Tag: journalism

Holly Doan, Watchdog.

January 17, 2024

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. 

***

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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Catching up on MediaPolicy- Polling problems at CBC – CRTC reviews fair play and discoverability rules

Apple TV’s Canada tab

January 12, 2024

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. 

***

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).

This new proceeding will kick off on May 12th and will cover regulatory issues that don’t quite fit into the Commission’s high profile proceedings dealing with cash contributions to media funds, television and video streaming programming for news and entertainment, and the yet to be announced hearing on audio streaming and radio.

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.”

By that, the Commission means hardware that is purchased with the (foreign) manufacturer’s programming apps pre-installed. When I asked the Commission about this a few months ago, I received a one sentence reply “the Commission does not regulate technology.” Now it’s on the table.

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 “One Soccer” 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:

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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Catching Up on MediaPolicy – Fake News for credulous Lefties – the YouTuber farm team – Google news payouts take a haircut – Picky about The Sticky

Guelph Ontario’s Jus Reign

January 5, 2024

For those of you who are returning from a proper holiday break and have not checked your MediaPolicy feed, the last two 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.”

***

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.

***

The simmering feud between Canada’s mainstream media and the Google-anointed Canadian Journalism Collective seems closer to blowing up.

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.

Taking a 35% haircut on Google licensing payments that are already far less than publishers thought they would get after the Australian experience is bound to rankle.

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.

***

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 The Sticky, 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 painfully inauthentic CanCon.

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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How much online hate and misinformation do Canadians see? Do your politics matter?

Graphic from “Spot Fake News Online,” News Media Canada

January 1, 2025

In the previous MediaPolicy post, we looked at the Pollara/Dais poll of Canadians’ news consumption and trust in news journalism. 

It confirmed what other polls had already established. Overall, Canadians go to mainstream outlets for their news while younger Canadians increasingly get their news on social media platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok. 

Across generations, the lack of trust in content distributed on social media is high.

The other half of the Dais Report (based on the Pollara survey) lasers in on the harms from online misinformation and hate. Just so I don’t bury the lede, the most salacious finding was that right-wing Canadians are far more prone to believe misinformation than left-wingers are. I’ll get to that lower down in this post.

The scope of Dais investigation overlaps but does not quite match the focus of the Liberals’ proposed online harms legislation, Bill C-63 or the Conservatives’ alternative, Bill C-412. Maybe that is because the idea of State intervention to combat harms to children, deep fakes, and revenge porn are uncontroversial. It’s the debate over hate and misinformation that heats controversy.

Majority support for fighting online harms

The Dais report looks at public attitudes towards the State stepping in to the ring to regulate online misinformation and hate. The bottom line: two out of three Canadians say fighting online harms trumps the freedom to misinform or hate:

An even stronger majority in favour of State action gets teased out of the poll numbers when differentiating between specific harms and consolidating “strongly” and “somewhat” support:

This polled majority support for State action against online harms is consistent with results in three previous polls.

Is public sentiment an endorsement of the Liberal bill? There is only a modest level of public awareness of the specifics of Bill C-63. Only nine per cent of Canadians think they know details of the bill and another 28% are “vaguely” aware. This is typical of public attitudes towards proposed legislation so the Dais/Pollara survey has to be taken as a snapshot of uncrystallized public opinion on the bill. As well, there has been no poll testing whether combatting online harms is a vote-changer in the upcoming election, as there was with the Conservative proposal to defund the CBC.

Nevertheless a take away from all this polling suggests that the public criticism of Bill C-63 is out of step with public opinion.

the hate you see

The Dais poll asked survey respondents to self-identify and then, based on the results, concluded that Canadians are seeing a troubling amount of online “hate.”  Check out the third line of this graphic:


As for personal targeting, members of racialized and LGBTQ communities experience more of it:

An omission in the survey, which Dais would best be able to explain, is the experience of women being targeted by misogyny and Jews by antisemitism.

Of course hate may be in the eye of the survey respondent and not all hate is illegal. How bad does hate have to be before we censor or punish it?

The legislative standard for illegal hate was written by our Supreme Court adjudicating the Criminal Code and human rights legislation. The legal “hallmarks of hate” are those that vilify and dehumanize members of certain communities, inciting violent and non-violent attacks upon them. 

Here’s the Court describing illegally hateful messages:

The messages conveyed the idea that Black and Aboriginal people were so loathsome that white Canadians could not and should not associate with them. Some of the messages associated members of the targeted groups with waste, sub-human life forms and depravity. By denying the humanity of the targeted group members, the messages created the conditions for contempt to flourish.

