Ezra Levant’s controversial right-wing mag is gone. Will anyone miss it?
It’s my first ride in a Hummer. Beside me sits Calgary “turbo-capitalist” Ezra Levant (his words not mine) publisher of the recently folded Western Standard . We’ve just finished an hour-long interview over Chinese food in Mission and now we’re going to drive all of three blocks to the Standard’s office above the Ship & Anchor on 17th Ave. S.W. “I love driving a Hummer because it’s a symbol of my support for the oilpatch” Levant 35 says proudly. “And people hate it.”
As Levant throws his H3 — which he admits is an “ugly vehicle” — into reverse I recall our lunch conversation. My driver has explained to me that global warming is a myth — a religion actually. “The science behind it is getting shakier all the time” says Levant who worked as former Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day’s communications director in 2001. “(Environmentalism) has all the elements of a religion: an Eden time gurus an apocalypse coming rites and rituals inquisitions on deniers.”
This is typical Levant: brash contrarian outrageous opinion and lots of it. He fiercely defends fallen media baron Conrad Black (always identified in Levant’s editorials as “Lord Black of Crossharbour”) as an unfairly maligned martyr for the capitalist cause. Levant’s magazine which folded in early October labelled multiculturalism a “multicult.” And one Western Standard cover story depicted Stephen Harper as a green giant “a green lantern of enviro-activism” whose environmental concessions would severely harm the country. (Neither Levant nor his former writers care much for nuance.)
When we arrive at the Standard office it’s clear things are winding down. Images of the magazine’s covers are being taken off the walls. Boxes are being packed up. The Standard after more than three and a half years and 82 published issues has joined its ideological predecessor the Alberta Report in the annals of local media history. Some have cheered the unapologetically right-wing mag’s demise — “Trees will be saved” wrote rocker Matthew Good on his blog — but the Standard’s demise means there’s one less independent media voice in this city province and country. “The lack of independent media in this country is a concern for everybody to begin with” says Kevin Libin a columnist for the National Post and the Standard’s first editor. “It’s especially pronounced in Alberta.… The more media outlets there are out there the more transparent and accountable governments are going to be with people.”
FROM THE ASHES OF THE ALBERTA REPORT
In the summer of 2003 the Alberta Report folded after three decades of publishing. Published by Christian fundamentalist Ted Byfield the Report’s death turned into the Standard’s beginning. “What really bugged me was the glee that I heard from (the Report ’s) ideological opponents” says Levant. “The glee that it was shutting down. It was almost as if they were saying ‘Haha we don’t have to answer your ideas anymore. You’re silenced. We didn’t have to win the debate because you were just taken out of the debate. We’re glad you’re gone.’”
Levant who was practising law at the time tried to convince the Byfields to restart the magazine. When that failed he decided to start an entirely new publication. “If I didn’t do it no one would do it” he says. Levant found a group of people — “conservative ethical investors” he calls them — to put up money for the new venture. (The largest investor was local oilman Lyle Dunkley and Levant says the investors put in about $3.5 million throughout the magazine’s life.) In March 2004 the first issue of the Standard was published. It was a little different than the Report — instead of the Byfields’ Christian fundamentalism the editorial content was permeated by Levant’s fierce libertarianism — but it published many of the Report ’s writers including Byfield himself.
Over the next three and a half years the Standard covered local national and international stories from a conservative angle. It railed against multiculturalism bilingualism public services unions the UN the “liberal” mainstream media and so on. “It tended to appeal to certain people who liked that kind of stuff and didn’t appeal to other people that they needed to reach” says D.B. Scott a media consultant in Ontario who writes a blog on the Canadian magazine industry. “They seem to have picked what the advertising agencies refer to as ‘low-hanging fruit.’ They got all the easy right-wingers and then they needed to kind of expand outside that area — and they weren’t able to.”
THE CARTOON CONTROVERSY
The magazine’s high point — or low point depending on perspective — was the publishing of the controversial Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad in February 2006. “That was such a huge moment in our short history” says Libin who left the magazine for the Post shortly after the cartoons were published. “That was the most intense moment.” The Standard hired two security guards to watch the office for two months afterwards.
Both Libin and Levant say the magazine wasn’t trying to be controversial by publishing the cartoons. “We almost didn’t do it because I was so sure that Maclean’s was going to do it or the National Post was going to do it” says Libin. “We were so positive that somebody was going to beat us to printing the cartoons.” But nobody did.
And so the Standard was thrust into the national media spotlight for publishing what few others in North America would. (One other Calgary publication the Jewish Free Press published the cartoons.) “We showed a commitment to the principles of journalism — namely the freedom to publish what we want no matter who opposes us” says Levant. “We earned respect in the industry for that moment.”
