media – Page 3 – MediaPolicy.ca

Canada’s age verification bill S-209 faces its first Parliamentary test

October 30, 2025

The Senate’s justice committee will soon be voting on Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne’s Bill S-209, an age verification bill for pornography that was launched in the upper house and will eventually make its way to the House of Commons.

The committee was scheduled to stop hearing witnesses and consider amendments on November 5th but hit a snag on October 29th when a representative of the German online regulator told Senators that the Canadian-owned PornHub had not complied with German law, something that appeared to contradict PornHub lawyer Solomon Friedman‘s testimony on October 8th that PornHub would obey a Canadian law as it had elsewhere, specifically mentioning Louisiana and the United Kingdom. The Senate committee is now considering its options which could mean recalling the fiery PornHub lawyer to answer questions again.

Regardless, the bill will likely get to a committee vote in November and then move on to the full Senate where an earlier version was previously endorsed in 2024 as Bill S-210.

The committee debaters, including Senators, seem to be divided into two groups, one for those that are single-minded in their concern about the privacy risks to porn consumers and another for those fed up with the lack of a policy response to the scourge of violent pornography miseducating children about sex.

UBC law professor Janine Benedet, in the bluntest possible language, described porn as a harmful cultural product sold by companies hiding behind an expansive view of the right to privacy:

UBC professor Janine Benedet – 4 minute video

LCJC meeting no. 8 17-38-02 Download

So far the Senate debate has been preoccupied with adult porn subscribers being outed in a data hack. The policy challenge for the bill is how to avoid, minimize or secure the risk of personal data stolen through hacks, a risk that goes up when Photo ID is required.

That’s why the bill is designed to exploit age estimation as far as possible to dramatically drive down the number of Internet users who would ever have to verify age by submitting ID proof of majority.

Age estimation technology is driven by AI-fueled online surveillance and web scraping: the age-estimating company searches the web or commercially available data for the Internet footprint associated with the viewer’s e-mail address, suggesting either an adult or a child. To the extent that estimation misfires and wrongly concludes the viewer is ineligible as a minor to access porn, the viewer can then submit ID to the age estimator.

The fear of data leaks is an anxiety that can’t be medicated by amending the bill, but likely amendments will be tabled anyway.

Right now, S-209 says that porn sites (which could include social media platforms that allow porn) have to contract with a commercial age verification service that meets federal government standards, including a critical requirement that personal data is digitally expunged as soon as age is verified.

In this regulatory model, thousands of websites or content applications become the age-gaters for porn in partnership with age verification companies. This is how the UK is doing it.

Some US states, like Utah and Texas, have moved the responsibility for age verification further up the chain of online distribution and are hanging the age gating role on apps and content applications (like Meta, X, Google etc.) by making them contract with age verification companies. If age estimation generates false positives and denies age verification to an adult, ID would likely be required.

California has gone one step further up the tech chain. The California bill puts the onus on companies selling device operating systems to require device users to volunteer their age. Perhaps the reason that the state’s Silicon Valley giants endorsed the bill: there’s no ID required at any point.

(An interesting aside, Google’s corporate policy is to use age estimation first, requiring ID if necessary, but only for their own products available in the GooglePlay app store).

The thinking seems to be: the bigger the tech company managing the age estimation task, the better their access to data, and therefore the better their age estimation results.

The downside to moving age verification up the Internet chain is that all adult users of a major online product, like Google Search or Facebook, might be caught in the age verification net, even if they’ve never sought out porn or never will.

Google’s approach to S-209 is generally supportive: it applauds sticking the porn providers with age verification responsibility and opposes PornHub’s view that it’s simpler and less risky to make a few Big Tech companies responsible.

The S-209 amendment that Google is proposing to the Senate is to narrow the scope of porn regulation to online entities that are porn sites by nature, as opposed to most websites, apps and platforms whose overall content is not “primarily intended” for porn. That might let Elon Musk’s X off the hook even though X officially permits porn. (Google’s YouTube does not allow porn, but age-verified adults can find it on Google Search if you disable the SafeSearch default settings. On the other hand, X allows under age children to view pornography if they opt-in).

As drafted, the Bill delegates to a future government regulatory body the line drawing exercise of which online entities with porn content are going to be in or out of the age verification scheme. Age verification could be restricted to conventional porn sites or expanded to a site like X which reputedly is the source of 41% of porn consumption by children.

Critic and law professor Michael Geist told the Senate committee that such an impactful decision on requiring age verification for social media apps or search engines ought to be written right into the legislation, not deferred to a regulator.

Geist does not offer an alternative to S-209 however, other than suggesting the bill be scrapped entirely and the problem of underage consumption of violent pornography punted to a broader Online Harms bill that the government has yet to table.

***

Letter to the Editor: there’s an alternative to S-209 choice of age verification

***

If you would like regular notifications of future posts from MediaPolicy.ca you can follow this site by signing up under the Follow button in the bottom right corner of the home page;

or sign up for a free subscription to MediaPolicy.ca on Substack;

or follow @howardalaw on X or Howard Law on LinkedIn.

I can be reached by e-mail at howard.law@bell.net.

Catching Up on MediaPolicy – Canadians don’t want culture thrown under the bus – the CBC’s trust factor – Wikipedia or Wokepedia

(Some classic Canadian humour to start your weekend)

October 25, 2025

MediaPolicy previously made the observation that while Culture and Identity Minister Steven Guilbeault rejects any further trade concessions to Donald Trump on cultural legislation, we haven’t heard from Mark Carney. And probably won’t. The PM is shying away from those kind of red lines as he transitions rhetorically from “elbows up” to bended knee.

Those of you who recall your history might remember that, according to reports, Canada’s theatrical film legislation was the very last thing on the negotiating table when Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan agreed to Free Trade deal number one in 1987. It didn’t go our way.

It’s good to educate ourselves in anticipation of similar cliffhangers. Last weekend the Globe and Mail’s arts staff writers went all out with a collection of stories about the challenges for Canadian artists and media producers as Canada’s trade relationship with the United States wobbles.

Kelly Nestruck wrote about how television production, stage shows and museum exhibitions are going to manage when access to their main export market, the United States, could be up for grabs.

Brad Wheeler invited Rheostatics’ Dave Bidini to riff on his new album, as well as elbows-up nationalism (“Bumper sticker nationalism is not interesting to me,” says Bidini).

Josh O’Kane looked at the desperate state of Canadian-owned book publishing.

Kate Taylor offered a solid overview of trade deals and US retaliation (and trade law wonks can check out the latest from Hugh Stephens).

Eric Andrew-Gee explained the warm hearth of Québec’s cultural nationalism to anglophones (“The price of having a culture to protect is constant fretting about the state of that culture”).

And last of all Barry Hertz broached the sensitive topic of whether collectively we are up to supporting Canadian culture at all.

