The CRTC is shaping the regulatory path for streaming services in Canada in three big files: audio content, video content and media distribution. The public hearings for video and distribution were done before the summer break and this week the Commission kicked off hearings on music streaming and radio.
The Commission has to figure out what more the global streaming services must do for Canadian content, a year after the CRTC levied on the streamers a “5 per cent” cash contribution to Canadian media funds that match those paid by Canadian cable TV providers.
In music streaming, that could mean new requirements for streamer spending on Canadian songs and musicians through a combination of copyright payments and investments in musician development. It could also mean “prominence” requirements giving an extra push of Canadian songs to the attention of listeners, something that the streamers normally do only if music labels pay them.
The pro-CanCon advocacy group Friends of Canadian Media (I’m a volunteer) says the regulatory algebra should be straightforward.
The streamers’ spending requirements ought to be benchmarked at the same level of radio broadcasters’ budgeted spending on Canadian music and local programming, about 30% of revenues according to the Ontario Association of Broadcasters.
With the benchmark set, next would come the detailed arguments about what streamer expenditures on Canadian music count towards the 30%. The streamers will point to their current budget for copyright payments to Canadian musicians whose songs are uploaded to their platforms, but those don’t come anywhere near filling up a 30% bucket.
Then the “discoverability” requirements would get assessed and Friends has proposed that the Commission require the streamers to promote Canadian music with home-screen prominence, e-mailed song recommendations, more song picking of Canadian music in staff-curated playlists and an algorithmic responsiveness to listeners’ Search inquiries for different types of music. The cash value of these prominence measures to Canadian music producers would be calculated and set off against the streamers’ spending obligations.
The streamers are looking for two things and they want both.
They want the repeal of the five per cent cash levy that supports touring and special development projects for Canadian musicians under the stewardship of independent Canadian media funds. The streamers don’t want to pay and have appealed the levy to the courts.
Also they have filled the ears of the Trump administration and US Congress on how unfairly Canada is treating them (Canadian radio broadcasters pay only a one-half per cent cash levy because they already carry the heavy airtime quotas.)
The other thing the streamers want is no Canadian regulation. Or to put that in regulatory vocabulary, they want whatever efforts they care to make to support Canadian music deemed sufficient. It’s worth recalling that Canada is the first country to regulate streaming audio, even the Europeans haven’t done it yet.
This audio hearing is also the opportunity for Canadian radio broadcasters to bang away at air-time quotas for Canadian songs. As well, they want to water down the “MAPL” definition of what counts as Canadian music for the purpose of meeting those quotas.
The dispute about MAPL —which provides a point system for counting song contributions from performers and songwriters—- will drive some headlines if only because Canadian rock star Bryan Adams publicly trashs it. At some point, MediaPolicy will chime in (again) on that topic.
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It is hard to keep up with dizzying pace of the Trump administration’s rolling offensive against mainstream media outlets (excepting Fox News of course).
The FCC Chair’s threats of regulatory action against Disney/ABC and the television stations that carried the Jimmy Kimmel comedy show were successful in getting Disney to kill the show after Kimmel lampooned the President’s response to a question about the assassination of his friend and ally, Charlie Kirk.
A day later, the President said that he expected NBC to fire two more late night comedians, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon. He also promised more FCC regulatory action against television networks if they don’t put more conservative guests on air.
As well, this week Trump filed a $15 billion libel lawsuit against the New York Times. A district judge punted the statement of claim as too long and rhetorical, giving Trump’s lawyers a month to refile.
Stepping back from the daily drama, I recommend Matt Stoller’s most recent Substackthat sees recent developments as the consequence of successive Republican and Democrat administrations allowing rampant corporate consolidation of telecommunications and media over the last four decades.
Stoller argues that repression of free expression was made possible by a consolidated media landscape, compounded by monopolies in Big Tech.
He has a lengthy list of recommendations, combining anti-trust break-ups of major tech and media companies with new regulatory action that favours more diverse ownership of media.
The ambition of his wish list is considerable, perhaps unrealistic, but it looks to be a campaign proposal to the Democratic Party based on the idea the people are ready to break up Big Media into smaller and more lovable independent media outlets.
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Lest this blog space seem to be picking on the Americans, I draw your attention to MediaPolicy’slast post spotlighting an on-air anti-Semitic rant from Radio-Canada‘s Washington correspondent.
Élisa Serret described Jewish influence in American politics as “a big machine” fuelled by Jewish money and claimed that “the Jews run Hollywood” and (a new one) that Jews are the mayors of America’s “big cities.”
There’s also a good opinion piecefrom the Globe and Mail‘s Tony Keller that you might like.
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On Monday, Radio-Canada’s Washington correspondent Élisa Serret, appearing on the network’s afternoon news show “Sur Le Terrain,” was asked by the host how it was that the US government seemed unable to distance itself from Israel following the IDF attack on Hamas leaders who were meeting in Qatar, a US ally.
The veteran host Christian Latreille asked why the US administration “has such difficulty distancing themselves from Israel, even in the most difficult moments?”
Serret’s answer was that it was because of the “big machine” of Jewish influence in American politics.
Specifically, what she said (as translated in theNational Post story) was that “my understanding, and that of multiple analysts here in the United States, is that it is the Israelis, the Jews, that finance American politics a lot.
“There is a big machine behind them, making it very difficult for Americans to detach themselves from Israel’s positions. It’s really money here in the United States. The big cities are run by Jews, Hollywood is run by Jews.”
You can watch the video here. Her broadcast comments were covered by the French language press here and here.