The Standard’s decision earned both praise and scorn. Many both inside and outside the media said the decision to publish the cartoons was irresponsible. One local editor called it “childish.” (Full disclosure: in the pages of this newspaper I wrote a column saying the Standard’s decision showed a “lack of discernment.” I am less sure of that now.) The magazine still has a human rights complaint pending against it from Calgary imam Syed Soharwardy president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada. “It was a deliberate calculated attempt to incite hatred against Muslims” says Soharwardy of the Standard’s decision.
One of the magazine’s defenders was Gillian Steward a former managing editor of the Calgary Herald and a Fast Forward columnist. She says the mainstream media’s rationale for not publishing the cartoons was shallow and unconvincing. “I thought the Western Standard had a better idea actually of what liberal democracy is all about” says Steward who until recently was publisher of Alberta Views magazine. “As citizens of a liberal democracy we can choose to disobey religious rules if we want to. That’s just the way it works…. It was the right thing to do.”
THE JOURNALISTIC LEGACY
When University of British Columbia law professor Joel Bakan read the September 2006 Standard story headlined “Canada’s Nuttiest Professors” he couldn’t believe it. He and 12 other profs were accused of using their classrooms as “bully pulpit(s) from which to inculcate students with their own ideologies.” This surprised Bakan an award-winning instructor. “I don’t bring my editorializing into the classroom” says Bakan author of The Corporation and co-writer of the film of the same name. “And if I do I always very clearly label it as my editorializing and say: let’s debate this.”
Writer Terry O’Neill one of the Standard’s B.C. reporters lamented that “universities are hothouses of intellectual repression encumbered by censorious codes stifling free speech and weakened by employment-equity programs that force faculties to favour diversity over accomplishment.”
In the story Bakan — who Levant tells me is “one smart cookie” — was derided for “getting basic economic facts wrong” in The Corporation . “(The story) was shockingly inaccurate and under-researched and made silly mistakes that were derived from other (published) pieces that made silly mistakes” says Bakan. “What bothered me was not that they decided to criticize me. What bothered me was the research and journalism was so poor that it came off as nothing other than a personal attack with no foundation.”
The Standard’s journalism was also called into question in February 2006 for something other than the Danish cartoons. At issue was a column written by columnist Ric Dolphin — a former Calgary Herald scribe who was fired from the daily for writing disparaging columns about aboriginals. In his February 13 Standard column Dolphin quoted a “fishing buddy” of then Premier Ralph Klein as saying: “Once she stops being the premier’s wife she goes back to being just another Indian.” (Colleen Klein is Métis.)
What made the Standard story suspect aside from the racist nature of the comment was the fact Dolphin never attributed the quote. (In his controversial Herald columns he also used anonymous sources to make his point that aboriginals are “spoiled by too much government money and not enough responsibility for their fate.”) Fresh off the cartoon controversy Levant and Libin again had to defend the magazine. “There was a double standard there” says Libin. “A lot of the media prints anonymous or unattributed quotes all the time. That’s what this was.” Levant is also unrepentant. “What we’re going to bury that because we don’t want to hurt the feelings of the missus?” he says. “That’s not journalism…. I think people were trying to shoot the messenger.”
But while the Standard arguably got some stories wrong other times it got them right — like the investigative report on corruption and sexual harassment in the offices of the Alberta Securities Commission (ASC) published in December 2005. “That was important because no one else did it” says Levant. The story dug into the “culture of favouritism and unaccountability” at the regulator and exposed how high-ranking Tories including the Kleins benefited from the corruption.
After the story ran Levant says he got a call from someone in Klein’s Calgary office. “He’s used to calling up publishers and editors in this town and screaming at them and expecting them to say ‘Oh I’m so sorry’” says Levant. “In a one-party state like this you have a very supine media.” The Standard refused to back down and Levant says it’s one of the magazine’s proudest moments. “We weren’t in the pocket of the Tories” says Levant. “We were allowed to be free.”
LEVANT AS A PEACE-LOVING BUDDHIST MONK
Despite its success in getting media attention The Standard didn’t turn a profit. “We never made money ever” says Levant. On October 5 Levant posted on The Shotgun Blog — the Standard’s blog — that the magazine would stop publishing. (Many of the magazine’s contributors hadn’t heard the news before seeing Levant’s blog post and Standard columnist Colby Cosh wrote on his personal blog that the closure was “poorly handled from the standpoint of the editorial employees and contributors.”)
At its end the magazine had an audited circulation of about 34000. According to Levant about 19000 of these were paid subscriptions. “That’s a huge readership for a very niche publication” says Colleen Seto executive director of the Alberta Magazine Publishers Association. “So I think if anything it demonstrated you can make a real go of magazine publishing in Alberta.”