Hertz’s column references a new opinion poll just released by Pollara, sponsored by Canada’s independent television and film producers, that shows Canadians want Mark Carney to defend Canadian culture against American trade aggression.

The poll says that 87% of Canadians now support the Liberals’ Online Streaming Act Bill C-11 (up from 67% in May 2022). As for having a fight over Canadian culture with Trump, 68% of Canadians say yes, only 13% say throw it under the bus (the rest don’t know).

It’s true that half of Pollara’s respondents had no clue about C-11 in the first place, but the pollster’s “statement” polling below suggests Canadians’ values are nevertheless strongly aligned with defending cultural legislation.

***

In last weekend’s post, MediaPolicy summarized CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard’s plan for reinvigorating the public broadcaster. Her two biggest points were “more local” and “more diversity.”

Bouchard did the Parliamentary rounds last week, appearing before the Commons Heritage Committee and the Senate communications committee.

Bouchard’s line on ‘more local’ —-she keeps using the word “proximity” to capture both geography and audience affinity with content —- is that digital technology means the CBC can pivot back to local without having to build new stations.

Sitting next to Bouchard, CBC’s Regional Services GM Jean Francois Rioux also emphasized affinity. Canadians want to see people “like me” or “like us” on CBC. They also want other Canadians to see and hear their concerns on the national stage that CBC provides.

There are others who have a different take on affinity, and they mean ideological affinity, code for “more conservatism” on CBC.

Bouchard treads delicately on this one, although in her Commons appearance she thoughtfully suggested that the CBC’s retreat to major cities as a response to budget cuts in the 1990s probably meant that coverage skewed to metropolitan values, which can feel “more centre and left” to anyone living in the “more centre or right” hinterland of Canada.

Bouchard was also interviewed by CBC reporter Jayme Poisson on her October 16th Frontburner podcast. Poisson poked reasonably hard on a number of sore points. On ideological diversity, Poisson pointed out that although CBC’s “trust” rating tops the charts, CTV and Global score better with conservative listeners. Maybe more opinion coverage is what’s needed?

Bouchard didn’t immediately bite on the suggestion —- avoiding a debate over whether big-c Conservatives are treated fairly in CBC coverage— but said what was needed was consistent inclusiveness in CBC content:

Well, I mean, there’s all sorts of ways to make people feel reflected and included. It starts by being in the communities where they are. It also means including a more diverse set of points of view. If that’s possible. And it’s also about being constant about it. Not just during an election period or during a specific period of time. It’s just to have that reliable approach to a diversity of points of view.

That sounds like a shift in content curation as a conscious effort. The execution will be the hard part.

***

A public broadcaster that offers affinity as broadly as possible (my new description of being “highly trusted”) is something we need to keep our democracy glued together. It’s important that everyone is motivated to check in with at least one media source that tells them about all tribes, not just their own.

Wikipedia does something similar. The popular website is quietly just there in our Google Search results. If you read it critically, you’ll get both the uncontroversial facts and the contentious points, the latter helpfully linked to content that you can read and then draw your own conclusions.

That’s unless Wikipedia is a woke, left-wing mind control machine, which is how it gets disparaged these days by the MAGA movement. To that point, Elon Musk says he’s about to release his politically recalibrated competitor to Wikipedia.

Here’s an interesting read from the Washington Post about the political campaign against Wikipedia lead by co-founder Larry Sanders.

***

I can be reached by e-mail at howard.law@bell.net.

Catching Up on MediaPolicy – CBC President unveils a new vision – Anti-porn bill is back in the Senate – did C-18 give Google a get-out-of-jail card on content scraping?

October 18, 2025

Last fall, when the CBC seemed destined to fall at the hands of an incoming Conservative government, MediaPolicy published a number of posts on “what is to be done” if the CBC received a stay of execution.

One post (MediaPolicy’s most popular ever) was a guest column from ex-CBC VP Richard Stursberg welcoming the new CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard with some advice for a re-engineered public broadcaster.

One federal election later and we are now getting a clearer picture of what a rethought CBC might look like.

This week Bouchard disclosed an advance copy of her five year plan to Canadian Press which published reports in English and French. The latter story is more in-depth, based on an interview with Bouchard.

Combing through the obligatory recitals for something new, Bouchard’s vision has some promising ideas.

The Plan document makes the familiar aspirational points about connecting Canadians with each other and fostering dialogue.

More concretely, her Plan commits to increasing CBC’s presence in local communities, “aiming to fund additional overage and hire sufficient journalists to cover 15-20 communities with a population greater than 50,000, that currently have no or little local CBC/Radio-Canada presence.”

Keeping that promise no doubt depends on the Carney government following through on its election promise for $150 million in additional funding.

Then there is the CBC’s platform problem. There are too many of them. But the CBC needs to be on them if it’s going to reach the nation’s audience —-multi regional, multi generational, multi lingual and so on. That’s a resource challenge for Bouchard.

Bouchard says CBC has to follow that national audience, youth in particular on digital platforms. The public broadcaster’s analog-to-digital transformation has been underway for years now —over time, television and radio funding has been cannibalized to support digital, especially the CBC News website. Its YouTube audience has grown quickly and TikTok is a must-do opportunity. Bouchard says the logic of the transition necessarily means cutting costs on other platforms, “stopping or transforming certain activities,” though she doesn’t say where or how much.

As for the CBC’s uneasy relationship with private sector media, always frayed because of CBC’s competition for advertising dollars on television and digital, Bouchard wants to focus on where the CBC can collaborate with local media and independent journalists, but also with the content creators and influencers who are popular with youth.

Bouchard also says the CBC should be “a pollinator, a helper to the [journalism] industry.” She told CP that “when we have services to share or offer, we should offer them on terms that are affordable for these media outlets. We have premises, we have space. We can consider facilitating access to [our] assets at zero cost or at a reduced cost that promotes budgetary balance for our colleagues.”

Finally, she grabs hold of the elephant’s leash: the widespread perception that the CBC isn’t ideologically ecumenical in its editorial curation; that it’s insufficiently conservative by content and temperament.

There will be no pleasing the CBC’s harshest critics, but Bouchard says the CBC wants to make a big effort to win over those who don’t tune in or else “undervalue” (what a euphemism!) the public broadcaster’s content. A step in the right direction is devoting more resources to the West and in rural Canada.

But that doesn’t just require money, it requires a migration of corporate culture.

The five-year Plan is officially unveiled on October 28th.

***

There is no sign of the federal government retabling its online harms bill in Parliament. It died on the order table at the last election.

Instead, Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne’s has revived her Bill S-209 which zeroes in on harmful pornography being made available to kids. The debate rages in the Senate’s Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee and MediaPolicy reported on it this week.

