EXCLUSIVE ANALYSIS: Canada's most prolific anti-conservative outlet is in retreat
The Broadbent Institute-backed outlet has never regained its pre-2021 publishing pace, and now one of its own reporters says a major lawsuit left the organization in a "dire" financial situation.
PressProgress, the Broadbent Institute’s relentlessly anti-conservative attack blog, published approximately 60 per cent fewer stories last quarter than it did at its pre-2021 peak, according to a Juno News analysis of the outlet’s archives.
Now, one of their most senior bloggers, Emma Arkell, has been laid off.
Arkell is one of many far-left bloggers that the outlet has hired over the years, investing heavily in a “news” room that was proudly unionized under UFCW Canada Local 1006-A.
The publication released roughly 30 stories during the most recent completed quarter, down from approximately 75 during its highest-output quarter.
The collapse in output is now being accompanied by cuts to the outlet’s reporting staff.
PressProgress labour reporter Emma Arkell announced Monday that the outlet terminated her position and laid her off after giving her little more than a week’s notice.
“This is my last working week as the labour reporter at PressProgress,” Arkell wrote on Bluesky.
Arkell said PressProgress is facing serious financial problems connected to litigation.
“PressProgress has been put in a pretty dire financial situation because of a major lawsuit,” she wrote, adding that she did not expect the layoff to happen so soon.
Arkell did not identify the lawsuit, but it is obvious to anyone who Canadians can thank for the slow demise of the far-left blog.
PressProgress and its parent organization, the Broadbent Institute, are defendants in a multimillion-dollar defamation lawsuit brought by former United Conservative Party candidate Caylan Ford over reporting published during Alberta’s 2019 provincial election campaign.
It is a bizarre piece of cosmic irony that PressProgress’s peak publishing days effectively ended on January 6, 2021, the exact day the Broadbent Institute and its journalists happened to file their statement of defence in Caylan Ford’s lawsuit.
While the timing is striking, a lawsuit alone doesn’t prove a long-term decline. Shifts in staffing, funding, and editorial strategy likely played a part. Ultimately, it could just be that the public appetite has dried up for far-left bloggers offering breathless, finger-pointing coverage of right-wing “wrongthink.”
Arkell’s disclosure nevertheless provides new evidence that the falling publication count is not simply the product of a quieter news cycle.
PressProgress is producing fewer stories while eliminating editorial capacity, and one of its own journalists says a major lawsuit has put the outlet in a “dire financial situation.”
For more than a decade, PressProgress has built its identity around attacking Conservative politicians, conservative organizations, and the broader political right, including me.
In fact, the name Keean Bexte is featured on their pages more times than I care to count.
PressProgress, I think, knew that they were playing a dangerous game. They were extremely careful not to technically defame people. Although they have ended up in hot water a few times, with both myself and my former employer Ezra Levant suing them, and of course now Caylan Ford doing the same.
They avoided what I would call “technical defamation,” and instead relied on the annoyingly legal tool “defamation by proximity.” While they often called me “controversial” and “alt-right,” they reserved the more stinging labels, like Nazi and white-supremacist, for sentences about unrelated people or events immediately after mentioning their targets’ name.
This tactic caused many conservative staffers and activists headaches, and in some cases excluded people from job markets. Some fellow members of the PressProgress hit-piece club who I have spoken to even contemplated killing themselves after being featured on their pages, with no legal recourse to fight what they viewed as deeply defamatory content.
Its coverage repeatedly portrays conservatives through allegations involving extremism, racism, social conservatism, corporate influence, and guilt by association. Old social-media posts, private communications, donors, employers, and personal relationships frequently become the raw material for its stories.
A Juno News review of all 454 posts published by PressProgress from 2023 through 2025 found that 273, or 60 per cent, primarily focused on a Conservative politician or government, a conservative party or candidate, a right-wing or far-right organization, activist or media outlet, or a recognizably conservative policy position.
The denominator includes 28 announcements and self-promotional posts. Excluding those items, 273 of 426 editorial publications—or 64 per cent—met the same standard.
For conservative readers, the pattern is unmistakable.
Its hostility toward conservatives is part of its editorial identity, which makes the collapse in its publishing output—and the elimination of a reporting position—deeply heartwarming to this reporter, on a personal level.
Ed Broadbent, the founder of PressProgress’ lesser known parent institute, died in 2024, knowing that his magnum opus was a decaying disappointment; one likely to careen off a cliff at any minute and join him.
No sympathy
Finally, a morsel of good news.