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.
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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.”
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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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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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The new CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard is now two weeks into the weirdest job in Canada.
The CBC is either due for its biggest make-over in its 90 year history or, if Pierre Poilievre becomes Prime Minister, annihilation.
No pressure.
The other weird thing about becoming the CBC/Radio Canada boss in 2025 is that the Heritage Minister who hired Bouchard was expected to announce something very important, rumour had it that it was legislation to update the CBC mandate in section 3(1) of the Broadcasting Act. With Parliament prorogued and the Liberal government about to fall, it now seems that whatever the Heritage Minister was planning to say about the future of the CBC will be an election promise.
But it’s our CBC, not the Heritage Minister’s and not Mr. Poilievre’s. Let the public discussion continue.
MediaPolicy has publishedinterviews or guest columns from three public broadcasting experts and here we add a fourth, from the founder of Friends of Canadian Media, Ian Morrison.
Morrison was the chief spokesperson for the advocacy group he started up in 1985 (launched in response to the Mulroney government’s CBC budget cuts) until he retired in 2018. As the voice of a citizen’s group, not a guild or broadcaster association, Friends became and remains the nation’s muse for cultural sovereignty and prominence.
Morrison weighs in here with this open letter to the new CBC/RC president:
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Memo to: Marie-Phillipe Bouchard, President & CEO, CBC/Radio-Canada
From: Ian Morrison, Founder, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
As you assume your new responsibilities as Canada’s most important cultural leader, I want to offer some advice and suggestions for your consideration:
Valued Institution: Despite facing criticism from various directions, CBC/RC remains a popular and valued institution. Numerous polls in recent years have shown that a strong majority of Canadians – including Conservative voters – appreciate your services and support their continuation. For example:
Historic Legacy: The institution you lead has a long and substantial record of service that Canadians value and rely upon. This dates back to the dawn of the audio-visual era when Conservative Prime Minister R.B. Bennett created the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Act (1932) to provide Canadian radio programming amid the influx of US-based content. Liberal Prime Minister Mackenzie King furthered this legacy by establishing the CBC/RC in 1936.
Modern Mandate: Your current governing document, the Broadcasting Act (1991), continues this mission, adapting it to the anticipated digital age under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney – focusing on values, rather than technologies. The Act provides you with a broad mandate to “inform, enlighten, and entertain.” The mandate places these verbs, in both official languages, in order of importance rather than alphabetically, guiding your decisions. Additionally, the Act mandates programming in English, French, and Indigenous languages.
Challenges and Criticism: Canadians face an avalanche of digital content, making it challenging to receive enough domestic content to maintain a cohesive culture across the northern half of the North American continent. Media organizations struggle to stay relevant while meeting their obligations under the Act. CBC/RC is not immune to this challenge and faces criticism of unfair competition from other broadcasters, including allegations of excessive bureaucracy. Address these issues head-on.
Digital Transformation: Embrace ‘digital first’ as more than just a slogan. Lead demographic change within CBC/RC’s personnel to truly embody this transformation.
Partnerships and Collaboration: Transform CBC/RC’s relationships with other media and cultural organizations by creating partnerships and fostering collaboration. This will require reducing dependency on television advertising and encouraging other broadcasters to use CBC/RC-generated content without charge but with visible and audio credit. Transform your relationships into partnerships with organizations like the Canadian Press, Library and Archives Canada, NFB, Canadian Museum of Human Rights, and the National Arts Centre. The BBC’s relationship with Cultural Britain serves as a good example.
Local Roots and Relevance: CBC/RC’s local roots are a prime asset. You should enhance collaboration among them to increase CBC/RC’s relevance to Canadians. Research shows that local news is a priority for a majority of Canadians. CBC/RC has unique Canada-wide presence and networks of local news operations in both official languages across the land.
Educational Role: Position CBC/RC as a ‘learning’ organization. This includes direct action and fostering collaboration with learning institutions across the country. Provide a non-partisan link between constituents and MPs. Serve as an ‘agora’ where Canadians learn about each other, from each other, and as a pan-Canadian technology incubator.
Cultural Hub: Reach out to institutions like the Nova Scotia College of Art, Concordia University, l’Institut national de l’image et du son, OCAD University, the Emily Carr School of Art, the Banff Centre, and others to create a pan-Canadian arts and culture hub.
