This week MediaPolicy posted a report on a complaint filed directly with the CRTC by Honest Reporting Canada and the CIJA citing the CBC’s news coverage of Gaza as systematically anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. I don’t offer an analysis of their as yet unrebutted allegations.
But as audience complaints normally go first to the office of the CBC Ombudsperson I took the news item as an opportunity to provide examples of how the Ombud has navigated a steady flow of pro-Israel and pro-Palestine allegations of bias and bad journalism. It’s educating stuff.
By revisiting my earlier post here, I want to add another Ombud review that I overlooked.
It was a pro-Palestinian complaint about the CBC’s televised profile of the late Yahya Sinwar (before he was killed in combat by the IDF).
Sinwar was the Hamas mastermind of the October 7th massacre of 1,200 Israeli civilians, 250 hostage kidnappings and the solicited Israeli hunt and kill operation that resulted in perhaps 50,000 dead Gazans, innocents and terrorists alike.
The allegation was that the CBC report unfairly rendered Sinwar as a sinister and “psychopathic” figure without a matching effort to portray Israeli leaders and actions in a similar vein. (The “psychopath” label was applied by an Israeli journalist, not the CBC, the commentator acknowledging the term was too crude to be useful).
I found the Ombud’s response to the complaint compelling.
Most of all I appreciated his reminder that accusations of “one-sided” coverage need to be taken in the context of the CBC’s body of reporting work, not just one story:
Your third primary complaint was that doing this story represented a double standard, that Israeli officials were not scrutinized or described in similar ways as Yahya Sinwar. In this case, I must pause and say that in my experience, people’s perceptions of media coverage are greatly influenced by their own point of view on the issues at hand.
In recent months, I have received hundreds if not thousands of complaints from people who would second your assertion that CBC privileges the Israel perspective and undermines the views of Palestinians. But I have also received hundreds if not thousands more from people who want to know why pro-Palestinian views and claims are accepted without challenge, and Israeli officials are challenged and doubted at every turn.
I am not trying to turn your review into a broader thumbs up or thumbs down on CBC’s coverage of the Middle East. But I am saying that there are endless examples in that coverage of Israel being criticized, challenged or questioned. And that while you are entitled to conclude that the profile of Yahya Sinwar is evidence of a double standard, I do not share that view.
Although there may not have been precisely the same type of profile done about Benjamin Netanyahu or other Israeli leaders, there have been many reports over time that have included highly critical commentary about them. It was the fact that CBC had done so little reporting on Yahya Sinwar that made this profile valuable to the audience.
The strength of the CBC’s Ombud’s open door policy for audience complaints is its thoughtful and educational analysis of good (or bad) CBC journalism, both as a body of newsroom reporting work and story by story.
I won’t litigate in this space my personal support for Israel, or the caveats to that support, because this blog is about MediaPolicy, not Middle East policy.
But since October 7th I have perceived a widespread ignorance and lack of education about a hundred years of conflict over a contested homeland.
As in all things, we must do own research, a lot of it in this case.
***
The CRTC’s hearings on regulating video content kicks off on March 31st. It’s just published a third party research report that will add polling and focus group feedback to the public record.
The commissioned report was authored by the Ottawa-based Phoenix SPI that has also done work for the federal Privacy Commissioner.
The Phoenix drill-down is about audience views on Canadian programming, more specifically the genres of drama and news. The report combines a 1200-person poll with responses from 90-minute focus groups. The polls oversampled from rural, northern and official language minority communities. The focus groups targeted the same communities but also urban residents and members of equity seeking groups.
The polling numbers sometimes conflict with previous data culled from other sources. For example, outcomes from the Phoenix poll identify a higher market domination of video consumption by streaming platforms (73% of Canadians) with only 44% on cable television (whereas CRTC and Statistics Canada record about a 60% coverage of Canadian households). Whatever the correct figures are, the market dominance of US streamers should drive an even greater sense of urgency at the CRTC.
Since the Commission wants to know what kind of video programs Canadians “primarily watch,” it learned in this Phoenix poll that the leading genres are serial comedy/drama (68%) and news (61%). Happily, those are the CRTC’s top priorities for extra attention in content funding and distribution.
The poll also generated numbers on which objective and subjective elements of a revised definition of a Canadian television program were seen as important.
The poll appears to support the Commission’s bent towards the participation of Canadian producers, talent and crews ahead of identifiable Canadian themes, although it’s a nuanced difference and not black and white:
There was focus group feedback on Canadian programming that came out a little garbled.
Canadian shows were appreciated as good quality, dismissing the stereotype of CanCon mediocrity. Feelings of pride, connectedness and a certain disdain for the sensationalism and narrative choices of US programming were pointed out.
But then a significant number of voices downplayed the importance of filming Canadian content on location in Canada. This “apparent contradiction” suggested that only quality Canadian content mattered to the participants, not shooting location. The US streamers might take some encouragement from that, but tens of thousands of Canadian television workers will not.
As for news programming, the poll offered surprising results on the choice of video platform, ranking online sources (combined text, video and audio) far ahead of television. This flatly contradicts recent polling. The discrepancy may end up being important to policy choices made by the Commission.
In the end, these polling numbers on news journalism paint a familiar picture:
Canadians rank “trust” as the overwhelming priority in choosing their news sources and give high approval ratings to their news outlets for accurate reporting. In the focus groups, the most commonly trusted news source was CBC/Radio-Canada, followed by the mainstream private media. In fact the participants “considered public broadcasters more trustworthy because they are publicly funded as opposed to privately owned.” Haven’t heard that for a while, have you?
Canadians have a tepid approval rating for the overall news ecosystem that includes both the sources they choose (and presumably trust) and those they don’t.
***
In the fall of 1985 a friend of mine dragged me to the Horseshoe Tavern in downtown Toronto to see a band I had never heard of. “You have to see these guys,” he said.
The band, Blue Rodeo, was unbelievably good. Rock-country fusion, just my thing. ‘Why are these guys still playing the Horseshoe and how have they not got a record deal?’ I wondered.
Forty years, sixteen studio albums, eleven Junos and a lot of bar venues later, the group is the subject of a new documentary streaming on CBC Gem, Lost Together.
“Blue Rodeo showed that other model,” offers band friend and former NOW publisher Michael Hollett. “Just work your ass off in Canada and you can have a great life as a musician.”
***
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The big media news of the week was Heritage Minister Pascale St.-Onge presenting a 10,000-foot “proposal” to better fund and govern the CBC. MediaPolicy offered an overview here.
The Minister’s recommendations have yet to be endorsed by the Liberal cabinet or contenders to replace Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister. As for St.-Onge, she’s quitting politics.
Her proposal stole headlines with its bold plan to double Parliamentary funding from $33 to $62 per Canadian, a number she walked back immediately to $50, phased in over five years.
Pierre Poilievre was grateful for the opportunity, messaging that the Liberals were promising “another one billion dollars of your money” for the CBC. He then squandered the point with populist blarney to the effect that the money was “an extra incentive [for the CBC] to campaign day and night to re-elect the Liberal government to a fourth term. A reminder to believe nothing you see or hear on CBC.”
On the other hand, the leading candidates for the Liberal leadership have some thinking to do on how to respond to their colleague’s big idea.
The McGill poll from October pegged 78% majority support for maintaining the CBC in the face of Poilievre’s threat to defund. Importantly, that 78% was tied to “changes” at the CBC (at some point we ought to poll what Canadians mean by changes).
But other results from the McGill poll are sometimes overlooked. Thirty-four per cent of the same pool of respondents said CBC needs more reliable funding, unchanged from previous polling in 2021. Perhaps surprisingly, the 34% is not skewed by regional differences but support for the CBC and better funding is higher among non-Conservative voters.
The political challenge for the Minister’s plan is that it’s front loaded with money, with the changes to come later. That’s why the pressure is on CBC/Radio-Canada CEO Marie-Philippe Bouchard to describe the changes.
The political challenge for defunder Poilievre is that Donald Trump has put the CBC top of mind for many Canadians. We’ll wait for some polling on that.
***
Two weeks ago I posted an update on the CRTC’s regulation of foreign music streamers and, as promised, the Commission has announced a June hearing on audio services, radio and online.
