tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/canadian-media-62925/articlesCanadian media – The Conversation2024-02-28T18:44:00Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2236192024-02-28T18:44:00Z2024-02-28T18:44:00ZHow audience data is shaping Canadian journalism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577153/original/file-20240221-24-3j5bg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C45%2C7680%2C4265&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There’s been a big shift in how journalists consider their audiences in newsrooms. That shift is largely due to audience data.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With media conglomerates <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bce-cuts-1.7108658">slashing jobs, programs</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/torstar-metroland-nordstar-1">publications</a> and growing <a href="https://www.cem.ulaval.ca/publications/dnr-2023-canada-eng/">news avoidance and perceived issues of trust</a> in journalism, finding ways to catch, engage and retain an audience has become a matter of survival for those in the news business.</p>
<p>There’s been a big shift in how journalists consider their audiences in newsrooms. That shift is largely due to <a href="https://j-source.ca/heres-how-metrics-and-analytics-are-changing-newsroom-practice/">audience data</a> — lots of audience data.</p>
<p>Journalists experience almost constant feedback about the content they create. It doesn’t matter if they’re working online, in television, radio or traditional print. They’re delivering to multiple platforms and every day they’re exposed to quantitative data — metrics that measure audience behaviour on websites and social media — and qualitative data — such as audience comments on social media.</p>
<p>As one television journalist told us:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You know exactly how far someone scrolls down a page, how many seconds they’re spending on a page, what device you’re using, we know so much about our audience, just like Google knows about our audience.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But what impact does all of this data have on how journalists perceive their audiences and the content they publish? That’s what Colette Brin of Laval University, Stuart Duncan from Toronto Metropolitan University and I explore in a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2024.2310712">newly published paper</a> examining audience-oriented journalism.</p>
<h2>Audience-oriented journalism</h2>
<p>In basic terms, audience-oriented journalism involves three specific roles:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Infotainment — journalism that uses narrative strategies and style that align with more entertainment-based media; </p></li>
<li><p>Civic — journalism that focuses on educating citizens on their rights or advocating for their demands; and </p></li>
<li><p>Service — news reports that promote products or help you solve everyday problems.</p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577152/original/file-20240221-20-97keji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="the Toronto Star website" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577152/original/file-20240221-20-97keji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577152/original/file-20240221-20-97keji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577152/original/file-20240221-20-97keji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577152/original/file-20240221-20-97keji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577152/original/file-20240221-20-97keji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577152/original/file-20240221-20-97keji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577152/original/file-20240221-20-97keji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Finding ways to catch, engage and retain an audience has become a matter of survival for those in the news business.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We <a href="https://j-source.ca/a-global-study-on-pandemic-era-news-explores-the-gap-between-journalists-ideals-and-realities/">analyzed more than 3,700 stories</a> from 2020, surveyed 133 journalists in 2020 and 2021 and interviewed 13 journalists during the same time period. The news organizations we studied were the <em>Toronto Star</em>, <em>Globe and Mail</em>, <em>National Post</em>, CTV, Global News, <em>La Presse</em>, <em>HuffPost Canada</em>, TVA and CBC/Radio-Canada. Having worked in newsrooms ourselves, we were able to contextualize our results through our own experiences. </p>
<p>We found audience data has a big impact on practice in Canadian newsrooms. At the now defunct <a href="https://theconversation.com/bottom-up-audience-driven-and-shut-down-how-huffpost-canada-left-its-mark-on-canadian-media-175805"><em>HuffPost Canada</em></a>, for example, the audience was segmented into specific “types” of readers based on audience data. As one editor described, “We do X, Y and Z for this type of story for this type of person.” In essence, how a story was written depended on who it was being written for. </p>
<p>Reporters were also aware of the importance of audience data from a business perspective. As noted by one newspaper reporter:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“This is all algorithm stuff that I don’t entirely understand, but it does help the eggheads figure out how to customize your user experience when you go to the website. So it’s showing you stuff you’re interested in much the same way of Facebook and Twitter, which keeps people engaged with your website, which means more subscribers, which means I get to stay gainfully employed.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Responses to our survey supported the importance of audience data in the selection, development and promotion of stories and in measuring their value. Based on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884913504259">other studies</a>, we also know that journalists can lowball <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884915595474">the importance of data</a> in making editorial decisions, so there could be even greater impact than we measured. </p>
<h2>Infotainment and sensationalism</h2>
<p>There is frequent critique that the ubiquity of data in newsrooms has resulted in a push for clickbait or more sensationalized stories that boost traffic at the expense of more newsworthy reportage — and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2018.1504626">sometimes that happens</a>. </p>
<p>Sensationalism is part of infotainment. However, our content analysis revealed that a lot of what qualifies as infotainment in Canadian journalism involves descriptive language and sharing relevant, personal details about the subject being written about. Done appropriately this can give greater nuance and context to a story. </p>
<p>As well, infotainment in Canada is often combined with the “educator” part of the civic role. For example, one editor told us how they look to find the “more fun” (infotainment) aspect of a story that can give a “point of entry” to inform the public about things like rules of Parliament. </p>
<p>The civic and service roles are also often performed together, with news you can use that might impact someone’s understanding of political processes or stories about their rights as citizens. </p>
<p>Nearly 80 per cent of the stories we sampled had at least one audience-oriented role present, and almost 40 per cent had more than one. This provides strong evidence that audiences are top of mind in newsrooms. </p>
<p>Our conversations also revealed that even if newsrooms aren’t always able to <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2021/03/imagined-audiences-journalism-analytics-intuition.html">accurately interpret</a> what the audience wants, they’re spending a lot of time and resources trying to do so.</p>
<h2>Importance of social media</h2>
<p>Most reporters we talked to used social media — whether they wanted to or not — because they recognized it as an important tool to reach audiences, find sources and promote their work. More than 78 per cent of the journalists surveyed agreed it was an important tool to connect with audiences. </p>
<p>However, reporters also noted the downsides of social media, particularly related to political polarization. One newspaper reporter said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“While it provides a venue to find an audience, which is what we absolutely need to do, it has also created a forum with which to attack journalists and attack the free press.” </p>
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<p>That hostile environment resulted in another reporter being careful about her choice of words so she could reach a wider audience:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I deliberately go out of my way to try to reach the people who are trying to ignore me. Like, that’s the target audience as you write. So you’re avoiding unnecessary use of terms that get spun into shit, not because we don’t deserve to use those terms … but because what you’re actually attempting to do is to reach those people.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even if people might not trust news, or a certain media organization, there is evidence to show they can still recognize and appreciate <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003257998">quality journalism</a>. </p>
