‘Keep your nose out’: How one answer on independent media took over the news cycle

The warning that led Canada’s political news on Oct. 14 did not come from a news conference, a press release or a scrum on Parliament Hill. It came about 27 minutes into a 42-minute conversation on The Really Big Show, an independent news and commentary program hosted by Jim Csek in BC and Iain Burns in Ottawa.

In it, U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra said American officials were watching Canadian politicians for signs of interference in the Nov. 3 U.S. midterm elections, and told Canadians to “keep your nose out of American politics.”

Within a week, that answer had been carried by 37 outlets, from CTV News and CBC to Radio-Canada, TVA and a string of Postmedia dailies. Twenty-nine of them credited The Really Big Show as the source. Measured views and impressions across the show’s own channels, news-outlet videos, independent creators and posts on X reached 2,164,037 by Oct. 17.

The path the story took, from an independent talk show to independent commentators, then to the U.S. Embassy’s feed and into national newsrooms, shows how independent news and commentary can now set the agenda that legacy outlets follow.

The answer

The episode, posted to YouTube on Oct. 10 and to podcast feeds on Oct. 11, ranged over trade, NATO, border security, energy, China and artificial intelligence. Its title came from Hoekstra’s comments on defence: “‘Always is a long time’: No guarantee US will defend Canada forever, ambassador suggests.”

But it was a single exchange on election interference that travelled.

Hoekstra pointed to anti-tariff ads the Ontario government ran in the United States last year. “They decided to test the waters and see how far they could go,” he said, according to the Toronto Star. He also cited comments from Industry Minister Mélanie Joly about Canada’s retaliatory tariffs, and remarks by former prime minister Justin Trudeau at an American university in September.

If Washington concluded Canada was meddling, he said, the U.S. government “will respond.”

The remarks landed weeks before the midterms and days before Alberta’s Oct. 19 referendum, at a time when, as the Star noted, Ottawa was already watching for signs of American political influence at home.

How it spread

The first big reaction came from independent media, not a newsroom. On Oct. 11, the day after the interview went up, the independent YouTube channel Large Man Abroad posted a reaction video. It had 397,102 views by Oct. 17, the most of any single video in the measured set.

Three days later, at 6 a.m. PT on Wednesday, Oct. 14, the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa posted a 93-second clip of the election interference answer.

“U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra (@USAmbCanada) spoke to The Really Big Show about political interference in U.S. elections,” the post read. The ambassador’s own account reposted it 48 minutes later. By Oct. 17, the embassy post had 60,809 impressions, 28,112 video views and 1,052 replies.

CTV News published at 8:40 a.m. PT under the headline “‘Keep your nose out’: Hoekstra sends stern warning to Canada ahead of U.S. midterms.” Its video report used footage from the show. CTV’s post on X about the story drew 126,003 impressions.

An X News trending story followed, headlined “U.S. Ambassador Warns Canada Against Interfering in Midterms” and citing “a podcast interview shared by the U.S. Embassy.”

French-language newsrooms moved before noon Pacific time. TVA Nouvelles and LCN carried analysis at 11:59 a.m. PT, La Presse ran the story at 12:03 p.m., and Le Devoir added a sidebar at 12:17 p.m. The Canadian Press story was on iPolitics by 12:23 p.m. Radio-Canada followed at 12:56 p.m.

The Globe and Mail published Joly’s response at 1:39 p.m. PT, under the headline “Canada would never interfere in U.S. elections, Joly says after ambassador’s accusation.” CBC News followed at 2:15 p.m., BNN Bloomberg aired a segment at 3:19 p.m. and the National Post published at 3:30 p.m. The Post’s story then ran across Postmedia’s network. Global National closed the day with a segment by Mackenzie Gray.

On Oct. 15, the Toronto Sun ran its own story by Bryan Passifiume, headlined “‘KEEP YOUR NOSE OUT’: U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra warns Canada as midterms loom,” with the embassy post embedded. Juno News, Global News online and 98.5 Montréal followed, and the Toronto Star’s story by its Ottawa bureau was updated on Oct. 16.

