Catching Up on MediaPolicy – Only conservative voters want to defund CBC – the galling ingratitude of the National Post – censoring ‘Russians at War’ – Bell sells its MLSE stake to Rogers

From Russians At War

September 19, 2024

Angus Reid has published a helpful public opinion poll in anticipation of a federal election likely to be won by Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives.

The poll focusses on Canadians’ gut feelings on eight major governing issues including defunding the CBC. The poll surprisingly ignores the carbon tax and climate change. But it includes questions on a bundle of fiscal issues such as budget balancing, income tax cuts, and increased defence spending. 

The Canadian voter — the fictional voter representing aggregate opinion— has sniffed out Poilievre pretty well. He’s presumed to have a secret agenda. That’s probably because it’s awfully difficult to square the circle of budget balancing, reduced taxes, and increased defence spending unless you are a Ronald Reagan Republican (who famously ran up the national debt). The virtual voter long ago figured that out. 

The poll also establishes some wedge issues. Only Conservative voters support defunding the CBC, closing Canada’s borders to immigrants, mass layoffs in the federal public service, and encouraging more privatization of health care.

Assuming the Liberals, Bloc and NDP are game to exploit that voter divide, they might make a lot of noise on the campaign trail about a Conservative “hidden agenda” on those issues.

***

Last week there was a minor kerfuffle on social media after Liberal MP Taleeb Noormohamed chastised National Post Senior Editor Terry Newman for having the temerity to twitter troll his colleague, Liberal Immigration Minister Marc Miller.

Noormohamed’s brain fart was to scold Newman for her taunts as so much ingratitude, considering that the Liberal-authored federal journalism subsidies keep the Post afloat:

Conservatives and others opposed to journalism subsidies as a threat to the independence of the press had a field day and were all over his statement.

My guess is that Noormohamed let his emotions get the better of him out of loyalty to a colleague and the guilty admission that, yes, Liberals are so committed to saving a mainstream media that is essential to democracy that they will even fund that bullhorn of a Trudeau-derangement syndrome news outlet, the National Post.

Nobody honourably resigns from anything anymore, but Noormohamad either has to apologize or resign from his portfolio as Parliamentary Secretary to the Heritage Minister, the cabinet member responsible for the federal news funding programs.

Since neither will happen, I recommend an alternative remedy that he be required to read aloud in the House of Commons from the following essay on press freedom penned by New York Times publisher AG Sulzberger.

***

The documentary Russians At War produced by Canadian-Russian filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova about the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine has roiled nationalist passions and cries for censorship. 

Trofimova’s embedded reporting on a platoon of Russian soldiers souring on the war was denounced by many, including Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, as “Russian propaganda” that ought to be repressed, stripped of federal film subsidies, or outright censored. Conservative Party free speech crusaders are conspicuously without an opinion on the matter. On the other hand, the freedom of expression organization CJFE came to the defence of distributing the film.

Several mainstream reviewers saw the film and categorically rejected the Russian propaganda label and agreed that it lived up to its billing as an anti-war documentary.

Myself, I haven’t seen the documentary. I spoke to a couple of friends about it. One, a reporter, reminded me that embedded reporting gives the audience a front-row seat to reality with great emotional impact, but embedded reporters are limited in their ability to sharply question news subjects holding loaded weapons in their grasp. Better not to be the “ded” in “embedded.”

Another, a filmmaker, thought that Trofimova might have executed some better context and editing in a couple of scenes where Russian soldiers are conceded unfiltered speech, but that overall Russians At War is an anti-war documentary.

***

We haven’t heard much from the Liberals on when they will push forward Bill C-63, the Online Safety Act they tabled during the spring session of Parliament. MediaPolicy previously commented on the bill here, here and here.

My free political advice is the Liberals should split the Bill and proceed only with the online safety features. The hotly debated anti-hate provisions that increase criminal penalties for hate speech and re-establish human rights litigation can go into the Liberals’ next election platform for Canadians to pass judgment.

There’s also some merit in watching what the Americans are doing. The trumpeted success of the US Senate passing an online harms bill to protect kids is now getting watered down in the House, according to The Washington Post, possibly an outcome of heavy lobbying by Big Tech companies.

***

Any time a Canadian media company begins talking up an innovative or start-up idea, it swivels my head.

Here’s a couple.

