The big media news of the week was Heritage Minister Pascale St.-Onge presenting a 10,000-foot “proposal” to better fund and govern the CBC. MediaPolicy offered an overview here.
The Minister’s recommendations have yet to be endorsed by the Liberal cabinet or contenders to replace Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister. As for St.-Onge, she’s quitting politics.
Her proposal stole headlines with its bold plan to double Parliamentary funding from $33 to $62 per Canadian, a number she walked back immediately to $50, phased in over five years.
Pierre Poilievre was grateful for the opportunity, messaging that the Liberals were promising “another one billion dollars of your money” for the CBC. He then squandered the point with populist blarney to the effect that the money was “an extra incentive [for the CBC] to campaign day and night to re-elect the Liberal government to a fourth term. A reminder to believe nothing you see or hear on CBC.”
On the other hand, the leading candidates for the Liberal leadership have some thinking to do on how to respond to their colleague’s big idea.
The McGill poll from October pegged 78% majority support for maintaining the CBC in the face of Poilievre’s threat to defund. Importantly, that 78% was tied to “changes” at the CBC (at some point we ought to poll what Canadians mean by changes).
But other results from the McGill poll are sometimes overlooked. Thirty-four per cent of the same pool of respondents said CBC needs more reliable funding, unchanged from previous polling in 2021. Perhaps surprisingly, the 34% is not skewed by regional differences but support for the CBC and better funding is higher among non-Conservative voters.
The political challenge for the Minister’s plan is that it’s front loaded with money, with the changes to come later. That’s why the pressure is on CBC/Radio-Canada CEO Marie-Philippe Bouchard to describe the changes.
The political challenge for defunder Poilievre is that Donald Trump has put the CBC top of mind for many Canadians. We’ll wait for some polling on that.
***
Two weeks ago I posted an update on the CRTC’s regulation of foreign music streamers and, as promised, the Commission has announced a June hearing on audio services, radio and online.
Parliament handed the Commission a laundry list of tasks in implementing the Online Streaming Act, the most pressing of which is what’s expected of Spotify and the American music streamers and whether the declining Canadian radio industry can catch a regulatory break.
The Commission’s Notice of Consultation sports the usual hints of what it’s already thinking before the hearings begin. Its code words are “our preliminary view,” “we consider,” and “we propose.”
Here’s a rundown:
As the Commission ruled in June, the streamers are going to pay five per cent of Canadian revenues into funds for Canadian musicians and radio news. Perhaps to shore up its legal flank in the face of the streamers’ upcoming court challenge this June, the Commission plans to impose more significant cash contributions on Canadian radio networks that take in at least $25 million in annual revenue (the same earnings threshold as the Commission is applying to the foreign streamers).
CRTC Figures identify five radio broadcast groups exceeding $25 million in annual Canadian revenues
As for smaller radio broadcasters, the Commission seems ready to eliminate their half-per cent of revenue (0.05%) cash contributions to musician development funds. The current radio airplay quotas of 35% to 65%, however, are slated to remain.
The national pastime of debating the “MAPL” formula for a Canadian song that qualifies to fill airplay quotas will be revived but the Commission seems committed to the modest changes it proposed in 2022. Rules on Canadian co-writing of music and lyrics will be loosened. The Commission doesn’t seem convinced as yet that Canadian studio producers ought to join artists and songwriters in the talent club that satisfies the airplay quota.
The Commission is interested in strengthening on-air exposure for emerging Canadian artists and is open to a 5% airplay quota for artists in the first four years of their recording careers.
Similarly, the Commission is interested, in fact very determined, to introduce a 5% airplay quota for Indigenous music.
In a typically opaque discussion of news programming, the Commission declares that “news is a priority” (indeed the Online Streaming Act says so) but unlike other policy items it offers no blueprint for how to make the priority into a reality on air.
But the most difficult policy question is how to close the gap between radio broadcasters and online streamers with respect to the prominence and consumption of Canadian songs.
As noted by the Commission, CanCon consumption is a mere 10% on streaming platforms operating in Canada, a far cry from the 35% to 65% radio airplay quotas. The consumption of streamed French language music is 8.5% in Québec.
What’s unmissable in the Commission’s public notice is how little it makes of these consumption outcomes, so dismal that they are directly proportional to the Canadian share of the continental market.
It’s safe to say that if the Commission was planning anything bold to address the outcome gap, it would have said so. Instead it says “more information is required to fully understand how online services can facilitate [CanCon] discoverability.”
***
The Liberal-tormenting True North has rebranded itself as Juno News and its boss Candice Malcolm had Pierre Poilievre on her show for a 37-minute video interview last week.
The Malcolm interview is in the vein of the Conservative leader’s famous chat with Canadian expat Jordan Peterson: it falls short of being a softball news interview, it’s more of a tag team narrative (for example, Malcolm responding to Poilievre’s comments as “excellent”).
So naturally Malcolm introduced the topic of independent journalism.
What was interesting was that Poilievre passed on the opportunity to reiterate his plans for a scorched earth repeal of federal aid to journalism and said Canadians should wait to see his election platform.
Having said that, he expressed concern that some news organizations had been denied eligibility for federal aid for politically motivated reasons.
All of this is difficult to read, but there seems to be some kind of policy cogitation going on behind the scenes and we will, as the Opposition Leader suggests, have to wait to see his election platform.
***
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A few weeks ago the CBC seemed doomed. Pierre Poilievre’s defunding promises were (are) real, and as the then Prime Minister-in-waiting said, “I can’t wait to defund the CBC.”
Now that promise is an albatross draped around the Conservatives’ neck.
An October poll pegged popular support for the CBC at 78% of Canadians. The big caveat to that number was that most of the 78% were demanding an improved CBC as the price of their support.
The Liberals’ third Heritage Minister in their nine-year run, Pascale St.-Onge, is finally addressing this public desire, five years after the government’s expert committee told cabinet how to accomplish it through amendments to the Broadcasting Act.
On Thursday, St.-Onge unveiled a “proposal” to revamp the public broadcaster’s mission, funding, and governance. The quotation marks here signify that the Minister is challenging Liberal candidates for the Prime Minister’s job to say yes.
It’s a sign of the weird political moment we are in that a Minister who has already announced her decision not to run in the upcoming election was green-lit by a lame duck PM Justin Trudeau to propose, not announce, detailed legislative action on a key election issue to those contending to replace him.