It was a gobsmacking statement. There are pro-Israel lobby groups in the US, as there are many groups that lobby US politicians on everything under the sun. There are Jewish Americans who make campaign donations, as there are plenty of non-Jewish Americans who do the same.
Then’s there’s the canard about “Hollywood” being “run by” Jews and putting the whammy on all thinking Americans. As for Jews dominating the ranks of big city mayors, I think that’s a new conspiracy theory, although demographically fictitious (three out of fifty US big city mayors are Jewish).
The host, an award-winning veteran of broadcast journalism, including the last eleven years as anchor and Washington correspondent, did not interrupt, contradict, or ask Serret to clarify.
After Serret was called out on X, Radio Canadaapologized for Serret’s “stereotypical, anti-Semitic, erroneous, and prejudicial allegations against Jewish communities.”
Serret has been suspended by her employer pending investigation, although she is still listed on the Radio Canada website as the show’s Washington correspondent. Audience complaints will no doubt be filed to the network’s Ombud and we’ll get a published report after he interviews Radio-Canada management.
This is one of the moments where the casual, ingrained anti-semitism in Canada smacks you in the face. As a friend reminded me, Serret “just said the quiet part out loud.”
What he means by that, or what I mean by that, is the matter-of-fact manner in which anti-Semitic conspiracy narratives about Jewish control and manipulation of non-Jews and government are culturally reproduced, century after century, day after day, everywhere.
What happened here is that a well educated veteran journalist carried around these conspiracy theories in her head for years and finally had a chance to offer them on-air as conventional wisdom. The awkward question is whether her views were already known and condoned. As for the host Latreille, he either regarded her comments as legitimate journalism or he froze, which doesn’t say much about his level of professional abilities.
Serret’s assumption that she could state these conspiracies as analysis, in a broadcast to a national audience, suggests she believes her views are widely shared with the audience.
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The Travis Dhanraj story that MediaPolicy followedthis summer took another step forward with the former news host filing a formal complaint against the CBC at the federal human rights commission.
In a previous media interview, Dhanraj’s lawyer Kathryn Marshall described the public broadcaster as “Stalinist” and her client’s complaint as “the CBC’s nightmare.” She promises to disclose “names, receipts and e-mails.”
The Globe and Mail viewed a copy of the complaint and, as reported earlier, the grit of the allegation is an ugly newsroom battle between Dhanraj, host of the Canada Tonight evening show, and “two liberal white hosts” of CBC’s Parliamentary bureau over booking, or not booking, high profile news guests. Dhanraj characterizes the dispute, and how CBC responded to it, as race discrimination.
According to the Globe, the complaint says “the CBC constantly gave leading speakers and guests to shows on CBC News Network that had liberal, white hosts namely [Power & Politics host] David Cochrane and [chief political correspondent] Rosemary Barton…These hosts received resources and opportunities that Mr. Dhanraj, the only brown prime time host on CBC News Network with a solo show representing multiple minority identities, was denied.”
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US mainstream media is typically disparaged on the right as hopelessly woke, liberal and Democrat, but things are looking up for conservatives.
The right-wing Fox News cable television network has been rejuvenated by the resolution of the succession dispute among 94-year-old patriarch Rupert Murdoch’s children. The three older siblings have been handsomely bought out for $4 billion and Lachlan Murdoch, who is currently running Fox, will continue to lead the business. Prior to the settlement, there was speculation that the less conservative heirs might one day reorient the political compass of the news organization.
Meanwhile the venerable CBS news network may be in for a big change. As reported previously, CBS is changing owners and the new proprietor Paramount has given assurances to the White House that it will keep a watchful eye on the newsroom that President Trump disparaged and sued. Now there is a report that Paramount may purchase Bari Weiss’ online news site, The Free Press, and as part of the deal appoint Weiss as head of CBS News.
For those who aren’t familiar with the iconoclastic Weiss, read up. She’s difficult to pigeon-hole but she would readily claim that mainstream media is hopelessly woke, liberal and Democrat.
Still more news, Reuters reports that Paramount is now considering a bid for Warner Brothers Discovery. A merger or acquisition would surely be driven by the opportunity for increasing market share in streaming video. But Warner Brothers also owns CNN News, a charter member of mainstream media and oft impeached on the right as “the Clinton news network.”
Paramount is owned by David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison (the world’s second richest billionaire) who is reputedly a supporter of the President’s, although their relationship bears a strong resemblance to the President’s mercurial alliance with the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.
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There is something special about the ability of documentaries to ignite controversy and the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival is often the well lit stage.
Previously, MediaPolicy commented on TIFF disinviting Russians At War (2024) and this year’s The Road Between Us. The latter was reinvited after public outcry. Barry Hertz has an interview with TIFF festival director Cameron Bailey here.
Now there’s another TIFF controversy. A new film on the making of the iconic Degrassi television series reportedly features former child actors accusing producer Linda Schuyler of exploiting them. Schuyler deemed that categorically false and defamatory, adding that she was never confronted with the allegations or given an opportunity to refute them when she was interviewed for the film.
Her application for a court injunction against TIFF screening the film was resolved after the film’s producers agreed that post-TIFF screenings of the documentary will “add some additional context around the compensation paid to the performers.”
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Hudson was a legendary professor and provocative thinker in telecom and broadcast law who touched the lives and careers of many, many of us who have worked in this space.
With me, it started in his Communications Law class at Dal where gave some personal attention and a boost, arranging to publish something I had written for his class on the development of the CRTC FM Policy. Then, when I articled at the CRTC, he was on sabbatical in Ottawa, and we saw quite bit of each other. Much later I was a guest lecturer for many years in his Communications Law class when he was at U of T.