Jeff Elgie’s Village Media has done a soft launch of his foray into the Toronto market for digital news. The full-on launch of the TorontoToday.ca website will be in October. At the moment, he’s aggregating reader e-mail addresses and pushing out a daily news e-mail update that links to news and information content published on his competitors’ websites. That will change next month to his own reporters’ content.

Elgie has expanded Today’s initial target audience in the condo-heavy downtown core to go a little further north and west (now capturing yours truly in a modest semi-detached).

He’s up against some stiff competition for eyeballs in the Toronto Star, BlogTO et al. His journalism will be more hyperlocal than the Star and is likely to be better than BlogTo and the various neighbouhood print monthlies (and as a resident I’d be grateful if they raised their game in response).

It will be interesting to see how Elgie innovates with information items and listings that draw in more readers, like cheaper (than the Star) obits or his Spaces social media product that invites readers to moderated community chats. He’s the most innovative publisher in the Canadian digital landscape, so TorontoToday is a space to watch.

Then there’s the announcement of Postmedia Studios creating a partnership with the Los Angeles based media creation company Contend. The product is video entertainment, drawing on Postmedia’s IP and historical archive.

The words “Postmedia” and “innovation” in the same sentence, you ask? There’s not a great deal of reveal in the press release, so it’s another space to watch.

***

There are so many ways to tell the news story of Rogers $4.7 billion buy out of Bell’s share of MLSE, the operator of the Toronto Maple Leafs, the NBA Raptors, the Argonaut CFL club and the MLS club Toronto FC.

There’s crystal ball gazing into what Rogers intends to do with more control over its sports businesses and the media content it generates (even though Rogers conceded Bell another 20 years of access to its current share of games).

Another angle is what if anything Bell is signalling about long term plans for its media division. That’s a question that keeps getting asked every time big blue sells radio stations or lays off television employees.

There’s no clear answer to that question: Bell CEO Mirko Bibic passed on the opportunity to make the announcement into a “retreating from media” story, although he certainly didn’t describe broadcasting assets as a core business. 

The Globe’s Tim Kildaze provides a good explainer on Bell’s decision to pay down debt and prop up both the BCE share price as well as its ability to meet its high dividend payout.

***

As media-playing smartphones have long served as a second television, radio receiver and music stereo, I keep track of the never-ending debates over Canadian cell plan prices. 

There’s been a lot of regulatory action. The federal cabinet has ordered the CRTC to kick butt. The Commission has responded with its “MNVO” plan which forces the majors to rent out their infrastructure to price-piranha independents. 

The same federal cabinet waded into the Rogers-Shaw merger last year and cleaved Shaw’s Freedom Mobile from the deal, now sold to Quebecor as a disruptor in the BC and Ontario markets.

You may also follow the spirited debates about what cell phone prices really are. The singular focus on basic plan price, or sometimes total monthly bills for all services, is ripe for cherry picking the numbers.

To place plan price within its full value package, the majors must be presumed to deliver quality. After all, what’s the point of tolerating market power in telco ownership if their customers aren’t getting the premium brands’ promise of great customer service and reliable connectivity?

So here’s my recent experience as a mobility customer. 

I felt I was paying too much to Bell. Despite the trumpeted price-war, Bell raised prices this spring. I was up to $61 per month for cross-Canada calling, 15 GB of data monthly, and an additional $13 for the Apple Watch connectivity (a second wireless line). 

It was August with back-to-school pricing in full swing, so I went to Freedom Mobile which might as well be an indie in Ontario. A great price of $30 per month (US calling and lots of data included) but another $30 for the Watch line. Fair enough, I don’t think Freedom is targeting the Apple Watch crowd.

So I went down the street to Rogers. 

The sales guy quoted $55 for the phone plan, Canada and US calling, 100 GB monthly, and $15 (first 24 months free with a $70 connection fee) for the Watch line. Beat Bell by some margin. 

Okay, sold to the man in the red golf shirt.

That’s when the quality and service nightmare began. 

The Apple Watch line wouldn’t activate. It took Rogers a week to fix it: six hours of my time spent in queues and five chat calls with tech support before they figured out it was a coding problem for customers bringing their own phone. Once they figured it out, Tech Support messaged me it was “fixed” but neglected to tell me to do a factory reset on the watch. Another hour of my time in a queue to get that key instruction.

Then two other things immediately happened that can’t be coincidental. 

My iMessage no longer synchs properly across my four Apple devices. 

And suddenly I’m getting at least two scam texts daily (with Bell it used to be two per week). 

Price ain’t everything. 

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