Moreover, the level of vitriol, vulgarity and incendiary language contributed to the Tribunal’s finding that the messages in the case were likely to expose members of the targeted groups to hatred or contempt. The tone created by such language and messages was one of profound disdain and disregard for the worth of the members of the targeted groups. The trivialization and celebration in the postings of past tragedy that afflicted the targeted groups created a climate of derision and contempt that made it likely that members of the targeted groups would be exposed to these emotions. Some of the posted messages invited readers to communicate their negative experiences with Aboriginal people. The goal was to persuade readers to take action. Although the author did not specify what was meant by taking action, the posting suggested that it might not be peaceful. The Tribunal found that the impugned messages regarding Aboriginal Canadians and Jewish people attempted to generate feelings of outrage at the idea of being robbed and duped by a sinister group of people.

While incitement to violence is a powerful justification for censorship of hate, the common understanding of incitement as direct cause and effect may not capture hate’s long term poisoning of the mind: Jews are too rich (so take away their property); Indigenous are idle (so don’t hire them); Blacks are violent (so keep them in a ghetto).

The incitement to violence is just a further matter of accumulating a critical mass of dehumanization. The bereaved Afzaals of London Ontario probably would like to know how many haters and hate messages it took to incite the man who murdered their family with a pick-up truck.

It’s really not surprising that Canadians’ majority support for action against online hate is so high. Whether or not expanding the existing anti-hate legislation that is already on the books through C-63 is the answer, there are many informed discussions to consider. And it’s important to keep in mind that much of the bill doesn’t deal with hate speech.

taking the misinformation quiz

The Dais report also puts a lot of focus on misinformation. Neither the Liberal nor Conservative bills propose to regulate misinformation, other than where it’s present in harm to children, deep fakes, and hate speech.

It’s not well known that Canadian television and radio regulations have long prohibited “false or misleading news” in broadcasting. I can find no cases where the CRTC took action on those grounds (although a there have been censures and licence revocations for the “abusive comment” of misogyny and racism over the airwaves).

When Parliament updated the Broadcasting Act in Bill C-11 in 2022 it excluded regulation of “abusive comment” and “false or misleading news” from applying to content distributed on social media platforms such as YouTube. The federal cabinet went even further by excluding podcasts, keeping them unregulated.

Nevertheless, the Dais Report looks at the size of the online misinformation problem in Canada. This is where I promised the salacious stuff.

First, the polling confirms that Canadians see a lot of “fake news”:


Next, Dais looked at who is especially vulnerable to misinformation, or credulous of it, depending upon self-identified political views of the respondents; right, centre or left wing.

The pollster posed eight true/false questions about current affairs, described below with the correct answers (7 are false, one is true), in order to assign respondents to membership in “low, medium or high misinformation groups.”

Membership in the “low” misinformation group required at least six correct answers out of eight. Respondents were allowed to qualify their answers as “somewhat” true or false, or respond “don’t know.”

Seventy-eight per cent of left-wing identifying respondents scored six or better. Thirty-two per cent aced the test.

Across town in right-wing territory, only 34% scored six or better. Only six per cent nailed all eight.

Men and women performed about the same overall. Older Canadians did dramatically better than the younger generation (62% versus 45% for six or better). University-educated Canadians topped high school and college graduates. And finally, Québec respondents outperformed the rest of Canada by a considerable margin:

If you aren’t wound up enough by this point, consider that left-wing, university-educated, boomers from Québec have to be feeling pretty good about themselves.

Happy New Year.

***

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Pollsters took the pulse of Canadian media consumers in 2024

December 29, 2024

Despite the power of algorithms, somehow the Internet failed to alert me to an August 2024 Pollara poll animating a lengthy report on Canadian news journalism and online harms from The Dais, TMU’s public policy think tank.

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 poll results on consuming and trusting news sources in 2024 match similar observations by Reuters, Pollara, and the McGill University’s school of Media & Technology.

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):

In a separate poll, Pollara came to the same CBC results in 2024.

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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Catching up on MediaPolicy – Our big posts of 2024 – MediaPolicy is going Substack

December 27, 2024

It being the time of the year, retrospective lists abound.

The MediaPolicy 2024 wrapped list includes posts that are worth reading (again or for the first time) because they cover public policy that Pierre Poilievre has sworn to repeal or at least do something else that looks like he has wiped the Liberal policy slate clean.

***

Defunding or defending the CBC

The Poilievre banner campaign to defund the CBC is the right-wing answer to cancel culture. I don’t like you, I silence you.

A Sparks poll in January 2024 suggested overwhelming public support for the CBC, although a big slice of that is soft. Hence the importance of a public discussion of how to improve or re-engineer the public broadcaster.

