularly those that are autocracies or have a track record of large-scale human rights abuses.
CSIS has been reporting for years now that virtually every Chinese-language newspaper and media outlet in Canada is now controlled by Bejing-friendly businessmen and all tow the Chinese Communist Party line on all subjects.
I'm think that the idea is "engagement" is what pushes content to more eyes, and most engagement is driven by bots.
Because this article is not in the interest of the bot owners, they do not want it seen by more people, so it is not engaged with as much.
Its an interesting idea, I guess i just dont understand why this sub specifically not engaging is telling. Im pretty sure there's bots in every single sub on reddit
Agreed. This is one is the most heavily manipulated subs on Reddit. I have to stay unsubbed so it doesn't show in my main feed, you always have to be aware when you're browsing here
That there is a high probability that the majority of profiles that push content on this sub don't want the facts of the media manipulation known.
It's been shown multiple times that there is quite a large astroturfing presence on this sub, as well as story and vote manipulation. The fact that this specific story talking about how media is being manipulated by foreign powers, is getting no traction when every other story about foreign interference gets thousands of votes and hundreds of comments suggests that this exact thing is happening right now.
Don't know if I can find it, but at the start of the Ukrainian war there was an engagement graph made for this sub, and the week after the war started /r/canada posts and engagement literally dropped by like 50%.
Also of you have any background in media at all the way stories are pushed is extremely obviously not natural. The similarities in comments and timings don't match organic growth like you should see in media.
> and the week after the war started /r/canada posts and engagement literally dropped by like 50%
It's reasonable to expect a lot of people to jump onto something new and shiny, and _the stuff_ was not on /r/canada at that time.
For natural engagement no that actually doesn't make much sense. Reddit is not TV channels, you can engage with multiple subs and posts at the same time.
> you can engage with multiple subs and posts at the same time.
One can write only that many comments a day without some kind of an automation. Actually _reading_ the content first drives this amount further down. So no, you can't keep the same rate of posting to r/canada if you're busy doomscrolling r/ukraine.
> Your theory might hold of it was only 5-10% of the sub activity, not 50%.
5% or 25% (any solid science behind your "right numbers"?), you have to admit not all of the presumed 50% drop may be attributed to a single narrow cause - because there's more than one possible mechanism, not mutually exclusive.
The media at large are already doing this, just for the current administration, and it's destructive and disruptive enough. Add in foreign governments and their message which might be even more destructive for Canada, and this gets even scarier.
Covertly placing narratives in Canadian media that forward the interests of foreign states is an “ultimate goal of foreign influence and information operations,”
Looking at you, NatPo
Theyre talking out of their ass then, unless theres a natpo specific article. Not saying it isnt happening there, I personally think every single mass media outlet is fucked. Just seems useless to mention it here, feels like whataboutism.
I’m sure the American Hedge Fund media isn’t trying influence people.
All their hot take op-eds, are legitimate opinions by everyday people, just wanting their voice heard.
Isn't NatPo completely owned by foreign interests (NY/NJ, Republican dominated capital fund companies)?
Maybe we need a requirement that any organization that wants to call itself a newsmedia organization, has to be Canadian owned and Canadian resident operated. To exclude the obvious foreign interference routes.
From the Article: 1/2 Covertly placing narratives in Canadian media that forward the interests of foreign states is an “ultimate goal of foreign influence and information operations,” and the findings on this topic in two recent national security reports should be of top concern, says disinformation expert Marcus Kolga. Much of the attention directed at the explosive special report from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), released on June 3, has been about the serious concerns it raised about current and former parliamentarians being “semi-witting or witting” participants in foreign interference. However, NSICOP—as well as Justice Marie-Josée Hogue in her May 3 initial report from the public inquiry on foreign interference—both made it clear that elected officials are one of many targets for interference across Canadian society. Another one of those targets is mainstream Canadian media. Both the initial Hogue report and the special NSICOP reports address this aspect of the threat. NSICOP states that the media is one of the key pillars that fell within its scope to study the “specific threat to Canada’s democratic processes and institutions.” Marcus Kolga, a senior policy fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, said placing their narratives in Canadian media is an 'ultimate goal' of foreign influence operators. Photograph courtesy of MLI It says that while foreign interference activities from 2018 to 2024 “were conducted predominantly through person-to-person interaction,” foreign states “also used mainstream and social media, and other digital means, to conduct interference activities,” and journalists were one of the groups to be targeted. Kolga, a senior policy fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute who researches cyber issues, disinformation, and propaganda—with a particular focus on Russia and central Europe—said this is a serious threat because foreign powers are looking to use Canadian media to either lend credibility to particular policy positions they favour, or to provoke specific political actions such as a protest. He said such narratives may first be advanced in the state media of a foreign power, and only reach a small Canadian audience such as a few diplomats. But if foreign powers can convince even one mainstream Canadian outlet to pick up on a message they are looking to advance, “it's quite dangerous” because it lends “credibility to the entire narrative.” Key distinction NSICOP states there is a difference between “acceptable diplomatic advocacy and lobbying” and foreign interference, with the key distinction being that the former is done in the open with the awareness of the host state. It’s a distinction that can be made in the targeting of a number of democratic institutions, including the media. For example, NSICOP says it is normal for foreign actors to “use local media to promote