He used to take summer fishing trips to Killarney Mountain Lodge in northern Ontario and would stop off for a family lunch at our cottage on the way. We loved the stories about his boyhood in South Africa and Saint Helena and, given that island’s connection with Napoleon, my history nut father always made sure to attend.
I was honoured to speak at his U of T retirement dinner at the Rideau Club. It was quite an evening, an all hands gathering of the telecom and broadcast regulatory “clan” there to celebrate and honour his contribution to our little world.
We kind of lost touch when he moved west, but he came back to Killarney for almost six months when he and his wife Alice separated. He said he was writing, but beneath it was clear he was grieving. While he was there, Hatty and I joined him for a few days. Because he strode through the town every day like he was its mayor, the local folks began to call him that! Every once in a while, he would hitch a ride into Sudbury in the lodge’s food truck to get a haircut!
He was a larger-than-life teacher, a powerful mentor, and a wonderful friend. He was an important part of my life, and I will miss him.
Doug Barrett, Adjunct Professor, Schulich School of Business
French journalist unions have won a share of the licensing fees negotiated by publishers with AI companies whom are paying for the news content they scrape off the Internet, according to a report in Nieman Lab.
If not for the French: always the first to fight for content creators. Several years ago, journalist unions got their members a share of the “Google money” paid out in Europe under its news licensing framework in the last few years. Le Monde reporters earn an additional 275 euros per year.
Now that there is a new content licensing deal between Le Monde and OpenAI reporters get 25% of the cash. No reports on how much that is.
By his own description, the judge exercised occupational “humility” by going easy on Google. The most significant thing he had to say, much cheered by Google, was that whatever skullduggery allowed Google to solidify its dominant market position over Search, the competition for the AI market is a horse race.
The judge handed out consolation prizes by requiring some limited data sharing with Google’s search competitors, a remedy disparaged by the CEO of Duck Duck Go as “a nothing burger.”
Also, the judge ruled that Google’s multi-billion dollar agreements with Samsung and Apple for making Google the default search app on their phones can continue. Those commercial agreements were significant in the judge’s earlier finding that Google’s monopoly was illegal.
On the other hand, Google is looking a gift horse in the mouth and will appeal both the limited remedy and the original finding of monopoly.
The Big Tech giant may have escaped the worst consequences of the Search monopoly-ruling but it has other concerns. A US Justice Department anti-trust lawsuit against its domination of digital advertising is well underway and yesterday European Union regulators fined Google nearly three billion euros for the same market domination. The regulator’s fine was immediately entangled by US-EU trade tensions and could be delayed.
Meanwhile Google’s share price bumped 8%, so at least someone is happy.
It’s an elaboration on what it means to defend “digital sovereignty,” a new catchphrase describing a public policy gamut stretching from communications infrastructure to software and the regulation of online content. Or as one Comment column in the Globe and Mail put it recently, more Canadian autonomy over “data, code and compute.”
The basic idea is to recognize the new geopolitical environment in which digital technology is increasingly controlled by states, namely the United States, and becomes more than just a regulatory issue but a matter of economic self sufficiency and political security.
An executive summary of the new Open Letter is here:
I made a needed correction to last week’s MediaPolicy’s report that independent Canadian broadcaster Wildbrain had abandoned its CRTC licenses and pulled its suite of family channels from cable TV.
I reported that Wildbrain is selling out to American interests, which its spokesperson says it isn’t, rather it is taking advantage of its new status as a digital-only broadcaster by removing Canadian ownership requirements from its public share structure.
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I am enjoying a left-wing American Substack I just discovered, The Argument.
It published a poll on political attitudes that was interesting but I am not inclined to just map its findings over to the Canadian experience.
But still, I was left agape by the poll finding that 40% of Kamala Harris voters would consider cutting off contact with a family member “for opposing political views.” Only 11% of Trump voters would do that.
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If you track news reports about President Donald Trump’s tariffs, you may recall that he struck a one-sided framework agreement with the European Union on July 28th. The headline was 15% American tariffs on imported goods arriving from the EU. On the flip side, the US gained tariff-free access to the EU market.
Initially the deal seemed more of an armistice than a fully fledged agreement, since nothing was signed off until a one-page Framework was published three weeks later. Notably there was no repeal of the EU’s digital services taxes on American companies (like the one that Canada scrapped on June 29th).
At the time, the White House made a point of describing EU DSTs as unfinished business while the EU news release stated that the agreement “fully respects the EU’s regulatory sovereignty.”
Now for round two.
Deal or no deal, this week Trump threatened to retaliate against 15 EU nations that maintain DSTs and also denounced as discriminatory the full gamut of EU tech regulation under its Digital Services Act (online harm and safety) and Digital Markets Act (anti-competitive practices). The threats include new tariffs, presumably in excess of the 15% “deal.” Trump also threatened export bans or taxes on American AI micro processing chips.
The European response was defiant: “it is the sovereign right of the EU and its member states to regulate economic activities on our territory, which are consistent with our democratic values.”
As for Trump’s new trade cudgel of export taxes, last month he reversed a Biden-era export-ban on Nvidia’s AI chips destined for China after meeting with CEO Jensen Huang. The New York Times published an illuminating feature story on why.
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I have some updates on recent MediaPolicy posts.
Earlier this month I wrote about the US State Department claiming that press freedoms are threatened in Canada. As I said at the time, the State Department’s Report was performative, written for the benefit of a majority-Republican Congress. If you found that post interesting, you’ll find Hugh Stephens’ bluntly worded post to your taste.
