Catching Up on MediaPolicy.ca – The C18 drivers’ guide for Senators – Rupert Murdoch’s date with Supreme Court destiny – Best Media Policy read.

December 17, 2022

You can read MediaPolicy.ca’s summary of where the key amendments, adopted or rejected, landed in Bill C-18 the Online News Act. The prize inside is a PDF of the amended House Bill that will move on to the Senate in February.

Michael Geist posted on what I would describe as his memo to Senators on the 101 reasons why he hates Bill C-18 and how it’s a Canadian ‘shakedown’ of Big Tech. That moved me to post about a couple of those 101 points, the arguments made about ‘trade irritants’ and treaty obligations under CUSMA and the Berne Convention on copyright.

There’s a shakedown in there all right, just not the one Geist is claiming.

***

There’s a good interview of CBC English TV’s Barb Williams in Hollywood Reporter by Etan Vlessing in which she talks about the programming pivot that CBC is making towards content relevant to Indigenous, Black and racialized communities. 

***

News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch is being deposed in preparation for the defamation trial brought against him by Dominion Voting Systems. The lawsuit arises because of Fox News’ inaccurate reporting on DVS —perhaps knowingly or recklessly— arising out of the 2020 US election and the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement.

Murdoch will be holding on for dear life to the US Supreme Court precedent of ‘NYT v. Sullivan’ which swaddles media and reporters in the ‘actual malice defence’ to libel claims. The Sullivan ruling has long been a target of right-wing activists and now they have a lock on the Supreme Court .

Quite a dilemma. Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post has a column on this.

***

Love and hate relationship with Twitter? The best media policy read of the week was last weekend in the New York Times, Ezra Klein’s thoughts on the platform. Profoundly insightful IMO.

***

If you would like regular notifications of future posts from MediaPolicy.ca you can follow this site by signing up under the Follow button in the bottom right corner of the home page; 

or e-mail howard.law@bell.net to be added to the weekly update; 

or follow @howardalaw on Twitter.