<p>Canadian journalists have to find ways to understand and reach an audience that may not always want to listen. They’re trying hard to do so. Whether it works, and the lasting impact of their efforts on journalistic standards, remains to be seen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223619/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Blanchett has received funding from Mitacs, Centre d’études sur les médias, The Journalism Research Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University, The Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto Metropolitan University, and SSHRC.</span></em></p>A new study on Canadian journalism examines the impact of audience data on journalistic roles and journalists’ perceptions of their audienceNicole Blanchett, Associate Professor, Journalism, Toronto Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2134352023-10-17T18:01:05Z2023-10-17T18:01:05ZWe fact-checked residential school denialists and debunked their ‘mass grave hoax’ theory<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/we-fact-checked-residential-school-denialists-and-debunked-their-mass-grave-hoax-theory" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Recently a politician from a village in Prince Edward Island <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-murray-harbour-sign-1.6986901">displayed an offensive sign on his property in which he proclaimed there is a “mass grave hoax”</a> regarding the former Indian Residential Schools in Canada. Although <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/10007201/murray-harbour-councillor-calls-for-resignation-mass-graves-sign-pei/">many</a> have called for him to resign, he is just one of many people who subscribe to this false theory.</p>
<p>A hoax is an <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hoax">act intended to trick people into believing</a> something that isn’t true. Commentary that a “hoax” exists began circulating in 2021 around the time of public announcements from First Nations across the country that — <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/chooutla-residential-school-gravesite-investigation-anomalies-1.6978801">through the use of ground penetrating radar and other means</a> — the remains of Indigenous children are suspected to be in unmarked graves at or near some former residential schools.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go6Fpp03Voc">Commentators circulating allegations of a “hoax”</a> contend journalists have misrepresented news of the potential unmarked graves, circulating sensational, attention-grabbing headlines and using the term “mass grave” to do so. They also contend some First Nations, activists or politicians used this language for political gain — to shock and guilt Canadians into caring about Indigenous Peoples and reconciliation.</p>
<p>Like the councillor in P.E.I., many people — <a href="https://www.rebelnews.com/tags/buried_truth">in Canada</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egbXE18omy0">internationally</a>, fuelled partly by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKeagTWr7_M">misinformation from the far-right</a> — <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ5qHwxDM50">are accepting and promoting</a> the “mass grave hoax” narrative and casting doubt on the searches for missing children and unmarked burials being undertaken by First Nations across Canada.</p>
<h2>There is no media conspiracy</h2>
<p>As two settler academic researchers, we decided to investigate the claims of a media conspiracy and fact-check them against evidence. </p>
<p>What did Canadian news outlets actually report after the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation made <a href="https://tkemlups.ca/wp-content/uploads/05-May-27-2021-TteS-MEDIA-RELEASE.pdf">their public announcements</a> about their search for missing children? </p>
<p>To find out, we analyzed 386 news articles across five Canadian media outlets (CBC, <em>National Post</em>, the <em>Globe and Mail</em>, <em>Toronto Star</em> and <em>The Canadian Press</em>) released between May 27 and Oct. 15, 2021. </p>
<p><a href="https://chrr.info/other-resources/debunking-residential-school-denialism-in-canada">What we found, according to our evidence from 2021</a>, is that most mainstream media did not use the terminology “mass graves.” Therefore, we argue that the “mass grave hoax” needs to be understood as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2021.1935574">residential school denialism</a>. </p>
<h2>‘Preliminary findings’ of ‘unmarked burials’</h2>
<p>After some public confusion over the specific details of the May 2021 Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announcement, which named “preliminary findings” regarding “the remains of 215 children,” the First Nation <a href="https://tkemlups.ca/t%e1%b8%b1emlups-te-secwepemc-fully-supports-the-appointment-of-the-special-interlocutor/">clarified the findings</a> as the confirmation of “the likely presence of children, L’Estcwicwéý (the Missing) on the Kamloops Indian Residential School grounds” in “unmarked burials.” </p>
<p>The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation had already <a href="https://nctr.ca/residential-schools/british-columbia/kamloops-st-louis/">identified 51 student deaths</a> at the Kamloops school using church and state records. </p>
<p><a href="https://rsc-src.ca/en/voices/%E2%80%98every-child-matters%E2%80%99-one-year-after-unmarked-graves-215-indigenous-children-were-found-in">A National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Memorial Register</a> has to date confirmed the <a href="https://nctr.ca/memorial/national-student-memorial/memorial-register/">deaths of more than 4,000 Indigenous children</a> associated with residential schools. </p>
<p>But the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) noted its register of missing children <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-names-of-2800-children-who-died-in-residential-schools-documented-in/">was incomplete</a>, partly due to a large volume of yet-to-be-examined and destroyed records. The TRC’s <a href="https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Executive_Summary_English_Web.pdf">Calls to Action 71-76 refer to</a> missing children and burials.</p>
<p>The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation — responding to these calls — initiated further research to learn the full truth to facilitate community healing. </p>
<h2>Countering harmful misinformation</h2>
<p>In the two years since, a number of commentators, <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/archdiocese-apologizes-after-priest-accuses-residential-school-survivors-of-lying-1.5528472">priests</a> and <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/alberta/comments/y4f731/danielle_smith_the_premier_of_alberta_claims/">politicians,</a> including the P.E.I councillor with his sign, have downplayed the harms of residential schooling — or questioned the validity, gravity and significance of the the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation’s announcement.</p>
<p>One <em>National Post</em> commentator wrote that the account of a “mass grave” was reported “<a href="https://nationalpost.com/opinion/the-year-of-the-graves-how-the-worlds-media-got-it-wrong-on-residential-school-graves">almost universally</a>” adding that this narrative, and subsequent “discoveries” preceded a descent into “shame, guilt and rage …”</p>
<p>Despite the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation’s announcement never mentioning a “mass grave,” and Chief Rosanne Casimir saying in a news conference, <a href="https://www.squamishchief.com/bc-news/casimir-says-tkemlups-find-is-series-of-unmarked-graves-not-a-mass-burial-3848382">“this is not a mass grave, but rather unmarked burial sites that are, to our knowledge, also undocumented,”</a> some have even wrongly suggested the First Nation “<a href="https://nypost.com/2022/05/27/kamloops-mass-grave-debunked-biggest-fake-news-in-canada">announced the discovery of a mass grave</a>” and this was a “fake news story.” </p>
<p>In response, the <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/department-justice/news/2022/06/independent-special-interlocutor-to-work-with-indigenous-communities-on-protection-of-unmarked-graves-and-burial-sites-near-former-residential-schools.html">independent special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked graves and burial sites associated with Indian Residential Schools</a> has amplified <a href="https://osi-bis.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/OSI_InterimReport_June-2023_WEB.pdf">calls for</a> Canadians to take responsibility for countering such harmful misinformation. </p>
<p>We hope that our research can contribute to this work and that <a href="https://chrr.info/other-resources/debunking-residential-school-denialism-in-canada/">our report</a> helps to debunk the “mass grave hoax” narrative specifically. </p>
<h2>Cherry-picked ‘evidence’</h2>
<p>Our report reveals that most Canadian news outlets did not use the language, “mass grave.” The idea that a “mass grave hoax” exists is a myth.</p>
<p>Myths, however, <a href="https://arsenalpulp.com/Books/N/National-Dreams">are not pure fiction</a>; they often contain a kernel of truth that is <a href="https://arpbooks.org/product/storying-violence/">exaggerated or misrepresented</a>. </p>
<p>This selective representation of evidence is commonly referred to as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03086534.2023.2209947">cherry-picking</a>, and it’s easy to see how those spreading the “mass grave hoax” narrative rely on cherry-picked evidence.</p>
<p>Of the 386 articles reviewed in our study, the majority of the articles (65 per cent, or 251) accurately reported on stories related to the location of potential unmarked graves in Canada.</p>
<p>A minority (35 per cent or 135 articles), contained some inaccurate or misleading reporting; however, many of the detected inaccuracies are easily understood as mistakes and most were corrected over time as is common practice in breaking news within the journalism industry. </p>
<p>Of the 386 total articles, only 25 — just 6.5 per cent of total articles — referred to the findings as “mass graves,” with most of the articles appearing in a short window of time and some actually using the term correctly in the hypothetical sense (that mass graves may still be found). </p>
<p>That means that 93.5 per cent of the Canadian articles released in the spring, summer and fall of 2021 that we examined did not report the findings as being “mass graves.” </p>
<p>It appears that some journalists and commentators misunderstood a large number of potential or likely unmarked graves for mass graves in late May/June 2021. By September, denialists were misrepresenting the extent of media errors to push the conspiratorial <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go6Fpp03Voc">“mass grave hoax” narrative</a> online. </p>
<p>Our research shows that the “mass grave hoax” narrative hinges on a misrepresentation of how Canadian journalists reported on the identification of potential unmarked graves at former residential school sites in 2021.