I’ll just add one more citation to my own post about North American press freedoms: this past week President Trump again invited his appointee as FCC chair to de-license ABC and NBC local news stations on the grounds that “they give me 97% bad news stories” and act as “an arm of the Democratic Party.”
MediaPolicy also posted an interview with Senatrice Julie Miville-Dechêne, the sponsor of Bill S-209 that will impede kids from accessing online porn by implementing age verification technology, an increasingly common public policy in the US and the UK.
In the interview, Miville-Dechêne expressed doubts about the wisdom of extending age verification technology to social media apps. The state of Mississippi is not so doubtful and implemented a parental consent requirement for minors under age 18 with age verification of adult users as enforcement.
Last week the news sharing app Bluesky, a progressive alternative to the X app, responded by exiting that deepest of red states, Mississippi. A Bluesky statement described age verification regulation as too big a hassle for too small a company.
Perhaps the size of the “Mississippi progressive” market was a factor too.
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As the fortunes of broadcasting businesses rise and fall, certain bellwether events stand out among the steady drumbeat of quarterly and annual reports.
Here’s two you may not have noticed.
Québecor took the occasion of announcing its fall television programming line-up for its TVA network to make another plea for regulatory relief from the CRTC.
What popped out in CEO P-K Pélédeau’s press release was that the combined revenue of TVA’s specialty and conventional television businesses has crossed the profitability line into negative territory. “In absolute terms, TVA and its specialty channels have lost $34.9 million in television advertising revenue over the past three years.”
The MTM numbers from 2023 indicate that Québecor’s revenue situation is typical: as a group, Canadian broadcasters boasted a mere 1.6% net profit on total broadcaster revenues. The new CRTC chart (2023-24) below suggests it has become a net loss.
That calls into question the “regulatory bargain” cited by the Commission in 2016 that committed the major networks to paying for money-losing news programming out of the robust profits earned in specialty television, thanks to the majors holding Canadian distribution rights to high-margin American programming.
The other ominous development for conventional broadcasting was the announcement by Wildbrain that it is exiting broadcast television and is removing the restriction on its non-Canadian shareholder voting that is required by broadcasting regulations. Wildbrain is (was) the only independent Canadian children’s programmer that operated Canadian children’s channels (Family Channel and WildbrainTV) until the CRTC blessed the decisions by Rogers and Bell cable to drop them. Steve Faguy’s blog has more.
[Update and correction: the original publication of this post inaccurately stated that Wildbrain was “selling its growing online business to American interests.”)
The prevailing financial and audience trends in Canadian broadcasting were updated in the CRTC’s new annual report (with now year-old data).
I was very much saddened to read an obituary for Hudson Janisch who is well known to those in the telco community. He taught me Public Law in first year law school and made quite an impression. A great teacher and a mensch.
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The ka-ching is the responsibility of the Google-appointed gatekeeper, the Canadian Journalism Collective, to decide who gets what.
The conservative website The Hub gets $22,248 and is donating it to the March of Dimes charity. The Western Standard, operated by former Wildrose Party MLA Derek Fildebrandt, is down for $68,377. Rebel News didn’t apply.
None of that is surprising. The Hub and the Western Standard were previously vetted by the Canada Revenue Agency as Qualified Canadian Journalism Organizations, becoming eligible for federal news subsidies or reader tax credits (but not necessarilycollecting them). Rebel Newswas not.
An unusual outcome of the Canadian Journalism Collective’s distribution was that the CJC approved the licensing cash for the current affairs website The Conversation (sub nom the Academic Journalism Society) after the CRA rejected it as ineligible for the QCJO subsidy program. The CRA’s rejection (on the recommendation of its independent advisory panel) was upheld by the Federal Court of Appeal in 2024.
The difference in result appears to be how the CJC is interpreting what it means to produce “original news.” That’s a requirement under both the CRA guidelines for QCJO and the Online News Act regulation 2023-276 for Google news payments.
But the difference seems to be that CRA guidelines explicitly require first-hand news gathering “such as independent research, interviews, and fieldwork. For example, a news article orreport about an event would be original if it is written or reported by a journalist and is based on first-hand knowledge that journalist gained by conducting independent research, attending or witnessing the event, or interviewing people who organized, attended, or witnessed the event.”
The CJC guidelines are far less precise. Tersely, “news content should be original, produced on an ongoing basis.”
I did my best to get the Canadian Journalism Collective to explain how it arrived at a different assessment than the Canada Revenue Agency of whether The Conversation is now producing original news with first hand reporting, or if the CJC rules are somehow more forgiving.
All I got was that the CJC’s eligibility criteria was applied and the news content submitted by The Conversation, like all applicant news organizations, will be reviewed each time there is a new cash distribution.
The Conversation’s parent organization, the Academic Journalism Society, has an unusual structure. Its newsroom consists of staff editors who collaborate with university professors who do the writing, based on the academic work of others or their own scholarly writing.
AJS funding comes 80% from participating universities and 20% from readers, philanthropists or government programs. But its financial structure is not an obstacle to qualifying for either QCJO or Google funds. It still comes down to whether the content is original. The QCJO program requires first-hand reporting but it’s unclear if the Google cash distributed by the CJC requires it. In the end I couldn’t get a satisfactory answer.
It’s important to get that answer, in fact it’s vital.
If there is no requirement for first-hand reporting activity, then news organizations are either aggregators of first-hand reporting done by other newsrooms and contribute nothing of their own, or they are opinion websites.
Opinion is cheap to produce and plentiful in supply. Do we need to underwrite opinion writing, or in the case of the Online News Act, devote Parliamentary bandwidth to wresting cash out of the hands of Big Tech?
