Catching Up on MediaPolicy – Was #C18 bust or boon? – Québec town sues citizens, muzzles local paper – Parti Québécois wants to Close the Loophole – Black Press on the block

January 21, 2024

This weekend MediaPolicy posted a long-form analysis (an 18-minute read) about whether the federal government’s Online News Act has, so far, been a win, draw or loss.

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There is a press freedom drama unfolding in the village of Sainte-Pétronille (population 1000) on the Île d’Orléans, across the river from Québec City. The Globe’s report in English is here, but it’s worth reading the Radio-Canada account and the scathing La Presse column too.

The Québec Municipal Commission is investigating the village’s town council after it threatened to sue 100 of its own citizens and the community paper Autour d’Île over a citizen petition demanding answers about the controversial hiring of the Council’s new General Manager. 

The town paper knuckled under to the libel threat and spiked its news reporting. Adding colour to it all, the Council’s statement through its lawyer included a veiled threat to go after the Autour d’Île’s public funding (25% of its revenue, dispensed by the Regional Municipality but not the village Town Council).

It’s all blowing up on the Town Council now but the endgame may take a while.

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This week the provincial opposition Parti Québécois laid out its ideas for supporting news journalism in Québec. Its program includes using the tax system to reward and/or punish advertisers for placing their business with online Québec news outlets rather than foreign digital platforms.

This is a familiar policy idea, sometimes referred to as “Close the Loophole,” to extend the long standing federal tax rules on writing off advertising expenses in print and broadcast media so that they apply to placing ads with online media. The proposal was raised in Parliament by the federal NDP as recently as last month.

A throw-away line in the La Presse story on the PQ announcement was that the CAQ Culture Minister Mathieu Lacombe is already in contact with the federal government on something similar. Do tell.

The PQ platform also includes a mandatory 4% spend of government advertising on community media.

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I’ve buried the lede this week by leaving this item until last. 

Black Press Media has entered creditor protection for its chain of 150 community newspapers located in western Canada, the North and the United States. It has a consortium of buyers lined up, including the Canadian hedge fund Canso (freshly paid off as first lien creditor of Postmedia) and the Alabama-based Carpenter Media Group. 

Details will eventually leak out about how Black Press got into a liquidity crunch, what terms the retiring owner David Black is leaving on, and how the voting shares in a new company will be structured.

There are going to be important policy issues that emerge from this transaction. Canadian ownership is the most obvious. Another is the requirement in the Online News Act that the “Google money” —for which Black Press will be eligible at approximately $20,000 per journalist— be spent on news journalism (as opposed to making payments on 10% debt bonds) in “an appropriate” amount. The good news is that the staff are represented by Unifor whose task is to protect journalists, newsrooms and therefore the public interest. 

This does have the déja vu feel of the ugly Canwest/Postmedia story, so stay tuned.

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