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Systematic backdating

[edit]

The text of this article states that the podcast The White Saviors was released "in July 2020." It is referenced to an August 2020 story by David Moscrop of the Washington Post.[1] However, the first episode of the podcast was released on 11 August 2021.[2][3] The Moscrop piece does credit Canadaland, but it links to a print piece by Jesse Brown, not to the podcast The White Saviors which didn't exist at the time.

Further down the text, we read, "Bloomberg credited Jesse Brown of Canadaland for being "one of the lone journalists to scrutinize the charity before the furor.""[4] It is true that the article, by Natalie Pearson et al., (not "Bloomberg") says that; however this once again refers to Jesse Brown's print pieces from 2020, not to the podcast.

The effect of this systematic backdating was expressed on Talk:Olusola Adeogun, where it was claimed that "[The White Saviors] was a key part of the WE Charity scandal which was one of the top news items in Canada for some time. It led to the resignation of the Finance Minister Bill Morneau."[5] But Morneau resigned on 17 August 2020.[6], a year before The White Saviors was released.

Several other sentences in this article appear to shore up the claim that The White Saviors podcast played a critical role in the controversy surrounding Morneau: " The podcast reports that the WE Charity hired the daughter of Bill Morneau, Canada's Finance Minister at the time, and covered $41,366 of travel expenses for Morneau" and "The podcast also reported that payments were made to Justin Trudeau's family for speaking activities at WE Charity events." Again, these allegations date to 2020.

The entire Media responses subsection is similarly backdated to attribute Morneau's resignation to the podcast: "As the media followed up on allegations that the podcast broke, the WE Charity Scandal became a partisan issue in Canada. David Jefferess, writing in Canadian Dimension magazine attributed initial reluctance from mainstream media to report on issues in the podcast that were in the public domain to partnerships between WE Charity and Canadian media organizations." The podcast didn't "break" any of these claims, and all but one of the referenced sources date to 2020. The only one which doesn't is Scott Laurie's Toronto Star piece about Theresa Kielburger's lawsuit against The White Saviors, which mentions Jesse Brown's previous reporting in passing.

All of this material should be removed from the article.CorrTimes (talk) 22:46, 15 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think you are correct on the release date. I have updated the article accordingly. Calling my initial error "systematic" is perpetuating the lack of WP:AGF that you continue to exhibit towards my editing and I am, yet again, asking you to stop that. CT55555 (talk) 22:57, 15 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Your correction is still a year off.[7] Check the Apple podcasts link again - The White Saviors was released on August 20, 2021.[8] Thus, played no role in Bill Morneau’s resignation the previous year.
I’ll go ahead and fix it myself.CorrTimes (talk) 23:17, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have corrected the article. CT55555 (talk) 23:23, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]