Parliament handed the Commission a laundry list of tasks in implementing the Online Streaming Act, the most pressing of which is what’s expected of Spotify and the American music streamers and whether the declining Canadian radio industry can catch a regulatory break.
The Commission’s Notice of Consultation sports the usual hints of what it’s already thinking before the hearings begin. Its code words are “our preliminary view,” “we consider,” and “we propose.”
Here’s a rundown:
As the Commission ruled in June, the streamers are going to pay five per cent of Canadian revenues into funds for Canadian musicians and radio news. Perhaps to shore up its legal flank in the face of the streamers’ upcoming court challenge this June, the Commission plans to impose more significant cash contributions on Canadian radio networks that take in at least $25 million in annual revenue (the same earnings threshold as the Commission is applying to the foreign streamers).
CRTC Figures identify five radio broadcast groups exceeding $25 million in annual Canadian revenues
As for smaller radio broadcasters, the Commission seems ready to eliminate their half-per cent of revenue (0.05%) cash contributions to musician development funds. The current radio airplay quotas of 35% to 65%, however, are slated to remain.
The national pastime of debating the “MAPL” formula for a Canadian song that qualifies to fill airplay quotas will be revived but the Commission seems committed to the modest changes it proposed in 2022. Rules on Canadian co-writing of music and lyrics will be loosened. The Commission doesn’t seem convinced as yet that Canadian studio producers ought to join artists and songwriters in the talent club that satisfies the airplay quota.
The Commission is interested in strengthening on-air exposure for emerging Canadian artists and is open to a 5% airplay quota for artists in the first four years of their recording careers.
Similarly, the Commission is interested, in fact very determined, to introduce a 5% airplay quota for Indigenous music.
In a typically opaque discussion of news programming, the Commission declares that “news is a priority” (indeed the Online Streaming Act says so) but unlike other policy items it offers no blueprint for how to make the priority into a reality on air.
But the most difficult policy question is how to close the gap between radio broadcasters and online streamers with respect to the prominence and consumption of Canadian songs.
As noted by the Commission, CanCon consumption is a mere 10% on streaming platforms operating in Canada, a far cry from the 35% to 65% radio airplay quotas. The consumption of streamed French language music is 8.5% in Québec.
What’s unmissable in the Commission’s public notice is how little it makes of these consumption outcomes, so dismal that they are directly proportional to the Canadian share of the continental market.
It’s safe to say that if the Commission was planning anything bold to address the outcome gap, it would have said so. Instead it says “more information is required to fully understand how online services can facilitate [CanCon] discoverability.”
***
The Liberal-tormenting True North has rebranded itself as Juno News and its boss Candice Malcolm had Pierre Poilievre on her show for a 37-minute video interview last week.
The Malcolm interview is in the vein of the Conservative leader’s famous chat with Canadian expat Jordan Peterson: it falls short of being a softball news interview, it’s more of a tag team narrative (for example, Malcolm responding to Poilievre’s comments as “excellent”).
So naturally Malcolm introduced the topic of independent journalism.
What was interesting was that Poilievre passed on the opportunity to reiterate his plans for a scorched earth repeal of federal aid to journalism and said Canadians should wait to see his election platform.
Having said that, he expressed concern that some news organizations had been denied eligibility for federal aid for politically motivated reasons.
All of this is difficult to read, but there seems to be some kind of policy cogitation going on behind the scenes and we will, as the Opposition Leader suggests, have to wait to see his election platform.
***
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A few weeks ago the CBC seemed doomed. Pierre Poilievre’s defunding promises were (are) real, and as the then Prime Minister-in-waiting said, “I can’t wait to defund the CBC.”
Now that promise is an albatross draped around the Conservatives’ neck.
An October poll pegged popular support for the CBC at 78% of Canadians. The big caveat to that number was that most of the 78% were demanding an improved CBC as the price of their support.
The Liberals’ third Heritage Minister in their nine-year run, Pascale St.-Onge, is finally addressing this public desire, five years after the government’s expert committee told cabinet how to accomplish it through amendments to the Broadcasting Act.
On Thursday, St.-Onge unveiled a “proposal” to revamp the public broadcaster’s mission, funding, and governance. The quotation marks here signify that the Minister is challenging Liberal candidates for the Prime Minister’s job to say yes.
It’s a sign of the weird political moment we are in that a Minister who has already announced her decision not to run in the upcoming election was green-lit by a lame duck PM Justin Trudeau to propose, not announce, detailed legislative action on a key election issue to those contending to replace him.
And now the fate of the CBC will be an elevated election issue, of that we can be reasonably certain. While the CBC has always been emblematic of cultural sovereignty, we are no longer concerned just about cultural sovereignty. In Trump’s new world order, Canadians are thinking about sovereignty-sovereignty.
St.-Onge was not subtle in making the link, repeatedly, between the importance of the CBC to Canadian democracy and the ability of US social media platforms to flood our zone with election interference, as easily achieved as writing new algorithm code.
As for her conflicting calls for national unity on supporting the CBC and suggestions that Pierre Poilievre’s blood lust for killing the CBC is unpatriotic, that’s politics folks. You can’t say he didn’t ask for it.
Her proposal responds to the undisclosed advice of her expert committee but also the five public recommendations put forward by the Yale Committee in January 2020.
Here’s a quick run-down of her proposal:
The headline grabber is a phased-in doubling of the CBC’s $1.4 billion annual Parliamentary funding from an unofficial $33.66 per Canadian to an official funding formula of $62.20 per capita which is the benchmark funding within the G7 (see the chart below). For that kind of money, she understated, Parliament would “expect a general increase in performance indicators.”
The companion to the funding change is to abolish advertising in public affairs programming, recommended by the Yale Committee and included in the Liberals’ 2021 election platform.
There is no recommendation to mirror UK legislation that grants the BBC a multi-year charter inking a mandate and guaranteed funding, but St.-Onge suggested that legislating a funding formula that is independent of Parliamentary budgets, like Old Age Security or federal-provincial transfers, ensures funding is relatively insulated from politics. The legislative guarantee would be subject to five-year reviews by MPs.
Per capita funding of public broadcasters, c. 2022
Not pointed out by the Minister, the doubling of funding would restore historic levels of CBC finances prior to the Harper, Chrétien and Mulroney cuts that fell most heavily upon the CBC’s regional and local television and radio programming. The $62.20 is eye-popping, but the Minister had it walked back to $50 before she took her first question from reporters.
That’s the money. Now for the accountability. St.-Onge’s pitch acknowledged the range of heated passions about the CBC, the in-vogue vocabulary for those strong opinions being “public trust.”
She proposed some widely recommended legislative changes starting with the CBC Board of Directors hiring its own CEO, instead of being hand picked by the Prime Minister. As for the Board itself, she wants to entrench in legislation the practice of appointing from an independently generated list.
While this governance reform is important to any well run public broadcaster, it will elicit yawns from most Canadians. That’s why St.-Onge’s key recommendation of “citizen participation” in governing the CBC is such a missed opportunity:
“As a public broadcaster, CBC/Radio-Canada should reflect the lived experiences, languages and needs of Canadian citizens. To facilitate this responsiveness, the Minister would propose to amend the Broadcasting Act to require that the Corporation include public consultation on issues related to its priorities and strategies in the context of its corporate plans. The amended Act could require CBC/Radio-Canada to indicate in its corporate plans how it satisfies the public consultation requirement, including the results and ways in which these results influence its decision-making and operations.”
In other words, the CBC would listen to Canadians and then write its own reviews, (sometimes known as an annual report).
A bold move (says me) would have been to enshrine a triannual Assembly of Canadians of undetermined numbers who would spend a week in Ottawa debating observations and publishing recommendations for the public broadcaster’s CEO and Board of Directors.
Such a citizen’s town hall should not pull any levers — otherwise it will end up a mock Parliament and tool of disruption— but it would be hard to ignore the people’s thoughtful and well-reported judgment on whether the CBC had in fact “shown a general increase in performance factors.”
There’s not much more the Minister, or a future Parliament, can do to re-engineer the CBC. Much of the really hard work is getting the programming strategy right and setting the right cultural tone. That is the job of the independent CBC Board and its new CEO, not Parliament.
For that, the clock is already ticking.
***
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Before catching up on MediaPolicy, there are two posts I offer up to you.