***

The much-slagged Online News Act Bill C-18 took another hit this week from The Hub publisher Rudyard Griffiths who told the Parliamentary Heritage Committee that C-18 protects Google from potential copyright lawsuits for ingesting and repurposing Canadian news content in its AI tools, Overview and Mode, embedded in its search engine.

The bill, Griffiths told MPs, “requires all news organizations [accepting money under C-18] must make all of their content available to Google. If you are a recipient of funding through the Online News Act, you are unable to prevent Google from scraping behind your paywall, scraping subscriber-only content to serve up in their [large language model]”

Sections 2 and 26 of the Act grant a copyright waiver for news content that Google “makes available” on Search by “ranking and indexing” so long as Google reaches a compensation agreement with news publishers.

The Conservatives’ slagger-in-chief of the Online News Act, MP Rachel Thomas, jumped on Griffiths’ claim and posed it as rhetorical question to subsequent witnesses appearing before the Heritage’s committee that is investigating the impact of AI on Canadian media and cultural industries.

As Canadian news outlets have yet to sue Google for ingesting their news content and repurposing it in Overview and Mode, this remains a hypothetical issue for now. If it got before a judge, the court would have to decide if “ranking and indexing” is what an AI tool does, as opposed to ingesting, summarizing and rewriting from multiple sources. The fact that Mode and Overview are embedded in Search, as opposed to a separate AI app, could be important too.

This idea that that Google might have snagged a windfall immunity from copyright challenges to its content-scraping for AI tools arose previously when Google struck its agreement in June 2024 with the Canadian Journalism Collective for the distribution of Google’s $100 million compensation for Canadian news content, a year after the Overview prototype was launched in the United States.

Taking its cue from section 26 of the Act, Google inserted a clause into its agreement with CJC:

7(h) The Collective will not initiate or participate in, and will include a similar requirement of the Members in the Members Agreement, from initiating or participating in, (i) any bargaining process or (ii) proceeding before the Commission, a mediator, an arbitration panel, or a court of competent jurisdiction, in each case related to (A) any bargaining process in connection with Google, any of its Affiliates, or any Intermediaries pursuant to the Act or the Regulations, or (B) infringement of copyright in relation to making available news content of Members by Intermediaries in the manner permitted by the Act. The Collective will enforce such provision in the Members Agreements to the fullest extent and in a timely manner.

When the Google-CJC agreement was submitted to the CRTC for approval, the Commission appeared to say that the copyright waiver didn’t apply to AI tools so there was no need for action “at this time”:

Some interveners, including the CP group, Village Media, The Logic, and Unifor, raised issues with clause 7(h) in the Agreement, which forbids news businesses from pursuing Google for “infringement of copyright in relation to making available news content of Members by Intermediaries in the manner permitted by the Act.” The interventions raised concerns that this would limit their ability to enforce their copyright against Google for uses beyond making news content available on Google Search. In particular, interveners were concerned about potential use on DNIs other than Google Search, or used to train artificial intelligence (AI) models. Google argues that the provision is drafted specifically to reflect the use considered under the Act, namely the making available of news content on the DNI covered by the Agreement.

Section 26 of the Act protects an operator from copyright liability in certain circumstances where its DNI makes news content available. Clause 7(h) of the Agreement extends a similar protection to Google in respect of the making available by Google Search of the news content of news businesses in the collective. (Original Footnote: Clause 7(h) refers to news content made available by “Intermediaries” of Google. Under the Agreement “Intermediaries” is defined as DNIs operated by Google to which the Act applies, which is only Google Search). To the extent that this clause reflects protections from liability set out in the Act, the Commission notes that there is no need for any further action at this time. As a result, the Commission makes no order with respect to clause 7(h) of the Agreement.

So far there’s no copyright lawsuit, so there’s no issue. That might change.

While you’re thinking about news organizations and AI scraping, you might find interesting copyright expert Hugh Stephens’ latest post about the debate that is unfolding at the Heritage committee.

***

I can be reached by e-mail at howard.law@bell.net.

Child safety law S-209 is back in Parliament, porn sites want Californian-style age verification

Image by Open AI

October 16, 2025

Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne’s age verification bill for pornography is back in the Parliamentary pipeline.

The Senate’s legal and constitutional affairs committee has already held four days of hearings on Bill S-209 with two more days scheduled next week.

Earlier this summer, MediaPolicy interviewed bill sponsor Miville-Dechêne about the legislation aimed at protecting children from the harmful pornography that is widely available on the web, both on porn websites and social media apps.

In the video below, Lord James Bethell, a British Parliamentarian who pushed through similar legislation in the United Kingdom this summer, had this to say to Canadian senators about the impact of porn on the “plasticity” of young minds:

Courtesy of SenVu

The lightning rod for critics of the bill is the introduction of age verification into regulation of the Internet.

In the Senate hearings, fears about data breaches and leaks, increasingly remote as technology improves, have consumed most of the oxygen in the room.

But the bill seems likely to get through Parliament, eventually. So representatives of the porn sites want Canada to follow California and shift the legal responsibility for age verification from porn websites to the phones, tablets and laptops pre-installed with operating systems sold by Google, Apple and Microsoft.

The device-centred approach emphasizes parental responsibility for setting up devices to send “adult-only” or “child-access” signals to app developers who still have to obey the signal but otherwise are off the hook for age verification, as are porn sites and social media platforms.

That’s a better system of age verification, say the Canadian-based porn providers, because it only has to regulate a few tech giants instead of a constellation of porn sites, especially the offshore sites that are likely to defy the law and force the government to chase them from one website address to another with site-blocking orders.

Another key issue is whether the bill will apply to social media platforms. As written, the legislation only excludes its application to search engines.

According to Miville-Dechêne, the bill can apply to social media companies. Elon Musk’s X is reputed to be the largest conduit of pornography to children, surpassing porn sites. But the text of the bill leaves the decision to cover social media services to the federal government or its regulator.

Miville-Dechêne says she’s content to defer to a regulator on that point as her age verification bill will have to mesh with the government’s online harms bill, should it decide to revive Bill C-63.

As the hearings progress, the elephant in the room is the Liberal government’s opposition to S-209.

Miville-Dechêne’s old bill passed the Senate and second reading in the House of Commons during the 44th Parliament with majority support before dying on the order table at election time. Barring a swing in the strong popular support for legislation, the bill seems likely to keep the votes of Conservative, NDP and Bloc MPs once resubmitted to the House of Commons.

The only question is whether the Carney government maintains the barge-pole distance from the bill that the previous Liberal administration kept. Former PM Justin Trudeau criticized the Senator’s bill as likely to push pornography-seeking children to the dark web and Liberal MPs voted against it in the House.

Alas, the Carney cabinet observed Parliamentary convention by not appearing at the recent senate committee hearings on the bill. Instead, heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault sent mid-level civil servant Amy Awad, his subject expert on digital regulation.