Successful Models: Learn from existing models of collaboration, such as the partnership between Hockey Night in Canada and Rogers Communications. Study and learn from the strategies of other national public broadcasters in OECD countries like NHK, BBC, and German public broadcasters. We are not alone. We are just nearer to the huge broadcasting organizations of a country of 335 million people to our south. Our proximity may lead us sometimes to forget that it is they, rather than we that are a broadcasting outlier in the democratic (OECD) world!
I wish you well in your new role!
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If you’ve read MediaPolicy’s posts over the last three years, you may have noted an affection for opinion polls.
They are hardly a stand-in for policy debate: but public opinion surveys test the mood of the broad populace on any given issue while the political class thrashes it out clause by clause and tweet by tweet. That’s vital in a liberal democracy, no one will dispute.
But poll accuracy has become challenged by one big thing: no one answers the phone anymore. That’s why many pollsters have switched from “random sampling” to “opt-in panels” of poll respondents.
Random sampling is the gold standard, based on pollsters’ outbound telephone calls to about 1500 to 2500 members of the general population, chosen randomly with attention to general demographics. The random selection allows pollsters to afix the label of “accurate within a [ ] margin of error” to assure everyone that the poll is representative of public opinion.
The same “accurate within a margin of error” claim can’t be made for opt-in panels because they aren’t truly random.
The “opt-in” approach is an invitation to participate in a similar sized group of self-selected poll participants. This corps of volunteers can be tweaked by pollsters for demographic balance, but the real challenge is the motivations of the volunteers which can’t always be filtered out by poll questions like “who did you vote for in the last election?”
Plainly put, some volunteer respondents may be gaming the poll questions based on their perception of how the survey results will play in public. Also, it stands to reason that volunteers are more opinionated, more tuned into public policy than the cohort of randomly selected Canadians. “I don’t know” remains an important opinion.
The CBC Ombud Maxime Bertrand opined on this problem after media researcher Barry Kiefl cited a CBC Toronto radio show for relying on an Angus Reid opt-in poll without explaining its limitations. In fact, that pollster publishes a statement on its website to the effect that “if a randomly selected panel of respondents was asked the same questions as our volunteer panel, the margin of error would be ‘x’.” Arguably, that statement is bootstrapping the opt-in method as being more reliably representative of public opinion than it is.
Kiefl also observed that the Angus Reid spokesperson’s appearance on the CBC show was not just limited to reporting results, but added analysis and commentary like a CBC journalist would. Pollsters are not journalists: they run a business and have a stake in convincing the public that their results are accurate.
The Ombud agreed with Kiefl and in the course of his investigation the responsible CBC News manager did too: the limitations of polls should be noted during the newscast and the pollster’s guest appearance should be presented as opinion and not journalism.
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The CRTC has announced another hearing on the implementation of the Online Streaming Act Bill C-11.
The notice elicited a bit of a yawn from the mainstream press which was more interested in whether a federal election would interrupt CRTC deliberations (the answer appears to be no, but the Commission won’t issue newsworthy decisions during the election period).
The major focus of the May 12th hearing is what the Commission describes as a review of its existing rules governing the competitive rules of engagement between programming and distribution undertakings, with the possibility of extending them online. The regulatory task is to use competition policy to countervail against the market power of big broadcasters and streamers whose gatekeeping poses a barrier to independent programmers gaining exposure for their Canadian content.
Done right, the Commission may open up a real policy discussion on getting the foreign streamers to make the “discoverability” of Canadian content on their Canadian platforms into a reality, instead of a box ticking excercise.
If you look today for Canadian video programming on any major US platform, you will only find it by keyword searching “Canadian” or else locating the “Canadian” page listing a handful of titles, most of which does not come close to being considered Canadian by any reasonable standard. It’s no better on music streaming platforms.
Also —and this surprised me— the Commission will look at the lack of discoverability tools for Canadian content on “smart TVs, mobile handsets, and streaming devices.”
Another issue that the Commission is mooting is whether we need new rules to ensure that programming covering “events of national and cultural significance” doesn’t disappear. The Commission has obviously taken note of the rising cost of sports broadcast rights for hockey and the Olympics. It may also be an opportunity to address situations like Rogers forcing the Canadian “OneSoccer” channel to crawl across broken glass to get onto cable distribution.
The Commission’s other big focus in this proceeding will be to review existing “access” regulations that support Canadian channels, especially independent broadcasters, getting carried on cable and perhaps have some of those supports extended to online platforms, the new home of program distribution.