And now the fate of the CBC will be an elevated election issue, of that we can be reasonably certain. While the CBC has always been emblematic of cultural sovereignty, we are no longer concerned just about cultural sovereignty. In Trump’s new world order, Canadians are thinking about sovereignty-sovereignty.
St.-Onge was not subtle in making the link, repeatedly, between the importance of the CBC to Canadian democracy and the ability of US social media platforms to flood our zone with election interference, as easily achieved as writing new algorithm code.
As for her conflicting calls for national unity on supporting the CBC and suggestions that Pierre Poilievre’s blood lust for killing the CBC is unpatriotic, that’s politics folks. You can’t say he didn’t ask for it.
Her proposal responds to the undisclosed advice of her expert committee but also the five public recommendations put forward by the Yale Committee in January 2020.
Here’s a quick run-down of her proposal:
The headline grabber is a phased-in doubling of the CBC’s $1.4 billion annual Parliamentary funding from an unofficial $33.66 per Canadian to an official funding formula of $62.20 per capita which is the benchmark funding within the G7 (see the chart below). For that kind of money, she understated, Parliament would “expect a general increase in performance indicators.”
The companion to the funding change is to abolish advertising in public affairs programming, recommended by the Yale Committee and included in the Liberals’ 2021 election platform.
There is no recommendation to mirror UK legislation that grants the BBC a multi-year charter inking a mandate and guaranteed funding, but St.-Onge suggested that legislating a funding formula that is independent of Parliamentary budgets, like Old Age Security or federal-provincial transfers, ensures funding is relatively insulated from politics. The legislative guarantee would be subject to five-year reviews by MPs.
Per capita funding of public broadcasters, c. 2022
Not pointed out by the Minister, the doubling of funding would restore historic levels of CBC finances prior to the Harper, Chrétien and Mulroney cuts that fell most heavily upon the CBC’s regional and local television and radio programming. The $62.20 is eye-popping, but the Minister had it walked back to $50 before she took her first question from reporters.
That’s the money. Now for the accountability. St.-Onge’s pitch acknowledged the range of heated passions about the CBC, the in-vogue vocabulary for those strong opinions being “public trust.”
She proposed some widely recommended legislative changes starting with the CBC Board of Directors hiring its own CEO, instead of being hand picked by the Prime Minister. As for the Board itself, she wants to entrench in legislation the practice of appointing from an independently generated list.
While this governance reform is important to any well run public broadcaster, it will elicit yawns from most Canadians. That’s why St.-Onge’s key recommendation of “citizen participation” in governing the CBC is such a missed opportunity:
“As a public broadcaster, CBC/Radio-Canada should reflect the lived experiences, languages and needs of Canadian citizens. To facilitate this responsiveness, the Minister would propose to amend the Broadcasting Act to require that the Corporation include public consultation on issues related to its priorities and strategies in the context of its corporate plans. The amended Act could require CBC/Radio-Canada to indicate in its corporate plans how it satisfies the public consultation requirement, including the results and ways in which these results influence its decision-making and operations.”
In other words, the CBC would listen to Canadians and then write its own reviews, (sometimes known as an annual report).
A bold move (says me) would have been to enshrine a triannual Assembly of Canadians of undetermined numbers who would spend a week in Ottawa debating observations and publishing recommendations for the public broadcaster’s CEO and Board of Directors.
Such a citizen’s town hall should not pull any levers — otherwise it will end up a mock Parliament and tool of disruption— but it would be hard to ignore the people’s thoughtful and well-reported judgment on whether the CBC had in fact “shown a general increase in performance factors.”
There’s not much more the Minister, or a future Parliament, can do to re-engineer the CBC. Much of the really hard work is getting the programming strategy right and setting the right cultural tone. That is the job of the independent CBC Board and its new CEO, not Parliament.
For that, the clock is already ticking.
***
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Before catching up on MediaPolicy, there are two posts I offer up to you.
The first is my speech to the Digital Media at the Crossroads conference from last weekend. It’s a well salted explainer of the CRTC’s implementation of the Online Streaming Act on music streaming, its first efforts having drawn court appeals, trade threats and the launch of the “Scrap the Streaming Tax” campaign.
The Commission is going to announce a further public consultation on audio (including radio) this week.
The US digital giants offshore revenue from their Canadian operations (and do the same in other OECD nations) in order to minimize corporate tax.
The DSTs enacted in Canada and Europe are a response to that tax avoidance.
Former US President Joe Biden recognized that when he negotiated a tax treaty to fix it but US Congress refused to ratify it.
The tech bros appear to have backed the right horse.
***
The Public Policy Forum just published a report on local news journalism, The Lost Estate. The report comes out of the Michener Foundation’s conference last October. Written by journalism A-listers Alison Uncles, Ed Greenspon and Andrew Phillips, the report covers familiar ground about the extent of Canadian news deserts and news poverty.
The Report’s public policy recommendations have evolved beyond those recommended in 2017 by Greenspon’s Shattered Mirror study and the roster of federal programs aiding news journalism enacted since then by the Trudeau Liberals.
Here they are:
Work harder at getting philanthropic foundations, community organizations and individuals to utilize current tax write-offs for donations to news journalism.
Make it easier for news organizations to go non-profit, unlocking those charitable donations.
Mirror these contributions to the operational costs of running newsrooms with a public-private-philanthropic capital investment fund for community rescues of failing news outlets.
Legislate a requirement that moribund media organizations must give a four-month public notice of closure so that local investors can save the outlet (this would require both provincial and federal action).
Redesign Ottawa’s Local Journalism Initiative that funds 400 reporting jobs by matching federal funding to charitable fundraising, something that the recipient news organizations would be responsible for undertaking.
Redesign the federal reporter subsidy by requiring staff retention and rewarding new hiring.
Introduce an advertiser tax credit for expenditures in local media.
Encourage more governments to increase their advertising expenditures in local media.
If there is a theme in these recommendations it is to juice the market-facing incentives in current programs while not abandoning government aid.
As an appendix to its Report, the Forum provided an Ipsos poll covering some familiar questions about public attitudes towards news journalism.
The results confirm a key trend in public opinion: mainstream media is highly trusted and information carried over social media is not.
On the other hand, two questions related to government subsidies to independent news journalism elicited concern that state sponsorship “might” stoke bias and a lack of independence from government.
The most trusted news sources are in fact the most subsidized by government, so give the public credit for agreeing with MediaPolicy: subsidies are a difficult to measure risk to public trust but so far not a harm.