In a sea of online opinion, commentary and blather, talk is cheap. Meanwhile the far more costly endeavour of news gathering is the value proposition that journalism offers to the public. Looking in the mirror, MediaPolicy.ca isn’t “original news” and deserves no subsidy or special favour.
And there are more good reasons to draw the line between news gathering and opinion.
The Online News Act was opposed by some as an unwarranted state intervention into the ecosystem of online information that Google and social media platforms have provided.
Sure, the monopolistic platforms Google and Meta exploit their market power in content distribution, stiffing news organizations on fair (or any) licensing payments.
But to critics of the Online News Act, this was justified by the overriding public interest in free information, benefiting both liberal democracy and public education.
On the other hand, what the EU, Australia, and Canada did with their legislative intervention on behalf of news organizations was to carve out news journalism from the unregulated Internet as a special case because of the public interest in, well, political and educational information.
As I said, news gathering is the value proposition of journalism.
I could be wrong of course. When Scott White moved on from his role as editor of The Conversation a year ago, he published acri de coeur on LinkedIn. The gist was that the CRA ruling against his news outlet was narrow minded and rooted in legacy thinking.
In an academic article published earlier this year, Nicole Blanchett and her co-writers suggested that “rigid journalism definitions risk excluding hybrid platforms like The Conversation Canada, limiting innovation and diverse voice in public discourse.”
Not to be coy about it, the authors speculated that the troubles encountered by The Conversation should be seen through the lens of legacy media defending its turf:
Answers to these [research] questions were primarily analyzed through boundary work. Boundary work is at play “when the goal is expansion of authority or expertise into domains claimed by other professions or occupations” (Gieryn, 1983, p. 791). Specific to journalism, it includes “expansion” of journalistic practice that can lead to the attempted “expulsion” of outside actors or inside agitators, as a means to protect the professional “autonomy” of journalists (Carlson, 2015, p. 9). As media startups look to attract the same eyeballs as legacy organizations, “efforts to restrict or extend access to technologies, reporting resources, or press credentials are all acts of boundary work that are simultaneously material and discursive in nature. As such, talk about journalism cannot be isolated from practice and context” (Carlson & Lewis, 2019, p. 132).
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The Canadian Pressreported last week that the US State Department has an opinion on Canada’s respect for the independence of the press and freedom of expression. And it isn’t good. In fact, we got the MAGA raspberry.
The US produces “country reports” every year to satisfy US Congress that its foreign aid is going to the right place or, in our case, that we’re a suitable trading partner.
Some context first: the Report is a compliance document for Congress. It was not written for us. If the Report’s allegations against Canada happen to line up with Congressional trade complaints against the Online Streaming Act and the Online News Act, that’s part of the compliance.
Trade irritants or not, the Report picks up the vocabulary of Canadian opponents of public broadcasting, federal aid to journalism and any manner of mandatory payments to support Canadian news journalism such as the Broadcasting Act and the Online News Act. It’s “discriminatory,” it’s “censorship.”
The State Department’s special contribution to the debate is it’s view that our federal government’s $10 million enrichment of existing Canadian media funds to support news reporting in minority communities smacks of “DEI” and discriminates against white journalists.
Not that we needed the State Department to remind us, but the Report goes on to list incidents that occurred in 2024 which, in Washington’s opinion, raise “significant human rights issues including credible reports of serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom, including unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists and activists.”
The Report gets one right, off the top, by reminding us that in January 2024 the RCMP arrested Indigenous journalist Brandi Morin when she refused to leave the federal police force’s inflated “media exclusion zone” at an Indigenous protest she was covering for Ricochet Media. What the Americans might have added was that this is hardly the RCMP’s first offence on media exclusion zones. The Crown withdrew the charges and the RCMP’s Civilian Review committee took Morin’s side and an apology was issued.
Another incident cited may or may not clear the bar of a “credible” report of press freedoms violated, that will be up to a judge if lawsuits proceed.
The State Department takes at face value the allegations raised by Rebel News against a venue landlord and a Liberal MP that Rebel was wrongly arm-twisted into paying $37,000 in security costs for a MAGA-themed rally it organized in Toronto, headlined by the US President’s son.
Canada doesn’t do country reports on American freedoms. It’s probably just as well. But the United Nations does. All UN signatories to the Convention of Human Rights participate in a five-year “peer review” of each other that includes press freedoms.
Here are a few items that might come up:
During street protests against the immigration-related arrests in Los Angeles in June, an LAPD officer deliberately aimed and shot an on-camera news journalist with a rubber bullet, hitting her in the foot.
The Federal Communications Commission initiated an investigation of Media Matters, a left-leaning critic of right-wing media, Elon Musk’s X platform and the Republican Party. A federal judge issued an injunction against the investigation on the grounds of 1st amendment rights of free speech.
US Congress withdrew all federal funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, accounting for 15% of the overall financing of NPR and PBS. House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene stated that Congress was acting because of alleged liberal bias.
While running for President, Donald Trump proposed that the FCC pull the broadcasting licenses of CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS because of their news coverage of him (although the FCC only licenses local stations, not cable news).
The President also sued CBS, alleging that a 60 Minutes interview with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris had been edited and sanitized to her advantage.
The Trump lawsuit resulted in a $16 million settlement without any admission of wrongdoing from the network.
However credible news reports suggested that the FCC might have struck down the $8 billion sale of CBS-parent Paramount to Skydance were it not for a last-minute agreement between Paramount and the FCC that the new owners would scrutinize the CBS newsroom for “multiple viewpoints” and abolish all DEI hiring and personnel policies. According to the President, Paramount committed to providing him with $20 million in free advertising and public service announcements although that was refuted by Skydance.
