Andrew Lawton has seen this all before

With the Emergencies Act inquiry in its final days, and the government's case in tatters, Alexander Brown chats with best-selling author, journalist, and talk show host extraordinaire Andrew Lawton.

Andrew Lawton really has seen this all before.

Lest we forget, he was even pepper sprayed for it.

“A lot of the information from the Public Order Emergency Commission, that’s only coming out now, is already in my book,” he tells me, in reference to his best-seller The Freedom Convoy: The Inside Story of Three Weeks that Shook the World (a must-read, if you ask me, and I encourage you to pick up a copy on Amazon).

“Mainstream media types may be acting shocked. But I’m not.”

Some, like yours truly, consider his reporting — along with Rupa Subramanya’s — to be the gold standard from that fascinating moment in our history, for it was blissfully free of faux-January 6th editorializing, Liberal interference, and never shied away from showcasing the humanity of protestors and convoy leadership, even as they were so viciously set upon by a big red machine in full campaign mode.

With just two weeks remaining in an inquiry that has truly come apart at the seams for a government desperate to justify the seemingly unjustifiable, I could think of no better journalist to put it all in perspective than Andrew, who, when not writing powerful personal essays on Canada’s ill-fated foray into MAID, covering the daily occurrences at the POEC, or hosting one of the nation’s leading talk shows (also for True North), was kind enough to carve out time for his friends and fans at Acceptable Views.

Q: You mentioned to me before that a lot of the so-called news coming out of the Public Order Emergency Commission was already in your book. Why do you think that legacy media wasn't interested in telling the whole story to begin with?

A: There were a few legacy media reporters that really did try to understand who the protesters were and what they were there for, but I'd say there were far more of them that had a baked-in narrative, that saw them either as crazy deplorables on one end of the spectrum or violent extremists on the other end. There was clearly a demand for stories that cast the convoy in a bad light – such as the Terry Fox statue, the swastika and Confederate flag, or the infamous (and definitively debunked) attempted arson. But most of these stories didn't pass the smell test or were blown wildly out of proportion.

One legacy media journalist told me that their editor at one point asked for "more swastikas" only to be told by reporters that they couldn't find any. I can't say I was surprised with either side of that story.

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