Article by Rebel News staff.

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More details surrounding the federal government's funding of news outlets through the Local Journalism Initiative surfaced this week.

A story published by Blacklock's Reporter revealed one outlet, Canada's National Observer, received an eye-catching $1.3 million in wage subsidies, in addition to more than $640,000 in other grants and over $435,000 in sole-sourced federal contracts.

On Tuesday's edition of The Ezra Levant Show, Ezra slammed the Liberal government for funnelling taxpayers' money to radical left-wing media companies pushing climate propaganda.

Describing the National Observer as a “branch plant of San Francisco leftists,” given its history of funding from the Tides Foundation.

“They are not a business; they are a grift,” Ezra said, further calling it a “project of the Liberals” and blasting the Observer for describing itself as “independent.”

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“This is so super gross,” he continued, adding media outlets become addicted to government funding.

“Imagine if every year, you got hundreds of thousands of dollars from Mark Carney,” he said. “That would warp you, and you would become addicted to it because you'd be reliant on it and you would be obsessed with it.”

These media companies taking government dollars are then less likely to be critical of the source of their funding, Ezra said.

“They have to force people to subscribe to them,” he stated, suggesting “they would die in two weeks” without government handouts. 

“No one's heard of the National Observer — other than the bureaucrats forced to buy it,” Ezra said.

“They're a propaganda site; they receive massive funding from a lobby group. They are stenographers; they are PR men. They don't have an open mind; their mind can't be changed. They're a propaganda site paid for by Tides, and then Trudeau, and then Mark Carney. There is no organic, authentic support for them.”