Ezra Levant: Globe's PR poll backfires

...when one of Bell’s subsidiaries, CTV, signed a deal with Kevin O’Leary, a TV personality who had previously worked for the CBC. Bell put out a press release about this news. But really, why be satisfied with a press release when you own a stake in the Globe and Mail? Make those newspaper boys work for a living. O’Leary’s move wasn’t just an internal human resources matter. It was A! Big! Deal!

So the Globe dispatched a “reporter” to write a breathless article about how O’Leary will be the king of all media with this brilliant move. Maybe that’s true. But it’s also passing off an ad, or at best an internal pep-talk memo, as national news.

That kind of advertorial blurring would not have happened in the prime of the Globe’s life.

The O’Leary PR didn’t just alter the Globe’s editorial independence. It changed their editorial style. The Globe agreed to host a gimmicky online poll – click bait, as it’s called in the lower rungs of the Internet – to ask Canadians to “vote” on the question, “who’s the biggest name in Canadian broadcasting?”...

Plus: the Globe's poll HERE