MediaPolicy posted two interviews and a guest column from media commentators who know what they are talking about when it comes to the CBC: Chris Waddell, Richard Stursberg and Peter Menzies. I have a fourth instalment in this series on the way.

Online Harms 

The Liberals’ Bill C-63 obliges social media platforms to come up with content moderation codes. It also empowers the government to order take-downs of revenge porn and content harmful to children. The Justice Minister has split off the more controversial portions of C-63 into a second bill: harsher criminal sanctions for Internet hate and access to human rights tribunals for victims.

The Conservatives are opposed to all of it (they have a more modest proposal) and none of it will pass before the next federal election.

When the Bill was tabled, MediaPolicy itemized C-63’s more controversial anti-hate provisions.

Federal Money for News Journalism

In 2019 the Liberals passed the so-called “$600 million bailout” for Canadian news organizations (except for licensed broadcasters). The $600 million was the over-budgeted amount for five years: the actual spending was less than half of that. 

MediaPolicy posted about the alleged relationship between that federal program and declining trust in news organizations. Also I looked at some policy prescriptions that might carry over into a Poilievre government despite his pledge to abolish the program.

News licensing payments 

You say “link tax,” I say “compulsory news licensing payments.”

The Online News Act Bill C-18 blew up on the Liberals when Google and Meta decided to play hardball with enough gusto that US legislators would think twice about following Canada, Australia and Europe in making Big Tech platforms share their advertising revenue generated by news links.

I tried to get past the noise on this bill and pinpoint what I believe are the deeper truths about the legislation. The post is now a year old, but still helpful.

Poilievre says he will repeal this bill and, it would seem, refund Google its $100M in annual news licensing payments. 

The Netflix Bill C-11

It took them forever, but the Liberals passed the bill that compels foreign streaming giants to share the responsibility with Canadian broadcasters to finance and distribute Canadian audio and video content.

The CRTC has to fill in the specifics but in its lumbering sort of way is beginning to do so. MediaPolicy posted a general context piece and then more detailed reports on the Commission’s plan for Netflix and the video streamers and another on Spotify and the music streamers.

Poilievre has been clear: he will “kill Bill C-11.” 

Digital Services Tax

The DST is a stand-in for recouping $900 million in corporate tax avoidance by Big Tech in Canada. That doesn’t always come through clearly in news reports. Unfortunately, leading Canadian critics have displayed an obsequiousness (to Big Tech) or fear mongering (of US retaliation) that is unbecoming. 

MediaPolicy posted what I will call a context piece on the DST that I hope is informative.

***

A note to readers, MediaPolicy posts will now be available on Substack. The MediaPolicy website on the WordPress platform will continue with its archive of previous postings and resource links.

If you are already an e-mail subscriber, you will continue to receive MediaPolicy posts and will not get a duplicate from Substack (unless you sign up for it). 

Substack is a fascinating creature in the news ecosystem. Founded in 2017, it’s a platform for 17,000 writers, including journalists. You can find leading independent Canadian journalists: folks like Paul Wells (30,000 paid and unpaid subscribers); Jen Gerson of The Line (26k), Justin Ling (12k), Terry Glavin (12k), Ken Whyte (7k) and Patrick White (2k). On Subtstack, both writers and readers can pepper the blogosphere with rhetorical outbursts, à la Twitter/X. But for journalists and news junkies, the site’s real draw is full-length opinion and analysis.

A year ago, Substack had about 50 million unique visitors in the month of January. It boasts two million paying subscribers and over 20 million registered readers (after you have opened an account or surrendered your e-mail address to one of your favourite writers). The writer posts are usually partially paywalled, but not always (mine is not). 

The most popular Substacker is Heather Cox Richardson (1.8 million), American historian and author of the non-paywalled Letters to an American. Popular Substackers, who usually charge a $5 monthly subscription fee, can make a decent living.

The question arises at to whether Substack is a candidate for stealing yet another big chunk of mainstream media’s franchise by peeling off well known staff journalists who are currently thankful for a regular paycheque.

Having lost classified ads, much of its display advertising, and a range of editorial products to the Internet leviathan, online newspapers have stayed in business by cutting news and news gatherers. To replace the lost news content, we have a great deal more opinion columns. Opinion is popular and, for the news proprietors, cheap. The key has been to concede more of the news hole to the best and well known opinionators.

What if Substack took those marquée writers and their audiences too?

If you mark off 45 minutes of your time, an engaging Canadaland podcast hosted by Jesse Brown and starring Paul Wells, Jen Gerson, and Chris Best (Substack’s Canadian co-founder) talks about the possibility of mainstream media losing its stars to Substack.