***
I sometimes close this post by recommending content, but consider this more of a referral: the Hollywood-crafted and star-studded Super Bowl ads you didn’t get to see because the NFL sold the Canadian programming and advertising rights to Bell Media’s TSN.
Nobody quite does goofy the way that Hollywood can.
Are you not entertained? You decide.
***
Okay, changed my mind, I will recommend something serious.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only Canadian listening to Trump’s inauguration speech who noticed the President’s reference to “Manifest Destiny,” a long active but recently dormant part of America’s imperial DNA.
Here’s a good piece on that from the US National Public Radio news site.
***
From The Lost Estate Report:
FOR PHILANTHROPY
Expand issue definition: Philanthropy is growing rapidly in the United States around local news. In addition to the small handful of U.S. foundations that are interested in journalism and democracy, a second wave of foundations and donors that were funders of other issues — including domestic violence, hunger, homelessness and poverty — have come to realize they’re not going to make any progress if there’s no local news. Canadian philanthropists should follow suit.
Step up community foundation involvement: There are more than 200 community foundations across Canada, as well as thousands of private foundations. They are just now beginning to channel their impressive fundraising acumen towards local news initiatives: The Winnipeg Community Foundation, for instance, has funded reporting on religion by the Winnipeg Free Press, and the Toronto Foundation is one of several foundations that help to fund The Local. Community foundations should be encouraged to support local news coverage as part of their wider missions to encourage social vitality, community health and local democracy. More media organizations should be knocking on those doors, and more community foundations should be stepping up.
Help enable new local news models, including not-for-profits and charities: Major French-language news outlets such as La Presse and Le Devoir have become not-for-profits and then used that status to apply for Registered Journalism Organization status to take advantage of money from foundations and individual donors. Only four media organizations outside Quebec have done the same; that represents a major missed opportunity to develop a new source of revenue to support local news. RJO status would mean new startup ventures could accept philanthropic support or present an opportunity for community-based fundraising to claim back news outlets from the corporate chains that have abandoned local coverage.
Foundations can help with this step. Achieving charitable status can be complicated, but foundations can offer guidance on how to navigate the rules around registered philanthropic organizations, such as setting up “friends of” charities that can more easily raise money from supporters. If more outlets had charitable status, more foundation help could be unlocked for local journalism.
FOR GOVERNMENT
Reconceive the Local Journalism Initiative: Report for America in the United States provides a good model of a partnership with strategic intent that builds long-term capacity rather than plugging short-term holes. Its stated mission is to “strengthen our communities and our democracy through local journalism” and it funds reporters in local newsrooms for three-year terms, rather than the single year or less of the LJI. Among its other virtues: It provides training for journalists, unlike the LJI; its grants get smaller each year, shifting more onus each year on the news organization to finance its staff; and it helps news organizations learn how to fundraise within their communities. A homemade “Report for Canada” would roll in LJI funds to match those invested by philanthropy. This would provide the added governance benefit of distancing the program from the government of the day and placing authority in an independent board. Public contributions, as with academic granting agencies, would come in the form of multi-year funding.
Mandate a sales notice period: Communities should have an opportunity to rally support for news outlets that are threatened with closure by corporate owners. Specifically, there should be a notice period, perhaps 120 days, before a news operation can be shut down or sold to a non-local buyer. That would give communities time to gather support for local ownership. To help promote local buyers, governments can explore policy interventions that could include training and development, support with restructuring operations, access to expert resources, navigation support of federal and provincial programs, as well as low-cost or no-cost loans.
Tie the Labour Tax Credit to jobs: The LTC is the most important government program supporting news operations at the moment, worth an estimated $67 million in the 2024-25 fiscal year.[42] It should be continued, but with important changes. Organizations should not take money and cut content; the tax credit should carry an incentive to grow newsrooms and should be tied to the increase or preservation of editorial positions and other resources necessary to produce local content. The credit would be higher for those who increase their spending on journalism.
Drive local advertising with a tax cut: Along the same lines, local advertisers should receive a tax credit for spending their ad dollars with independent, locally owned media. As advertising dollars continue to flow to foreign-owned digital sites, depriving local media of funds they need, a tax credit would give advertisers a greater incentive to vote local while leaving the decision about which outlets get support to them, not government. Equitable tax credits for advertisers have the additional benefit of being more likely to withstand shifts in the political winds. That said, local advertising only helps if Main Street can withstand the competition from distant digital retailers, which presents a different set of challenges.
Direct government ad dollars to local news: Governments should earmark a portion of their substantial advertising budgets to local publishers and broadcasters. Ontario is showing the way by requiring that 25 percent of government ad budgets, including spending by four large provincial agencies, be directed to “Ontario-based publishers.” This program, which went into effect in September 2024, is explicitly aimed at “helping to support these publishers and their workers, who are creating local news content for people across the province.” Brought in by a Conservative government, it could be worth some $50 million a year to Ontario publishers. The federal government, other provinces and territories, and municipalities should follow suit. Governments are already spending substantial amounts on advertising and marketing. It makes no sense for them to talk about the need for vibrant local democracy and a healthy local news environment while they continue to funnel their own ad dollars to foreign-owned social media sites.
FOR PHILANTHROPY AND GOVERNMENT
Encourage capital formation: The best way to strengthen local news is to help it remain in local hands in whatever form entrepreneurs believe will work best in each community. In many cases, this will require capital. Programs to encourage capital formation for this purpose would go a long way to preserving the public good that is local news. A sustainable investment vehicle, co-funded by the federal government, provincial and territorial governments, the philanthropic sector, as well as NGOs, could draw lessons from government programs like the Social Finance Fund[43] and the Canada Rental Protection Fund,[44] where federal investment complements other public, private and philanthropic money. The government should explore any mechanism that makes crowding-in more effective, by utilizing a “first-in, last-out” methodology. For philanthropic organizations engaged in social impact investment, local journalism is a perfect match. The same is true for governments that have already put in place measures to encourage employee ownership or support.
***
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Batter up: Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Sundar Pichai (Google) and Elon Musk (X).
January 25, 2025
The memorable line-up of US tech bros attending Donald Trump’s inauguration as special guests is an early candidate for Photo of the Year, although it’s possibly been eclipsed by Elon Musk’s nazi salute of the same day.
What the Trump victory means for Canadian regulation of Internet services seems ominous and Michael Geist is first out of the gate with “I told you so.”
In the months ahead you’ll find a different perspective here on MediaPolicy, I promise.
Thanks to Trump, we are headed into a nation-defining crucible, as Jean Charest just argued persuasively on CBC News. Of course media policy is just one thing on the table and you can’t eat cultural sovereignty.