Awad handled the Senators’ questions adroitly and advanced the idea that the Liberals’ much broader Online Harms Act Bill C-63 —-which also died on the Commons order table earlier this year— could have addressed the same policy goal of making porn sites responsible for age verification through third party service providers.

Those of you familiar with Online Harms bill might wonder where she finds that in the text of C-63. Answer: it isn’t there, at least not explicitly

Nevertheless, Awad argued that the concept of age verification was not inconsistent with the self-designed safety codes that C-63 would have required from the digital platforms and that the proposed Digital Safety Commission might have ordered age verification.

The decorously unasked question of Awad was “where is Bill C-63 now?” A candid answer would have been “bolted to the back burner while we deal with Trump.”

This sets up a scenario in which Miville-Dechêne’s Senate bill gets back to the House of Commons in 2026 and forces the hand of the government on Bill C-63.

***

I can be reached by e-mail at howard.law@bell.net.

Catching Up on MediaPolicy – Spotify’s coy ignorance – Guilbeault’s agenda – Paramount, HBO and Crave

October 11, 2025

I am guessing the five commissioners running the CRTC’s public hearing on radio broadcasting and audio streaming read Simon Gionet’s column in Le Devoir, published on the last day of hearings, September 29th.

The story conveyed the Québec’s music industry’s message: we’re getting slaughtered and the CRTC better do something about it.

The online streaming consumption of Francophone music in Québec is 4.6% per cent of the top 10,000 songs, according to the latest projections by l’Observatoire de la culture et des communications de l’Institut de la statistique du Québec.

Approximately five per cent. In a province that is 80% Francophone.

This is happening in an environment in which streaming is gradually displacing the sale of digital and physical music formats in Québec; 55% of those sales are French language music. It’s skewed by age: the Observatoire notes that consumption of French language music remains high in legacy media such as physical music sales and radio, but rock bottom on streaming services, the medium of choice for the younger generation.

At the CRTC, the response of foreign music labels and global streamers went like this:

Patrick Rogers of Music Canada (the big three labels Universal, Warner and Sony) told the CRTC “what we don’t support is [a CRTC requirement for] the inclusion of any music, Canadian or otherwise, that wouldn’t normally make‑up that listening experience.”

Xenia Manning, Spotify’s Director of Global Music Policy, offered her coy ignorance of the French language problem. When asked by a commissioner if the Observatoire’s “five per cent” number was accurate for the world’s biggest music streamer, Manning said “we could look into it.”

The best known spokesperson for Québec’s music industry is APEM’s Jérôme Payette. “The future of the music industry as we know it is truly at stake,” he told Le Devoir. “Our Francophone and Canadian musical culture risks virtually extinction or becoming completely invisible and marginalized if nothing is done.”

His ask of the Commission was:

Make the streamers include 50% Canadian music in their song recommendations made to Canadian subscribers, including a French language quota;
Next, collect quarterly data on the consumption of music;
Take further action if the new numbers aren’t good enough, and
Look for an improvement from 2% to 8% consumption of French language music across Canada by 2029 (he didn’t specify a Québec-only number).

Payette’s parting shot to the Commission was “the CRTC has the opportunity… to show that we are capable of standing up to preserve our cultural sovereignty and our culture.”

***

Ah, the federal Heritage committee is back. How I have missed its performative politics.

All roads to Canadian cultural policy run through the ten MPs who sit on this Parliamentary committee, five Liberals, four Conservatives and the lone member from the Bloc Québécois.

It’s useful to parse the committee transcripts for clues on the government’s legislative intentions, as well as what mayhem to expect from Opposition MPs.

First, a report on the mayhem. The Conservatives began their dependable tormenting of the CBC. They also pushed successfully (over Liberal objections) to send three of the committee’s Reports from the last session of Parliament to the House of Commons. Those reports (on Big Tech meddling in Canadian politics, toxic content on social media, and the state of Canadian news media) are now filed in the Commons, with Conservative dissents, so the government owes a written response. More grist for the mill.

Going one Report further, the Conservatives won a new committee investigation into the state of news media, with subject matter, witnesses and committee dates to be determined.

As for the government agenda, Minister Steve Guilbeault appeared at the committee and promised something newsworthy about CBC’s plans for local news would emerge soon.

He was grilled by the Conservatives and the Bloc about where the rumoured Liberal budget cuts to his department’s programs might fall. He deferred to the Finance Minister’s budget on November 4th, but hinted about consolidating the administration of the Canada Media Fund for television, Telefilm, and another program (my guess, the National Film Board). It seems unlikely he can cut 15% of spending over three years without paring back program spending.

The Minister also gave an unparsable answer to a question about retabling Bill C-63, the complex online harms bill that included mandatory safety codes for social media platforms, a revived individual right of complaint against hate speech, and stronger criminal penalties for online hate. While the latter subject matter is arguably covered by Justice Minister Sean Fraser’s Bill C-9, Guilbeault left us guessing about bringing back the safety code proposal.

One last point, I was surprised that the Minister was willing to take the Conservative bait to pass judgment on ex-CBC host Travis Dhanraj, who claims he was mistreated and prevented from inviting conservative guests onto his show by CBC management.

Travis Dhanraj with co-host Karman Wong and guest Kevin O’Leary

The Minister’s comments in French —“d’abord, je tiens à déplorer ce qui est arrivé à cet employé”—- were officially translated as “I condemn,” but were closer to “I lament.” He says he wasn’t briefed on the controversy by CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard, so his willingness to express regret stands out. Later in the transcript he qualifies his concern by saying “it’s possible that it went very badly for this individual, I’m sorry about that.”

The Committee is currently engaged in a review of AI impact on media and cultural industries to which MediaPolicy will return.

***

The Hollywood news outlet Deadline is speculating about the rumoured Paramount purchase of Warner Brothers Discovery. Warner assets include studio production, the premier streaming platform HBO Max, and cable properties CNN, TNT Sports, and various nature and lifestyle channels.

Netflix might submit a competing bid, but Deadline immediately dashed that speculation by observing that Netflix wouldn’t want the cable assets (indeed, ask yourself why they would want anything other than the library of titles).

What’s not speculated upon is the knock-on effect on Canada, specifically Bell Media which is hanging on to exclusive Canadian distribution rights to HBO content as the ballast for Crave. Bell’s current deal for HBO still runs for an unknown number of years, probably until 2027 or 2028, and keeping access to premium US television dramas will always be job one.

The unanswered question is whether a Paramount-owned HBO would be more or less willing to renew Bell’s deal for Crave or instead go direct to Canadian consumers like Netflix and Disney Plus.

***

Go Jays.

I thought I was too old for birthday presents, but thanks to @27vladdyjr and @davidortiz for this:

***

I can be reached by e-mail at howard.law@bell.net.