Gerson has a trenchant observation: the Canadian journalists enjoying success on Substack are generally those who made their bones and their reputations after years of service in mainstream media newsrooms. That career path, she suggests, doesn’t exist anymore.

Then there’s Substack’s Nazi problem. With that teaser, I recommend the podcast, here.

***

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Catching Up on MediaPolicy – You are the media now – a CBC pivot – CanCon stagnation

December 21, 2024

On today the shortest day of the year it seems that nature is in pathos with the times: what a dark time and chaotic mess we are in.

I refer to the obvious, obviously. Our national politics are in turmoil. An economic terrorist to the south mocks our elected Prime Minister, our country and half-seriously threatens to annex us at economic gunpoint.

But this too shall pass, just as the days will get longer. Besides, it’s the weekend.

The more troubling thing that is not going to pass is the tectonic change in news media, particularly the frayed success of serious news outlets reaching the mass audience.

What I have in mind is how the November election in the United States illustrated a tipping point in the movement of the audience from doting on mainstream news outlets that mostly reside on traditional media to the massive but fragmented universe of YouTubers, Rumble channels, podcasters, Substackers, influencers and video shock jocks who can monetize outrage in echo-chamber audiences with relative ease.

Those media actors are —-prematurely—— crowing victory over mainstream media, captured by Elon Musk’s chortle “You are the Media now.“

Whether this perception of chaos in news journalism is just some kind of passing zeitgeist, well let’s check in again this time next year.

On that note, I was pleased to see that CBC is pleased to see that its YouTube pivot is bringing in the numbers hoped for.

CBC’s audience development guy Paul McGrath posted on LinkedIn that the CBC YouTube channel hit a billion views in 2024 (it’s unclear if he means all CBC digital or just English-language news):

I’m proud of this one. Together, we got 1 billion views on our YouTube channels this year. It’s the first time we’ve ever surpassed a billion views in a single calendar year. A new all-time record. 

It actually happened on Nov. 11, but no one noticed because we don’t usually track views. We tend to focus on watch time and other metrics. Our goal is reaching and engaging new audiences and growing our channels. We’re getting better at that, and along the way we picked up a billion views. 

What’s driving this? 

YouTube Shorts is a big part of it, obviously. But it’s also because we made a big strategic bet on YouTube, we all got behind it and it’s paying off. YouTube is the biggest video viewing platform on the planet, and we’re prioritizing reaching and engaging new audiences there. 

So far this year we’ve published over 30,000 videos, including over 500 full episodes of full season shows (we’ve taken a similar approach to the ITV deal that was announced this week). 

So yeah, we focused on growing our channels and reaching and engaging new audiences. We got tactical about the nuts and bolts. And along the way we picked up a billion views.

McGrath goes on to thank his staff but also US media commentator Evan Shapiro (not to be confused with Doug Shapiro) who is bullish on the opportunities for public service media on YouTube.

Fishing where the fish are, or at least the younger fish that don’t watch CBC television, it’s a matter of survival for the CBC to attract the younger audience before the older audience ages out (McGrath has another post on this).

And YouTube is a good place to do it. By contrast, TikTok’s short-video format and slavish devotion to engagement metrics is more suitable for breaking news and partisan rants, not reflective commentary or explainers.

Here’s some insight into the opportunities for news journalism succeeding on YouTube. This chart from Press Gazette (unfortunately the data is a year old, before CBC made its big push) tells me two things: CBC ain’t doing bad when you look at the US and UK news organizations ahead of it and the Canadian news outlets behind it. And secondly, look at who is hitting it out of the park:

The chart-topping Vox does not do breaking news. Arguably, this is what should be a lower priority for CBC in a world in which there are plenty of Canadian and global media companies happy to compete for that audience.

Instead, Vox excels at explainers and reflective journalism on issues that don’t break so much as they emerge and cook.

Sounds like public broadcasting to me.

***

I hope that you caught the MediaPolicy post last week of an interview with Peter Menzies on the state of the CBC.

As I describe in the introduction to the interview, Menzies is neither defunder nor defender of the CBC and his criticism is blunt. It’s something both defunders and defenders need to hear, agree or not.

His comments elicited a Letter to the Editor response from Chris Waddell, who also contributed to this MediaPolicy series of posts on the CBC.

I’m working on one more interview to complete the series.

***

Last week the Labor government in Australia announced it would pass legislation taxing Big Tech platforms to pay for news, even if they block news on their platforms.

The voluntary licensing agreements reached in 2021 between Meta and Google and Australian news outlets were reputedly worth about $190M annually. The value of the new tax, which will cover all large tech platforms, has not been set.