And we hope our report sparks a national conversation about how important language is when covering this issue. </p>
<p>Media needs to be precise with language and also acknowledge its errors (and avoid future ones), or clarify details in a way that feeds truth, empathy and more accurate reporting — not denialism, hate and conspiracy.</p>
<h2>Challenging Residential School denialism</h2>
<p>The “mass grave hoax” narrative cannot be reasonably seen as just skepticism. Rather, it should be understood as an expression of residential school denialism. </p>
<p>According to Daniel Heath Justice and Sean Carleton (one of the authors of this story), <a href="https://theconversation.com/truth-before-reconciliation-8-ways-to-identify-and-confront-residential-school-denialism-164692">residential school denialism</a> is not the denial of the residential school system’s existence. Nor do denialists, for the most part, deny that abuses happened. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/truth-before-reconciliation-8-ways-to-identify-and-confront-residential-school-denialism-164692">Truth before reconciliation: 8 ways to identify and confront Residential School denialism</a>
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<p>Residential school denialism, like climate <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-thinking-error-that-makes-people-susceptible-to-climate-change-denial-204607">change denialism</a> or <a href="https://theconversation.com/science-denial-why-it-happens-and-5-things-you-can-do-about-it-161713">science denialism</a>, cherry-picks evidence to fit a conspiratorial counter-narrative. This distorts basic facts and the overall legacy of the Indian Residential School System (IRSS) to <a href="https://thewalrus.ca/residential-school-denialism/">alleviate settler guilt</a> and block important truth and reconciliation efforts.</p>
<h2>Truth before reconciliation</h2>
<p>Our research shows how detailed analysis can be an effective tool in confronting the growing threat of residential school denialism and other kinds of misinformation and disinformation, as called for recently by many <a href="https://osi-bis.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/OSI_InterimReport_June-2023_WEB.pdf">Indigenous communities</a>. </p>
<p>Instead of directing ridicule and outrage at denialists — which can give them a larger platform — what is needed is deep and reasoned analysis of their discourse to show why they are wrong or misleading. </p>
<p>This is the strategy of disempowering and discrediting residential school denialism advocated by former TRC Chair <a href="https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/residential-school-deniers-white-supremacists-biggest-barrier-to-reconciliation-says-murray-sinclair/">Murray Sinclair</a>. </p>
<p>We hope others will join us in this type of research to help Canadians learn how to identify and confront residential school denialism and support meaningful reconciliation. </p>
<p>Our full findings can be <a href="https://chrr.info/other-resources/debunking-residential-school-denialism-in-canada/">read in our new report</a> for the Centre for Human Rights Research at the University of Manitoba. </p>
<p>As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said in its final report, without truth there can be no genuine reconciliation. </p>
<p><em>For those who may be experiencing trauma or seeking support, here are some resources:</em></p>
<p><em>— The Indian Residential School Survivors Society’s 24/7 Crisis Support line: 1-800-721-0066</em></p>
<p><em>— The 24-hour National Indian Residential School Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419</em> </p>
<p><em>The Conversation used the term “mass graves” in <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-longer-the-disappeared-mourning-the-215-children-found-in-graves-at-kamloops-indian-residential-school-161782">a story</a> published in the days following the announcement by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation. The article has since been updated to use the term “unmarked graves.”</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213435/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Carleton receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Centre for Human Rights Research at the University of Manitoba.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Reid Gerbrandt receives funding from The Centre for Human Rights Research at the University of Manitoba. </span></em></p>Contrary to what some ‘denialists’ believe, research shows that Canadian media outlets did not help circulate a ‘mass grave hoax’ regarding unmarked graves at former Indian Residential Schools.Sean Carleton, Assistant Professor, Departments of History and Indigenous Studies, University of ManitobaReid Gerbrandt, MA Student, Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of ManitobaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2137272023-09-27T20:03:54Z2023-09-27T20:03:54ZCanadian media is far too reliant on U.S. tech. Here’s what the government can do about it<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/canadian-media-is-far-too-reliant-on-us-tech-heres-what-the-government-can-do-about-it" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>American social media companies <a href="https://www.cp24.com/news/all-news-in-canada-will-be-removed-from-facebook-instagram-within-weeks-meta-1.6502474">blocking Canadian news</a> poses serious problems for Canadian media. Meta blocked Canadian news on its social media sites, Facebook and Instagram, in August in response to Canada’s Online News Act. Google has <a href="https://blog.google/intl/en-ca/company-news/outreach-initiatives/an-update-on-canadas-bill-c-18-and-our-search-and-news-products/">threatened to take similar action</a> when the law comes into effect at the end of the year. Outlets that rely on social media to reach their target audiences will likely struggle to get by. However, the problem also creates an opportunity to rethink communication funding in Canada.</p>
<p>Pablo Rodriguez, then Heritage Minister, was right when he said the <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/O-9.3/">Online News Act</a> is about correcting “<a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-tech-companies-news-outlets-canada-google-facebook/">market imbalance</a>” between Canadian news outlets and Silicon Valley tech companies. Canadian news organizations should be compensated by the social media platforms for content.</p>
<p>Add this conundrum to the over-reliance on American telecommunications services, and the need to rethink funding Canadian communication is urgent.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/as-canadian-wildfires-rage-facebooks-news-ban-reveals-the-importance-of-radio-211966">As Canadian wildfires rage, Facebook's news ban reveals the importance of radio</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<p>However, there could be a silver lining in these dark clouds: public outrage may be enough to push the government to establish Canadian-centric media policies and a new funding model for emergency information and communication technology. A revolution in Canadian communication funding policy is not only possible, it is necessary.</p>
<h2>Trickle-down funding just doesn’t work</h2>
<p>U.S.-based companies like Google and Meta profit from Canadian content and Canadian audiences, while relatively small dollars trickle down into the pockets of a few Canadian businesses. The most obvious impacts of this dynamic are on <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/observers-worry-about-impact-of-metro-media-closure-on-local-democracy">local</a> media outlets that are forced to cut staff, or <a href="https://financialpost.com/telecom/bell-cutting-1300-positions-closing-selling-9-radio-stations">close altogether</a>, creating an <a href="https://www.thespec.com/opinion/contributors/news-deserts-why-the-decline-in-local-journalism-threatens-democracy/article_c5ab878b-7cd8-560f-83cb-0f0fb1fcaf2e.html">impoverished media landscape</a>.</p>
<p>Some outlets will no doubt suffer as a result of U.S. tech companies blocking Canadian news. Meanwhile, the few millions of dollars of ad revenue provided to Google and Facebook <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-canadian-government-suspends-advertising-on-facebook-instagram/">withheld by Ottawa</a>, provincial governments and <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/technology/article-telecom-and-media-firm-quebecor-to-pull-its-ads-from-facebook-and/">some Canadian media</a> will barely make a dent in the profits of the Silicon Valley behemoths.</p>
<p>This comes at a time when dwindling media revenues are posing risks to Canada’s emergency alert system, <a href="https://www.alertready.ca/">Alert Ready</a>. There has been a <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/emergency-alerts-canada-extreme-weather-wildfires-evacuaiton-1.6943105">rise in the use of the system</a> due to floods, tornadoes and wildfires. Yet, Canadian authorities are sticking to a funding model that relies on dwindling cable TV subscribers.</p>
<p>Funding from commercial Canadian cable companies <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-emergency-alerts-crtc-funding/">trickles down</a> to fund the alert system. But customers are <a href="https://broadcastdialogue.com/one-in-five-english-speaking-canadians-has-cut-the-cord/">increasingly switching away</a> from cable TV for options like streaming.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://angusreid.org/netflix-streaming-canada-cord-cutting-tv-landlines/">Angus Reid Institute</a>, while a little over 88 per cent of Canadian households subscribed to cable in 2012, that number dropped to 61 per cent in 2022. </p>