Catching Up on MediaPolicy – The AI Death Star – the Ellison media empire

AI Image

October 5, 2025

There is a good analysis piece by Gretel Kahn that reviews the distribution of the $100 million Bill C-18 Google payments to Canadian news outlets and the Meta ban on Canadian news.

The criticisms from various publishers and commentators on where the Google money landed are fairly predictable. Mainstream media, especially the US-controlled Postmedia chain, come in for a bashing and the most vivid quote comes from Christopher Curtis, the online publisher of local news outlet The Rover, who opines that “this whole thing has been a huge gift for foreign-owned legacy media and a spit in the face of small outlets like ours and Indigenous-owned outlets.”

Got it.

The fresh stuff that Kahn digs out is how news outlets are adapting to the Meta ban on Canadian news. One publisher points out that Meta’ s traffic referrals to news sites were falling well before Mark Zuckerberg responded to the Online News Act Bill C-18 by banishing most news organizations from his platform.

Many of these publishers are figuring out work arounds on Meta applications, buying Facebook ads to promote their hyperlinked news or posting unlinked news items on Instagram. Others are leaning more heavily on YouTube and TikTok distribution. As one publisher comments in the story, it’s “better not to build on rented land,” a nod to heavier reliance on their own e-mail and subscription distribution instead of Search and Social platforms.

But all of that may be yesterday’s problem. The new disruptors of journalism are the Internet-scraping AI companies, including the same Big Tech platforms that make news available through hyperlinked news snippets.

Canada’s Online News Act C-18 doesn’t regulate AI ingestion of Canadian news content. So far, the AI companies have got away with being the dog that eats your book, barfs it, and claims the ingestion was okay because it’s no longer a book.

If the Liberal government has any concern about that, or any interest in amending copyright law to get at the problem more quickly, it has yet to show such interest.

In the meantime, the referrals of audience traffic from AI-enhanced search engines to news sites are way down. Yet a news report suggests that the few AI companies deigning to make licensing agreements with a handful of news agencies are sending more traffic to these chosen outlets. In these early days, the AI horizon facing news organizations appears to range from catastrophic to not-so-catastrophic scenarios and the question of which news sites get licensing deals may be determinative. If this sounds like the problem of oligopoly in content distribution that lead to Bill C-18, it should.

Federal AI Minister Evan Solomon just announced the advisory panel for his federal AI Strategy Task Force. The list of strategic priorities does not include news media. The panel is dominated by experts on AI development and economic opportunities. The only member appointed to the 23-person panel who is focussed on the downside harms to the media ecosystem is McGill University’s Taylor Owen.

Whatever is coming from AI, so far the Liberal government does not seem interested in riding to the rescue of the media or creative industries. The Parliamentary Heritage committee is scheduling hearings beginning October 6th and 8th that may put the issue into the public policy spotlight.

***

The Bari Weiss deal is done now. The iconoclastic publisher of The Free Press has sold her publication to the newly consolidated Paramount, owned by David Ellison.

Weiss becomes the editor-in-chief of CBS News and, given her MAGA affinities, the editorial curation of the mainstream broadcaster could change.

Paramount joins Fox, Warner Brothers Discovery (CNN, TBS), Disney (ABC, ESPN) and Comcast (NBC) as a media superpower in both news and sports & entertainment. But Ellison has a special edge and the potential to dominate global media to the extent that he works in cooperation with his father Larry Ellison, the second richest man in the world. Ellison pater is expected to become a significant minority owner of the US-operations of TikTok once that deal with Chinese-owned ByteDance is consummated.

The Washington Post has a good story on the Ellisons, their businesses, and their relationships with the White House.

***

I have two recommendations for weekend listening.

For those of you who read my review of David Cayley’s new book on the CBC, you may enjoy (a) reading the book, or (b) listening to Tara Henley’s excellent podcast interview of the author.

And if you want to listen to an interview full of unexpected personal insights, I recommend the engrossing New York Times podcast interview of the actor, artist and activist Sean Penn. The interview was recorded in two parts, divided chronologically by the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

***

I can be reached by e-mail at howard.law@bell.net.

Catching up on MediaPolicy – Dhanraj tells his CBC story – Kimmel is back, really back – Unifor launches CheckFactHere – Western Standard cashs a federal cheque

September 27, 2025

Last week Culture and Identity Minister Steven Guilbeault showed up at the House of Commons’ heritage committee for his root canal.

The Conservatives were on him immediately about former CBC host Travis Dhanraj’s charges that the public broadcaster violated the Human Rights Act by treating him as a token “brown guy.” MP Rachel Thomas cited CBC’s “toxic environment” as a fact.

Guilbeault appeared to take Dhanraj’s allegations at face value, expressing “regret” at “what happened to him” but distanced himself from the CBC’s handling of the dispute.

MediaPolicy has covered the story here, here and here but I was waiting for more details on Dhanraj’s claims against unnamed colleagues in CBC’s Ottawa bureau and how CBC management handled the whole situation.

Now Dhanraj has given a more fulsome version of his story on episode one of his new podcast, Can’t Be Censored, produced with former CP24 reporter Karman Wong.

The episode is over an hour long and it’s pretty clear that without naming David Cochrane, the host of CBC’s parliamentary show Power and Politics, that is who Dhanraj is identifying as his nemesis (Cochrane has declined comment). Dhanraj says that “three or four” journalists are running the Ottawa bureau’s news coverage as their own club.

Dhanraj’s narrative is that CBC headhunted him, first as a national reporter and then as the host of Canada Tonight, a current affairs show. Dhanraj tried to make the show edgy and popular by inviting controversial guests. They included former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, whose appearance CBC management vetoed on the grounds that Carlson is a white nationalist, although Dhanraj says in the podcast he doesn’t agree with that description.

What got him into hotter water was inviting Conservative Party deputy leader Melissa Lantsman onto his show while the Conservatives were boycotting Cochrane’s hot seat on Power & Politics. As it turns out, CBC management already had an internal protocol that forbade the Conservatives end-running Cochrane in favour of a preferred host. Dhanraj tried to convince his boss that it was good journalism and better for the CBC’s reputation as a big tent public broadcaster to get the Conservatives onto any CBC show at all. He even quoted the Broadcasting Act. His boss didn’t buy it.

There’s more in the podcast episode on other friction points between Dhanraj and the Corp. Assuming he has offered his best arguments, it’s hard to see his allegation of racist tokenism as anything other than his editorial gloss. Rather his story comes across as a tale of an ambitious television anchor making a play to upgrade a lesser show into a bigger one, some colleagues resenting that, and CBC not accommodating it.

If David Cayley’s new book critiquing the CBC had gone to press a little later, I am sure he would have devoted a chapter to Dhanraj. Earlier this week, MediaPolicy posted a review of Cayley’s book.

***

Bob Iger is writing his own history, day by day.