The first is my speech to the Digital Media at the Crossroads conference from last weekend. It’s a well salted explainer of the CRTC’s implementation of the Online Streaming Act on music streaming, its first efforts having drawn court appeals, trade threats and the launch of the “Scrap the Streaming Tax” campaign.
The Commission is going to announce a further public consultation on audio (including radio) this week.
The US digital giants offshore revenue from their Canadian operations (and do the same in other OECD nations) in order to minimize corporate tax.
The DSTs enacted in Canada and Europe are a response to that tax avoidance.
Former US President Joe Biden recognized that when he negotiated a tax treaty to fix it but US Congress refused to ratify it.
The tech bros appear to have backed the right horse.
***
The Public Policy Forum just published a report on local news journalism, The Lost Estate. The report comes out of the Michener Foundation’s conference last October. Written by journalism A-listers Alison Uncles, Ed Greenspon and Andrew Phillips, the report covers familiar ground about the extent of Canadian news deserts and news poverty.
The Report’s public policy recommendations have evolved beyond those recommended in 2017 by Greenspon’s Shattered Mirror study and the roster of federal programs aiding news journalism enacted since then by the Trudeau Liberals.
Here they are:
Work harder at getting philanthropic foundations, community organizations and individuals to utilize current tax write-offs for donations to news journalism.
Make it easier for news organizations to go non-profit, unlocking those charitable donations.
Mirror these contributions to the operational costs of running newsrooms with a public-private-philanthropic capital investment fund for community rescues of failing news outlets.
Legislate a requirement that moribund media organizations must give a four-month public notice of closure so that local investors can save the outlet (this would require both provincial and federal action).
Redesign Ottawa’s Local Journalism Initiative that funds 400 reporting jobs by matching federal funding to charitable fundraising, something that the recipient news organizations would be responsible for undertaking.
Redesign the federal reporter subsidy by requiring staff retention and rewarding new hiring.
Introduce an advertiser tax credit for expenditures in local media.
Encourage more governments to increase their advertising expenditures in local media.
If there is a theme in these recommendations it is to juice the market-facing incentives in current programs while not abandoning government aid.
As an appendix to its Report, the Forum provided an Ipsos poll covering some familiar questions about public attitudes towards news journalism.
The results confirm a key trend in public opinion: mainstream media is highly trusted and information carried over social media is not.
On the other hand, two questions related to government subsidies to independent news journalism elicited concern that state sponsorship “might” stoke bias and a lack of independence from government.
The most trusted news sources are in fact the most subsidized by government, so give the public credit for agreeing with MediaPolicy: subsidies are a difficult to measure risk to public trust but so far not a harm.
***
I sometimes close this post by recommending content, but consider this more of a referral: the Hollywood-crafted and star-studded Super Bowl ads you didn’t get to see because the NFL sold the Canadian programming and advertising rights to Bell Media’s TSN.
Nobody quite does goofy the way that Hollywood can.
Are you not entertained? You decide.
***
Okay, changed my mind, I will recommend something serious.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only Canadian listening to Trump’s inauguration speech who noticed the President’s reference to “Manifest Destiny,” a long active but recently dormant part of America’s imperial DNA.
Here’s a good piece on that from the US National Public Radio news site.
***
From The Lost Estate Report:
FOR PHILANTHROPY
Expand issue definition: Philanthropy is growing rapidly in the United States around local news. In addition to the small handful of U.S. foundations that are interested in journalism and democracy, a second wave of foundations and donors that were funders of other issues — including domestic violence, hunger, homelessness and poverty — have come to realize they’re not going to make any progress if there’s no local news. Canadian philanthropists should follow suit.
Step up community foundation involvement: There are more than 200 community foundations across Canada, as well as thousands of private foundations. They are just now beginning to channel their impressive fundraising acumen towards local news initiatives: The Winnipeg Community Foundation, for instance, has funded reporting on religion by the Winnipeg Free Press, and the Toronto Foundation is one of several foundations that help to fund The Local. Community foundations should be encouraged to support local news coverage as part of their wider missions to encourage social vitality, community health and local democracy. More media organizations should be knocking on those doors, and more community foundations should be stepping up.
Help enable new local news models, including not-for-profits and charities: Major French-language news outlets such as La Presse and Le Devoir have become not-for-profits and then used that status to apply for Registered Journalism Organization status to take advantage of money from foundations and individual donors. Only four media organizations outside Quebec have done the same; that represents a major missed opportunity to develop a new source of revenue to support local news. RJO status would mean new startup ventures could accept philanthropic support or present an opportunity for community-based fundraising to claim back news outlets from the corporate chains that have abandoned local coverage.
Foundations can help with this step. Achieving charitable status can be complicated, but foundations can offer guidance on how to navigate the rules around registered philanthropic organizations, such as setting up “friends of” charities that can more easily raise money from supporters. If more outlets had charitable status, more foundation help could be unlocked for local journalism.
FOR GOVERNMENT
Reconceive the Local Journalism Initiative: Report for America in the United States provides a good model of a partnership with strategic intent that builds long-term capacity rather than plugging short-term holes. Its stated mission is to “strengthen our communities and our democracy through local journalism” and it funds reporters in local newsrooms for three-year terms, rather than the single year or less of the LJI. Among its other virtues: It provides training for journalists, unlike the LJI; its grants get smaller each year, shifting more onus each year on the news organization to finance its staff; and it helps news organizations learn how to fundraise within their communities. A homemade “Report for Canada” would roll in LJI funds to match those invested by philanthropy. This would provide the added governance benefit of distancing the program from the government of the day and placing authority in an independent board. Public contributions, as with academic granting agencies, would come in the form of multi-year funding.
Mandate a sales notice period: Communities should have an opportunity to rally support for news outlets that are threatened with closure by corporate owners. Specifically, there should be a notice period, perhaps 120 days, before a news operation can be shut down or sold to a non-local buyer. That would give communities time to gather support for local ownership. To help promote local buyers, governments can explore policy interventions that could include training and development, support with restructuring operations, access to expert resources, navigation support of federal and provincial programs, as well as low-cost or no-cost loans.
Tie the Labour Tax Credit to jobs: The LTC is the most important government program supporting news operations at the moment, worth an estimated $67 million in the 2024-25 fiscal year.[42] It should be continued, but with important changes. Organizations should not take money and cut content; the tax credit should carry an incentive to grow newsrooms and should be tied to the increase or preservation of editorial positions and other resources necessary to produce local content. The credit would be higher for those who increase their spending on journalism.
Drive local advertising with a tax cut: Along the same lines, local advertisers should receive a tax credit for spending their ad dollars with independent, locally owned media. As advertising dollars continue to flow to foreign-owned digital sites, depriving local media of funds they need, a tax credit would give advertisers a greater incentive to vote local while leaving the decision about which outlets get support to them, not government. Equitable tax credits for advertisers have the additional benefit of being more likely to withstand shifts in the political winds. That said, local advertising only helps if Main Street can withstand the competition from distant digital retailers, which presents a different set of challenges.
Direct government ad dollars to local news: Governments should earmark a portion of their substantial advertising budgets to local publishers and broadcasters. Ontario is showing the way by requiring that 25 percent of government ad budgets, including spending by four large provincial agencies, be directed to “Ontario-based publishers.” This program, which went into effect in September 2024, is explicitly aimed at “helping to support these publishers and their workers, who are creating local news content for people across the province.” Brought in by a Conservative government, it could be worth some $50 million a year to Ontario publishers. The federal government, other provinces and territories, and municipalities should follow suit. Governments are already spending substantial amounts on advertising and marketing. It makes no sense for them to talk about the need for vibrant local democracy and a healthy local news environment while they continue to funnel their own ad dollars to foreign-owned social media sites.
FOR PHILANTHROPY AND GOVERNMENT
Encourage capital formation: The best way to strengthen local news is to help it remain in local hands in whatever form entrepreneurs believe will work best in each community. In many cases, this will require capital. Programs to encourage capital formation for this purpose would go a long way to preserving the public good that is local news. A sustainable investment vehicle, co-funded by the federal government, provincial and territorial governments, the philanthropic sector, as well as NGOs, could draw lessons from government programs like the Social Finance Fund[43] and the Canada Rental Protection Fund,[44] where federal investment complements other public, private and philanthropic money. The government should explore any mechanism that makes crowding-in more effective, by utilizing a “first-in, last-out” methodology. For philanthropic organizations engaged in social impact investment, local journalism is a perfect match. The same is true for governments that have already put in place measures to encourage employee ownership or support.