All that’s left of the Standard now is The Shotgun Blog. The blog publishes writers so far to the right that by comparison Levant looks and sounds like a peace-loving Buddhist monk. “Because (the Standard ) makes almost a fetish out of allowing free comment they have allowed their blog to become extraordinarily extreme” says Scott who stopped reading the blog because he “wasn’t learning anything” from it.
The content is often racist and discriminatory. In one post published last July one of the bloggers called Islam a “death cult” and suggested it should be banned in Canada the same way smoking is banned. “Islam must be labelled for what it truly represents: wholesale slaughter and a corrupt ideology of sex and death” she wrote. “It must be stopped.” A month later the blog published comments that labelled Muslims “aliens from another planet” that need to be killed off “until there aren’t enough left to mount much of a challenge to the civilized world.”
Levant defends the decision to leave the comments on the blog. (They weren’t posted by a Standard blogger but a reader.) “We don’t edit or censor our blogs unless there’s absolutely no redeeming value to it” says Levant. “Or if they’re extraordinarily crude.”
Scott says that if the Standard is going to succeed in the online world it will have to tone down the rhetoric and drastically improve the site’s content. “The most successful publications on the web tend to be the ones with the highest quality editorial which has the broadest possible interest to the largest possible audience” says Scott. “If it’s just going to be a bunch of unknown cranks who are willing to write for nothing then remember — there’s eight million blogs out there. You can find those anywhere.” Levant says that’s one of the questions he’s asking: “Can we get a budget for some true shoe-leather reporting?” At this point he doesn’t know the answer.
Looking back over the Standard’s short and colourful history Levant says he has no editorial regrets — only business ones. “It’s a tough gig” he says noting that during the Standard’s life Saturday Night and Toro — two award-winning content-rich magazines — went under. “Magazines on the left or the right are very difficult economic propositions today” says Levant. “But we gave it a good college try.”
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MATTHEW GOOD — BETTER THAN EZRA?
B.C. rocker Matthew Good was one of the first people to celebrate the Western Standard’s demise. On his blog he wrote that he was glad to see the right-wing mag go under. Ezra Levant the Standard’s publisher responded in the comments section and a lively debate followed. We contacted Good to ask if we could publish excerpts from his blog. He sent us a three-word response: “Sorry not interested.”
Levant on the other hand had no problem with us republishing his comments. So we’re still publishing the debate except we’ll have to paraphrase Good and break his writing into smaller quotes so we don’t infringe his copyright. We’re not very happy about this — it’s more work for us. But we’ve done it anyways. Here for your reading pleasure is the debate Matthew Good never wanted you to read.
GOOD: Good began by saying he is “happy” the Standard folded. He called Levant a “shitty publisher” and said good magazines like the New Yorker and Harper’s “tend to stick around for a good reason primarily because they’re actually good.” He went on to call the Standard a “Canadian print version of Fox News in many ways — loud and empty.”
LEVANT: “You celebrate the silencing of a contrary voice. That’s not liberal in any sense of the word. You can disagree with us; want to rebut us; challenge us; even despise us. But to celebrate our end? Are you really that afraid of different points of view?
“I happen to think you serve up nothing but leftist cliches but I wouldn’t be happy if you were stopped for any reason other than that I had convinced you of your wrongness. Don’t you think you should tolerate ideas other than your own?
“God-forbid if you should ever be silenced (especially by threats of violent censorship as we were) I hope that I believe strongly enough in freedom diversity and open-mindedness that I would put aside my policy differences with you to stand up for your right to be wrong.”
GOOD: Good responded by saying the Standard’s decision to publish the Danish cartoons was a “publicity stunt not some championing of freedom of expression.” At this point Good started to work himself into a rhetorical frenzy. “Your website is replete with borderline racist and degenerative remarks from low minded individuals who routinely display the inability to express themselves in any fashion that is at all productive with regards to civil discourse” he wrote.
He kept going calling the Standard “the product of mind-numbing ridiculousness that pandered to those whose xenophobic tendencies provide them comfort because they lack any sort of humanistic fortitude.” Good went on saying he’s celebrating the Standard’s demise because trees will be saved. “That fact alone is enough to celebrate it.” He then started talking about his own musical success.
LEVANT: “I made the mistake of thinking that you were more than a Laurie David or Sheryl Crow — celebrities with intellectual inferiority complexes desperate to prove to the world they were more than just pretty faces. I see that your blog is not really about ideas or debate but a vanity project — to show that you’re more than just someone strumming a guitar. But it’s fake: anyone who celebrates the closure of a magazine is intellectually closed. You think you’re modern and leftist but it was the Nazis who celebrated the burning of books 70 years ago. Your cheering of our demise bears a closer resemblance to that nihilism than you know.
“Good luck Matt. I think I’ll go back to listening to your music and ignoring your politics.”