This week the government followed up with an announcement of direct government funding for news outlets worth $33M annually. That number is proportional (based on national population) to Canada’s QCJO subsidy to journalist salaries.

Detailed reporting on the Australian program has been sparse, so stay tuned.

A national election in Australia is expected in May 2025.

***

The futures of premium video – Graphic from Doug Shapiro

Let me shift gears and look at entertainment television programming.

Doug Shapiro’s chained-tweet narrative that I have been reposting on X might be summed up as this: the long term growth in video entertainment is being captured by YouTubers, TikTokers and the rest of the “creator economy.”

Faced with this trend, Hollywood’s gold-plated business of long-form premium video is in a torpor that it hasn’t shaken off, and we’ll all be watching closely to see if it does (hint: the go-to salvation for big media companies is typically mergers and corporate consolidation).

That raises the question of the impact of industry trends on the Canadian ecosystem of independent television producers who make Canadian content and, as a profitable side-gig, make shows for Hollywood.

The Canadian Media Producers Association just released its annual Profile report for 2023/24 that includes all sorts of metrics of industry health. The data runs up to March 31, 2024 and therefore captures the expected downturn after an atypical spike in the 22/23 report.

The way I look at the new 23/24 numbers, unfortunately the long-term flat-lining in Canadian content production has been restored (once inflation is taken into account).

This is relevant to the debate over the Online Streaming Act C-11 where opponents such as Michael Geist have suggested that things have never been better for Canadian producers and the production of Canadian content and therefore it is unnecessary to compel Netflix and the foreign streamers to contribute to Canadian content.

The other way of looking at it (available in my gift-friendly book about C-11, Canada v California) is that the post-2017 downturn in Canadian broadcasting revenues has shrunk the media funds and licensing fees available to finance Canadian programs, hence the stagnation.

***

I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy Hanukah. It’s so cool they fall on the same day this year. We’ll be honouring tradition by going out for Chinese food on Christmas Eve.

And thinking about the hostages.

Chag Urim Sameach.

***

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Letter to the Editor: Menzies comments about journalism education are off base

December 17, 2024

I enjoyed reading Peter Menzies’ comments (A Very Different CBC, December 16) – thanks for adding them to your continuing valiant efforts to generate a debate about the CBC’s future.

While I agree with much of what he suggests for the CBC (although I do believe it makes a difference if the international news Canadians read, see and listen to comes from US, British or French wire services rather than Canadian journalists) I do take issue on three specific grounds with his comments about journalism programs and his suggestion that journalists do not need university degrees.

First, the demographics of students in journalism schools has changed dramatically over the last 15 years so the student body is representative of today’s Canadian society with a strong presence of Asian, Muslim, Black and students of a much broader range of ethnic backgrounds than decades ago. To a significant degree these are the children of immigrants who came to Canada in the 1990s and early 2000s and in many cases are the first in their families to attend university, just like those like in many other university degree programs in 2024. It is far from a preserve of those from upper middle class suburbs.

That means their socioeconomic backgrounds, interests and expectations are very different than journalism students of 25 years ago. As they have graduated in recent years and populated newsrooms, they have brought with them to their employers their different perspectives on issues such as what is a story, how to cover it etc. Some of that has led to newsroom philosophical turmoil of recent years, valuably questioning and in some cases leading to long overdue changes in trdaitional newsroom practices and perspectives. 

Second, a significant component of journalism education today involves technical training – recording and editing audio, recording and editing video, shooting photos, knowing how to post material on websites etc. Journalism employers are simply unwilling to pay for that training for their employees. They expect those they hire to walk into newsrooms with all these skills including an ability to present information in audio form, in front of a camera and in a multimedia environment as well as writing. If you don’t have these skills, when you apply you won’t get a job and your employer won’t pay the training costs to give them to you. Today’s journalism doesn’t use typewriters any more, and many more teenagers than one might think are not very tech-savvy.

Third, many of the issues journalists are expected to cover these days are complicated, complex and not easy to understand whether it is climate change, health care, the needs of an aging population, defence procurement, business, the economy, social or justice policy. A university journalism education is part journalism but also includes studies in elective fields that can enhance a student’s general and specific knowledge of the world around them. If they are interested in journalism employment after graduation, many are smart enough to take courses related to the type of journalism they want to practice. That makes them smarter and more aware of the issues in the subjects they want to cover resulting in better journalism. This is particularly true when there seems a viable future for specialized journalism but much less promising opportunities in news organizations that are still trying to cover everything for everyone. Subject matter education obtained as part of a journalism degree enhances a graduate’s job prospects significantly.