***
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Last weekend I did a little speed-dating at the 2025 Digital Media at the Crossroads conference. I had fifteen minutes to give an update on what’s up with the CRTC’s regulatory path for music streaming.
That wasn’t a lot of time. Things like “should we overhaul the ‘MAPL’ eligibility formula for Canadian songs?” just fell by the wayside. But I hope the conference delegates found it a useful summary.
***
I think the reason that I was invited here today is that I wrote a coupleof blogs back in fall in response to the music streamers’ petition campaign “Scrap the Streaming Tax.”
That campaign was launched by Digital Media Association, the American lobby organization that speaks for the foreign music streamers Spotify, Amazon, Apple and Google’s YouTube. The face of the campaign was Bryan Adams, our own legendary rock star.
In the next 15 minutes I’m going to give you a brief overview of what might happen in the CRTC’s implementation of the Online Streaming Act, Bill C-11 for the audio industry, in particular the music streamers.
Last June the Commission handed down a cash levy of 5% of Canadian revenues to the music streamers — much to their dismay— and next month we expect a notice of consultation that should put discoverability of Canadian music squarely on the table.
That’s assuming an election doesn’t sideswipe the Commission’s work.
I don’t have to tell any of the radio broadcasters in the room that audio is the neglected child of the broadcasting system, a much smaller ecosystem by revenue than its big brother television and video streaming.
It’s difficult to find an explicit policy discussion of why we regulate the broadcasting of music, whereas there’s plenty of that kind of public debate about television.
What video and audio have in common of course is that Canadian music, like Canadian television or any other kind of mass media, swims up current in a continental market dominated by large foreign-owned media giants.
So we regulate in order to carve out an adequate space in the Canadian mass market for Canadian songs, composed and performed by Canadian artists.
I suggest that means we are not content that a handful of high achievers like Drake, The Weeknd, Justin Bieber and Tait McRae have become international superstars.
For Canadian music to have real prominence and presence in our domestic market we have to nurture a musician middle class in Canada, which is a small market, and especially Québec, which is an even smaller market.
Ditto, ditto for Indigenous music.
If that’s why we regulate, we then have to consider what we’re up against in terms of the distribution of music in Canada, and the distribution of the money made from that.
Streaming is now the dominant distribution architecture .
And streaming is run by an oligopoly of foreign media companies.
Let’s just look at a couple of slides here.
You’ve probably seen this one: streaming saved the music industry from piracy and financial oblivion… and then became its master.
Streamers are now the retail face of the recorded music industry and the ingestion point for two thirds of its income.
When streamers distribute that revenue they keep a third for themselves, half goes to labels and artists, and 15% goes to songwriters.
Canada is a rich market for a small country. Canadian consumers are significant streaming adapters on a per capita basis.
Two-thirds of Canadians are on streaming platforms, listening to about 15 tracks per day. Ninety per cent of Canadians under the age of 30 are signed up for streaming; it’s clearly the future of the industry for as far as we can project.
The streamers themselves may not be a tech bro oligarchy, but they are an oligopoly. And Spotify stands first, with twice as many paid subscriptions as its fellow giants.
What’s more, the streamer oligopoly negotiates licensing fees with another cartel, the major music labels.
Such is the market power in the industry that carves up the revenue pie, which arguably results in more financial precarity for artists and songwriters than might otherwise be the case.
As I mentioned, Canada hits above its weight in music consumption but also is an overachiever in producing global superstars.
Check out this Spotify Top 10 artists list.
But the question for Canadian media policy is not whether a handful of Canadian stars become rich and famous, it’s whether we are filling the music distribution pipeline with enough good music to achieve an adequate share of the domestic music market for our own artists.
In short, the question is whether we can nurture a Canadian musician middle class where enough artists can make enough money over a long enough time to develop their craft and their audience.
Broadcasting regulation and adjacent public policy like the Canada Council address this problem on both the supply side and the demand side.
What do I mean by that?
We stimulate audience demand through radio airplay quotas and financial support, usually through media funds like FACTOR, for sound recording, live performance and marketing.
We stimulate the supply of musician income from music sales and licensing, radio royalties and support for other income generating gigs.
One of the frustrating things about public policy in this area is that for a variety of reasons we don’t have good data on musician incomes.
But we do have data on consumption of Canadian music, and when it comes to consumption on the biggest platform, music streaming, it’s underwhelming to say the least.
This slide shows that Canadian musicians have only a ten per cent share of the Canadian music streaming audience.
Here are two benchmarks for that 10%.
The unregulated market in theatrical release films has infamously resulted in a three per cent (one per cent in English Canada) revenue share for Canadian films in our own domestic market.
At the other end, the CRTC’s radio airplay quotas range from 35% to 65% airplay for Canadian music or French language music.
There’s enough information about artist compensation from music streaming that we can estimate that a “musician” —which is a business with multiple artists and mouths to feed— has to stream about 6 million songs annually on Spotify to earn $100,000 USD from all income sources.
And if you’re wondering how many Canadian bands achieve that 6 million, and who they are, you are out of luck. As I say, data poverty is really holding back public policy here.
The Canadian economist Gerry Wall looked into this a few years ago for Heritage Canada and concluded that, putting aside a few superstars, not enough Canadian musicians were making enough money. He concluded that ‘there has been a “hollowing out’ of the middle class of music creators.’
Then we have the dire case of Québec and French language music. If ever there was a canary in the coal mine for Canadian culture, the dramatic under consumption of French language music on streaming platforms would be it.
The Canadian francophone market is obviously small at 8 million in population and some argue that the small market problem is compounded by streamer algorithms that are believed to confer prominence on songs that have reached at least one million plays, again a small market challenge.
The outcomes couldn’t be worse.
Eight per cent of streamed music in Québec is French language.
The highest ranked streamed French language song, in Québec, is in 49th place.
Let that sink in.
I asked the Digital Media Association about that, and the publicist hired by DIMA for Scrap the Streaming Tax campaign issued a statement saying….that the global export market for French language music is strong and that the top French language song in North America belongs to Patrick Watson, a well-known Québécois artist.
As for the 8% outcome for French language music streamed in Quebec, the publicist opted not to return my email.
How will our broadcasting regulator respond to these issues, the under consumption of French language streamed music and the broader problem of nurturing a Canadian musician middle class?
As you know, the Commission handed down a five per cent cash levy on the streamers this last June.
I believe the streamers were genuinely gob smacked by this.
The Canadian content cash levy on radio broadcasters is a tenth of that, at 0.5%.
The music streaming tax in France is 1.2%.
The streamers should have expected something more than the half-per cent that radio broadcasters pay, since radio broadcasters make such dramatic airplay contributions to Canadian music.
And the streamers also knew that Sirius Radio, which has much softer CanCon airplay quotas than conventional radio, pays 4%.
But it didn’t assist the streamers that at every opportunity they have told Parliament and the Commission that they have no interest in taking any additional steps to make Canadian music more prominent in their playlists and streaming channels.
The trouble is, Parliament ordered it so.
Here’s the text of section 3(1)(r) of the Online Streaming Act, an amendment sponsored by the Bloc and supported by the NDP and the Conservatives in committee.
It says music streamers mustuse any means at its disposal to recommend and promote Canadian songs.
I’d suggest to you that “any means” includes integrating a higher prominence for Canadian songs into playlist algorithms.
But the CRTC, perhaps unintentionally because they were preoccupied with YouTube videos, appeared to rule this out within hours of the Online Streaming Act becoming law in April 2023.
However, the federal cabinet left the door ajar on this in its Policy Direction to the CRTC in November 2023.
The streamers’ pitch on its current efforts to promote Canadian songs and Canadian artists is that if you ask for Canadian, you will get it.
They will curate all-Canadian playlists.
They will promote Canadian new releases.
They will engage in musician development, sponsorship, and workshops.
And they want those efforts to be the sum total of their promotion of Canadian content.
But under no circumstances do they want their proprietary and secret algorithms to be regulated for outcomes or anything else.
