Canadian iconoclast Ezra Levant told RoadKill Radio Tuesday night about his hopes for the latest phase of his career: host of a one-hour public affairs talk show on the new SUN-TV network.
“The theme is one word,” said Levant: “Freedom. It’s about the individual and the State. And we’ll be able to talk to people all across the country.”
The network and Levant’s new show premier April 18. As of this writing, Shaw is the only cable service committed to carrying it.
What will be the tone of Sun News Network? The station’s slogan is “Hard News; Straight Talk.”
“I’ve heard Pierre-Carl Peladeau speak about it several times,” said Levant, “and he uses the word ‘conservative’… It’s also populist, patriotic, irreverent. Look at the talent that will be animating this network: Charles Adler, Brian Lilley, Theo Caldwell… There’s a unity of purpose. I’ve heard the phrase ‘A rebel network’… One of our people said, ‘We already have a CBC… we already have a billion-dollar-a-year, completely unwatchable bland, stale, vanilla network. We don’t want to be another.’
“The biggest problem with Canadian journalism,” Levant continued, “is the sameness of it… remarkably similar, like birds responding to some ultrasound signal, lining up their formation. Once in a while, the mob gets it right; but so often the group-think expresses itself in a liberal way. My favourite example is the way the press is in love with Omar Khadr, with gun control, with global warming—by far the biggest issue on which you have this ‘consensus’ in the media… it’s like a group of high school girls comparing fashions: ‘If you’re not doing what the other Heathers are doing, you’re un-cool.’ That’s the way it is with the old media on global warming.”
“So much of what goes on in media is so boring,” added Kari Simpson. “That’s because it’s all liberal.”
Click here to listen to Ezra with Kari Simpson and Terry O’Neill, including their discussion of the Leaders’ Debate, on the RoadKill Radio archives.