In the end I find it hard to imagine how someone could produce better journalism with less education. 

Christopher Waddell

Professor Emeritus, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University

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A very different CBC: an interview with Peter Menzies

December 16, 2024

If you do a Search of Canadian journalist Peter Menzies you will discover one thing that is demonstrably untrue: that he is “still an occasional author.“

He is in fact prolific. And a great deal of his analysis and opinion work is in Canadian media policy. That befits a life spent in news journalism but also a lengthy stint serving on the CRTC (rising to Vice-Chair for Telecommunications). He writes a weekly Substack column.

I discovered his writing because over the last several years of Liberal government in Ottawa I noticed that he and I disagreed on seemingly everything. But I also noted that his was usually the perspective I had to grapple with in order to formulate my own.

As for the CBC and its future, Menzies is neither defender nor defunder. He is a critic and he is blunt in his criticism.

One thing that he and I agree upon is that the CBC must be the centrepiece of any cogent public policy for Canadian news journalism. That comes across in an essay he wrote with former CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein in 2023, And Now the News (to which Ivor Shapiro and I responded, here).

Here, Menzies answered my questions about the CBC:

Q. Let’s get right to the point. If something needs fixing at the CBC, what is it?

Too many Canadians, often for ideological but also for regional/cultural reasons simply don’t see their realties reflected in the broadcasts or in the online copy. That needs to be addressed and I’m not sure that’s possible at this stage. Its biggest problem is not that – at least for the English part – so many Conservatives want to kill it, it’s that a large number of people just don’t care if it lives or dies.

And we are moving into a post-Woke, post cancel culture time in which people have tired of reading and watching what they interpret as sermons disguised as news copy. There’s a growing backlash against moral instruction and a deep desire on the part of consumers to have news delivered to them in a fashion that trusts the reader to draw conclusions. There’s work to be done across the industry on that.

Q. It seems to me that the CBC is mired in the classic Canadian paradigm of metropolis and hinterland. Outside of central Canada, it’s viewed as a central Canadian institution with a central Canadian institutional culture. It seems to drive the politics about the CBC. How do you get at changing that?

You probably have to physically relocate. I remember, for instance, when CBC News Network started the day being anchored in Halifax, then moved with the sun to Toronto, then West to an anchor in Calgary and finally in Vancouver. If I had my way – just kidding, sort of – I’d put their head office in Baker Lake, which is the community closest to the nation’s geographical centre but Winnipeg would do.

It needs to have multiple homes spread across the country. The physical infrastructure is there; the mentality is not. Nothing against Toronto but its culture and interests are very unique.

Q. You’ve been writing frequently about a different CBC for several years now, and one constant message has been getting the CBC out of the advertising market in television and digital. You frame it as part of a holistic Canadian media policy, because it would be good for private media too. 

Yes, Richard Stursberg said once at a CRTC hearing that the CBC is not a public broadcaster – it is a publicly-funded commercial broadcaster and that has stuck in my mind ever since. Corporately, it shape-shifts so that when it needs government money, it can play the public broadcaster violin but when it sees a commercial advantage, like online news advertising, it can put on its CNN of the North cape and play private sector media. This sort of dualistic life is eating its soul because advertisers want strong GTA numbers which over time impacts how people in a Toronto office measure success and works against the CBC fulfilling its mandate as a truly national institution.

It also undermines efforts by legacy private sector media to transition to digital only by competing there for advertising, which lowers rates and opportunities.

Q. But what about the audience benefits in going ad-free for CBC programming? 

CBC Radio One is a leader in almost every major radio market in the country because it is ad free. Private radio broadcasters are generally okay with that because they don’t have to compete with them for advertising revenue.

It’s also popular locally because it’s locally produced and informs people about what’s going on in their community and is important to people. It’s less political – big P and little p – less preachy and people can relate to local on-air personalities. But then it switches to day time programming out of Toronto and, with apologies to folks there, the world according to Toronto doesn’t sell all that well in Antigonish, Thomson or Grande Prairie.

Q. Back to the holistic policy for Canadian journalism: you’ve endorsed the idea of CBC providing its news content to other news outlets for free, like a no-fee syndication service. A creative commons. How would you implement that?

Yes. CBC should be a sister or brother to other media within the national media ecosystem, not a competitor. So long as the content is produced through subsidy, it should be of benefit to everyone – domestically – through something similar to a creative commons license. This could be of significant assistance in so-called news deserts and would need to have reasonable limits but I really think that if we are going to have a publicly-funded broadcaster, the benefits that come from that need to flow through to private media as well. That’s much preferred to the direct subsidies we’ve got going now that destroy trust in media.