That’s obviously a hard-line position, and perhaps that’s to be expected in the first sovereign country to propose regulated prominence outcomes in music streaming.
This is not like video streaming, where the EU plowed the regulatory furrow before we did.
It’s too bad we are so entrenched at this moment.
There do seem to be win-win regulatory solutions.
For example, Spotify has a third-party research paper posted on its website that suggests that reserving a prominent space on the home screen for local content works well for local artists and delivers better results for the streamer objective of keeping people listening longer and without interruption.
There are obvious discoverability tools that the Commission could order including home screen prominence for local content and Canadian airplay quotas for the DJ-curated channels that the streamers carry, for example Apple Music does a lot of this.
But moving the needle of Canadian music consumption, especially in Québec, may require more dramatic measures.
So if we ever get to this Commission consultation on audio streaming I would expect a showdown on song curation and recommendation algorithms.
In the meantime, the streamers are engaged in an all-out campaign to sabotage Canadian regulation.
As you may know, they are challenging the 5% levy in court. They are running their publicity campaign in Canada.
My guess is they have given Conservative MPs an earful by now and are hoping Pierre Poilievre will become Prime Minister and “Kill Bill C-11.” And they are running to US legislators in Congress to put the Canadian Online Streaming Act in the trade war crosshairs.
There’s so much drama and chaos in our relationships with American media companies and American Presidents, I wouldn’t want to predict what happens next. The velvet gloves are off.
Like everything else in broadcasting regulation, we take it day by day. 365 days per year.
***
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As a federal election gets closer, the fate of the CBC gets nearer.
The worst thing that can happen to the CBC (and the 78% of Canadians who support it) is that Pierre Poilievre gets elected to majority government. He will indeed defund the CBC, the only question is how quickly and completely.
The second worst thing that can happen is that the Conservatives don’t come to power and Ottawa hits the snooze button on re-engineering the public broadcaster. Recall, the McGill poll from November 2024 reaffirmed broad public support for the CBC but only if it addresses its major criticisms.
The public debate about those criticisms of the CBC, and what to do about them, finds commentators speaking from two different viewpoints. No, not for and against. But rather “news” versus “entertainment.”
Most of the high profile commentators are journalists who focus on the democratic imperative of saving CBC News in a shrinking journalism ecosystem. After all, about a third of Canada’s 10,000 professional journalists are employed by the public broadcaster. The journalist corps representing the other two-thirds, employed by privately owned media, is steadily shrinking despite the federal government financial aid that Poilievre also says he will defund.
There’s been a useful public debate on how CBC News could do the trifecta of improving programming, defending its audience share (at risk among young Canadians) and mollifying its critics in the political class.
Chris Waddell and Peter Menzies, both interviewed here on MediaPolicy, have offered useful ideas on how to do it. Their views were supplemented last week by the journalist and policy analyst Ed Greenspon and independent (and very much ex-CBC) news producer and writer Tara Henley.
If there’s at least one common theme to all these opinions, it’s to decentralize or re-regionalize CBC News. As it happens, this rhymes with the talking point that the new CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard is making by extolling “local” and “proximity” as the CBC’s greatest virtues.
Decentralizing CBC News would address at least two problems: first, give Canadians more of the local news they want. Second; mitigate the hinterland anger directed at a richly endowed public broadcaster that is dug deep into the Toronto streetscape where its main newsroom is steeped in a metropolitan bias, the natural outcome of where most of its employees live.
Another common theme among the news-first proponents is the lack of interest in preserving or improving CBC’s entertainment programming. Waddell and Henley want to toss it overboard entirely and cry uncle to the US streamers, while Greenspon just doesn’t mention it at all.
The CBC is the nation’s biggest platform for Canadian entertainment content, in particular television drama and documentaries (leave aside CBC sports television programming for now, that’s a different discussion).
The private Canadian broadcasters are spending less and less on “Programs of National Interest” (PNI)—-don’t be distracted by the awkward CRTC jargon—- for a variety of macroeconomic factors that can’t be bargained or reasoned with.
The ad market for television has deflated.
Canadian broadcaster revenues and profit margins have been falling steadily because of cord-cutting and the success of foreign television and music streamers.
Corus Entertainment (operator of StackTV and Global TV) is almost insolvent.
Bell Media runs its news division at a massive loss and is barely profitable only because of an entertainment portfolio anchored by its long-term deal to retail HBO programming in Canada.
Indeed, the trends are all going in the wrong direction.
Spending on Canadian TV dramas by the English language Canadian networks has shrunk 65% (in real dollars) over the last decade according to a recentstudy commissioned by the Director’s Guild.
Meanwhile the streamers have set a new, stratospheric bar in rising per hour production budgets. Canadian broadcasters can either respond with bigger budgets (they can’t or haven’t) or allow the gap in on-screen production values to widen. (The APTN/CBC/Netflix co-pro North of Northcould not have been made without the Netflix investment that made filming in Iqaluit possible).
Enter the CRTC’s white-flag-of-surrender idea of abolishing the regulatory category of “PNI” in hopes that when it orders Netflix, Amazon and Disney to make “Canadian content” the streamers will by default make dramas. Meanwhile, abolishing PNI for Canadian broadcasters would mean Bell, Global, Rogers and Québecor can opt to shift their spend from money-pit dramas to profitable unscripted television and lifestyle programming.
Quite apart from whether it’s a good idea to outsource Canadian television dramas to American studios looking to sell back into their own market, the question is whether Canadian broadcasters would ever make a drama series again if the CRTC doesn’t require it.
Those who were around to win the regulatory battle for Canadian television drama back in the 1980s will have an opinion on the matter.
If we have to take a defunded English language CBC out of the funding equation for Canadian television drama we subtract a programming budget north of $120 million annually, as the public broadcaster is the nation’s biggest buyer of Canadian dramas.
Bell spent $70 million on English-language Canadian drama in 2023-24 (its budget was $75 million ten years ago) and Corus spent $37 million (it was $96 million as Shaw and Corus combined in 2014).
Friends and foes of the Online News Act Bill C-18 will say the predictable things. What a spineless, election-motivated reversal.What a foreseeable debacle.
News Media Canada took the opportunity to hurry new survey results to press: a solid majority of Canadians want the federal government to spend more advertising in newspapers and less on social media.
According to its press release, “almost two thirds (63 per cent) of Canadians trust advertising in newspapers/news sites, while just 28 per cent trust ads they see on Facebook/Instagram.”
The publishers’ alliance applauded the Ontario government’s decision last July to boost ad spending on newspapers while pointing out that the federal advertising budget allocates only two per cent of its dollars to print.
***
I often recommend Ken Whyte‘s Substack column SHuSH and do so again.
Whyte is the owner and operator of the Canadian book publisher Sutherland House and as such automatically qualifies as an expert in the economics of Canadian media. He’s also the former editor of Maclean’s Magazine, ex-President of Rogers Publishing, and once Editor-in-Chief of the National Post. Additionally, he writes like a dream.
In his last column he contemplates what a Trump tariff on books would do to Canadian publishers who are mostly small independents that hold, collectively, a minority share of the Canadian market that is otherwise dominated by foreign giants.
Sound familiar?
***
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The illegal Trump tariffs begin today, heralding trade war.
Last week MediaPolicy posted an editorial of sorts, calling for elected politicians to greet America First with Canada First in trade negotiations over culture.
A flimsy “cultural exemption” in our free trade deal with the US dates back to 1987. As intended, it offers no more than a speed bump to powerful US media and tech companies determined to dominate Canadian cultural consumption. It needs to be locked down.
How and when that happens in the permanent state of Trump chaos that we’ll endure for the next 1500 days isn’t clear.
Tariffs now, tariffs later,
tariffs done or undone.
How’s the weather in Newfoundland?
***
Spotify is feeling it.
In this week’s corporate blog post, the Netflix-of-music-streaming stands triumphant.
As the colossus of the audio industry, Spotify is more than twice the size of any of its nearest competitors TenCent, YouTubeMusic, Apple and Amazon, with over 220 million paid subscribers.
As the proud vanquisher of Napster and the torrent pirates, Spotify reports that every industry metric is looking up. Altogether, audio steamers have a half-billion paid subscribers signed up around the world. Spotify music VP David Kaefer says a billion is the next goal.