<p>This fall could put funding for the emergency alert system in jeopardy. That is cause for concern, especially at a time when emergency situations like wildfires and floods are becoming more frequent and dangerous. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549179/original/file-20230919-21-b7v0e3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A phone displaying an emergency alert message" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549179/original/file-20230919-21-b7v0e3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549179/original/file-20230919-21-b7v0e3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549179/original/file-20230919-21-b7v0e3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549179/original/file-20230919-21-b7v0e3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549179/original/file-20230919-21-b7v0e3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549179/original/file-20230919-21-b7v0e3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549179/original/file-20230919-21-b7v0e3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Funding for Canada’s emergency alert system comes from commercial Canadian cable companies, but viewers are increasingly switching away from cable.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Two lessons for Canadians</h2>
<p>In order to fix these problems, Canadians must bear in mind two lessons about how not to construct communication systems.</p>
<p><strong>Lesson one:</strong> Do not rely on American media and communication infrastructure to protect the interests of Canadians.</p>
<p>The first lesson should be obvious. Canada is far too reliant on communication infrastructure and media products from down south. I have written <a href="https://theconversation.com/canada-should-look-to-its-past-and-europe-for-guidance-on-media-policy-but-not-south-206251">previously</a> about the reliance on U.S. media. But, to be clear, the problem is not only the media content. </p>
<p><a href="https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/ised/en/reliable-telecom-services/improving-reliability-and-resilience-canadas-digital-infrastructure">As Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada reports</a>, “the bulk of Canadian consumer-to-consumer traffic and consumer-to-enterprise traffic is routed by Canada’s incumbents via the US (and US IXPs) rather than through Canada.”</p>
<p>Both Liberal and Conservative governments have not kept <a href="https://canadaehx.com/2022/06/04/the-birth-of-the-cbc-2/">former prime minister Richard Bennett’s 1932 promise</a> of “complete Canadian control of broadcasting from Canadian sources.”</p>
<p>Canada relies on U.S. private industry for routing Canadian traffic through the U.S. and <a href="https://news.microsoft.com/en-ca/2022/03/16/rogers-and-microsoft-announce-strategic-alliance-to-revolutionize-hybrid-workplace-communications-and-power-5g-innovation-across-canada-with-azure/">upgrading services</a>. That reliance on the U.S. is not difficult to understand: it’s cheaper. Ensuring safety and services to Canadians is not the priority. </p>
<p><strong>Lesson two:</strong> Do not rely on ever-changing elected leaders or ever-changing commercial communication services to provide stable support for media that serves the needs of all Canadians.</p>
<p>Funding for the CBC has <a href="https://frpc.net/broadcasting/forum-publishes-new-study-on-public-funding-of-cbcs-operations-from-1937-to-2019/">vacillated dramatically</a> over the years. A funding policy reliant on advertising dollars has left the CBC vulnerable to complaints about <a href="https://torontosun.com/news/cbc-for-free-an-ongoing-threat-to-the-canadian-media">competing unfairly</a> with commercial media and underfunded. </p>
<p>When it comes to funding, the CBC lags behind comparable media in other countries. A <a href="https://site-cbc.radio-canada.ca/documents/vision/strategy/latest-studies/Nordicity-analysis-of-government-support-for-public-service-broadcasting-april-2020.pdf">2018 report</a> prepared for the CBC comparing public funding for public service media showed that at $33 per capita, Canadian public service media funding ranked 17 out of 20 western countries. </p>
<p>Research by the <a href="https://www.ebu.ch/files/live/sites/ebu/files/Publications/EBU-Viewpoint-PSM-Funding_EN.pdf">European Broadcasting Union</a> suggests the single most important factor determining public service media audience share is adequate financing. And having <a href="https://www.mdif.org/">financial independence</a> is key to gaining public trust.</p>
<p>Trust in media is vital to get the public to respond effectively to emergencies. Statistics Canada <a href="https://www.statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/3738-are-canadians-prepared-next-natural-disaster-or-weather-related-emergency">reports that Canadians are not prepared</a> for the next pandemic, flood or wildfire. The CBC is insufficiently funded to provide effective emergency communication, including providing trusted information and coordinating effectively with Alert Ready.</p>
<h2>An independent and well-funded media</h2>
<p>Canadian media and telecommunications services must not be dependent on either U.S. or Canadian commercial interests or Canadian politicians. Canada should establish a non-government trust funded (but not controlled) by both commercial operations and Canadian governments.</p>
<p>The trust could be funded, in part, by a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/tv-licence">British-style licence fee</a>. In 2022, the BBC saw an <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/284705/the-bbc-s-licence-fee-income-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/">income</a> of around 3.8 billion British pounds from licence fees. In 2023, the licence fee was £159 per year (around $260).</p>
<p>Establishing a similar arrangement could potentially provide far more than the $1.2 billion the government <a href="https://site-cbc.radio-canada.ca/documents/impact-and-accountability/finances/2022/consolidated-financial-statements-2022-2022.pdf">spent</a> on the CBC in 2022.</p>
<p>Canadian public service media and telecommunications service could also derive revenue to invest in a communication trust from spectrum licence fees and fees generated by foreign use of Canadian content and data.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549180/original/file-20230919-23-3v9y10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A tablet displaying a news page placed on top of a stack of newspapers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549180/original/file-20230919-23-3v9y10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549180/original/file-20230919-23-3v9y10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549180/original/file-20230919-23-3v9y10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549180/original/file-20230919-23-3v9y10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549180/original/file-20230919-23-3v9y10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549180/original/file-20230919-23-3v9y10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549180/original/file-20230919-23-3v9y10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Canadian news must be well-funded and delivered in a variety of ways.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A robust, reformed Canadian public service multi-platform communication service is more than feasible. Canadian public service media should be required to provide services beyond the broadcasting technology of the 20th century. Video, audio and text should be made available via a Canadian social media platform, local electronic billboards and other platforms. </p>
<p>An integrated, interactive emergency communications system with a focus on service to local communities would begin to address current needs with the latest technologies.</p>
<p>The old promises of the CBC have <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/metis-nation-ontario-land-rights-1.6224140">not been met</a>, and <a href="https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/broadcasting-telecommunications-legislative-review/en/canadas-communications-future-time-act">warnings about reforming Canadian media</a> have been largely ignored. The damage to Canadian media caused by social media extortion and the loss of cable TV revenue makes it clear that the time for piecemeal reform has passed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213727/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Lloyd does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Meta’s blocking of Canadian news reveals how reliant Canada’s media industry is on the U.S. The government must create a better funding model to provide support for Canadian media.Mark Lloyd, Associate Professor, Communication Studies, McGill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2110782023-08-10T15:12:32Z2023-08-10T15:12:32ZCanadian government’s battle with big tech platforms and what it means for the future of journalism<p>Canada recently passed a law to address the continuing financial woes of its traditional news media, trust in which has steadily fallen to <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2022-06/Digital_News-Report_2022.pdf">42% in 2022</a>. The <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/online-news.html">Online News Act,</a> known as Bill C-18, passed in June 2023 but is yet to come into force. It will require digital media companies to compensate news organisations for hosting their content on sites such as Facebook and Instagram and via search engines such as Google. </p>
<p>In response, it is reported that Meta has begun to block news stories from its sites Facebook and Instagram. News companies are reported to have <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/8/8/canadian-publishers-seek-antitrust-probe-of-meta-blocking-news#:%7E:text=Canada's%20Online%20News%20Act%2C%20part,the%20end%20of%20this%20year.">called on the country’s antitrust regulator to investigate</a>, arguing: “Meta seeks to impair Canadian news organizations’ ability to compete effectively in the news publishing and online advertising markets.”</p>