Q. To create a real CBC creative commons of local news, CBC might have to invest more in local?

They should do that anyway. Only what is local is real to most people. All media know that but these days almost all of them just offer lip service and centralize everything. CTV and Global used to have General Managers in Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, St. John’s, etc. Now their breakfast and other shows get produced out of Toronto. Headlines in the Star Phoenix are written in Hamilton. It’s suicidal short termisim but it helps executives meet their numbers and get their bonuses. Bit of a rant there but the CBC mandate demands local. But they’ve wandered from that. Their mandate and their CRTC licence conditions are all a charade if no one ever has their performance measured against them.

Q. In an article you wrote for The Line in 2020 —with some hilarious commentary I might add— you suggested the CBC is obsessed with US current events and should stop. Care to elaborate?

Because they are centred in Montreal and Toronto, there is a gravitational pull within the CBC culture that influences their news curation and programming decisions and as I earlier mentioned the advertising incentive exaggerates that. They seem to want to compete with CNN, MSNBC, etc. rather than just serving Canadians. So every Monday morning the national news on radio tends to lead with USA USA USA because Toronto is very USA facing. Of course USA news is important but the entire reason the CBC exists – frig, the entire reason the Broadcasting Act exists – is to ensure that Canada doesn’t just become the 51st state, if not geographically then culturally. I just want them to do their job. 

Q. As a follow up to that, some experts on the CBC like Waddell and Stursberg have endorsed a news curation strategy that involves reinvesting in global reporting as a way of “explaining the world to Canadians.” What do you think of that as a programming priority?

Sure, in an ideal world that might be nice but I wouldn’t do it at the risk of local. In an online world, there are multiple sources of international news that aren’t American that people can go to so I don’t see the same imperative there as I do for who’s covering school boards in Moncton because right now no one is doing that although I’m sure someone in Moncton will correct me. But you get the drift. 

Q. Back to news curation, what do you think of CBC’s overall editorial performance? 

Journalism in Canada these days is occasionally brilliant, too often disappointing and regularly just bad. There is a general malaise that has come from somewhere – I’m assuming the j-schools are teaching it – that abandons the aspiration to produce news as objectively as possible – the way consumers want it delivered. 

I think it is absolutely killing the business. Plus, you now have to have a degree to get a job. Why? It’s not a profession, it’s a trade and a noble one at that. Whatever happened to the blue collar men and women holding the powerful to account? Now you have to have tens of thousands of dollars to go to university for four, five or six years which means chances are your reporters are from upper middle class suburban backgrounds. And why? The basics can be taught in four or five courses over eight or nine months followed by an apprenticeship. If you can’t get the basics down in six months, you won’t get them in six years. Which is a long-winded way of saying the CBC should stop – right now – insisting on university degrees. They misunderstand the business.

And because of that, they misunderstand Canadians.

Q. One thing you hear whenever the topic of reinvigorating the CBC comes up is a recommendation that it pick some priorities and make some hard decisions about programming and services, whether that’s to cut costs or redirect budgets. Do you have any thoughts about how to do that?

I think it’s worth asking whether we need CBC TV daytime programming at all or more than one radio network in each language and what the heck did we do turning Radio Canada International into a domestic multicultural broadcaster? Like, either do the job or don’t but don’t run that scam.

I think it has way too much water in its wine, tries to do too many things and take up too much space in the ecosphere. So I’d be fine with – in English anyway – trimming it down to a single 24-hour news channel with maybe four to six hours of prime time, 100% Canadian, entertainment content. In other words, merge CBC News Network – with mandated stories from coast to coast – and CBC. 

Do the same with radio. A single English language radio network with local morning and afternoon drive shows, national programming evening only and move the music into the daytime slots – for instance and dump the national day time programs. I’m not saying this definitively but provocatively to prompt some “why not” thinking to clear out dead wood not only in programming but administratively and bureaucratically. Right now. Because if they don’t, someone’s going to do it for them.

Q. If Pierre Poilievre gets elected sometime in 2025, CBC English services might be walking the plank. In January there will be a new CEO with a new mandate. What would you do if you were in her shoes?

Well the new mandate already is a few weeks behind when we were expecting it but I’m sure Madam Bouchard has a pretty good idea where it’s going. She doesn’t have much time. She needs to move quickly and decisively, unrolling an action – not an aspirational – plan within 60 days and begin implementing it within 30 more days. It’s that simple. 

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Catching Up on MediaPolicy – News bias at the CBC – Online harms back on the menu – Doug, Donald and the 51st state

Exporting Canadian content, c. 1814

December 7, 2024

The closer we get to a federal election, the more the debate about the CBC heats up. 