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As noted above, the State Department Report repeatedly criticizes the Online News Act and the Canadian Press story on the Report states that “Prime Minister Mark Carney indicated last week he is open to repealing the legislation.”
The CP and Post descriptions of Carney’s thoughts on repeal are based on a question and answer session with Kelowna Now.
Here is the reporter’s question:
“Bill C-18 stands in our [publication’s] way to get back onto Facebook and Instagram, are the Liberals looking at an alternative or rescinding that so that we can get that news [about wildfires] back on those platforms?
And here is Carney’s answer:
I’ll say this Steve thank you for the question. First thing and one of the things that we have done —and I will answer your specific question, but let me make a point on something we have done, and you may not like this part of the answer but I am going to give it to you— which is that one of the roles of CBC-Radio Canada is to provide unbiased, local, immediate information particularly in regards in situations such as you are referring to. And that’s why we made the commitment to invest and reinforce and actually change the governance of CBC-Radio Canada to ensure that they are providing those essential services.
Now to your specific question. Personally, this government is a big believer in the value of what you do. I’m going to use you as the representation in local news. And the importance for ensuring that that is disseminated as widely and as quickly as possible. So we will look for avenues to do that and I understand your question and it’s part of our thinking around that, thank you.
If we parse closely, the important nuance here is that Carney said he is “looking for avenues to do that and it’s part of our thinking around that.”
Grammatically, the “that” refers both todisseminating local news (especially in light of his comments about CBC-Radio Canada) and “in response to the question” which refers to “rescinding” and/or “alternatives” (or “avenues”). It’s hard to tell what he meant or whether he intended the ambiguity.
If Trump puts enough pressure on Carney, would the Prime Minister cave like he did on the DST ? Unlike the unimplemented DST, the $100 million in Google money is the bird in hand, not in the bush. The mandatory news licensing payments are already in the bank accounts of over a hundred Canadian online news outlets.
I have a long article to recommend: a New York Times feature that tells the story of Donald Trump’s lawsuit against Paramount’s CBS, the FCC’s approval of the Paramount-Skydance merger and the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show on CBS.
The reporting is based on embargoed access to Paramount owner Sheri Redstone. It’s sympathy for Redstone is not subtle, but it’s an informing read anyway.
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I can be reached by e-mail at howard.law@bell.net.
This blog post is copyrighted by Howard Law, all rights reserved. 2025.
Senatrice Julie Miville-Dechêne does not give up easily.
The senator appointed by Justin Trudeau in 2018 is now engaged in her third try to get the pornography-regulating Bill S-209 passed through Parliament before it gets killed off by another election call. Her previous bills died that way: S-203 by the 2021 election and S-210 by the 2025 election. Both times, her Bill passed the Senate but got a frosty reception from the governing Liberals.
Described in MediaPolicy’s post earlier this week, Bill S-209 would introduce age verification technology to force pornography websites to screen out children under 18 years of age so that impressionable kids don’t view, and internalize, violent sexual behaviour. Adult access to pornography remains uncontested.
The issue of children viewing porn is definitely down her feminist alley as the former head of Québec’s Council on the Status of Women, but the Senator works hard and champions many underdog and progressive causes.
In 2022 she and fellow Senator Paula Simons fought relentlessly (but ultimately not successfully) to carve out Canadian YouTubers from the scope of the Online Streaming Act. In vindication, the CRTC later agreed with them and exempted YouTube videos from broadcasting regulation for the foreseeable future.
In 2023 Miville-Dechêne initiated legislation in the Senate that requires Canadian governments and large companies to report on their global supply chains so that the federal government can enforce prohibitions against imports of goods manufactured by forced and child labour. The Liberals played ball on that one and it was sponsored in the House by Toronto MP John McKay and it passed with broad support.
Her pornography bill has already stirred the Kraken of a regulation-free Internet, so if S-209 does make it to a House of Commons Committee in the next few months, expect some debate, especially about age verification technology that could also be used to stop children from opening social media accounts, were the federal government to consider legislating that.
Media Policy: It’s a little unusual for a bill to have the support of the Senate and the opposition parties, but not the government. What can you say about any discussions you have had with the Justice Minister?
Julie Miville-Dechêne: Not much, I had a confidential discussion very late in the game [in 2024] with [former] minister Virani. But let me say that in general, my conversations with Liberals were mind boggling.
I don’t think they knew what pornographic sites have become, hardcore and violent, so our conversation was difficult. It’s not ‘70s era erotica, a form of sexual liberation. They brought up the importance for young people searching for their identity or sexual orientation to have free access to porn sites, as if seeing violent stuff was the path to sexual identity.
There’s a whole generation at risk, we need to get something done. Studies show a correlation between viewing and harm. Kids think this is what sex is all about. The British Commissioner for children did surveys and found that 47% of youth aged 16 to 21 stated that girls expect sex to involve choking.
MP: So the former Prime Minister didn’t see it that way?
JMD: In talking to media in 2024 he called S-210 a Conservative Bill which would do shady things with personal data. It was easier I suppose than to state that the sponsor was a feminist, an independent senator. The Trudeau government never proposed any improvement to the Bill as they do with private member bills that they like. On the other hand, there was support for the Bill from all the other political parties, not just the Conservatives, but the Bloc and the NDP as well.
MP: What was it about the government’s own online harms Bill C-63 that you thought did not adequately address underage access to hardcore porn?