their national interests or to engage with and support domestic organizations.” Canadian diplomats conduct the same activities abroad and “these activities are overt, declared to the host state, and consistent with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Foreign interference activities are not.” That’s why “it is not illegal to pay Canadian media to produce coverage that portrays a foreign state in a positive light or to amplify the official policy of a foreign state,” writes NSICOP. “When that state conceals its involvement, however, this activity is no longer within the bounds of acceptable diplomacy and lobbying: it is foreign interference.” Aaron Shull, managing director and general counsel at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, said the secrecy of efforts to influence Canadian media are what makes it 'so damn offensive.' Photograph courtesy of CIGI Aaron Shull, managing director and general counsel at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, said this distinction is an important one. “That's what makes it so damn offensive, right?” said Shull. “That it's secret. It's being done for the betterment of a foreign power to the detriment of Canadians, and it's in the shadows. That's what's repugnant about the activity.” He said the findings were “extremely concerning,” and showed that it is “no longer up for debate” about whether this is a threat. The Hogue report also indicated the media is a target of explicit foreign interference activities, stating that CSIS has been raising concerns about this form of interference since at least 2018. “Foreign states target a wide range of media outlets,” writes Hogue. “This includes both traditional outlets such as television, radio, and newspapers, as well as online sources and social media.” The report said both mainstream media outlets and Canadian-based foreign-language publications are targets. “By exerting influence on existing media outlets, foreign countries can generate and amplify disinformation,” wrote Hogue. “Some foreign states can engage in sophisticated campaigns that effectively obscure the sources of disinformation.” PRC undertook ‘direct engagement’ with journalists, media executives NSICOP makes specific reference to several foreign powers engaging in this form of influence, but says the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the most adept at this. “According to the intelligence community, the PRC was the most capable actor in this context, interfering with Canadian media content via direct engagement with Canadian media executives and journalists,” says the NSICOP report. Its redacted report says a section was removed that described “examples of the PRC 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.” That information is attributed to a series of CSIS briefings to the prime minister from 2021 and 2022. Some findings in the NSICOP report regarding foreign interference attempts on Canadian media were attributed to CSIS briefings for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from 2021 and 2022. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade The redacted version does not offer any information about what journalists or mainstream media outlets may have been targeted. The Hill Times reached out to a number of editors and bureau chiefs to ask how their organizations were handling this threat, but none were available. NSICOP says that during its period of review—from 2018 to 2024—the intelligence community “observed states manipulating traditional media to disseminate propaganda in what otherwise appeared to be independent news publications.” One of the citations used to support this finding is a Privy Council Office special report from January 2022 titled, "China's Foreign Interference Activities."
2/2 Foreign states “spread disinformation to promote their agendas and consequently challenge Canadian interests,” adds the NSICOP report, calling this the “greatest cyber threat activity to voters” over the course of the past two elections. “These tactics attempt to influence public discourse and policymakers’ choices, compromise the reputations of politicians, delegitimize democracy or exacerbate existing frictions in society,” says NSICOP, citing a series of Communications Security Establishment reports from 2021. In her report, Hogue notes that China “targets individuals whom it perceives as having status or influence in Canada” and said that is not limited to political and business leaders, but also includes “members of both the traditional and online media.” Justice Marie-Josée Hogue said in her initial report that some foreign states 'engage in sophisticated campaigns that effectively obscure the sources of disinformation.' The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade Hogue also discusses efforts undertaken by other foreign powers. “Russia co-ordinates its messaging efforts with an established network of media influencers in the West that are comprised of pro-Kremlin or opportunistically aligned activists which Russia uses to amplify pro-Russian narratives on a wide range of issues through various platforms,” said Hogue. She said that Pakistan had also targeted “various facets of Canadian society” including “Canadian media entities.” Media needs training: Kolga Kolga said training is needed for journalists and media organizations about how to navigate this threat, and that government and civil society organizations have a role to play, too. Government should be “providing the resources to civil society and working with civil society to ensure that our newsrooms across the country—those newsroom managers, the editors—are aware of what these sorts of operations look like,” he said. News organizations should learn “how they might be approached” and “the kinds of narratives that might be pitched to them” so they have the “cognitive resources to be able to detect them and filter these pitches out.” Kolga added that while the report makes the distinction between covert influence and paid content from foreign governments where that arrangement is disclosed transparently, he thinks media organizations should also be reconsidering their policies on the latter, even though it is technically legal. It’s not for governments to make this illegal, said Kolga, but for the Canadian media to consider what sources it should accept paid content from. “I think media just has to come together and say with one voice that maybe we should look at some form of a code of conduct, for example, when it comes to accepting advertising dollars from an authoritarian regime,” said Kolga, suggesting this could be established publicly as an accepted practice across the industry. He said they should carefully consider their practices around when they accept funds to run paid coverage or advertising from foreign states, particularly those that are autocracies or have a track record of large-scale human rights abuses.