It’s televised too. Check out the Parliamentary video channels ParlVu and SenVu. Both the Commons Heritage committee (CHPC) and the Senate Transportation and Communications committee (TRCM) are conducting ongoing hearings where Parliamentarians question invited witnesses.

Unfortunately the CHPC is often a gong show as MPs posture for the cameras, so the policy content is low. On the other hand, the unelected Senators on TRCM continuously engage in a serious investigation. Geraldo or the Dick Cavett Show, your choice.

This week the Senate invited former CBC journalist (and union president) Kim Trynacity as well as Richard Stursberg, the former CBC Vice President who recently provided a guest column for MediaPolicy. Both witnesses emphasized that CBC television’s best bet to recover its audience ratings is to double down on local and regional news.

Trynacity made the point that we just can’t wish it so: funding shortfalls were taken out of local television years ago, money would have to be put back.

Stursberg suggested there are unexplored synergies between CBC radio news coverage and cbcnews.ca and that perhaps there are localities where resources from the inherently expensive television news operations could be diverted to sister platforms. 

That’s a pragmatic idea if the gap between ratings and funding can’t be narrowed, but maybe not so enticing to audiences wedded to local news on that medium.

That’s just a taste of an illuminating policy dialogue.

On another policy topic I’ve video clipped three minutes of Stursberg’s time on the witness stand where he commented on accusations of journalistic “bias” against the CBC, the rallying cry that fuels Conservative fund raising to “defund the CBC.”

Stursberg reminded Senators of an external study on CBC editorial performance that he commissioned in 2010. The well publicized results suggested that CBC was being unfairly criticized for partisan bias. 

The advice Stursberg gives now is that the CBC ought to subject itself to this kind of public accountability every year. 

The review would be even more persuasive if expanded beyond partisan reporting (fair or not to political parties) to the hot button issues that routinely feed the culture war of impugning mainstream media. 

On that point, check out this 3-minute video recorded in 2015 by former CBC news anchor Peter Mansbridge who vehemently denies partisan motivations lurking within the CBC. But he posits a “Toronto-centric” mindset of the Front Street journalist corps leaking into its journalist culture and news coverage.

While we are talking about bias and the CBC, this is the opportunity to revisit Pollara’s survey results from last July that I posted about at the time.

First, here’s the headline number on how much Canadians trust CBC News in comparison to other outlets:

Then there’s the question of “nobody’s watching the CBC:”

The latter chart is obviously a polling of audiences on all platforms, not just television.

Now here’s a clue to some of the CBC-bashing:

These trust gaps are clearly driven by party allegiance, a proxy for a diversity of world view and perhaps a visceral cynicism about media (only 25% of Conservative supporters trust the National Post).

Regardless, the exaggerated trust gap for the CBC is a concern, no matter how you look at it.

On the other hand, if the concern is that polarized opinion on CBC “bias” is dividing the country regionally, consider this outtake from the 2024 Sparks poll that compares opinions in Alberta to those in Québec:

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The Liberals’ Online Harms bill has been plucked out of the Parliamentary wilderness. “Pre-study” hearings at the Commons Justice committee resume Monday.

Justice Minister Arif Virani finally acknowledged political reality and split off the anti-hate provisions of the bill which expand criminal sanctions and re-open the door to human rights litigation. The core of harm prevention in the legislation is a self-regulation regime for social media platforms and that will go forward on Monday.

Given the election calendar, don’t expect much progress. Also expect the Conservatives to filibuster in committee. The CPC has its own harms bill it wants to advance: ironically, it’s a crime bill (although directed only at harms against children).

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford annoys me so much that I often wish I could vote twice, once for a different Premier and once for a different mayor (oops, he’s not really Mayor of Toronto, he just governs as if he was).

But today I thank my Premier for zipping it to Donald Trump after la grande orange quipped about Canada becoming the 51st American state. I suppose we shouldn’t take offence: after all Trump only wants to annex us, not insult us. 

Globe editorialist Tony Keller has the story of Doug’s retort here, with a bucket of Canadian trash talk for Trump.

AI-generated photo of Donald Trump viewing the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps

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Let me recommend a gripping start-to-finish episode of Ezra Klein’s New York Times podcast —-only 80 minutes long!— acknowledging that it may be of more interest to my fellow progressives. 

Klein interviews Faiz Shakir, a senior staffer from the Bernie Sanders camp, on whether Democrats are overdue to embrace “Bernieism.” 

Shakir believes Democrats can win with economic populism, a brand and policy platform that is based on what he describes as the majoritarian sentiment in the United States that capitalism is rigged and an authentic politician with bulldozer appeal can deliver change “for you.” 

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