Kaefer also says musician earnings are way up over the last ten years, with the top 10,000 musicians on Spotify —out of 10 million— earn at least $100,000 USD annually. That money is shared with band members and songwriters.
Spotify earnings are 25% of a typical “musician’s” total income, he estimates, adding to income from other streaming services, downloads and live performances.
The “long tail” of music creators uploading to streaming platforms, to quote music economist Will Page, “is very long and very skinny.”
***
The CRTC is expected to announce in March a public consultation on a policy framework for audio streaming and radio.
On the streaming side, the cash contribution of 5% of Canadian revenues was established by the CRTC last June, so this new consultation will likely focus on other things; the discoverability and prominence of Canadian songs being the logical focus.
The Commission just now put out a request for proposals for a third party research study of the prominence and discoverability of Canadian audio and video content.
Well, better late than never, no? The results won’t be reported until November and will be unavailable for the policy framework.
In response to a MediaPolicy inquiry, commission staff said the report findings would be available when the commission moves into its third phase of setting tailored regulatory terms and conditions for streamers in 2026.
***
The recommended podcast for the week is an episode of Bubble Trouble, music economist Will Page’s platform.
He’s invited media oracle Doug Shapiro onto his show. MediaPolicy often recommends Shapiro’s Substack page, The Mediator.
If you follow either tech or media news in the most cursory way, you’re going to find this interview about the past, present and future of media as riveting as I did.
If podcasts aren’t your thing, I found a LinkedIn post from Midia Research’s Mark Mulligan who has some out of the box thoughts about how music streaming algorithms that chase listening time above all else will drive away some artists, hardcore fans, and discerning listeners, into the emerging ecosystem of Do-It-Yourself distribution.
***
Here’s an update on my January 1st post about polling conducted by TMU’s The Dais School of Public Policy.
No thin skins for them, the folks at The Dais acknowledged the point I raised about how its annual survey questions failed to solicit the experiences of Jews and women with online hate.
The Dais also saw some merit in my observations that their poll questions testing Canadians’ susceptibility to misinformation on the basis of political ideology were torqued towards right-wing conspiracies and misinformation.
To its credit, The Dais is going to review these issues in preparation for its 2025 survey.
***
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Batter up: Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Sundar Pichai (Google) and Elon Musk (X).
January 25, 2025
The memorable line-up of US tech bros attending Donald Trump’s inauguration as special guests is an early candidate for Photo of the Year, although it’s possibly been eclipsed by Elon Musk’s nazi salute of the same day.
What the Trump victory means for Canadian regulation of Internet services seems ominous and Michael Geist is first out of the gate with “I told you so.”
In the months ahead you’ll find a different perspective here on MediaPolicy, I promise.
Thanks to Trump, we are headed into a nation-defining crucible, as Jean Charest just argued persuasively on CBC News. Of course media policy is just one thing on the table and you can’t eat cultural sovereignty.
Forty years ago, a majority of Canadians voted against a free trade deal with the United States as an over commitment of our economic fortunes to a single dominant trading partner.
But if we stick together and get decent political leadership, we can come out the other side as a greater country and more independent of the United States.
The Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization seal of approval unlocks reporter salary subsidies of 35% and reader tax credits of up to $75 per year in subscriptions paid.
The drift of Beeby’s article is that the news subsidies are bad —a debate for another day— and expensive to administer. Also, he says the costs of the entire program are not transparent because so little effort is made to publicize them.
The “$275 million” paid out in labour subsidies (spread out over six years, it’s worth mentioning) are reported in the government’s annual tax expenditure report.
The annual cost of the reporter subsidy was about $35 million until the government almost doubled its cost last year in response to the shortfall in anticipated news licensing payments from Google and Facebook. (The subsidy was boosted from 25% to 35% of a mid-range reporter salary of $85,000).
In addition to the $35 million labour subsidy, the reader tax credit has cost the public treasury about $15 million per year. With little fanfare, that subscription tax program expired on December 31, 2024.
The tax expenditure of a third QCJO program —-tax write-offs for private donations to non-profit journalism—- has never been released if it has even been tracked.
As for the Panel members’ compensation, Beeby notes that annual billings to the taxpayer have averaged $47,000. That’s divided among its five members. Most of their time is spent reviewing news articles submitted by QCJO applicants seeking to demonstrate “ongoing” (i.e. frequent) and “original” (i.e. not harvested from other sources) reporting of “news” (not opinion) that is of “general interest” (i.e. not niche or specialized).
I’m advised by panel Chair Colette Brin that its members bill the government on an hourly basis, with detailed timesheets, against the federal daily tariff of $275 to $450.
Since the program’s inception, the five panel members representing regions across the country have met online eighteen times rather than convene in Ottawa, except for a single in-person meeting costing $8000 in total travelling expenses.
Spitballing the three-part QCJO program cost at $90 million annually, the Panel’s administrative costs are 0.05% (half of a tenth of one per cent). The CRA did not provide Beeby with a costing of civil servants processing tax claims.
On the other hand, as Beeby points out, the lack of the government’s interest in pro-active transparency about the identity of the program recipients is baffling.
The Revenue Canada website does identify 191 news outlets whose readers are eligible for the now-expired QCJO reader tax credit (and therefore also the labour subsidy), but it does not reveal the unpaywalled news sites that only collect the labour subsidy. There may be as many as another 200 recipient news outlets basking in anonymity. As the reader tax credit has expired, it’s possible the list of 191 news outlets will disappear from public view.
The panel itself asked for more transparency as far back as 2019.
So have news organizations. Asked for comment, Paul Deegan of News Media Canada told MediaPolicy that “transparency is a necessary precondition for trust and accountability. We fully support making the list of QCJOs public, and we have asked the Government of Canada to do so.”
By comparison the $20 million per year Local Journalism Initiative, administered directly by Heritage Canada rather than Revenue Canada, requires recipient news organizations to identify the reporter subsidy on their mastheads.
In addition to identifying recipient news organizations so that readers can reach their own conclusions about accepting subsidies, there is the absence of employment and subscriber data that would permit public analysis of the programs’ effectiveness.
Did the $75 reader tax credit bring in new readers, or just subsidize the existing news junkies? Are labour-subsidized news organizations still laying off reporters or have numbers stabilized?
Transparency is the low hanging fruit in any public policy, especially a controversial one. It’s a harsh judgment on this federal government for not taking the simple steps here.
***
Here are two rabbit holes to dive down this weekend.
The first is an excellent backgrounder by Matt Stoller on the up-for-grabs US Congressional ban on TikTok, now delayed 90 days by President Trump. If you want a deeper (and Canadian) perspective, check out law professor Jon Penney’s guest column in the Globe and Mail.
The second is a Broadcast Dialogue podcast interview of Brodie Fenlon. The CBC Editor-in-Chief has many candid things to say, including some illuminating comments on the “niche casting” challenge for CBC News to meet younger audiences fragmented across the Internet, as well as TV viewers whose portal to content is the app menu embedded in foreign-made smart televisions.
***
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MediaPolicy posted twice this week. The first one returns to our dialogue about an improved CBC with an Open Letter from Ian Morrison, the founder and former spokesperson of Friends of Canadian Media.
The other post is an interview with publisher Holly Doan of the elbows-up investigative news site, Blacklock’s Reporter. With the Reporter in mind, I coined the phrase “journalism at its fiercest” and it seems from the volume of post views and twitter response to the interview that her publication very much has a fierce fan base. If you like Old School, you’ll love this interview.
***
This is the last weekend before all hell breaks loose in our relationship with the United States.
Cast your mind back in Canadian history and recall that perhaps the most nation-defining things we have ever done were dispossessing Indigenous peoples and then managing not to be dispossessed ourselves by our covetous neighbours (1776, 1812, 1837, 1844, 1866, 1870, let me know if I’ve left anything out).
The national achievements of the USA make for a longer list. Dispossessing Indigenous people and enslaving Africans, for starters. A game effort at national fratricide through civil war. Denying African American citizens their civil rights. Building a hemispheric and then a global military empire. Tipping the balance in two world wars. Quite a list.
Now the US might be entering its age of autocracy and Big Tech oligarchs.