<p>It’s the latest episode in the digital transformation of the global news industry whose business model has been severely disrupted as news revenues have moved to online platforms rather than the producers of the news themselves. In Canada, 80% of all online advertising revenue (CAD$9.7 billion for 2020) now goes to <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2023/06/changes-to-news-availability-on-our-platforms-in-canada/">Meta</a> and <a href="https://blog.google/intl/en-ca/company-news/outreach-initiatives/an-update-on-canadas-bill-c-18-and-our-search-and-news-products/">Google</a>. </p>
<p>By requiring them to provide a digital dividend to news outlets, the act aims to reinvigorate Canada’s news industry, which was <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2021/canada">hit particularly hard during the COVID pandemic</a>, with the closure of at least 40 news outlets. Meta’s decision to block news from its platforms is likely to make life even harder for the country’s news industry.</p>
<p>Sue Gardner, a journalist and influential media commentator in Canada <a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/maxbellschool/max-policy/c-18">has criticised the legislation</a> as trying to fix a “tragedy without a villain” – apart from perhaps the internet itself. She says: “News publishers want to appear on those platforms, because that’s where people are finding news.” </p>
<p>She also says news companies must come up with better ways of monetising their content – and that waging war on the platforms where most people consume that content is not the best way forward.</p>
<h2>The Australian experience</h2>
<p>Any deals struck under C-18 are likely to disproportionately benefit the more powerful, larger, established news companies. This has already been happening in Australia where similar legislation was passed in 2021. </p>
<p>In response to the Australian law, Facebook (as it was then) initially blocked all news content before relenting and agreeing on a <a href="https://www.accc.gov.au/by-industry/digital-platforms-and-services/news-media-bargaining-code/news-media-bargaining-code">news media bargaining code</a>. This enabled media companies to negotiate with platforms and has reportedly resulted in revenues of about AUD$200 million (£102 million) flowing to news organisations. </p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2022-06/Digital_News-Report_2022.pdf">Reuters Institute</a>, the lion’s share of this initially went to the big players: Nine Entertainment Co, News Corp. Australia,
Australian Community Media, the Guardian, and the ABC. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp reportedly receives <a href="https://jninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Rod-Sims_News-Bargaining-Code_2022.pdf">15%-20% of these funds</a>. But a deal was struck by a group of smaller publishers
who were able to <a href="https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/australia-news-media-bargaining-code-google-deal/">collectively bargain</a> for recompense from Google for use of their content.</p>
<h2>Funding quality journalism</h2>
<p>It’s tempting to focus on the stand off between online media and the government on this matter, but the debate obscures a far deeper issue that societies are wrestling with all over the world: how do we fund quality journalism in an era of fast media? </p>
<p>Where clickbait and entertainment – <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aap9559">even misinformation</a> – are better at attracting eyeballs (and therefore generating more revenue) than news produced by newspaper and broadcast companies, the latter can easily become a diminishing presence in people’s lives.</p>
<p>News consumption is in freefall around the world, whether measured in terms of interest in news, which has <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2022-06/Digital_News-Report_2022.pdf">fallen globally from 63% in 2017 to 51% in 2022</a>), or in the proportion of people who will admit to actively avoiding news, which has risen over the same period from 29% to 37% (46% in the UK). </p>
<p>Only about 17% of people (in countries where payment for news is an established thing) say they are willing to pay for news. And the picture gets far worse when you look at the same factors for young people.</p>
<p><a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2022-06/Digital_News-Report_2022.pdf">Research</a> shows that the vast majority of people under the age of 30 get their news via mobile devices. They want their content to be free and are ambivalent about the notion that the choice of what they get to see is made via an algorithm (in fact the Reuters Institute found that many younger people trust algorithm-based news choices more than the gatekeeping of human news editors).</p>
<h2>Future of journalism</h2>
<p>Scandals – such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/doreen-lawrence-and-prince-harrys-lawsuit-against-daily-mail-publisher-underlines-need-for-leveson-inquiry-part-two-192753">phone hacking</a> by newspapers in the UK – and perceived biases of different news organisations have destroyed trust in much of the established news media. </p>
<p>And <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/01/algorithms-and-the-reflexive-turn/">algorithms have done the rest</a>. By showing people more of what they are perceived to want, they force news “consumers” into silos where the ideas being received by people at one end of the spectrum are barely recognised by people at the other.</p>
<p>This is why the aim, if not the effect, of Canada’s new legislation should be seen as worthy. It’s an attempt to preserve a form of mainstream journalism by encouraging a negotiated future between legacy media and online media. </p>
<p>If Canada does find a way forward to encourage Meta and Google back to the table, then other countries may follow. We could begin to see more settlements and funds flow back into the news media, reversing the trend of the past two decades. Yet, even if it does work, it may not go far enough in thinking through how to ensure the news media remains sustainable in the long term.</p>
<p>Without an organic shift in public trust in the value of high-quality journalism, there will be further erosion to the idea that there is a necessary, public good brought uniquely by our professional news media – which would leave democracy all the poorer.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211078/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andy Miah does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new law in Canada attempts to force big tech to pay for the news stories on its sites. But big tech isn’t playing ball, which is a huge problem for journalism.Andy Miah, Chair in Science Communication & Future Media, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2088272023-07-04T16:50:44Z2023-07-04T16:50:44ZBill C-18: Google and Meta spark crucial test for Canadian journalism<p>Three events have recently marked a powerful inflection point in Canadian journalism. </p>
<p>First, <a href="https://blog.google/intl/en-ca/company-news/outreach-initiatives/an-update-on-canadas-bill-c-18-and-our-search-and-news-products/">Google</a> and <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2023/06/changes-to-news-availability-on-our-platforms-in-canada/">Meta</a> announced they will no longer share Canadian news links on their platforms in response to the new <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/online-news.html">Online News Act (Bill C-18),</a> designed to make them pay for their use of Canadian journalism. Their actions are receiving global media attention as other countries navigate platform monopolies of digital advertising dollars and the large financial losses for national commercial journalism ecosystems.</p>
<p>Second, two of the country’s largest English-language commercial newspaper companies, Nordstar Capital and Postmedia Network, announced they are <a href="https://www.postmedia.com/2023/06/27/postmedia-and-nordstar-capital-address-merger-speculation/">exploring a possible merger</a>.</p>
<p>And third, Bell Media, which owns CTV, Canada’s largest commercial broadcaster with 35 local stations in French and English, announced it would like to <a href="https://broadcastdialogue.com/bell-media-appeals-to-crtc-for-regulatory-relief-on-local-news-programming-requirements/">reduce its local news commitments</a> as currently required under CRTC regulations.</p>
<p>These events reflect the changing nature of contemporary journalism systems, described by respected global media economists as “characterized by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/16522354.2016.1176781">volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity</a>.” </p>
<h2>What’s at stake?</h2>
<p>At stake is the nature of the country’s communications ecosystem, affecting how Canadians get news and information that matters to them.</p>
<p>As former journalists, researchers and co-founders of <em>The Conversation Canada</em>, a national not-for-profit news organization dedicated to sharing insights from academics, we support the emergence of the best possible journalism ecosystem given the conditions. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Screen view of the Google and Facebook icons" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535416/original/file-20230703-267655-brbpwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535416/original/file-20230703-267655-brbpwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535416/original/file-20230703-267655-brbpwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535416/original/file-20230703-267655-brbpwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535416/original/file-20230703-267655-brbpwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535416/original/file-20230703-267655-brbpwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535416/original/file-20230703-267655-brbpwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Will Canadians still be able to see Canadian news via Google and Facebook?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Canada is becoming a crucial test for what these systems could and should look like in the 21st century, addressing concerns of what journalism could and should do — and who should do it. Related questions include what is quality journalism content and how much of it is needed.</p>