JMD: I was very disappointed. Nowhere in their Bill did it say that, to minimize harms to minors, age verification or age estimation is expected. Nowhere. There was only an indication that digital operators must adopt “age-appropriate design” for their services. That’s not specific enough. In the UK’s Online Safety Act, social media platforms and large search engines must also prevent children from accessing pornography and material that promotes or encourages suicide, self-harm and eating disorders. This has to be kept off children’s feeds entirely. By comparison, the Liberal Bill C-63 was vague and weak.
MP: An important practical consideration for your bill seems to be the effectiveness of age verification and estimation technology. The most recent technology doesn’t require personal information or facial recognition but claims to be able to use videos of human hand movements. Privacy lawyer David Fraser dismisses age estimation as “magic fairy dust technology.” What is the current state of the age verification/estimation technology as you understand it?
JMD: It’s obviously improving fast. I did rely on the expert on privacy matters, Privacy Commissioner Phillipe Dufresne. Because I introduced two similar bills on age verification since 2020, M. Dufresne took it upon himself to research the matter and speak with his counterparts in other countries. He testified on my Bill before the House of Commons Committee and proposed stronger safeguards
I took his advice and I rewrote section 12 of the new Bill S-209 where Parliament instructs the government on what standards it should enforce for age verification technology. The bill says that government can only approve a verification method that is “highly effective,” operated by a third party and not the pornographers themselves, collects solely personal information strictly necessary for age estimation purposes, and requires the destruction of the data once age verification is completed.
We are not re-inventing the wheel here. Germany has been verifying age for a decade on national porn sites and it’s working fine. Around twenty US states are doing age verification. Also, age verification is already happening in Canada when gambling, buying alcohol or cannabis over the Internet.
Age assurance technology is getting better. I have added age estimation to age verification in the bill because facial age estimation is now more precise, two years plus or minus, and there are also other emerging technologies like estimation of age through hand scanning which is said to be 98% accurate. No identity card is needed.
As you know, the UK started age verification and age estimation on July 25th of this year and are engaged in five million new age checks. Opponents are claiming it is a disaster because a few sites were blocked without reasons. I would argue that tech platforms are the ones who have to adjust themselves to block only what is in the law. Some might say they are acting upon an interest in the law not working.
MP: Let’s say the technology is not here yet but reasonably close to happening, does this mean the government might not implement this law until cabinet is satisfied with the technology?
JMD: I would say at this point it is more a question of transparency than technology, in the sense that the public should know what government will ask age verifiers to do in terms of privacy before authorizing them to check the age of Canadians. Right now, the bill says it must be implemented in a year after Royal Assent, but I expect that will be discussed in the House review of the Bill.
But Europe and countries like France, Spain and the UK are already in the process of implementing age assurance, why should we be the only country to think the technology is not ready? I think this debate should be put in the context of protecting children as soon as possible, because harm is being done now.
In Canada, on this issue I have support from feminists, Christian groups and worried parents. It goes beyond left-right I think.
MP: Seems so. A Leger poll conducted last year says that public support for your bill is high. But that support might change if administrative overreach ends up including something as mainstream as hot sex scenes on Netflix or HBO. Is the definition of pornography in the bill —“dominant characteristic,” “sexual purpose”— too broad?
JMD: I don’t think it’s that broad. Depiction for a sexual purpose of a person’s genital organs or anal region and breasts must be the dominant characteristic of the film or video. It’s the same elsewhere. In the UK, pornographic material is defined as ‘primarily intended for sexual arousal’. But for movies or series on Netflix, we also have the “legitimate purpose” exemption in section 7 (2) which states that no offense will occur if there is a legitimate purpose related to arts, education, science, or medicine. Movies and television series are generally considered a form of art.
MP: Okay, but I was just watching an HBO show —I would definitely not consider it pornographic in any way—that had a teen aged sex scene, body parts under clothes, and they acted out a spin-the-bottle sex game where the girl choked the boy as he masturbated. Is that “pornography” or is it exempted as “artistic” erotica?
JMD: I don’t think a single scene meets the test of ‘dominant characteristic.’An expert scholar Janine Benedet wrote a brief to the House committee hearing on S-210 that stated: The scaremongering that accompanies any attempt to define pornography in legislation is depressingly familiar. I have over the years heard predictions that any legal interventions in this area would result in the “banning” of works such as Lolita, American Psycho, Fifty Shades of Grey, and now Game of Thrones.
MP:The US Supreme Court just ruled 6-3 in favour of a Texas age verification law not unlike S-209. Even the dissent was limited to the “level of constitutional scrutiny,” meaning how much of an intrusion on free expression or privacy is too much. If that means age verification laws take hold in the US, one will think that it will here too?
JMD: It’s interesting question, because historically, the American courts have upheld the 1st Amendment of their Constitution, the freedom of expression, more strongly than in Canada.
So, the latest decision, last June was an important one: the Texas government had a legitimate interest in preventing minors’ access to porn and the law is appropriately tailored because it permits age verification of users through established methods.
Opponents of age verification will point to the fact that the US Supreme Court is now controlled by a majority of conservatives. True, but in first instance, it was a conservative trial judge who blocked the Texas Law, and in appeal court, the conservative justices were divided for and against age verification. So, it is an oversimplification to say that this is only a conservative issue.
MP: I believe US Supreme Court Justice Alito observed that 15-year-olds are far more tech savvy than their parents?
JMD: He’s right on this. So, you can imagine I was flabbergasted to hear technology expert Michael Geist in a Senate committee stating the responsibility of protecting children from porn with parental controls is solely with parents, like him, not with public authorities. Professor Geist stated: I believed then and believe now that addressing the issue is my responsibility, which includes education, frank conversations and an assessment of whether to use internal blocking tools or filters.