That’s not a reference to the US judiciary but the description of a new governing paradigm that disposes of policy and sees the Tech bros travel to the king’s court in Mar-a-Lago to supplicate and trade favours. Once in thrall to the king, Klein’s guest Erica Frantz suggests, Trump owns them in the way that Vladimir Putin owns his own oligarchs.
That has implications for everything, one of which is media. Elon Musk owns X. The grovelling Mark Zuckerberg owns Meta. Add Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to the list. Other media moguls will have to pay homage to the king to protect or advance their interests.
Then there’s the unknown future of TikTok. The US Supreme Court has upheld the Congressional ban on its Chinese-ownership. Its CEO Shou Zi Chew is playing a tough hand by saying TikTok will turn the platform dark on Sunday when the ownership edict comes into effect.
Trump is trying to engineer a sale of TikTok to a new owner, which Shou says he will not do. (Spare a kind thought for a guy caught between the world’s two superpowers.)
The Orange King supposedly has his oligarch pal Elon Musk in mind as the new owner.
And Canada’s carnival barking Kevin O’Leary, for whom grovelling to a foreign power is too mild a description, is making this comical by putting himself forward as a potential buyer of TikTok.
O’Leary’s antics are just what Trump would like to see from all Canadians: a bended knee and a favour sought.
Not since the cross-border Fenian raids of the 1870s has the threat of American dispossession been so tangible.
***
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Career journalist Holly Doan makes a business out of turning over rocks in Ottawa.
The publisher of the investigative Blacklock’s Reporter “doesn’t get invited to parties” on Parliament Hill, she quips on X. There are no “access” or insider sources for Blacklock’s.
The ruling Liberals likely regard her publication’s single-minded fault-finding with their administration of government as either partisan or opportunistic, a reflection of the fact that the Liberals have been in power for nine of Blacklock’s thirteen years since its 2012 start-up.
The online news website specializes in documents: the routine notices that no one reads and the juicier ones obtained by doggedly pursuing access to information requests.
In 2020 Blacklock’s ran a story about internal research documents at the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation revealing an interest in abolishing Canada’s legendary capital gains exemption for primary residences and coined the phrase “home equity tax.” The result was hot government denial —until documents proved otherwise— followed by the Liberal government publicly denying it would pursue such a policy. They’ve been on the defensive about any changes to the primary residence exemption ever since.
The Reporter accepts very little advertising and is dependent on annual subscriptions. It follows that it operates an airtight paywall and runs down any sign of password sharing. That vigilance has seen Doan litigating on and off for a decade against federal bureaucracies that have engaged in password sharing. There is no love lost between Blacklock’s and the federal civil service.
Doan refuses to apply for federal journalism subsidies and considers them antithetical to her publication’s independence from the government that Blacklock’s covers.
She tells us more about herself, Blacklock’s, journalism and even a little media policy in this interview.
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Blacklock’s publisher Holly Doan
Q. What’s your backstory? How did you get into journalism?
I grew up in rural Manitoba. Dad was from Toronto, a wildlife biologist and senior bureaucrat. Mother’s people were early prairie sodbusters. Our family never discussed contemporary politics or journalism.
At school my marks were dismal in math and science but always A’s in history and English. A guidance counsellor suggested journalism. Honestly, I think he was checking a box. The local community college journalism program in Winnipeg was tough to get into, so I started a high school newspaper in grade 12 and used that as an entry application.
My father who excelled in the sciences didn’t understand my career choice. Much later in 1990 I produced a documentary for CBC Alberta about the rise of the Reform Party. It was edgy. The interview with leader Preston Manning was a little sharp. My dad, with his central Canadian private school upbringing, watched and remarked: “No wonder they want cuts to the CBC.”
Starting in 1982, I was a television and radio reporter and news anchor in four provinces, including five years at CBC Alberta covering the legislature. At CTV National News in Ottawa, I was on the bus for the 1993 federal election campaign, followed by three years as Beijing Bureau Chief and two years in the CTV Toronto Bureau.
In 2003, my husband Tom Korski and I formed our own company to produce political history documentaries for CPAC, the Cable Public Affairs Channel.
In 2012, we created Blacklock’s Reporter.
Tom is Blacklock’s editor responsible for content. He is a 43-year reporter with a background in private radio and print, including The Sun chain and the South China Morning Post of Hong Kong. He also worked on the desk at CTV National News in Toronto.
Q. You started Blacklock’s in 2012. How long before the business stood on its own two feet and not your savings account?
We launched Blacklock’s without investors or bank loans and a commitment to draw no more than the cost of a new minivan from personal savings. The old van would have to last.
While Blacklock’s has never lost money, like any small business the first years were lean. In 2015 there was a small bump in subscribers and we learned our first lesson in what kind of journalism Canadians will pay for. People were dissatisfied with the Harper government and wanted more information on what the feds were doing.
Readership spiked again in 2019, another election year. The pandemic generated an even greater demand for government accountability. A lot of public money was going out. There was uncertainty in people’s lives. Readers appeared to want specific information on things like questionable government contracting, vaccine mandates, take up on small business loan programs, and abuse of CERB relief.
Readership has grown year over year since, although more slowly in recent inflationary times as people mind household budgets. The most valuable measurement of how it’s going is the year-to-year re-subscription rate. Blacklock’s annual re-subs run to about 70%. We love welcoming new readers, but those who’re willing to pay $314 every year suggests habit and trust. Trust is everything. Don’t tell them, show them.
Q. Many news publications today have angel investors backstopping the business. What about Blacklock’s?
Blacklock’s has never accepted donations of any kind. No group subscription or institutional licence represents more than 1.5 per cent of total revenues. We do not accept government subsidies. Pretty proud of that.
Q. Who’s your competition in covering federal government? The Hill Times? The Globe and Mail?
Blacklock’s is the only media outlet in the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery that focuses on federal affairs, not politics.
We don’t cover election campaigns or conventions. We do not commission opinion columns. We mostly ignore news conferences and Question Period. Our focus is government reports, audits, debates, committees, Access to Information, Public Accounts, tribunal and Federal Court rulings.
As such, we are distinguishable and have no direct competition. That doesn’t stop us from being a little jealous when another media outlet gets ahold of a government document that makes news!
Q. Who’s your subscriber audience?
Good question. Aren’t all media trying to figure that out?
The earliest subscribers were non-governmental organizations that purchased institutional accounts accessed by multiple readers. Unions and industry associations were early adopters.
Now, individual readers from all ten provinces and one territory dominate our subscriber base. A large number are small business people but they come from all walks of life.
The largest concentration is in Ontario but Saskatchewan punches above its weight.
Q. Do you think you’ll see some big reader churn if the Conservatives are elected this year?
A staffer in the office of a Conservative MP told me: “When we were in power (during the Harper years) I was told never talk to Blacklock’s or Bob Fife [of the Globe and Mail.]”
I laughed. I’ve known Bob and his fearsome reputation for breaking stories for 30 years throughout Liberal and Conservative administrations. The staffer didn’t mean it this way, but it was a huge compliment!
Blacklock’s Reporter is accountability journalism. We write about federal government mismanagement, waste, and cronyism. The mission has not changed since 2012, we’ve just become a little more practiced at finding documents. Accountability journalism stands on the belief that by exposing problems, corrections will be made that’ll give Canadians better government.
People ask, what will it be like when you have to hold a new Conservative government to account? Won’t you lose subscribers?
My silly answer is just think of all the new friends I’ll have! The serious answer is politicians change but the bureaucracy and the wheels of government do not. If people are subscribing because they trust Blacklock’s to tell them details of federal programs, they’ll stay.
If people are subscribing because they think Blacklock’s matches their partisan view, they’ll drop us. Bring it on!
Q. If I was marketing your operation for you I would brand it “journalism at its fiercest.” Your headlines and tweets are aggressive and have an anti-government flavour, but below the headlines the stories are very disciplined, high quality watchdog stuff. How do you see yourself? Muckraker? Watchdog? Advocate for smaller government?
“Journalism at its fiercest.” I like that. Can I use it? Is it original or subject to copyright?
Seriously, readers will pay for media to be “aggressive” in holding government to account. To us, that means finding information useful to Canadians, not yelling questions in scrums. As former Ottawa Journal editor Grattan O’Leary said, “Freedom of the press was not won for the sake of the press. It was won for the sake of the people.”