Iger is the Disney CEO responsible for suspending Live! host Jimmy Kimmel for his mockery of the US President’s odd reply to a journalist’s question about grieving Charlie Kirk’s death. Then the viewer and political backlash hit Disney. Iger turned Kimmel’s “indefinite” suspension into a one week cancellation.

US media commentator Evan Shapiro has a LinkedIn post breaking down the events leading up to Iger’s actions against Kimmel.

Bottom line: the threat by Trump’s FCC chair Brendan Carr to strip Disney’s ABC affiliate stations of their broadcasting licenses was an idle one. Up until now media moguls have blinked because they won’t play the long game against the Trump administration’s campaign to tame mainstream media.

Kimmel’s show is back on the ABC network, but initially two major station affiliates refused to air it. One of them is a big Trump supporter. The other needs the FCC to approve a merger.

That lasted three days. Yesterday the two affiliates that include 56 stations across the US reversed course and agreed to resume airing the show.

It ain’t over. Trump replied on Truth Social, “I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do.”

***

It’s World News Day tomorrow which is a reminder from major newsrooms around the liberal democratic globe that you’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Pairing up with that, my alma mater Unifor —-which represents journalists and media workers across the country—- has launched a middle brow version of the same, a public service campaign branded CheckFactHere.

Video and print ads created by Unifor will appear in Canadian media who are donating the inventory.

***

A few sunny weeks ago MediaPolicy posted a dissent from a Canadian Press story concluding that PM Mark Carney was considering repeal of the government’s Online News Act C-18 and its $100 million tithe on Google that compensates Canadian newsrooms for their stories appearing on Search. I didn’t think that Carney’s mangled response to a Kelowna journalist’s question about C-18 actually said that.

It took some time to pin down the government for a clarification, but Politico.com asked Culture and Identity Minister Steven Guilbeault for comment and his press secretary replied “the federal government has no intention of repealing either of the acts,” referencing both C-18 and the Online Streaming Act C-11.

Then the National Post story added that Guilbeault’s office hedged a bit, saying “for us, currently, the intention is not to repeal those acts… But I can’t pretend to know the end result of the negotiations with the United States” which are “very much” the main factor that will determine the future of both acts.

Somebody needs to put this question to Carney.

While we are talking about C-18, when the Canadian Journalism Collective announced the distribution of the $100 million in August, Media Policy posted that the conservative news outlet Western Standard was getting a $68,000 cheque. What I didn’t mention is that I e-mailed publisher Derek Fildebrandt asking him to confirm that he wasn’t also receiving the federal government’s “QCJO” journalist subsidy. His publication was part of a coterie of anti-subsidy news outlets who published a public oath they would never take that kind of money. Fildebrandt didn’t reply to my e-mail.

Now we know why. He’s taking the money. In an email to his subscribers, Fildebrandt said he couldn’t compete without the federal cash and ——I am reading between his lines here— without Pierre Poilievre in power those subsidies will continue to flow to his competitors.

Fildebrandt’s books aren’t public, so it’s also possible he couldn’t remain solvent without federal and Google money. In any event, my condolences, climbing down from high moral ground is never fun. Just ask Mark Carney.

***

I can be reached by e-mail at howard.law@bell.net.

How the CBC should get its mind right: David Cayley’s new book

Author and CBC Ideas producer David Cayley

September 24, 2025

David Cayley, The CBC: How Canada’s Public Broadcaster Lost Its Voice (And How to Get It Back Again), published by Sutherland House (2025).

The former producer of CBC’s radio show Ideas has a new book that asks and answers a question too often ignored: what is a public broadcaster and why isn’t the CBC behaving like one?

David Cayley’s “The CBC: How Canada’s Public Broadcaster Lost Its Voice (And how to get it back)” is prosaically titled but elegantly written. Cayley loves ideas of course and his argument is grounded in a series of cerebral set pieces that situate his message that CBC News is too much the storyteller and too little the convenor of open-minded dialogue.

If theories of media communications and linguistics are your thing, Cayley explores and applies the ideas of Marshall McLuhan, Harold Innis, Noam Chomsky, The Frankfurt School and a host of other thinkers you may never heard of. If you have a taste for this (I do) or consider yourself a left libertarian, there’s lots to eat. Otherwise, you may need to be patient with Cayley.

Each of his excursions into theory provide the context for his core message, which goes something like this:

For decades now, the CBC has strayed from its Parliamentary mandate, for which it is provided with big subsidies, to be the non-judgmental convenor of public debate instead of just another corps of journalists holding inflated ideas of their clairvoyant understanding of Canadians. The CBC suffers from cultural orthodoxy —let’s call it an overweening confidence in the destiny of liberal progressivism— and the newsroom’s belief that it has a special talent for divining truth and misinformation.

It’s a heck of an indictment and the prosecutor makes his case, beginning with Exhibit A: CBC’s coverage of the Covid pandemic and the three-week occupation of downtown Ottawa by the so-called Freedom Convoy, whose participants “manifested a large and vibrant new public,” according to Cayley.

In his view, the federal government, echoed in its messaging by mainstream media and the CBC, treated the participants in this “generally moderate Freedom Convoy” as enemies of the state and this demonstrates the dangerous polarization of the Canadian polity and the pressing need for more civic dialogue in this country. Cayley just published the relevant book excerpts in the National Post. On the other hand, the CBC Ombud’s judgment is here.

If you choke a bit on that lionization of the Freedom Convoy, you may be recalling that it was riddled with avowed insurrectionists and defiers of public health directives enacted by a democratically elected government in the name of reducing critical infections that threatened to kill untold thousands and overwhelm hospital emergency rooms. The incipient threat of violence associated with clearing the occupation was never far away.

Cayley is a skeptic of anything described as a consensus by the medical and science establishments and he reminds us of this when he lampoons the worldwide public health response to Covid as “comprised of speculative computer models whose probative value lies just north of tea leaves and bird entrails.”

He argues that Convoy participants were vindicated in their opposition to Covid vaccine mandates by later findings that vaccines became less effective over time in preventing the spread of the disease. Meanwhile the CBC and other media organizations disparaged the occupiers’ dissent as “misinformation,” unworthy of serious news reporting.

In this review I am not going to litigate this public health issue, or the openness of media coverage, to a conclusion. But suffice it to say it’s a contentious point on which to rest his argument that the CBC newsroom is swaddled in its own filter bubble.

How the CBC became its own biggest fan, says Cayley, can be traced back to its early departure from a more neutral role in public dialogue and its quest for mojo as an edgy news organization in television shows like the investigative journalism of This Hour Has Seven Days. Despite the fact that Seven Days, which ran only two seasons from 1964 to 1966, was cancelled by CBC management —guaranteeing its legendary status as Canada’s media iteration of the Avro Arrow fighter jet— its strong editorial voice and visually manipulative narrative style exemplifies for Cayley what’s always been wrong about CBC’s news journalism.