Forty years ago, a majority of Canadians voted against a free trade deal with the United States as an over commitment of our economic fortunes to a single dominant trading partner.
But if we stick together and get decent political leadership, we can come out the other side as a greater country and more independent of the United States.
The Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization seal of approval unlocks reporter salary subsidies of 35% and reader tax credits of up to $75 per year in subscriptions paid.
The drift of Beeby’s article is that the news subsidies are bad —a debate for another day— and expensive to administer. Also, he says the costs of the entire program are not transparent because so little effort is made to publicize them.
The “$275 million” paid out in labour subsidies (spread out over six years, it’s worth mentioning) are reported in the government’s annual tax expenditure report.
The annual cost of the reporter subsidy was about $35 million until the government almost doubled its cost last year in response to the shortfall in anticipated news licensing payments from Google and Facebook. (The subsidy was boosted from 25% to 35% of a mid-range reporter salary of $85,000).
In addition to the $35 million labour subsidy, the reader tax credit has cost the public treasury about $15 million per year. With little fanfare, that subscription tax program expired on December 31, 2024.
The tax expenditure of a third QCJO program —-tax write-offs for private donations to non-profit journalism—- has never been released if it has even been tracked.
As for the Panel members’ compensation, Beeby notes that annual billings to the taxpayer have averaged $47,000. That’s divided among its five members. Most of their time is spent reviewing news articles submitted by QCJO applicants seeking to demonstrate “ongoing” (i.e. frequent) and “original” (i.e. not harvested from other sources) reporting of “news” (not opinion) that is of “general interest” (i.e. not niche or specialized).
I’m advised by panel Chair Colette Brin that its members bill the government on an hourly basis, with detailed timesheets, against the federal daily tariff of $275 to $450.
Since the program’s inception, the five panel members representing regions across the country have met online eighteen times rather than convene in Ottawa, except for a single in-person meeting costing $8000 in total travelling expenses.
Spitballing the three-part QCJO program cost at $90 million annually, the Panel’s administrative costs are 0.05% (half of a tenth of one per cent). The CRA did not provide Beeby with a costing of civil servants processing tax claims.
On the other hand, as Beeby points out, the lack of the government’s interest in pro-active transparency about the identity of the program recipients is baffling.
The Revenue Canada website does identify 191 news outlets whose readers are eligible for the now-expired QCJO reader tax credit (and therefore also the labour subsidy), but it does not reveal the unpaywalled news sites that only collect the labour subsidy. There may be as many as another 200 recipient news outlets basking in anonymity. As the reader tax credit has expired, it’s possible the list of 191 news outlets will disappear from public view.
The panel itself asked for more transparency as far back as 2019.
So have news organizations. Asked for comment, Paul Deegan of News Media Canada told MediaPolicy that “transparency is a necessary precondition for trust and accountability. We fully support making the list of QCJOs public, and we have asked the Government of Canada to do so.”
By comparison the $20 million per year Local Journalism Initiative, administered directly by Heritage Canada rather than Revenue Canada, requires recipient news organizations to identify the reporter subsidy on their mastheads.
In addition to identifying recipient news organizations so that readers can reach their own conclusions about accepting subsidies, there is the absence of employment and subscriber data that would permit public analysis of the programs’ effectiveness.
Did the $75 reader tax credit bring in new readers, or just subsidize the existing news junkies? Are labour-subsidized news organizations still laying off reporters or have numbers stabilized?
Transparency is the low hanging fruit in any public policy, especially a controversial one. It’s a harsh judgment on this federal government for not taking the simple steps here.
***
Here are two rabbit holes to dive down this weekend.
The first is an excellent backgrounder by Matt Stoller on the up-for-grabs US Congressional ban on TikTok, now delayed 90 days by President Trump. If you want a deeper (and Canadian) perspective, check out law professor Jon Penney’s guest column in the Globe and Mail.
The second is a Broadcast Dialogue podcast interview of Brodie Fenlon. The CBC Editor-in-Chief has many candid things to say, including some illuminating comments on the “niche casting” challenge for CBC News to meet younger audiences fragmented across the Internet, as well as TV viewers whose portal to content is the app menu embedded in foreign-made smart televisions.
***
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MediaPolicy posted twice this week. The first one returns to our dialogue about an improved CBC with an Open Letter from Ian Morrison, the founder and former spokesperson of Friends of Canadian Media.
The other post is an interview with publisher Holly Doan of the elbows-up investigative news site, Blacklock’s Reporter. With the Reporter in mind, I coined the phrase “journalism at its fiercest” and it seems from the volume of post views and twitter response to the interview that her publication very much has a fierce fan base. If you like Old School, you’ll love this interview.
***
This is the last weekend before all hell breaks loose in our relationship with the United States.
Cast your mind back in Canadian history and recall that perhaps the most nation-defining things we have ever done were dispossessing Indigenous peoples and then managing not to be dispossessed ourselves by our covetous neighbours (1776, 1812, 1837, 1844, 1866, 1870, let me know if I’ve left anything out).
The national achievements of the USA make for a longer list. Dispossessing Indigenous people and enslaving Africans, for starters. A game effort at national fratricide through civil war. Denying African American citizens their civil rights. Building a hemispheric and then a global military empire. Tipping the balance in two world wars. Quite a list.
Now the US might be entering its age of autocracy and Big Tech oligarchs.
That’s not a reference to the US judiciary but the description of a new governing paradigm that disposes of policy and sees the Tech bros travel to the king’s court in Mar-a-Lago to supplicate and trade favours. Once in thrall to the king, Klein’s guest Erica Frantz suggests, Trump owns them in the way that Vladimir Putin owns his own oligarchs.
That has implications for everything, one of which is media. Elon Musk owns X. The grovelling Mark Zuckerberg owns Meta. Add Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to the list. Other media moguls will have to pay homage to the king to protect or advance their interests.
Then there’s the unknown future of TikTok. The US Supreme Court has upheld the Congressional ban on its Chinese-ownership. Its CEO Shou Zi Chew is playing a tough hand by saying TikTok will turn the platform dark on Sunday when the ownership edict comes into effect.
Trump is trying to engineer a sale of TikTok to a new owner, which Shou says he will not do. (Spare a kind thought for a guy caught between the world’s two superpowers.)
The Orange King supposedly has his oligarch pal Elon Musk in mind as the new owner.