It is true that five-word headlines do not capture context as well as a 600-word story. But have you seen newspaper headlines in the U.K.? They’re outrageous by Canadian standards. Canadian media is timid compared to press in other parts of the world.
Blacklock’s is committed to careful documentation; listing names of all reports and legislation so that readers are able to look those up. Blacklock’s never quotes unnamed sources. Words banned from Blacklock’s copy are “sources say” and “experts say.” Adjectives are sparse or non existent. Find a fact or don’t say it all.
But why should we hide all that good stuff behind a dull headline? Aren’t there enough of those already?
Q. You’ve butted heads with the federal government after numerous departments shared passwords to your paywalled content with thousands of civil servants, without paying for institutional licences. When you sued over that you were disparaged in the Justice Department filings.
In 2023 Alexander Gay, a lawyer with Justice Canada, told a judge: “Blacklock’s is yellow journalism, fake facts, and sensational headlines.” It’s a cliché, but there was a tiny gasp in the courtroom from a handful of Blacklock’s subscribers attending the hearing. It was a trial about copyright infringement, not defamation or the constitutional right to free expression.
They say “you know you’re over the target when you start catching flak.” This is especially true in Ottawa where government communications staff, whose job is to control or mitigate bad news, outnumber journalists by at least ten to one. This particular government, more than others I’ve covered, has a fetish for media control.
The best antidote to disparaging remarks is to “come with receipts”, that is, we do not report any story unless we already have documents or can cite sworn testimony. Ironically, the more Blacklock’s is attacked by officialdom, the more committed readers seem to become. We receive a lot of mail which I sometimes post on social media.
Q. As publisher of a private news organization reporting on Parliament and federal government, what are your views on the CBC?
Journalism is an apprenticeship system. The best training is long years of experience in the field. The second best training I’ve had was at CBC. But the corporation is not what it was when I worked there in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
CBC News has lost the love of many Canadians because, as Ombudsman Jack Nagler said in his final report, it has become “too timid” in representing a variety of views.
As a former television journalist, I have the old timers’ habit of watching all national newscasts and comparing and contrasting. How many stories do they have? Any scoops? When they cover the same story, whose is better? Which anchor is more pleasant?
I stopped watching CBC television a couple of years ago. They lead the national news with too much American content. By 13 minutes past the hour, they’ve mostly finished with the news. There isn’t much reporting from the regions. Don’t tell me it’s because there isn’t money! CBC is filling local newscasts with something, aren’t they?
When I worked for CBC Alberta, our newsroom was always being elevated to The National. I could get a story about Alberta government consolidation of services and departments on a national newscast. Why doesn’t CBC-TV News want to tell me more about my country? I’d love to hear about a noisy parent protest at a school board meeting in Halifax.
Then there’s activist journalism. As an older CBC radio producer said recently, “Holly, the younger ones come in here now with their opinions and they just want to change the world.” Those experienced editors who trained me are long gone.
What are the journalism schools teaching? Is it diversity, equity and inclusion? I can’t hire newbies who want to spend days writing ‘big think’ articles that quote academic experts. I wish they’d teach entire classes on Freedom of Information and document journalism.
Blacklock’s posts five original stories a day, five days a week. That’s damn hard work. Gone are the grubby, ink-stained scribes hustling for facts we saw in the movies. That’s what we aspire to though.
Whether the CBC survives does not impact Blacklock’s Reporter. The corporation is not competing with us on document journalism.
I believe in the concept of public broadcasting but am recently convinced that CBC has not demonstrated interest in changing and has evolved into a self serving bureaucracy that might as well be called the Department of Fisheries and Broadcasting.
I hope CBC survives in some streamlined form but it doesn’t look promising at this time of writing.
Q. As Blacklock’s publisher, you have been outspoken against federal subsidies to journalism. Expound on that, if you would.
Blacklock’s is opposed to newspaper subsidies because we believe they have eroded reader trust while not producing any demonstrable improvement in the product. Subsidies create an uneven playing field for independent media attempting to innovate. And worse, they create dependency. What will happen if subsidies are withdrawn by a future government?
Q. I feel like I’m setting up duck decoys for you to blast.
Next question: I read your 26-point submission to the Heritage Committee saying federal “QCJO” journalism subsidies are not just bad for independent journalism, they are fatal to public trust. I think I disagreed with almost every point. But would you consider applying for status as a Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization so that you could refuse subsidies but make your subscribers eligible for reader tax credits?
The Canada Revenue Agency directs tax filers looking for a media subscription tax credit to consult its list of “qualified” organizations. The list is comprised of publishers who sought subsidies. For example, the Western Standard was successfully vetted as a legitimate news organization by the CRA’s panel but never applied for actual subsidies. It is not listed.
I don’t want my company’s name on that list, either.
Would Blacklock’s apply if the subscription tax credit for readers was more than a skimpy 15%? No idea. Ask me again when something like that actually happens. Facts, right?
One positive aspect of an increased subscription tax credit might be Canadians would be encouraged to subscribe to journalism. Take away the direct newsroom subsidies, and we’d see what publications people really want. The subsidies mask marketplace failure.
Q. What about the Online News Act C-18? The public policy mischief identified for that legislation was that Google and Facebook abuse their market power in Search and Social by refusing to negotiate news licensing payments at all or only on their terms.Without endorsing C-18, do you see the mischief?
C-18 has been a legislative failure. I have no opinion on whether it should be scrapped or amended as Blacklock’s neither relied on Facebook nor Google prior to the Act being enacted and has not applied for any money from tech giants. We want to remain a square dealer without prejudice when reporting on this issue. If we must report on it!
Q. As publisher, can you update us on your copyright fight, your impermeable paywall?
It’s the story of David and Goliath.
Blacklock’s, a tiny publisher, relies on a password protected paywall to monetize journalism. Internet advertising is insufficient. We do not accept subsidies or donations. Our readers like this. With a porous paywall, we would not have been able to build a successful business or in fact any business.
The 2012 ‘Copyright Modernization Act’ implemented by Parliament introduced ‘technological protection measures’ to help creators like Blacklock’s and other media monetize their investment. A password has long been considered a protection measure. Canadians know you don’t share your password but government is advocating for this right.
From 2013 Blacklock’s passwords and content were shared on single subscriptions then worth $147 by 15 government departments without license or permission. Stories were then shared with thousands of readers in the public service. Distribution is proven through Access to Information and undisputed. For example, Health Canada shared the password by email with seven users, then cut and paste 122 stories to 1,193 email addresses.
Government refusal to pay has resulted in costly and prolonged litigation. The cases are defended by Justice Canada on behalf of the Attorney General of Canada. In May of 2024 a Federal Court judge ruled password sharing was acceptable for “any legitimate business reason” without any stated limit. The case is under appeal with no date set. [Blacklock’s statement is here: https://www.blacklocks.ca/note-from-blacklocks-editor/]
Q. We may have a change of government and perhaps a change of instructions to the Justice Department?
It’s not a good idea to rely on any hoped for change in government direction. If this is the way the Government of Canada and the Courts want to go in removing protections for the news media industry and other digital creators then our tiny company cannot stop them.
Canada would become the first G-7 country to undermine its own copyright law. We are prepared to lose again and seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. Failing that, Blacklock’s will testify at any future Commons committee with a statutory mandate to review weaknesses in the Copyright Act. Our story will be one of a government willing to change its own law protecting creators in order to win at all costs.
Q. My sense of your site, and all watchdog journalism, is that it’s dedicated to preventing the powerful from controlling the narrative, from hiding things. We’re about to elect a majority Poilievre government, with a big majority and (based on their communications strategy to date) great skill in shaping the political narrative. Seems fertile ground for a watchdog. What kind of issues do you predict Blacklock’s will be following?
Long experience teaches us that the first 12 months of any new government is spent repealing legislation, cancelling or revising programs introduced by predecessors.
For example, labour legislation nicknamed the “big union bosses” bills introduced by the Harper administration was immediately repealed by the Trudeau Liberals in 2015/16. Blacklock’s covered those bills from inception to repeal.
This will happen again. After that, no one can predict accurately what any new government will do or what news coverage should look like. Fortunately in the government accountability journalism business, the ground is always fertile. Always.
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