Newsrooms across Canada credited the source

Outlets that picked up the story had to say where it came from. Twenty-nine of the 37 named The Really Big Show in their published text. None of the coverage captured for this story named NowMedia, the show’s production company; the credit went to the show itself.

The credit lines, grouped by type of outlet:

• National TV news: CTV News and CP24: “In an interview with ‘The Really Big Show’ podcast, Hoekstra suggested the actions of several Canadian politicians, including Industry Minister Mélanie Joly, could amount to interference in close American races just weeks before the crucial midterm elections.” CBC News, Global News and CityNews, across eight city sites, ran The Canadian Press story and its credit.
• Wire: The Canadian Press: “During an interview on The Really Big Show podcast that was posted last week, Hoekstra said political ads run by the province of Ontario last year could be interpreted as political interference.”
• National papers and digital: The Globe and Mail: “… the U.S. ambassador told The Really Big Show podcast in an episode that was published this week.” National Post: “… he said in an appearance on The Really Big Show, a Canadian news podcast.” Toronto Star: “The U.S. embassy posted a video Wednesday morning of remarks that Ambassador Pete Hoekstra made during a recent appearance on The Really Big Show.” Toronto Sun: “… Hoekstra said in an episode of the Really Big Show podcast.” Juno News: “Speaking on The Really Big Show podcast …” iPolitics and Yahoo News Canada ran the CP credit.
• Regional newspapers: Nine Postmedia papers, the Vancouver Sun, The Province, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Ottawa Citizen, Financial Post, Calgary Sun, Edmonton Sun and Ottawa Sun, carried the National Post and Toronto Sun credit lines. The Winnipeg Free Press and Lethbridge Herald ran the CP credit.
• French-language: Radio-Canada and La Presse: “Lors d’une récente entrevue dans le balado The Really Big Show …” Le Devoir: “Lors d’une récente entrevue au balado The Really Big Show …” TVA Nouvelles: “En entrevue sur la chaîne YouTube « The Really Big Show » …” L’Authentique Presse: “Hoekstra s’est exprimé en entrevue au balado The Really Big Show …”

Eight outlets carried the story without a visible credit in their text: BNN Bloomberg, National Newswatch, Prime Asia TV Canada, 98.5 Montréal, The Elias Makos Show, Firstpost, NDTV World and Hook Global. National Newswatch, an aggregator, linked to the CP and CTV stories, which both carry the credit.

The reaction

The response from Ottawa came the same day. Joly told reporters Canada “would never” interfere in a U.S. election, a line that headlined The Globe and Mail’s story and videos from The Canadian Press and the Globe. The Star quoted her as saying, “Fundamentally, what I’ve done in the U.S. is to attract investments.”

John Fragos, a spokesman for Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, told the Star the counter-tariffs were proportional and retaliatory. “So, I think the (ambassador’s) comments are, in that sense, out of hand,” he said.

Prime Minister Mark Carney answered with a joke at a pro-Canada rally in Calgary. “Careful, they might think that’s election interference,” he said, in a line that CTV, Global and CBC all posted as clips. Those videos and CTV’s post about them added 533,717 views and impressions, counted separately because they cover Carney’s remarks rather than the interview itself.

Commentators piled in. On CTV, former NDP leader Tom Mulcair called Hoekstra the “clown prince of Donald Trump,” in a video with 207,740 views. iHeartRadio’s Bill Carroll, U.S. political analyst Eric Ham and former diplomat Colin Robertson weighed in on CTV programs. On LCN, analyst Yasmine Abdelfadel said the comments were about setting up a narrative for possible Republican losses: “On est en train de préparer les arguments du 4 novembre” (we are preparing the arguments for Nov. 4). On 98.5 Montréal, columnist Dimitri Soudas said U.S. politics had become “de la folie pure,” or pure madness.

Independent media set the agenda

The Really Big Show tracked the week in an impact report built from platform counts captured on Oct. 17. Its pages show the same pattern from several angles: an independent talk show produced the news, independent commentators amplified it first, and legacy outlets followed.