Obviously, not all parents are as knowledgeable as Professor Geist, and this is why the State has long imposed age verification in stores selling alcohol and cigarettes.
MP:Many US states and the UK are looking at age verification for viewing all social media content, not just pornography. What’s your view of that issue?
JMD: There are pressure and policy being brought forward in Australia and France to restrict social media for children and permit only teenagers of a certain age. So yes, it is a trend, not only pushed by the conservatives. I’m still reflecting on the issue. I find it is more complicated than age verification to limit exposure to porn because social media is also a form of socialization for kids. But addiction to social media exists, harm exists, so it is not an easy proposal. A Québec commission recently recommended restricting social media to 14 years and over.
MP: David Fraser is on YouTube describing you personally as “oblivious” to freedom of expression concerns and that supporters of your legislation are “finger waggers and pearl clutchers.” What’s your view of the freedom of expression and privacy interests raised by this kind of regulation?
JMD: I’m not a puritan if this is what he means, far from it. I’m a feminist and I was a public proponent of strong sexual education when I was head of Quebec’s Council on the Status of Women.
I’m a strong believer in freedom of expression. I was a journalist for 25 years, and then the ombud for news and current affairs at Radio Canada, so I have reflected and written on these questions. I don’t believe an age verification for porn sites which takes seconds unduly limits the freedom of expression of adults. It’s a very limited restriction. Adults can still access the sites. Asking an adult to identify themselves in a sex shop has never been seen as a limit to his freedom of expression. I also think no right is absolute. Here, we have to balance the inconvenience of proving you are an adult with protecting all children from harm.
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The Toronto International Film Festival may impale itself on yet another disinvitation, this year it’s the documentary “The Road Between Us: the Ultimate Rescue.”
The documentary is directed by a Canadian, Barry Avrich and tells the dramatic story of retired Israeli general Noam Tibon driving his car straight into the Hamas killing fields on October 7, 2023 to save his family under siege by Hamas terrorists in their safe room in kibbutz Berri. CBS 60 Minutes did a television segment on this in 2023.
According to news reports, TIFF claims there are outstanding copyright liabilities that the documentary producers failed to clear regarding livestream video of the Hamas assault. TIFF also told the documentary’s producers that it was concerned about anti-Israeli protesters disrupting TIFF (though it now denies this was the reason for the disinvitation).
TIFF encountered the same controversy last year by cancelling Russians At War, a documentary focussing on Russian soldiers participating in the invasion of Ukraine. The Ontario provincial educational broadcaster TVO then followed suit and cancelled its own distribution of the documentary.
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The National Postpublished a report suggesting US Congress is egging on the White House for trade war with Canada over Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act. The story was based on the Post‘s access to an unpublished letter sent to the White House from 18 of the 26 Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee.
The Post story quotes Republican allegations that our CRTC is unfairly favouring Canadian broadcasters and discriminating against American and other foreign streamers.
I’m not going to dive deep into that complex issue here: it’s complex because the CRTC’s assessment of contributions to support Canadian content is always an apples and oranges exercise.
Differently situated Canadian and foreign media companies contribute in different ways either by paying in cash –to Canadian media funds that offer subsidies to creators of Canadian video and audio content– or in kind, by making available and promoting Canadian content on their own platforms.
It’s fair to say that the CRTC provided the Americans with a bullseye target by exempting Bell’s streaming platform Crave from the same cash contributions as the Californian streamers, but that’s a small part of the overall picture and Bell sponsors far more Canadian programming on Crave than Netflix, Disney+, Paramount+, AppleTV and Amazon Prime combined.
In any event, the CRTC is in the midst of assessing the cash and kind contributions of foreign streamers and so the Congressional objections are premature.
But clearly the Congressional report is an early volley in the coming trade confrontation with the US over the renewal of the CUSMA trade deal, including Canadian culture.
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Reuters has published a story based on a confidential cables from the US State Department instructing US diplomats in Europe to the rattle cages of national governments over European regulation of Big Tech.
The disgruntlement is both US tech opposition to EU’s measures taken against online harms and misinformation as well as the alleged stifling of the MAGA political narrative in mainstream media.
The MAGA-tech strategic alliance fits comfortably with trade confrontation in which the US claims to be the aggrieved party, perhaps a signal that the recent tariff armistice between the US and the EU is temporary.
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On the topic of Big Tech’s political action in foreign countries, I note that the US Chamber of Progress (ah, the branding!) is setting foot in Canada by hiring a Canadian policy director.
The tech titans already lobby the federal government and make representations to the CRTC both individually and through the Washington-based CICA and Digital Media Association. So presumably the Chamber of Progress is coming here to do something a little different. The organization has been accused in the past of “astroturfing” for corporate campaigns. Or perhaps the Chamber is seen as a better lobbying fit for a Carney government.
In any event, we already have an authentically Canadian campaign organization that does similar work in pushing back on regulation of the Internet —-Open Media—- with very little money from Big Tech.
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Here are two recommendations, one joyful the other not.
Ezra Klein has an insightful podcast on “when is it genocide?” featuring legal expert Philippe Sands. Be prepared to invest a lot of time (almost two hours!) and at the end you may still feel that the arguments are incompletely litigated. But I think you will be better educated (I was) about the history of the UN Convention on Genocide, the legalities, and their application to Gaza.
The other is a repeat recommendation of my favourite show, Crave’s Empathie, thanks to the announcement that a second season of the funny-sad drama set in a Montreal mental health centre has been green lit.
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