<p>As important is how much power platforms such as Google and Meta should have to control Canada’s communications infrastructures and impact free speech, let alone considerations about the economic conditions for journalism organizations and journalists. </p>
<h2>The role of Google and Meta</h2>
<p>The decisions by Google and Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) to remove news will affect almost one in two Canadians (45 per cent) who <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2023/canada">cite social media as their go-to place for news</a>. Social media is the third most-used method to access news in Canada, after the internet (69 per cent), which is the main source of news for Canadians, followed by TV news (49 per cent). </p>
<p>For now, Canadians won’t notice anything different as Google says the changes will take place when the law comes into effect over the coming months. Similarly, Meta plans to phase out news by the end of the year.</p>
<p>If these announcements come into effect, Canadians will still be able to go directly to news sites and receive alerts about news content. Some companies have been planning alternative networks and ways to share their content.</p>
<p>Google also announced that it would close down its Google News Showcase program, <a href="https://blog.google/products/news/google-news-showcase-canada/">launched in 2021</a>. This will impact revenues of more than 150 Canadian news publishers that it currently pays to license their work, including the <em>Globe and</em> <em>Mail</em> and the <em>Toronto Star</em>. Neither Google nor the news organizations have publicly acknowledged the value of these deals.</p>
<h2>Act expected to take six months to be in place</h2>
<p>These moves by Google and Meta were precipitated by the Online News Act, which became law on June 22. It is likely to take six months to come into force as the Department of Canadian Heritage works out the details on how to enforce it.</p>
<p>The act was intended to help Canada’s ailing news industry by forcing Google and Meta to pay for news links on their platforms, with the Parliamentary Budget Office estimating it would bring in over <a href="https://www.pbo-dpb.ca/en/publications/RP-2223-017-M--cost-estimate-bill-c-18-online-news-act--estimation-couts-lies-projet-loi-c-18-loi-nouvelles-ligne">$300 million annually for Canadian media</a>. </p>
<p>There would be winners and losers under the act’s funding model, with larger conventional journalism organizations — mostly the big broadcasters, including the CBC — being the big winners. Small digital-born organizations would benefit the least.</p>
<h2>How we got here</h2>
<p>Both Google and Facebook have been working to negotiate with Canadian media in a pre-emptive strategy to avoid legislation and/or to impact the legislation in their interests.</p>
<p>The main <a href="https://www.cjr.org/widescreen/a-canadian-platforms-and-publishers-timeline.php/">focus of Google’s activities</a> has involved funding individual organizations through direct payment deals for content on Showcase. The company has also provided funding for digital innovation and training, oriented within their own proprietary systems, and boot camps for startup entrepreneurs. For example, in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Google provided <a href="https://blog.google/intl/en-ca/company-news/outreach-initiatives/gni-continues-work-towards-supporting-canadian-journalism-all-sizes/">$1.5 million to 230 Canadian newsrooms</a>. </p>
<p>Similarly, Meta has been active in securing deals with Canadian media in advance of the Online News Act, funding dozens of news publishers through its Local News Accelerator program.</p>
<p>Meta had also been funding local reporters <a href="https://www.thecanadianpress.com/about/partnerships/facebook/">through The Canadian Press</a>, investing $1 million through a one-year fellowship, which <a href="https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/meta-ends-contract-for-journalism-fellowship-program-as-bill-c-18-fallout-continues-1.1939676">has been discontinued</a> in response to the passing of the act.</p>
<p>The Canadian act was modelled on 2020 legislation in Australia. There too, the platforms threatened to and did shut down news content during the negotiations. While Australia passed the legislation, it has not been used, leaving Google and Meta to <a href="https://theconversation.com/canadas-online-news-act-may-let-meta-and-google-decide-the-winners-and-losers-in-the-media-industry-208088">make private deals with media</a>. With the Canadian legislation, Google’s concern is the tax on links leaves them in a position with a potential unlimited requirement to pay. </p>
<h2>Why now?</h2>
<p>The Online News Act is one part of the Liberal government’s recent efforts to directly have a hand in subsidizing the journalism industry, a historic approach used in other countries, largely in northern Europe. This is separate to its support of the CBC, the country’s public broadcaster. </p>
<p>Ottawa has allocated more than $600 million since 2017 directly to fund journalism organizations through labour and subscriptions tax credits, which are subsidising operations, and other funding mechanisms such as pandemic relief and other financial supports.</p>
<p>And this is where the proposed moves by media giants Postmedia, Nordstar (publisher of the <em>Toronto Star</em>) and Bell come in. </p>
<p>These crises raise complicated questions about a wide range of policy directions — from financial issues for commercial journalism organizations, to changing audience consumption and trust relationships with conventional media (only 11 per cent of Canadians paid for online news in the last year) and technology companies playing a dominant role in the communications ecosystem. </p>
<p>The dominant <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/16522354.2016.1176781">perspectives on the policy responses</a> focused on “preservation” of existing players through various forms of protectionist policy, such as the $600 million in media funding from government. Less prominent are “conservation” approaches, recognizing that the legacy system is facing sustainability challenges that need to be managed but can’t be stopped. </p>
<p>These approaches can pit legacy or conventional journalism against digital media, which is a winner-take-all strategy of change that is “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/16522354.2016.1176781">not supported by the facts</a>” or the conditions. </p>
<p>The larger questions for Canadians are about the nature, amount and quality of journalism and who controls its communications infrastructures. </p>
<h2>Impact of Postmedia-Nordstar merger</h2>
<p>Examples such as the proposed merger of Postmedia and Nordstar illustrate one of the trade-offs under consideration about the amount of journalism content and who is doing it, in addition to journalist economic conditions. </p>
<p>Postmedia and Nordstar account for 57 per cent of Canadian daily newspaper titles.</p>
<p>The last time the two companies made a deal to swap papers in 2017 resulted in 291 job losses and continuing centralization of content. More recently, Postmedia cut <a href="https://dailyhive.com/canada/postmedia-11-editorial-layoffs">11 per cent of editorial staff</a>. </p>
<p>A second question is having commercial organizations as Canada’s dominant media. BCE Inc., the parent company of Bell Media, has revenues in Canada far exceeding those of the tech platforms. Bell Media reported <a href="https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/bce-reports-2022-q4-and-full-year-results-announces-2023-financial-targets-891658807.html">revenues up 7.2 per cent in 2022</a>, but BCE CEO Mirko Bibic said the company’s news division incurs annual operating losses of “$40 million and growing” and that’s why “we need to accelerate our shift away from how telecom and media companies have operated in the past.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315167497-21/economic-contexts-journalism-rasmus-kleis-nielsen">As a social good</a>, journalism is in a unique position in part because its impact is not just about economics — it has a proven impact on <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/news-hole/86C7B8933122EB6EC229E4B05BBAA27C#">democratic accountability</a>.</p>