Cayley connects the immense popularity of Seven Days with a “populism” that seats media gatekeepers into the role of the audience’s surrogate, as its watchdog over the powerful, its advocate for justice, or (using just one more metaphor) the high priests of a media church sermonizing the congregation, vindicated in their righteousness so long as attendance remains high.

What suffers when the CBC insists on being the audience’s surrogate, he says, is the neglect of its core Parliamentary mandate, articulated by the first two words in its mission “to inform, enlighten and entertain.”

Once upon a time, the old guard in the early CBC were more inclined towards “adult education” and news you can use, rather than theatrical news reporting and laying claim to Canada’s voice. Cayley wants the CBC to get back to that “inform and enlighten.”

Cayley never makes it clear if he wants to blow up CBC’s editorial identity as a news reporting organization entirely or just re-set the newsroom mindset to something better aligned with “inform and enlighten.” He cautions that he is not advocating for a University of CBC.

Mostly, he critiques the CBC’s workplace culture as suffering from a baked-in orthodoxy of thought. He can be quite funny writing about this: his insider account of CBC management’s top-down reset of its corporate culture is relatable to anyone who has ever endured the same. His cheeky disparagement of Jian Ghomeshi’s popular radio show Q may leave a smile on your face or okay boomer on your lips.

But the prosecutor Cayley gets himself into trouble when he puts forward Exhibit B which purports to quantify the pervasive reach of the orthodoxy inside the newsroom.

He begins by citing a Léger poll commissioned by the Macdonald Laurier Institute that self-identified leftists outnumber conservatives in Canadian universities by a ratio of nine to one and that this is killing dissent and fostering self-censorship among the minority. From this poll he links to the CBC’s culture, claiming “the case is the same at the CBC, as I have already shown.”

Well no, he doesn’t show that at all.

To rebut, let me first note that the Léger poll was non-randomized and relied on voluntary participation. It collected lopsided data culled mostly from faculty in the humanities and social sciences —prolix socialists, all— and under participation from STEM departments.

More to the point, where’s the proof that CBC staff are nine-to-one lefties versus righties? Cayley points to three journalists (Exhibit C), one of whom is neither a journalist nor works for CBC but once wrote an analysis of CBC’s news coverage of Saskatchewan’s transgender laws.

He notes the troubling story of a veteran CBC Winnipeg reporter Marianne Klowak who quit in disgust at a management kibosh on her reporting that gave voice to vaccine dissenters.

He cites the departure of CBC Toronto news producer Tara Henley who also quit in disgust, issuing a public indictment of the “cognitive dissonance” created by the CBC newsroom’s groupthink.

Two journalists (make it three including Cayley) out of 3,000 is not enough evidence to support his claim, but to be fair it would be difficult to rely on anything but anecdotal evidence without the kind of newsroom polling that is impossible to provide.

Still, Cayley once lived in the belly of the beast and is likely on to something. Common sense tells you that a newsroom where most reporters live in three big cities may well list to the leftish values of urban progressivism.

On the other hand, my own experience of a lifetime representing reporters and journalists —although never at the CBC — convinces me that the left-right thing is for the opinion pages and eclipsed by the dominant spirit in all newsrooms: a Watchdog ideology that posits white-knight journalists at the service of the public by “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.” Nevertheless, Cayley views the CBC’s self-coronation as public champion as the problem that needs replacement by a more passive role as the convenor of civic dialogue, the aforementioned “inform and enlighten.”

His intriguing idea is there for your consideration. But in Exhibit D, the prosecuting Cayley again goes too far when he says that “what is more serious is the way the CBC has lost the country’s attention”.

I beg your pardon, it has not. CBC radio is a market leader across the country. Its online news website earns top ratings, vying each year with CTV for the most consumed or most trusted online source. Even CBC’s much maligned television ratings —which lag behind CTV and Global— are weighted down by flagging audiences for CBC’s entertainment programming which must compete head-on during prime time against American hit shows on private Canadian networks and also a little streamer named Netflix.

Cayley’s overstatements don’t detract from his deepest conviction: that Canada is becoming increasingly polarized, even a “fatally divided polity,” and a public broadcaster needs to engage the participation of all. A more open-minded programming culture of inquiry and intellectual curiosity may be the tonic. More reflection, fewer snap judgments.

Most book-length critiques of CBC tend to focus on news programming rather than television drama, which is too bad (Richard Stursberg being a notable exception). In fact, Chris Waddell and the late David Taras go so far as to recommend jettisoning entertainment programming altogether and saying uncle to Netflix.

Cayley discusses entertainment programming briefly, mostly in the context of the unstoppable tide of American shows that sets the cultural tone for Canadian content.

He calls upon the CBC to rely less on knock-off genres of television drama, set in classic Canadian landscapes, and more on historical and contemporary stories of Canadian self-discovery. Amen to that, but it’s not clear to me that the CBC isn’t already doing this with the limited production budgets that it has. When it wants to step up its game for bigger audiences, it makes co-venture deals with Netflix.

Finally, Cayley says almost nothing about Radio-Canada, an understandable limitation on the scope of his essay. The application of his critique and his solution, the question and answer about the CBC’s public broadcasting mission, might provoke more insights if anyone in Québec were to take up and explore his views.

***

I can be reached by e-mail at howard.law@bell.net.

Catching up on MediaPolicy – CRTC begins hearings on music streaming – MAGA media mayhem – RadioCanada’s Jewish problem

September 20, 2025

The CRTC is shaping the regulatory path for streaming services in Canada in three big files: audio content, video content and media distribution. The public hearings for video and distribution were done before the summer break and this week the Commission kicked off hearings on music streaming and radio.

The Commission has to figure out what more the global streaming services must do for Canadian content, a year after the CRTC levied on the streamers a “5 per cent” cash contribution to Canadian media funds that match those paid by Canadian cable TV providers.

In music streaming, that could mean new requirements for streamer spending on Canadian songs and musicians through a combination of copyright payments and investments in musician development. It could also mean “prominence” requirements giving an extra push of Canadian songs to the attention of listeners, something that the streamers normally do only if music labels pay them.

Quite significantly, the Commission has already said —-before public hearings kicked off— that it won’t mimic its radio regulations for minimum airtime for Canadian songs. That means the most direct way to address the low consumption of Canadian songs on streaming platforms is already off the table.

The pro-CanCon advocacy group Friends of Canadian Media (I’m a volunteer) says the regulatory algebra should be straightforward.

The streamers’ spending requirements ought to be benchmarked at the same level of radio broadcasters’ budgeted spending on Canadian music and local programming, about 30% of revenues according to the Ontario Association of Broadcasters.