The Commission did not give away any preliminary views on what it wants to do. But expect Rogers, Bell and Québecor to show up with demands for regulatory relief and US streamers to make exclamations of incredulity that any of these supports could apply online:
mandatory carriage of all local stations in a “skinny basic” cable package for $25 per month, per customer
While some of these rules are specifically designed for the cable environment, the principle of CBC and independent channels getting their Canadian content carried, and made prominent, on foreign online platforms is what is at stake.
The Commission will also review the existing “Wholesale Code” rules governing, to put it bluntly, the commercial bullying of independent channels and the cable divisions of Rogers, Bell and Québecor favouring their own channels.
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For those of you who are returning from a proper holiday break and have not checked your MediaPolicy feed, the lasttwo posts dove into a poll and report from The Dais on Canadians’ trust in news and also the current state of misinformation and online harms.
Since then, Reuters Institute at Oxford University dropped a related report with global results here.
The Dais’ Canadian report included poll results suggesting that right-wingers answering a panel of true/false questions were especially credulous of online misinformation whereas left-wingers were not. The test questions however seemed more likely to catch out misinformed (or defiant) right-wingers than progressives.
A friend of mine made the same observation, so over coffee he demonstrated his prowess with Chat GPT and conjured up an alternative set of true/false questions more likely to trip up left-wingers. The AI program said all of these statements are false. Enjoy:
1. “The world will be uninhabitable by 2030 due to climate change.”
2. “All genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are harmful and unnatural.”
3. “The majority of police officers are overtly racist.”
4. “All billionaires became wealthy through exploitation or illegal practices.”
5. “Big Pharma is suppressing natural cures for cancer to maintain profits.”
6. “Vaccines are completely risk-free.”
7. “All multinational corporations avoid taxes and exploit workers.”
8. “Facial recognition technology is being used primarily to surveil marginalized communities.”
9. “Elon Musk’s electric vehicles are just a greenwashing scam.”
10. “Every war the U.S. has been involved in was solely for corporate profit.”
11. “Countries with universal healthcare have no medical shortages or challenges.”
12. “Canceling offensive content will completely eliminate systemic inequality.”
13. “All nuclear energy is dangerous and unnecessary.”
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Almost every New Year’s prediction about video entertainment in 2025 painted a portrait of a cresting wave of YouTuber content, increasingly driven by AI tools, crashing down on the Hollywood streaming and TV industry and, in the long term, taking all of the growth.
The Globe and Mail’s TV critic wrote about this after an interview with Bell Media’s content VP Justin Stockman. One observation was that as a television and streaming company Bell is adapting to the success of YouTubers in the “creator economy” by seeking to draw on the Canadian corps of YouTubers as a farm system for emerging talent, especially in comedy.
For example, the CTV multi-season hit show Letterkenny began as YouTube videos before Bell Media signed the creator/actors. A more recent example is CTV’s Late Bloomer, starring Jus Reign.
I asked Digital First Canada’s Scott Benzie about this and he cautioned that YouTubers scouted by mainstream media can succeed there as talent, but rarely in the role of the YouTube show or character that got them noticed. As a rule, audience tastes and interests on YouTube are different from those on streaming and television platforms.
Also, says Benzie, YouTubers won’t keep the intellectual property in their talent once they pass through the gates of the broadcasting fortress. That’s why YouTubers continue to branch out into other monetization strategies including live performances, branding deals, and merchandise sales.
Benzie thinks the CBC is doing a good job of platforming creator content on its YouTube channel and, as a non-profit public broadcaster, conceding that the participating Canadian YouTubers continue to own their own shows.
If you recall, a term of Heritage Minister Pascale St.-Onge’s deal with Google for $100 million in annual news licensing payments was that Google got to choose which of the two coalition of news publishers would broker the distribution of the $100 million to eligible news outlets. Google chose the CJC, representing Canadian news outlets —-employing about one per cent of Canadian journalists—- that had by no coincidence linked arms with Google in opposing the Online News Act, Bill C-18.
The rest of the industry —-including the broadcaster and news media associations, as well as the CBC —- expressed skepticism that CJC would play the role of Google-money banker impartially.
The news is out now that CJC has approved an unexpectedly high number of “print” online publications applying for the $100M and, hence, the per journalist salary subsidy has been diluted to $13G per year down from a figure originally estimated by News Media Canada as $20G. Payouts for 2024 are on their way.