And Canada’s carnival barking Kevin O’Leary, for whom grovelling to a foreign power is too mild a description, is making this comical by putting himself forward as a potential buyer of TikTok.
O’Leary’s antics are just what Trump would like to see from all Canadians: a bended knee and a favour sought.
Not since the cross-border Fenian raids of the 1870s has the threat of American dispossession been so tangible.
***
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Career journalist Holly Doan makes a business out of turning over rocks in Ottawa.
The publisher of the investigative Blacklock’s Reporter “doesn’t get invited to parties” on Parliament Hill, she quips on X. There are no “access” or insider sources for Blacklock’s.
The ruling Liberals likely regard her publication’s single-minded fault-finding with their administration of government as either partisan or opportunistic, a reflection of the fact that the Liberals have been in power for nine of Blacklock’s thirteen years since its 2012 start-up.
The online news website specializes in documents: the routine notices that no one reads and the juicier ones obtained by doggedly pursuing access to information requests.
In 2020 Blacklock’s ran a story about internal research documents at the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation revealing an interest in abolishing Canada’s legendary capital gains exemption for primary residences and coined the phrase “home equity tax.” The result was hot government denial —until documents proved otherwise— followed by the Liberal government publicly denying it would pursue such a policy. They’ve been on the defensive about any changes to the primary residence exemption ever since.
The Reporter accepts very little advertising and is dependent on annual subscriptions. It follows that it operates an airtight paywall and runs down any sign of password sharing. That vigilance has seen Doan litigating on and off for a decade against federal bureaucracies that have engaged in password sharing. There is no love lost between Blacklock’s and the federal civil service.
Doan refuses to apply for federal journalism subsidies and considers them antithetical to her publication’s independence from the government that Blacklock’s covers.
She tells us more about herself, Blacklock’s, journalism and even a little media policy in this interview.
***
Blacklock’s publisher Holly Doan
Q. What’s your backstory? How did you get into journalism?
I grew up in rural Manitoba. Dad was from Toronto, a wildlife biologist and senior bureaucrat. Mother’s people were early prairie sodbusters. Our family never discussed contemporary politics or journalism.
At school my marks were dismal in math and science but always A’s in history and English. A guidance counsellor suggested journalism. Honestly, I think he was checking a box. The local community college journalism program in Winnipeg was tough to get into, so I started a high school newspaper in grade 12 and used that as an entry application.
My father who excelled in the sciences didn’t understand my career choice. Much later in 1990 I produced a documentary for CBC Alberta about the rise of the Reform Party. It was edgy. The interview with leader Preston Manning was a little sharp. My dad, with his central Canadian private school upbringing, watched and remarked: “No wonder they want cuts to the CBC.”
Starting in 1982, I was a television and radio reporter and news anchor in four provinces, including five years at CBC Alberta covering the legislature. At CTV National News in Ottawa, I was on the bus for the 1993 federal election campaign, followed by three years as Beijing Bureau Chief and two years in the CTV Toronto Bureau.
In 2003, my husband Tom Korski and I formed our own company to produce political history documentaries for CPAC, the Cable Public Affairs Channel.
In 2012, we created Blacklock’s Reporter.
Tom is Blacklock’s editor responsible for content. He is a 43-year reporter with a background in private radio and print, including The Sun chain and the South China Morning Post of Hong Kong. He also worked on the desk at CTV National News in Toronto.
Q. You started Blacklock’s in 2012. How long before the business stood on its own two feet and not your savings account?
We launched Blacklock’s without investors or bank loans and a commitment to draw no more than the cost of a new minivan from personal savings. The old van would have to last.
While Blacklock’s has never lost money, like any small business the first years were lean. In 2015 there was a small bump in subscribers and we learned our first lesson in what kind of journalism Canadians will pay for. People were dissatisfied with the Harper government and wanted more information on what the feds were doing.
Readership spiked again in 2019, another election year. The pandemic generated an even greater demand for government accountability. A lot of public money was going out. There was uncertainty in people’s lives. Readers appeared to want specific information on things like questionable government contracting, vaccine mandates, take up on small business loan programs, and abuse of CERB relief.
Readership has grown year over year since, although more slowly in recent inflationary times as people mind household budgets. The most valuable measurement of how it’s going is the year-to-year re-subscription rate. Blacklock’s annual re-subs run to about 70%. We love welcoming new readers, but those who’re willing to pay $314 every year suggests habit and trust. Trust is everything. Don’t tell them, show them.
Q. Many news publications today have angel investors backstopping the business. What about Blacklock’s?
Blacklock’s has never accepted donations of any kind. No group subscription or institutional licence represents more than 1.5 per cent of total revenues. We do not accept government subsidies. Pretty proud of that.
Q. Who’s your competition in covering federal government? The Hill Times? The Globe and Mail?
Blacklock’s is the only media outlet in the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery that focuses on federal affairs, not politics.
We don’t cover election campaigns or conventions. We do not commission opinion columns. We mostly ignore news conferences and Question Period. Our focus is government reports, audits, debates, committees, Access to Information, Public Accounts, tribunal and Federal Court rulings.
As such, we are distinguishable and have no direct competition. That doesn’t stop us from being a little jealous when another media outlet gets ahold of a government document that makes news!
Q. Who’s your subscriber audience?
Good question. Aren’t all media trying to figure that out?
The earliest subscribers were non-governmental organizations that purchased institutional accounts accessed by multiple readers. Unions and industry associations were early adopters.
Now, individual readers from all ten provinces and one territory dominate our subscriber base. A large number are small business people but they come from all walks of life.
The largest concentration is in Ontario but Saskatchewan punches above its weight.
Q. Do you think you’ll see some big reader churn if the Conservatives are elected this year?
A staffer in the office of a Conservative MP told me: “When we were in power (during the Harper years) I was told never talk to Blacklock’s or Bob Fife [of the Globe and Mail.]”
I laughed. I’ve known Bob and his fearsome reputation for breaking stories for 30 years throughout Liberal and Conservative administrations. The staffer didn’t mean it this way, but it was a huge compliment!
Blacklock’s Reporter is accountability journalism. We write about federal government mismanagement, waste, and cronyism. The mission has not changed since 2012, we’ve just become a little more practiced at finding documents. Accountability journalism stands on the belief that by exposing problems, corrections will be made that’ll give Canadians better government.
People ask, what will it be like when you have to hold a new Conservative government to account? Won’t you lose subscribers?
My silly answer is just think of all the new friends I’ll have! The serious answer is politicians change but the bureaucracy and the wheels of government do not. If people are subscribing because they trust Blacklock’s to tell them details of federal programs, they’ll stay.