<p>How we understand what is happening now and how we got here is necessary to make sound policy decisions moving forward.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208827/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alfred Hermida receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. He is a co-founder and board member of The Conversation Canada.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary Lynn Young receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. She is a co-founder of The Conversation Canada. </span></em></p>A series of crises in the Canadian media sector will become a crucial test for what the country’s media landscape could and should look like in the 21st century.Alfred Hermida, Professor, School of Journalism, Writing, and Media, University of British ColumbiaMary Lynn Young, Professor, School of Journalism, Writing and Media, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2081582023-06-20T20:05:31Z2023-06-20T20:05:31ZCanadians are losing their appetite for news — and trusting it less<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533006/original/file-20230620-23-onav3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C23%2C5168%2C3414&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A new report suggests Canadians are avoiding the news more and less willing to pay subscription fees.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Canadians have less appetite for news and are less inclined to pay for news online, according to the latest findings from the <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2023">2023 Digital News Report survey</a> by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2023-06/Digital_News_Report_2023.pdf">Digital News Report</a>, conducted by an international team of scholars, is one of the most comprehensive surveys about digital news consumption around the world. It’s based on a survey of more than 90,000 online news consumers in 46 countries, including Canada — covering half of the world’s population. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.cem.ulaval.ca/publications/dnr-2023-canada-eng/">new data on Canadian news habits</a> shows payment for online news or access to paid services (via a library, for example), which had been growing slowly in recent years, slipped by four percentage points — from 15 per cent in 2022 to 11 per cent in 2023. This is the first decline since 2016, when Canadian data was first collected, and the lowest result since 2019.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532984/original/file-20230620-27-n7wm1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A graph that shows the percentage of Canadians who are paying for news from 2016-23" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532984/original/file-20230620-27-n7wm1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532984/original/file-20230620-27-n7wm1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532984/original/file-20230620-27-n7wm1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532984/original/file-20230620-27-n7wm1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532984/original/file-20230620-27-n7wm1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532984/original/file-20230620-27-n7wm1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532984/original/file-20230620-27-n7wm1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There was a drop in the number of Canadians who are paying for news in 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters Institute/Oxford University, Centre d'études sur les médias</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Canadians also seem less and less interested in news: 80 per cent say they’re interested in news in 2023, a drop of six percentage points since 2021. However, fewer say they actively avoid the news (63 per cent) compared to 2022 (71 per cent). </p>
<h2>Social media less used for news</h2>
<p>In this context of relative disinterest in news, and while <a href="https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/meta-may-end-facebook-instagram-news-content-in-canada-over-act-1.1917262">Meta is reducing the importance its platforms place on news content</a>, more Canadians say they did not access news via social media in the week preceding the survey. This share rose from 26 per cent to 36 per cent between 2022 and 2023 — the highest result since 2018.</p>
<p>All major social media platforms are down with the exception of Twitter, which remains stable at 11 per cent for this first survey since its acquisition by Tesla founder Elon Musk. Facebook remains the most used social media when interacting with the news, at 29 per cent, but down 11 percentage points from 2022 (40 per cent) and by far its lowest result since 2016.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532991/original/file-20230620-19-4awt22.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A graph that shows a breakdown of news consumption by Canadians over several social media channels" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532991/original/file-20230620-19-4awt22.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532991/original/file-20230620-19-4awt22.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532991/original/file-20230620-19-4awt22.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532991/original/file-20230620-19-4awt22.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532991/original/file-20230620-19-4awt22.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532991/original/file-20230620-19-4awt22.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532991/original/file-20230620-19-4awt22.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Facebook remains the most popular social media channel for news among Canadians, although more people say they aren’t using social media for news.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters Institute/Oxford University, Centre d'études sur les médias</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Still, one in four Canadians gets news primarily from social media. Television news shows remain the main source of information for the largest number of respondents (40 per cent), followed by websites and news apps (27 per cent). Those figures are the same as last year.</p>
<p>Mobile phones remain the most popular device for consulting news online, used by one in two people (52 per cent) in the week preceding the survey. But this number is down nine percentage points from 2022. This is the lowest result since 2019, which seems consistent with declining interest in current affairs and less contact with news on social media.</p>
<h2>Trust continues to decline</h2>
<p>Trust in the news continues its slow descent among the country’s anglophones: 37 per cent say they trust most news, most of the time. For French-speaking Canadians, this confidence is higher (49 per cent) and up slightly from a year ago (47 per cent in 2022). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532996/original/file-20230620-17-7bdfcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A graph measuring trust in media from 2016-23" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532996/original/file-20230620-17-7bdfcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532996/original/file-20230620-17-7bdfcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532996/original/file-20230620-17-7bdfcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532996/original/file-20230620-17-7bdfcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532996/original/file-20230620-17-7bdfcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532996/original/file-20230620-17-7bdfcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532996/original/file-20230620-17-7bdfcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trust in news media is continuing to decline, although francophones in Canada trust the news more than anglophones.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters Institute/Oxford University, Centre d'études sur les médias</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Francophones more optimistic</h2>
<p>As in previous years, Canadian francophones show an overall more positive view of their news ecosystem than anglophones, perhaps due to the language barrier and the francophone market being less oriented towards foreign media.</p>
<p>In addition to a more generalized confidence in the news, one of many examples is the level of concern about the possibility of sorting out the truth from the false online. This concern is much less widespread among francophones (47 per cent) than anglophones (65 per cent). French-speaking Canadians are also more likely to rate both algorithms and news professionals favourably as intermediaries for news access. </p>
<p>The Digital News Report looks extensively into people’s perceptions of having social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google push news stories to readers based on their past habits. In Canada, 29 per cent of francophones and 25 per cent of anglophones find algorithms based on past consumption “a good way” to access news. </p>
<p>Canadians were slightly more skeptical about news stories selected by editors and journalists at media outlets — 26 per cent of francophones and 19 per cent of anglophones agree that having stories selected by editors and journalists is a good way to get news. All of these figures are down by around 10 percentage points since 2016. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533002/original/file-20230620-19-egjrfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three pie charts which break down responses by all Canadians, as well as anglophone and francophone, to the question 'In your opinion, how important, or not, are publicly funded news services to society?'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533002/original/file-20230620-19-egjrfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533002/original/file-20230620-19-egjrfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533002/original/file-20230620-19-egjrfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533002/original/file-20230620-19-egjrfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533002/original/file-20230620-19-egjrfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533002/original/file-20230620-19-egjrfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533002/original/file-20230620-19-egjrfe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Almost half of the Canadians surveyed felt publicly funded news services were important to society.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters Institute/Oxford University, Centre d'études sur les médias</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In these challenging times for the country’s news ecosystem, publicly funded news services are not widely seen as part of the problem. </p>