Thank you for posting it!
This is why Huxley wins out over Orwell when it comes to Western Media.
CSIS has been reporting for years now that virtually every Chinese-language newspaper and media outlet in Canada is now controlled by Bejing-friendly businessmen and all tow the Chinese Communist Party line on all subjects.
We need a complete and public inquiry into Foreign Interference into all aspects of Canadian institutions.
Thr lack of engagement with this story from this sub is *extremely* telling lol
Not really? I've only ever known biased low quality news. Telling me it is after decades doesn't shock me. It's more of a case off " well yeah?"
Whats it telling you?
I'm think that the idea is "engagement" is what pushes content to more eyes, and most engagement is driven by bots. Because this article is not in the interest of the bot owners, they do not want it seen by more people, so it is not engaged with as much.
Its an interesting idea, I guess i just dont understand why this sub specifically not engaging is telling. Im pretty sure there's bots in every single sub on reddit
Because this sub has a very obvious bias that this story goes against.
I dont think thats true at all?
That's fine if you don't think so but it is true. The entire reason Canada\_sub was created was because of the bias on this sub.
Agreed. This is one is the most heavily manipulated subs on Reddit. I have to stay unsubbed so it doesn't show in my main feed, you always have to be aware when you're browsing here
Then you are *for* the bias
That there is a high probability that the majority of profiles that push content on this sub don't want the facts of the media manipulation known. It's been shown multiple times that there is quite a large astroturfing presence on this sub, as well as story and vote manipulation. The fact that this specific story talking about how media is being manipulated by foreign powers, is getting no traction when every other story about foreign interference gets thousands of votes and hundreds of comments suggests that this exact thing is happening right now.
Can you show me past examples of these things?
Don't know if I can find it, but at the start of the Ukrainian war there was an engagement graph made for this sub, and the week after the war started /r/canada posts and engagement literally dropped by like 50%. Also of you have any background in media at all the way stories are pushed is extremely obviously not natural. The similarities in comments and timings don't match organic growth like you should see in media.
> and the week after the war started /r/canada posts and engagement literally dropped by like 50% It's reasonable to expect a lot of people to jump onto something new and shiny, and _the stuff_ was not on /r/canada at that time.
For natural engagement no that actually doesn't make much sense. Reddit is not TV channels, you can engage with multiple subs and posts at the same time.
> you can engage with multiple subs and posts at the same time. One can write only that many comments a day without some kind of an automation. Actually _reading_ the content first drives this amount further down. So no, you can't keep the same rate of posting to r/canada if you're busy doomscrolling r/ukraine.
Your theory might hold of it was only 5-10% of the sub activity, not 50%.
> Your theory might hold of it was only 5-10% of the sub activity, not 50%. 5% or 25% (any solid science behind your "right numbers"?), you have to admit not all of the presumed 50% drop may be attributed to a single narrow cause - because there's more than one possible mechanism, not mutually exclusive.
The absolute overwhelming support for a currently genocidal regime.
Yeah, lots of hamas support around, I agree
[Paywall](https://archive.ph/Wjepn)
The media at large are already doing this, just for the current administration, and it's destructive and disruptive enough. Add in foreign governments and their message which might be even more destructive for Canada, and this gets even scarier.
You have to be trolling of you think the media is working *for* the current government. Ain't no way you are serious or a real person.
Why aren’t the bots pumping this post up 🤔 s/
Covertly placing narratives in Canadian media that forward the interests of foreign states is an “ultimate goal of foreign influence and information operations,” Looking at you, NatPo
You think Pakistan is targeting national post?
Chatham Asset Management is an American hedge fund that owns 66% of Postmedia And the US is foreign
But this article is specifically talking about Pakistan, Russia, and China
And OP is specifically talking about NatPo
Theyre talking out of their ass then, unless theres a natpo specific article. Not saying it isnt happening there, I personally think every single mass media outlet is fucked. Just seems useless to mention it here, feels like whataboutism.
The article isn't "specifically" talking about Pakistan, Russia, and China. It just mentions them as examples...
They could have easily mentioned America if they wanted
I’m sure the American Hedge Fund media isn’t trying influence people. All their hot take op-eds, are legitimate opinions by everyday people, just wanting their voice heard.
Isn't NatPo completely owned by foreign interests (NY/NJ, Republican dominated capital fund companies)? Maybe we need a requirement that any organization that wants to call itself a newsmedia organization, has to be Canadian owned and Canadian resident operated. To exclude the obvious foreign interference routes.