If people are subscribing because they think Blacklock’s matches their partisan view, they’ll drop us. Bring it on!
Q. If I was marketing your operation for you I would brand it “journalism at its fiercest.” Your headlines and tweets are aggressive and have an anti-government flavour, but below the headlines the stories are very disciplined, high quality watchdog stuff. How do you see yourself? Muckraker? Watchdog? Advocate for smaller government?
“Journalism at its fiercest.” I like that. Can I use it? Is it original or subject to copyright?
Seriously, readers will pay for media to be “aggressive” in holding government to account. To us, that means finding information useful to Canadians, not yelling questions in scrums. As former Ottawa Journal editor Grattan O’Leary said, “Freedom of the press was not won for the sake of the press. It was won for the sake of the people.”
It is true that five-word headlines do not capture context as well as a 600-word story. But have you seen newspaper headlines in the U.K.? They’re outrageous by Canadian standards. Canadian media is timid compared to press in other parts of the world.
Blacklock’s is committed to careful documentation; listing names of all reports and legislation so that readers are able to look those up. Blacklock’s never quotes unnamed sources. Words banned from Blacklock’s copy are “sources say” and “experts say.” Adjectives are sparse or non existent. Find a fact or don’t say it all.
But why should we hide all that good stuff behind a dull headline? Aren’t there enough of those already?
Q. You’ve butted heads with the federal government after numerous departments shared passwords to your paywalled content with thousands of civil servants, without paying for institutional licences. When you sued over that you were disparaged in the Justice Department filings.
In 2023 Alexander Gay, a lawyer with Justice Canada, told a judge: “Blacklock’s is yellow journalism, fake facts, and sensational headlines.” It’s a cliché, but there was a tiny gasp in the courtroom from a handful of Blacklock’s subscribers attending the hearing. It was a trial about copyright infringement, not defamation or the constitutional right to free expression.
They say “you know you’re over the target when you start catching flak.” This is especially true in Ottawa where government communications staff, whose job is to control or mitigate bad news, outnumber journalists by at least ten to one. This particular government, more than others I’ve covered, has a fetish for media control.
The best antidote to disparaging remarks is to “come with receipts”, that is, we do not report any story unless we already have documents or can cite sworn testimony. Ironically, the more Blacklock’s is attacked by officialdom, the more committed readers seem to become. We receive a lot of mail which I sometimes post on social media.
Q. As publisher of a private news organization reporting on Parliament and federal government, what are your views on the CBC?
Journalism is an apprenticeship system. The best training is long years of experience in the field. The second best training I’ve had was at CBC. But the corporation is not what it was when I worked there in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
CBC News has lost the love of many Canadians because, as Ombudsman Jack Nagler said in his final report, it has become “too timid” in representing a variety of views.
As a former television journalist, I have the old timers’ habit of watching all national newscasts and comparing and contrasting. How many stories do they have? Any scoops? When they cover the same story, whose is better? Which anchor is more pleasant?
I stopped watching CBC television a couple of years ago. They lead the national news with too much American content. By 13 minutes past the hour, they’ve mostly finished with the news. There isn’t much reporting from the regions. Don’t tell me it’s because there isn’t money! CBC is filling local newscasts with something, aren’t they?
When I worked for CBC Alberta, our newsroom was always being elevated to The National. I could get a story about Alberta government consolidation of services and departments on a national newscast. Why doesn’t CBC-TV News want to tell me more about my country? I’d love to hear about a noisy parent protest at a school board meeting in Halifax.
Then there’s activist journalism. As an older CBC radio producer said recently, “Holly, the younger ones come in here now with their opinions and they just want to change the world.” Those experienced editors who trained me are long gone.
What are the journalism schools teaching? Is it diversity, equity and inclusion? I can’t hire newbies who want to spend days writing ‘big think’ articles that quote academic experts. I wish they’d teach entire classes on Freedom of Information and document journalism.
Blacklock’s posts five original stories a day, five days a week. That’s damn hard work. Gone are the grubby, ink-stained scribes hustling for facts we saw in the movies. That’s what we aspire to though.
Whether the CBC survives does not impact Blacklock’s Reporter. The corporation is not competing with us on document journalism.
I believe in the concept of public broadcasting but am recently convinced that CBC has not demonstrated interest in changing and has evolved into a self serving bureaucracy that might as well be called the Department of Fisheries and Broadcasting.
I hope CBC survives in some streamlined form but it doesn’t look promising at this time of writing.
Q. As Blacklock’s publisher, you have been outspoken against federal subsidies to journalism. Expound on that, if you would.
Blacklock’s is opposed to newspaper subsidies because we believe they have eroded reader trust while not producing any demonstrable improvement in the product. Subsidies create an uneven playing field for independent media attempting to innovate. And worse, they create dependency. What will happen if subsidies are withdrawn by a future government?
Q. I feel like I’m setting up duck decoys for you to blast.
Next question: I read your 26-point submission to the Heritage Committee saying federal “QCJO” journalism subsidies are not just bad for independent journalism, they are fatal to public trust. I think I disagreed with almost every point. But would you consider applying for status as a Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization so that you could refuse subsidies but make your subscribers eligible for reader tax credits?
The Canada Revenue Agency directs tax filers looking for a media subscription tax credit to consult its list of “qualified” organizations. The list is comprised of publishers who sought subsidies. For example, the Western Standard was successfully vetted as a legitimate news organization by the CRA’s panel but never applied for actual subsidies. It is not listed.
I don’t want my company’s name on that list, either.
Would Blacklock’s apply if the subscription tax credit for readers was more than a skimpy 15%? No idea. Ask me again when something like that actually happens. Facts, right?
One positive aspect of an increased subscription tax credit might be Canadians would be encouraged to subscribe to journalism. Take away the direct newsroom subsidies, and we’d see what publications people really want. The subsidies mask marketplace failure.
Q. What about the Online News Act C-18? The public policy mischief identified for that legislation was that Google and Facebook abuse their market power in Search and Social by refusing to negotiate news licensing payments at all or only on their terms.Without endorsing C-18, do you see the mischief?
C-18 has been a legislative failure. I have no opinion on whether it should be scrapped or amended as Blacklock’s neither relied on Facebook nor Google prior to the Act being enacted and has not applied for any money from tech giants. We want to remain a square dealer without prejudice when reporting on this issue. If we must report on it!