The 2,164,037 figure is a sum of platform counts. It breaks down this way:

• 300,925 views and impressions on The Really Big Show’s own channels, including 131,508 YouTube views of the full interview, 152,394 more on three YouTube clips, 13,927 on TikTok and 3,096 on X.
• 635,450 views on 22 videos by independent YouTube creators.
• 893,087 views on 18 YouTube videos by news organizations about the remarks, led by CTV, Global News, Hook Global, The Globe and Mail and The Canadian Press.
• 334,575 impressions on 22 earned posts on X from 19 accounts, including CTV News (126,003), U.S. Embassy Ottawa (60,809), CP24 (54,038) and The Globe and Mail (42,406).

Add the show’s own 300,925 to the 635,450 views on independent creator videos and independent media accounts for 936,375 of the measured total, more than the 893,087 views on news organizations’ YouTube videos.

Independent commentary channels took the story in their own direction:

• Large Man Abroad (248,000 subscribers): posted Oct. 11, three days before CTV, 397,102 views.
• The Elevate Report (175,000 subscribers): “‘Keep Your Nose Out!’ | US Ambassador Issues MASSIVE Warning To Carney,” 116,266 views.
• Moose on the Loose (213,000 subscribers): Hoekstra segments in two videos posted Oct. 14 and 15, with 289,397 combined views. These count the whole videos, so they are shown separately from the creator total.
• The Canadian: two videos on Joly’s and Carney’s responses, with 31,420 and 25,984 views.
• The Right Call with Elliot Daigneault (45,100 subscribers): 23,833 views.
• Canada Next, AllShorts, ONDAS FM, Alberta News and Views, John D. Cundle and other smaller channels, whose videos ranged from no views to nearly 6,000.

Legacy newsrooms then built their own video coverage on the interview. CTV posted nine YouTube videos about the remarks, Global News, The Globe and Mail, CityNews and The Canadian Press added more, and channels in India picked it up.

Only one creator video, by John D. Cundle, named The Really Big Show in its description. Whether others credited the show on screen could not be checked.

At every step, the full 42-minute conversation was available, unedited, to anyone who wanted to hear the answer in context. It is that format, long and unscripted, that independent talk shows and news commentary offer and that more Canadians are turning to as they look for free and independent sources of news.

“Canada needs and deserves a free and independent media,” said Jim Csek, host of The Really Big Show.

What the numbers don’t show

The totals in this story are conservative by design. They count only what platforms publicly display. They do not include:

• readership of the print and online stories, which no outlet publishes;
• TV and radio audiences for the CTV, Global National, LCN, BNN Bloomberg and radio segments;
• podcast plays of the episode;
• Instagram and Facebook views of the show’s clips;
• third-party TikTok posts, which were not searched.

Views and impressions are cumulative, not unique people. The X figures come from search results and are a sample, not a full count. Moose on the Loose segments were identified from published episode summaries. A few outlets could not be verified and were not counted.

About The Really Big Show

The Really Big Show is a weekday news and commentary program hosted by Jim Csek, a CPA based in BC, and Iain Burns, a journalist based in Ottawa whose career includes British national media and a London foreign desk. It streams live on YouTube every weekday at noon Eastern, 9 a.m. Pacific, and is produced by NowMedia.

The show describes itself as Canadian news done differently, built on direct questions and real conversations rather than talking points. Interviews run long and unscripted, and the full conversation goes up on YouTube and podcast feeds. That is how a sitting U.S. ambassador ended up spending 42 minutes on trade, defence and politics, and how one answer in the 27th minute became national news.

Watch and follow: The Really Big Show is live weekdays at 9 a.m. PT, noon ET, on YouTube at youtube.com/@thereallybigshow. Subscribe there to catch the next interview live, follow the show on X and TikTok, listen on major podcast platforms, and find the full Hoekstra interview at youtube.com/watch?v=LncaizMKE7Y and more at thereallybigshow.ca.

Figures in this story come from The Really Big Show’s impact report on the interview, based on platform counts captured Oct. 17, 2026, and each outlet’s published coverage.