The Freedom Convoy Media Strategy

Stripping legacy media of legitimacy

Part of my job as official spokesperson for the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa last winter was to speak to the news media. Many of my fellow organizers thought that meant giving daily news briefings to the corporate media, but I thought talking to outlets like the CBC and the Toronto Star was a waste of time. They weren’t reporting the news honestly. Even before the rigs reached Ottawa, the Toronto Star ran an editorial cartoon showing a truck labelled “Disinformation and Extremism” running over a Canadian beaver, a national symbol. All establishment news media — print, radio, and television — took money from the Trudeau government. None could be trusted to report the story impartially.

I had another reason for ignoring the corporate networks. If I were to give an interview to The National, CBC’s flagship television news show, I might appear for twenty seconds and get 263,000 viewers, the ratings figure released for March 1, 2022. Tucker Carlson gave me eight minutes on a show that registered 3.41 million viewers. Our media strategy, I told colleagues, was not to hold news conferences for establishment Canadian media. Instead, our approach was to take our message to social-media platforms and to the global, independent news media, especially the international cable and podcast shows. I set a goal: 100 million views globally the first week. Whether I achieved it or not, I don’t know. I might have exceeded it. Some analytics you can access, others you can’t.

Another part of my job was to feed social media. The trick was not to get censored. Major platforms routinely banned anybody questioning official COVID-19 edicts. A “Freedom Convoy” Twitter account would have been cancelled outright. To work around the bots — the web censorship robots — I used personal accounts. I used my personal Twitter account, Tamara’s account, my media company account, whatever accounts I had access to, and I would frequently change up the hashtags.

I used #FreedomConvoy, #FreedomConvoyCanada, #FreedomConvoy 2022, #FreedomConvoy22, #Convoy22, and #Convoy2022. To a human they all conveyed the same idea, but to a censor bot they all looked different. A bot doesn’t know what “Convoy2022” or “FreedomConvoy” mean, only that they are two completely different sets of binary that have nothing to do with each other. Supporters created other hashtags I hadn’t thought of — #truckerconvoy and #convoyforfreedom — and at one point we had five convoy-related hashtags all trending. Over the course of the protest, we were able to freely advocate for an end to government vaccine mandates and the QR passport. Our Twitter feeds racked up twenty or thirty million impressions.

I also follow the podcast world. Tucker Carlson Tonight isn’t a podcast but segments often run like a podcast on YouTube, and my appearances on Tucker Carlson and Glenn Beck gave the convoy an early boost. Over the coming days, I would do other U.S. shows: Louder with Crowder, with Steven Crowder; The Rubin Report with Dave Rubin; the Breitbart News Daily Podcast, with Alex Marlow; and a DailyWire podcast with Candace Owens. I would also appear on overseas online networks, including GB News in the UK and RT (Russia Today) International.

Before the protest was over, Jordan B. Peterson, the Toronto professor and bestselling author, invited me on his YouTube channel — 4.75 million subscribers. As a follow-up, his daughter, Mikhalia Peterson, interviewed me for forty-five minutes on her separate channel. Gad “The Gadfather” Saad, the popular Montreal host of The Saad Truth, had me on for forty-five minutes. Those were the big Canadian shows but there were many others with loyal followings, including The Andrew Lawton Show, with True North reporter Lawton, and The Same Drugs, with host Meghan Murphy.

The social-media feeds, podcasts, and cable shows helped generate buzz. They got other Twitter influencers and podcasters talking about the convoy. Elon Musk tweeted several times to his 70 million followers. Joe Rogan talked about it. The UK podcast Lotus Eaters devoted several shows to it. So did Tim Pool, the former Vice reporter, now one of the most popular political commentators on YouTube. U.S. political commentator Jeremy Hambling, host of The Quatering, talked about why he would “no longer ever, ever, ever promote, or give one single cent, to anyone who uses GoFundMe,” after the company called the Freedom Convoy demonstration an “occupation.”

In Canada, the Freedom Convoy easily ranked as the biggest news story of the pandemic. Globally, it was the biggest Canadian story since Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced, just before the pandemic, that they would move to British Columbia — temporarily, as it turned out. The protest made a huge story, with the most dramatic episodes yet to come.

On November 3rd, 2022 I be testify in the Government of Canada Public Order Emergency Commission.

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