Q. As publisher, can you update us on your copyright fight, your impermeable paywall?
It’s the story of David and Goliath.
Blacklock’s, a tiny publisher, relies on a password protected paywall to monetize journalism. Internet advertising is insufficient. We do not accept subsidies or donations. Our readers like this. With a porous paywall, we would not have been able to build a successful business or in fact any business.
The 2012 ‘Copyright Modernization Act’ implemented by Parliament introduced ‘technological protection measures’ to help creators like Blacklock’s and other media monetize their investment. A password has long been considered a protection measure. Canadians know you don’t share your password but government is advocating for this right.
From 2013 Blacklock’s passwords and content were shared on single subscriptions then worth $147 by 15 government departments without license or permission. Stories were then shared with thousands of readers in the public service. Distribution is proven through Access to Information and undisputed. For example, Health Canada shared the password by email with seven users, then cut and paste 122 stories to 1,193 email addresses.
Government refusal to pay has resulted in costly and prolonged litigation. The cases are defended by Justice Canada on behalf of the Attorney General of Canada. In May of 2024 a Federal Court judge ruled password sharing was acceptable for “any legitimate business reason” without any stated limit. The case is under appeal with no date set. [Blacklock’s statement is here: https://www.blacklocks.ca/note-from-blacklocks-editor/]
Q. We may have a change of government and perhaps a change of instructions to the Justice Department?
It’s not a good idea to rely on any hoped for change in government direction. If this is the way the Government of Canada and the Courts want to go in removing protections for the news media industry and other digital creators then our tiny company cannot stop them.
Canada would become the first G-7 country to undermine its own copyright law. We are prepared to lose again and seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. Failing that, Blacklock’s will testify at any future Commons committee with a statutory mandate to review weaknesses in the Copyright Act. Our story will be one of a government willing to change its own law protecting creators in order to win at all costs.
Q. My sense of your site, and all watchdog journalism, is that it’s dedicated to preventing the powerful from controlling the narrative, from hiding things. We’re about to elect a majority Poilievre government, with a big majority and (based on their communications strategy to date) great skill in shaping the political narrative. Seems fertile ground for a watchdog. What kind of issues do you predict Blacklock’s will be following?
Long experience teaches us that the first 12 months of any new government is spent repealing legislation, cancelling or revising programs introduced by predecessors.
For example, labour legislation nicknamed the “big union bosses” bills introduced by the Harper administration was immediately repealed by the Trudeau Liberals in 2015/16. Blacklock’s covered those bills from inception to repeal.
This will happen again. After that, no one can predict accurately what any new government will do or what news coverage should look like. Fortunately in the government accountability journalism business, the ground is always fertile. Always.
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The new CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard is now two weeks into the weirdest job in Canada.
The CBC is either due for its biggest make-over in its 90 year history or, if Pierre Poilievre becomes Prime Minister, annihilation.
No pressure.
The other weird thing about becoming the CBC/Radio Canada boss in 2025 is that the Heritage Minister who hired Bouchard was expected to announce something very important, rumour had it that it was legislation to update the CBC mandate in section 3(1) of the Broadcasting Act. With Parliament prorogued and the Liberal government about to fall, it now seems that whatever the Heritage Minister was planning to say about the future of the CBC will be an election promise.
But it’s our CBC, not the Heritage Minister’s and not Mr. Poilievre’s. Let the public discussion continue.
MediaPolicy has publishedinterviews or guest columns from three public broadcasting experts and here we add a fourth, from the founder of Friends of Canadian Media, Ian Morrison.
Morrison was the chief spokesperson for the advocacy group he started up in 1985 (launched in response to the Mulroney government’s CBC budget cuts) until he retired in 2018. As the voice of a citizen’s group, not a guild or broadcaster association, Friends became and remains the nation’s muse for cultural sovereignty and prominence.
Morrison weighs in here with this open letter to the new CBC/RC president:
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Memo to: Marie-Phillipe Bouchard, President & CEO, CBC/Radio-Canada
From: Ian Morrison, Founder, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
As you assume your new responsibilities as Canada’s most important cultural leader, I want to offer some advice and suggestions for your consideration:
Valued Institution: Despite facing criticism from various directions, CBC/RC remains a popular and valued institution. Numerous polls in recent years have shown that a strong majority of Canadians – including Conservative voters – appreciate your services and support their continuation. For example:
Historic Legacy: The institution you lead has a long and substantial record of service that Canadians value and rely upon. This dates back to the dawn of the audio-visual era when Conservative Prime Minister R.B. Bennett created the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Act (1932) to provide Canadian radio programming amid the influx of US-based content. Liberal Prime Minister Mackenzie King furthered this legacy by establishing the CBC/RC in 1936.
Modern Mandate: Your current governing document, the Broadcasting Act (1991), continues this mission, adapting it to the anticipated digital age under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney – focusing on values, rather than technologies. The Act provides you with a broad mandate to “inform, enlighten, and entertain.” The mandate places these verbs, in both official languages, in order of importance rather than alphabetically, guiding your decisions. Additionally, the Act mandates programming in English, French, and Indigenous languages.
Challenges and Criticism: Canadians face an avalanche of digital content, making it challenging to receive enough domestic content to maintain a cohesive culture across the northern half of the North American continent. Media organizations struggle to stay relevant while meeting their obligations under the Act. CBC/RC is not immune to this challenge and faces criticism of unfair competition from other broadcasters, including allegations of excessive bureaucracy. Address these issues head-on.
Digital Transformation: Embrace ‘digital first’ as more than just a slogan. Lead demographic change within CBC/RC’s personnel to truly embody this transformation.
Partnerships and Collaboration: Transform CBC/RC’s relationships with other media and cultural organizations by creating partnerships and fostering collaboration. This will require reducing dependency on television advertising and encouraging other broadcasters to use CBC/RC-generated content without charge but with visible and audio credit. Transform your relationships into partnerships with organizations like the Canadian Press, Library and Archives Canada, NFB, Canadian Museum of Human Rights, and the National Arts Centre. The BBC’s relationship with Cultural Britain serves as a good example.
Local Roots and Relevance: CBC/RC’s local roots are a prime asset. You should enhance collaboration among them to increase CBC/RC’s relevance to Canadians. Research shows that local news is a priority for a majority of Canadians. CBC/RC has unique Canada-wide presence and networks of local news operations in both official languages across the land.
Educational Role: Position CBC/RC as a ‘learning’ organization. This includes direct action and fostering collaboration with learning institutions across the country. Provide a non-partisan link between constituents and MPs. Serve as an ‘agora’ where Canadians learn about each other, from each other, and as a pan-Canadian technology incubator.