With the benchmark set, next would come the detailed arguments about what streamer expenditures on Canadian music count towards the 30%. The streamers will point to their current budget for copyright payments to Canadian musicians whose songs are uploaded to their platforms, but those don’t come anywhere near filling up a 30% bucket.

Then the “discoverability” requirements would get assessed and Friends has proposed that the Commission require the streamers to promote Canadian music with home-screen prominence, e-mailed song recommendations, more song picking of Canadian music in staff-curated playlists and an algorithmic responsiveness to listeners’ Search inquiries for different types of music. The cash value of these prominence measures to Canadian music producers would be calculated and set off against the streamers’ spending obligations.

The streamers are looking for two things and they want both.

They want the repeal of the five per cent cash levy that supports touring and special development projects for Canadian musicians under the stewardship of independent Canadian media funds. The streamers don’t want to pay and have appealed the levy to the courts.

Also they have filled the ears of the Trump administration and US Congress on how unfairly Canada is treating them (Canadian radio broadcasters pay only a one-half per cent cash levy because they already carry the heavy airtime quotas.)

The other thing the streamers want is no Canadian regulation. Or to put that in regulatory vocabulary, they want whatever efforts they care to make to support Canadian music deemed sufficient. It’s worth recalling that Canada is the first country to regulate streaming audio, even the Europeans haven’t done it yet.

This audio hearing is also the opportunity for Canadian radio broadcasters to bang away at air-time quotas for Canadian songs. As well, they want to water down the “MAPL” definition of what counts as Canadian music for the purpose of meeting those quotas.

The dispute about MAPL —which provides a point system for counting song contributions from performers and songwriters—- will drive some headlines if only because Canadian rock star Bryan Adams publicly trashs it. At some point, MediaPolicy will chime in (again) on that topic.

***

It is hard to keep up with dizzying pace of the Trump administration’s rolling offensive against mainstream media outlets (excepting Fox News of course).

The FCC Chair’s threats of regulatory action against Disney/ABC and the television stations that carried the Jimmy Kimmel comedy show were successful in getting Disney to kill the show after Kimmel lampooned the President’s response to a question about the assassination of his friend and ally, Charlie Kirk.

A day later, the President said that he expected NBC to fire two more late night comedians, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon. He also promised more FCC regulatory action against television networks if they don’t put more conservative guests on air.

As well, this week Trump filed a $15 billion libel lawsuit against the New York Times. A district judge punted the statement of claim as too long and rhetorical, giving Trump’s lawyers a month to refile.

Stepping back from the daily drama, I recommend Matt Stoller’s most recent Substack that sees recent developments as the consequence of successive Republican and Democrat administrations allowing rampant corporate consolidation of telecommunications and media over the last four decades.

Stoller argues that repression of free expression was made possible by a consolidated media landscape, compounded by monopolies in Big Tech.

He has a lengthy list of recommendations, combining anti-trust break-ups of major tech and media companies with new regulatory action that favours more diverse ownership of media.

The ambition of his wish list is considerable, perhaps unrealistic, but it looks to be a campaign proposal to the Democratic Party based on the idea the people are ready to break up Big Media into smaller and more lovable independent media outlets.

***

Lest this blog space seem to be picking on the Americans, I draw your attention to MediaPolicy’s last post spotlighting an on-air anti-Semitic rant from Radio-Canada‘s Washington correspondent.

Élisa Serret described Jewish influence in American politics as “a big machine” fuelled by Jewish money and claimed that “the Jews run Hollywood” and (a new one) that Jews are the mayors of America’s “big cities.”

There’s also a good opinion piece from the Globe and Mail‘s Tony Keller that you might like.

***

I can be reached by e-mail at howard.law@bell.net.

Saying the quiet part out loud: Radio-Canada’s anti-Semitic report from Washington

September 18, 2025

On Monday, Radio-Canada’s Washington correspondent Élisa Serret, appearing on the network’s afternoon news show “Sur Le Terrain,” was asked by the host how it was that the US government seemed unable to distance itself from Israel following the IDF attack on Hamas leaders who were meeting in Qatar, a US ally.

The veteran host Christian Latreille asked why the US administration “has such difficulty distancing themselves from Israel, even in the most difficult moments?”

Serret’s answer was that it was because of the “big machine” of Jewish influence in American politics.

Specifically, what she said (as translated in the National Post story) was that “my understanding, and that of multiple analysts here in the United States, is that it is the Israelis, the Jews, that finance American politics a lot.

“There is a big machine behind them, making it very difficult for Americans to detach themselves from Israel’s positions. It’s really money here in the United States. The big cities are run by Jews, Hollywood is run by Jews.”

You can watch the video here. Her broadcast comments were covered by the French language press here and here.

It was a gobsmacking statement. There are pro-Israel lobby groups in the US, as there are many groups that lobby US politicians on everything under the sun. There are Jewish Americans who make campaign donations, as there are plenty of non-Jewish Americans who do the same.

Then’s there’s the canard about “Hollywood” being “run by” Jews and putting the whammy on all thinking Americans. As for Jews dominating the ranks of big city mayors, I think that’s a new conspiracy theory, although demographically fictitious (three out of fifty US big city mayors are Jewish).

Serret is a ten-year veteran of Radio Canada and holds a graduate degree in global and international studies.

The host, an award-winning veteran of broadcast journalism, including the last eleven years as anchor and Washington correspondent, did not interrupt, contradict, or ask Serret to clarify.

After Serret was called out on X, Radio Canada apologized for Serret’s “stereotypical, anti-Semitic, erroneous, and prejudicial allegations against Jewish communities.”

Serret has been suspended by her employer pending investigation, although she is still listed on the Radio Canada website as the show’s Washington correspondent. Audience complaints will no doubt be filed to the network’s Ombud and we’ll get a published report after he interviews Radio-Canada management.

This is one of the moments where the casual, ingrained anti-semitism in Canada smacks you in the face. As a friend reminded me, Serret “just said the quiet part out loud.”

What he means by that, or what I mean by that, is the matter-of-fact manner in which anti-Semitic conspiracy narratives about Jewish control and manipulation of non-Jews and government are culturally reproduced, century after century, day after day, everywhere.

What happened here is that a well educated veteran journalist carried around these conspiracy theories in her head for years and finally had a chance to offer them on-air as conventional wisdom. The awkward question is whether her views were already known and condoned. As for the host Latreille, he either regarded her comments as legitimate journalism or he froze, which doesn’t say much about his level of professional abilities.

Serret’s assumption that she could state these conspiracies as analysis, in a broadcast to a national audience, suggests she believes her views are widely shared with the audience.

I’d like to think they aren’t, and the Culture & Identity Minister’s denunciation was appreciated, but as any member of any Canadian community targeted by hate will tell you, that hate is dangerous to our health.

***

I can be reached by e-mail at howard.law@bell.net.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: