Loading ...Canada’s tax agency paid employees as ‘ghostwriters’ to produce MSM ‘news’ articles: records
Records show that the Canada Revenue Agency doled out over $230k paying employees and others to write and publish ‘news’ articles that were eventually featured in a number of mainstream outlets across the country.
In response to the Inquiry, the CRA said that “The purpose of these articles was to inform Canadians,” adding that they were written to “help amplify its messaging in order to reach Canadians that it would not normally have access to through its own channels.”
When it comes to the federal definition of “fake news,” the ghostwritten articles meet the threshold. According to a 2017 Department of Canadian Heritage Memorandum To The Minister, included in the definition of fake news is anything that could be considered “state-sponsored.” “Characteristics of fake news,” notes the memo, include content that is “quick to create and share, and are not constrained by research or fact-checking.”