Cultural Hub: Reach out to institutions like the Nova Scotia College of Art, Concordia University, l’Institut national de l’image et du son, OCAD University, the Emily Carr School of Art, the Banff Centre, and others to create a pan-Canadian arts and culture hub.
Successful Models: Learn from existing models of collaboration, such as the partnership between Hockey Night in Canada and Rogers Communications. Study and learn from the strategies of other national public broadcasters in OECD countries like NHK, BBC, and German public broadcasters. We are not alone. We are just nearer to the huge broadcasting organizations of a country of 335 million people to our south. Our proximity may lead us sometimes to forget that it is they, rather than we that are a broadcasting outlier in the democratic (OECD) world!
I wish you well in your new role!
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For those of you who are returning from a proper holiday break and have not checked your MediaPolicy feed, the lasttwo posts dove into a poll and report from The Dais on Canadians’ trust in news and also the current state of misinformation and online harms.
Since then, Reuters Institute at Oxford University dropped a related report with global results here.
The Dais’ Canadian report included poll results suggesting that right-wingers answering a panel of true/false questions were especially credulous of online misinformation whereas left-wingers were not. The test questions however seemed more likely to catch out misinformed (or defiant) right-wingers than progressives.
A friend of mine made the same observation, so over coffee he demonstrated his prowess with Chat GPT and conjured up an alternative set of true/false questions more likely to trip up left-wingers. The AI program said all of these statements are false. Enjoy:
1. “The world will be uninhabitable by 2030 due to climate change.”
2. “All genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are harmful and unnatural.”
3. “The majority of police officers are overtly racist.”
4. “All billionaires became wealthy through exploitation or illegal practices.”
5. “Big Pharma is suppressing natural cures for cancer to maintain profits.”
6. “Vaccines are completely risk-free.”
7. “All multinational corporations avoid taxes and exploit workers.”
8. “Facial recognition technology is being used primarily to surveil marginalized communities.”
9. “Elon Musk’s electric vehicles are just a greenwashing scam.”
10. “Every war the U.S. has been involved in was solely for corporate profit.”
11. “Countries with universal healthcare have no medical shortages or challenges.”
12. “Canceling offensive content will completely eliminate systemic inequality.”
13. “All nuclear energy is dangerous and unnecessary.”
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Almost every New Year’s prediction about video entertainment in 2025 painted a portrait of a cresting wave of YouTuber content, increasingly driven by AI tools, crashing down on the Hollywood streaming and TV industry and, in the long term, taking all of the growth.
The Globe and Mail’s TV critic wrote about this after an interview with Bell Media’s content VP Justin Stockman. One observation was that as a television and streaming company Bell is adapting to the success of YouTubers in the “creator economy” by seeking to draw on the Canadian corps of YouTubers as a farm system for emerging talent, especially in comedy.
For example, the CTV multi-season hit show Letterkenny began as YouTube videos before Bell Media signed the creator/actors. A more recent example is CTV’s Late Bloomer, starring Jus Reign.
I asked Digital First Canada’s Scott Benzie about this and he cautioned that YouTubers scouted by mainstream media can succeed there as talent, but rarely in the role of the YouTube show or character that got them noticed. As a rule, audience tastes and interests on YouTube are different from those on streaming and television platforms.
Also, says Benzie, YouTubers won’t keep the intellectual property in their talent once they pass through the gates of the broadcasting fortress. That’s why YouTubers continue to branch out into other monetization strategies including live performances, branding deals, and merchandise sales.
Benzie thinks the CBC is doing a good job of platforming creator content on its YouTube channel and, as a non-profit public broadcaster, conceding that the participating Canadian YouTubers continue to own their own shows.
If you recall, a term of Heritage Minister Pascale St.-Onge’s deal with Google for $100 million in annual news licensing payments was that Google got to choose which of the two coalition of news publishers would broker the distribution of the $100 million to eligible news outlets. Google chose the CJC, representing Canadian news outlets —-employing about one per cent of Canadian journalists—- that had by no coincidence linked arms with Google in opposing the Online News Act, Bill C-18.
The rest of the industry —-including the broadcaster and news media associations, as well as the CBC —- expressed skepticism that CJC would play the role of Google-money banker impartially.
The news is out now that CJC has approved an unexpectedly high number of “print” online publications applying for the $100M and, hence, the per journalist salary subsidy has been diluted to $13G per year down from a figure originally estimated by News Media Canada as $20G. Payouts for 2024 are on their way.
Whether such a big gap will be closed over the next few weeks is up for grabs. The CJC has already included about 400 more journalists than expected by including newsroom hires funded by the federal Local Journalism Initiative. [An earlier version of this article inaccurately identified the new hires as “interns” when they are in fact journalists hired on one year contracts.]
In addition, the CJC’s invitation to media organizations to stick their hands up for Google money is likely to have flooded the CJC with applications from media outlets that don’t do original news reporting of current affairs. Comments from Paul Deegan of News Media Canada suggest a concern that payments will flow to applicants that don’t meet the C-18 definition of publishing “news content of public interest that is primarily focused on matters of general interest and reports of current events.”
Lastly, the CJC invited news organizations to include freelancers in their newsroom headcounts. The CRTC subsequently ruled that federal regulations make it clear that only payroled employees are eligible. News Media Canada’s Deegan has also expressed a concern that the CJC may have accredited applications that include audience engagement employees who are similarly ineligible.
CJC interim board chair Erin Millar told MediaPolicy that “the CJC is in the process of verifying eligibility of all news businesses that applied for funding. We also have a process for auditing journalist hours.”
Millar added “we have a policy and procedure for distributing funds in a risk adjusted way that accounts for ineligible claims.”
Stay tuned on this one.
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From IMDB
The recommended read and video watch for this weekend is directed to the CRTC commissioners and staff who are plotting to remove regulatory spending minimums on Canadian TV drama on the grounds that the US streamers will fill the void.
A few weeks ago Amazon Prime released its comedy-drama series TheSticky, based ever so loosely on the memorable maple syrup heist in Québec in 2012. As MediaPolicy commented, the series was written by Americans. It’s funny. It’s entertaining. It’s got a hip soundtrack. And it’s painfullyinauthenticCanCon.
Don’t take my word for it, read Globe TV critic Kelly Nestruck who has absolutely nailed it. And then watch the series.
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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 threepreviouspolls.
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:
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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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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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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