The Breakdown's muzzling should concern all media

The popular Alberta politics web show has opted to shut down to comply with an injunction ordered as part of a $6-million libel lawsuit from well-connected businessman Sam Mraiche.

On Feb. 16, widely watched Alberta politics web show The Breakdown posted a brief seven-minute episode, in which host Nate Pike revealed that he would be unpublishing The Breakdown’s social media feeds, including its YouTube channel, and going silent for the foreseeable future to comply with a court order.

“In consultation with my legal team, there is no way for me to complete what the court has ordered and keep The Breakdown social media operational in the timeframe that I’ve been provided,” Pike said.

If you go to The Breakdown’s website, you’re now greeted by this message:

This is the result of a $6-million defamation lawsuit businessman Sam Mraiche launched against Pike and the show for an episode that detailed Mraiche and medical supply company MHCare’s connections with the UCP government, as well as Pike’s social media posts promoting it.

It’s a major threat to press freedom that should have all journalists concerned.

In the Oct. 27 Breakdown episode, “The Skybox Network Exposed,” Pike weaved together a cohesive narrative from previously reported information on Mraiche inviting multiple cabinet members to his private box during the Edmonton Oilers’ 2024 playoff run and government contracts his company has received.

The most notorious of these contracts is a $28 million payment MHCare received from Alberta Health Services (AHS) in July 2023, most of which was for its role in importing knock-off children’s Tylenol from Turkey, which clogged patients’ feedings tubes and posed major risks to infants.

Since then, former AHS CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos has alleged that Mraiche and companies connected to him have received more than $614 million in contracts with AHS, which she suspects were awarded at inflated prices, and that an AHS staff member moonlights as an MHCare employee.

According to Pike’s statement of defence, as reported by CTV News, he reached out to Mraiche for comment before publishing his video and a lawyer assured him that Mraiche “was very enthusiastic about freedom of speech.”

Full disclosure: I like Pike, who had me on the show not long ago to discuss my book.

I don’t agree with everything Pike has ever said or tweeted, but his work is, in my view, a net positive for the Alberta media sphere.

Pike, who works as a paramedic by day, doesn’t consider himself a journalist. And while his show consists largely of interviews with experts and politicians, he certainly has done original journalism.

Last month, Pike revealed the Alberta government spent $116,800 in 2024 on advertising with the Counter Signal, a far-right news site run by Keean Bexte, who got busted working for a white supremacist memorabilia store in 2018, which he obtained through a freedom of information request.

But my view of Pike and his work is entirely besides the point.

A well-connected businessman throwing money around to shut down an independent news show for packaging together pieces of information that have been previously reported by mainstream news outlets sets an extraordinarily dangerous precedent.

If you upset powerful interests, they can launch a lawsuit and compel you to take down your entire body of work without even proving that you’ve done anything wrong.

Beyond silencing The Breakdown, the suit against Pike has the added effect of sending a message to journalists at better-resourced mainstream news outlets that they could be next if they’re not careful.

Mount Royal University political scientist Duane Bratt rightly called Mraiche’s lawsuit against Pike “an infringement on freedom of the press” and a case of “political intimidation.”

In Alberta, which lacks laws prohibiting strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP), powerful interests can easily initiate lawsuits that, even if they are found baseless, will eat up defendants’ time and resources that could be spent on literally anything else.

Alberta needs anti-SLAPP legislation, like they have in Ontario and British Columbia, ASAP.

But it’s not just Mraiche, a private citizen, who is attempting to shut Pike up.

According to Mentzelopoulos’s lawsuit against AHS, which has yet to be tested in court, the premier’s former chief of staff, Marshall Smith, tried to get Pike fired from his day job.

As reported by Julia Wong and Jason Markusoff for the CBC:

Mentzelopoulos's lawsuit claims that Marshall Smith called her last summer to advise her that “powerful people” were angry about an AHS paramedic named Nate Pike, whose webcast and social media account The Breakdown has been critical of the Smith government and who has posted often about the Turkish children's medication situation.

“Mentzelopoulos asked Smith if he was trying to tell her that AHS had to fire Mr. Pike,” the lawsuit states.

The premier's aide replied that Pike was “your employee” and “you're going to look very bad” and there would be “consequences.” Mentzelopoulos replied she wouldn't fire Pike, but did urge other AHS leaders to speak to Pike about tweeting while at work.

This would have been before Premier Danielle Smith and Justice Mickey Amery announced their government’s intention to introduce legislation to protect professionals from disciplinary action “based on bad faith complaints from people they have never dealt with professionally,” in Amery’s words.

That sounds a lot like what Marshall Smith (no relation to the premier) allegedly pulled.

Premier Smith, the self-proclaimed “most freedom-loving politician we ever had in this country,” has specifically envisioned Alberta as a “bastion” of press freedom, and not just for conservative and far-right outlets.

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She could show these words are more than hollow sloganeering by bringing forward anti-SLAPP legislation, clarify that her upcoming legislation protecting professionals from regulatory discipline applies to government critics, and, if substantiated, apologize to Pike for her former chief of staff’s attempt to get him canned.

Those interested in contributing to Pike’s fundraiser for his legal expenses can do so here.

This piece has been updated to clarify that Pike wasn’t ordered specifically to delete the Breakdown’s online presence, but did so in order to comply with a court injunction.