Whether such a big gap will be closed over the next few weeks is up for grabs. The CJC has already included about 400 more journalists than expected by including newsroom hires funded by the federal Local Journalism Initiative. [An earlier version of this article inaccurately identified the new hires as “interns” when they are in fact journalists hired on one year contracts.]
In addition, the CJC’s invitation to media organizations to stick their hands up for Google money is likely to have flooded the CJC with applications from media outlets that don’t do original news reporting of current affairs. Comments from Paul Deegan of News Media Canada suggest a concern that payments will flow to applicants that don’t meet the C-18 definition of publishing “news content of public interest that is primarily focused on matters of general interest and reports of current events.”
Lastly, the CJC invited news organizations to include freelancers in their newsroom headcounts. The CRTC subsequently ruled that federal regulations make it clear that only payroled employees are eligible. News Media Canada’s Deegan has also expressed a concern that the CJC may have accredited applications that include audience engagement employees who are similarly ineligible.
CJC interim board chair Erin Millar told MediaPolicy that “the CJC is in the process of verifying eligibility of all news businesses that applied for funding. We also have a process for auditing journalist hours.”
Millar added “we have a policy and procedure for distributing funds in a risk adjusted way that accounts for ineligible claims.”
Stay tuned on this one.
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From IMDB
The recommended read and video watch for this weekend is directed to the CRTC commissioners and staff who are plotting to remove regulatory spending minimums on Canadian TV drama on the grounds that the US streamers will fill the void.
A few weeks ago Amazon Prime released its comedy-drama series TheSticky, based ever so loosely on the memorable maple syrup heist in Québec in 2012. As MediaPolicy commented, the series was written by Americans. It’s funny. It’s entertaining. It’s got a hip soundtrack. And it’s painfullyinauthenticCanCon.
Don’t take my word for it, read Globe TV critic Kelly Nestruck who has absolutely nailed it. And then watch the series.
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The Dais report probed how Canadians get our news, how misinformation is consumed, the prevalence of hate speech, and public attitudes about using government to fix it. (This is the fifth annual report from the Dais, a two-minute video on its 2023 report can be viewed here.)
The Dais analysis of online harms —it includes false information among the harms— is the juicy stuff. I’ll keep that warm for my next post.
Mainstream media dominates
As for news sources, The Dais report confirms what we already knew: “legacy” television news is far and away the most popular news source for Canadians:
In fact, the Dais report shows that “yesterday’s man” of Canadian media is creeping even higher over time (Figure 5). And look above in Figure 4 who’s standing next to television on the podium: news websites and radio. It’s a clean sweep for mainstream media and the news organization that make it up.
On the other hand, the 2024 Reuters Digital Report for Canada lumped together a collection of “social media” platforms to claim third place for news consumption (whereas the Dais Report above breaks out those platforms, individually).
The results are of course skewed by age cohort (Figure 6 in the Dais Report). Younger Canadians (16-29 years) are more likely to source their news from search engines and social media, also observed by Pollara earlier this year.
As for trust in the news that Canadians are consuming, again it’s mainstream media that rules. And the under-fire CBC is the king of credibility (Fig.10):
As an aside on the issue of trust in CBC News, the Dais notes that the public broadcaster’s 48% for “high” trust is elevated by a 64% score in Québec for Radio-Canada but weighted down by a 34% “high trust” in Alberta. Then again, those skeptical Albertans gave Global News and CTV the same score and even rated the Globe and Mail at 21%.
Perhaps the biggest token of skepticism is found in the Dais’ Figure 7. While noting television news’ dominant trust in comparison to other news sources, almost as many survey respondents replied that they didn’t trust any news sources, running the gamut from mainstream media to the entire Internet.
On the other side of the trust coin, popular trust of social media platforms is very low (and getting lower over time), even among the young Canadians who flock to them:
As MediaPolicy wrote this summer, the good news is that we are still a nation of news consumers. News avoidance and exhaustion is a real thing, but it’s not the main problem.
The main problem is the unravelling of news media’s business model, but the second biggest problem is Canadians’ declining trust in media and many other public institutions. That’s a world wide phenomenon, particularly acute in the United States. In Canada, the percentage of the public saying “yes” to the question “I think you can trust most of the news, most of the time” has declined from 55% in 2016 to 39% in 2024.
In the next post, we’ll look at The Dais report’s insights into misinformation, hate speech and public attitudes towards government regulation.
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