<p>More than half of francophones (54 per cent) and 45 per cent of anglophones believe in the importance to society of publicly funded news outlets, such as CBC and Radio-Canada. Only 13 per cent of francophones and 20 per cent of anglophones feel they are not important, with the remainder either in between or refusing to comment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208158/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sébastien Charlton works for the Centre d'études sur les médias, which is the Canadian partner of the Digital News Reports. Canadian data collection was partly funded by Canadian Heritage. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colette Brin's work is funded in part by the Quebec government's Ministry of Culture and Communications and Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture. The Canadian edition of the Digital News Report is funded by Canadian Heritage through News Media Canada. Prof. Brin is Director of Centre d'études sur les médias, an independent non-profit research unit hosted at Université Laval in partnership with Université de Montréal and Université du Québec à Montréal. She is also Chairperson of the Independent Advisory Board on Eligibility for Journalism Tax Measures in collaboration with the Canada Revenue Agency</span></em></p>A new study of digital news consumption shows Canadians are avoiding the news more and trusting it less —especially in English Canada.Sébastien Charlton, Lecturer, Department of Information and Communication, Université LavalColette Brin, Professor and Director, Centre d'études sur les médias, Université LavalLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2062512023-06-04T11:19:15Z2023-06-04T11:19:15ZCanada should look to its past and Europe for guidance on media policy — but not south<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528960/original/file-20230530-8555-7cvlkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C35%2C6000%2C3925&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Canada needs to look back on its history of establishing the CBC to avoid its media landscape going the route of its neighbour to the south.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Rod Flores/Unsplash)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Seventy years ago, <a href="https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/37-2/HERI/report-2/page-54">Canadian leaders turned away</a> from the British model of media policy that rejected advertising-supported private broadcasting. </p>
<p>While it’s gone well for a few private corporations, it hasn’t benefited the Canadian public. And the future heralds an even more dangerous American-style media landscape here in Canada.</p>
<p>Canadian leaders once understood the importance and even the potential danger of media to the public. Those lessons need to be remembered. The honourable early history of media policy in Canada needs to be embraced anew.</p>
<h2>Aird Commission findings</h2>
<p>In 1928, <a href="https://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/472642/publication.html">the Royal Commission on Radio Broadcasting, also known as the Aird Commission</a>, was created to consider alternative models for the future of Canadian broadcasting. </p>
<p>It was led by Sir John Aird, the president of the Canadian Bank of Commerce. As media scholar Marc Raboy writes in his comprehensive history of Canadian broadcasting, <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/missed-opportunities-products-9780773507432.php"><em>Missed Opportunities</em></a>, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was established because of public pressure that came from a broad coalition of civic organizations that made up the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1676675341">Canadian Radio League</a>. </p>
<p>The Aird Commission found much to be alarmed about regarding radio. As <a href="https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/372/HERI/Reports/RP1032284/herirp02/herirp02-e.pdf">Aird stated in 1932</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I have watched — naturally I felt it my duty to watch — the program and the material that was coming over the air, and much of it is of the most objectionable character … what I object to most strongly is the character of the ribald songs and vulgar dialogues regarding robberies, burglaries, hold-ups of banks and things like that.” </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white photo of two farmers sitting in a living room listening to a large wooden radio with a bullhorn attached." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528958/original/file-20230530-15-9ga0mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528958/original/file-20230530-15-9ga0mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528958/original/file-20230530-15-9ga0mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528958/original/file-20230530-15-9ga0mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528958/original/file-20230530-15-9ga0mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528958/original/file-20230530-15-9ga0mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528958/original/file-20230530-15-9ga0mu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A farmer and his son listen to the radio in the mid-1920s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The commissioners listened to radio around the world and heard the concerns of various communities with access to the medium. They consistently heard complaints about content, but also about advertising. </p>
<p>As a result of its research, the Aird Commission <a href="https://publications.gc.ca/pub?id=472642&sl=0">proposed a publicly owned corporation</a> not unlike the British Broadcasting Corporation (the BBC). It argued the new medium of radio should be regarded as a national public service rather than a profit-making industry, and its ownership and operating structure should be organized to recognize this principle.</p>
<h2>Creation of the CBC/Radio-Canada</h2>
<p>In 1936, the <a href="https://canadianlabour.ca/uncategorized/twilh-cbc-founded-november-2-1936/">Canadian Broadcasting Act</a> created the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Radio-Canada as a Crown corporation funded through fees known as receiver set licences (initially $2.50 per licence) with limited financing from advertising.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/richard-bedford-viscount-bennett">Richard Bedford Bennett, the Conservative prime minister</a> of Canada who had the unfortunate task of attempting to unite a divided and economically struggling country through the Great Depression of the 1930s, pushed the CBC through its parliamentary hurdles. </p>
<p><a href="https://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_HOC1703_03">Bennett proclaimed</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“This country must be assured of complete Canadian control of broadcasting from Canadian sources. Without such control, broadcasting can never be the agency by which national consciousness may be fostered and sustained and national unity still further strengthened.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In addition to telling the Canadian story to the booming cities of Vancouver, Montréal and Toronto, the CBC was tasked with reaching remote and isolated rural and maritime communities, providing both national and local voices reflecting Canada and in two languages: English and French. Canada’s vast territory and multilingual character made the CBC one of the world’s most far-reaching and complex public broadcasters. </p>
<p>Yet the Aird Commission recommendation that private broadcasting should be fully replaced by public broadcasting never happened. </p>
<p>The British model of public service media funded through receiver licence fees was eventually abandoned in 1953, and CBC funding would be tied to the shifting sands of <a href="https://www.ourcommons.ca/Committees/en/CHPC/StudyActivity?studyActivityId=3699874">parliamentary funding</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A red and white circular logo is projected on a screen." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528962/original/file-20230530-24-kf5nip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528962/original/file-20230530-24-kf5nip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528962/original/file-20230530-24-kf5nip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528962/original/file-20230530-24-kf5nip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528962/original/file-20230530-24-kf5nip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528962/original/file-20230530-24-kf5nip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528962/original/file-20230530-24-kf5nip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The CBC logo is projected onto a screen during the CBC’s annual upfront presentation in Toronto in 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Tijana Martin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Cuts to the CBC</h2>
<p>In 1984, the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney made <a href="https://legacy.friends.ca/explore/article/change-in-parliamentary-appropriation-to-cbc-in-2014/">significant cuts</a> to the CBC, and <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/globe-politics-insider/cbc-funding-history-over-time/article17898560/">those cuts increased under the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien</a>.</p>
<p>Make no mistake — the BBC has more than its share of problems. While it’s <a href="https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/short-history-british-tv-advertising">thrived without advertising</a>, it has been under pressure, losing some of its audience to private commercial broadcasting (which began in 1955) and from political pressure exerted by both Labor and Tory administrations. Yet, the BBC <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/bbc-under-scrutiny-heres-what-research-tells-about-its-role-uk">dominate broadcast and online news</a> in the U.K. The CBC has not fared as well.</p>
<p>Budget cuts to the CBC, often fuelled by partisan politics, have wrought havoc. The Windsor CBC station I watched as a child growing up in Detroit was once a profitable Canadian production powerhouse, but it cancelled popular local programming and slashed the news operation. </p>
<p>In 1990, because of further budget cuts, CBC closed down the station’s news department, spurring street protests from thousands of Windsor citizens.</p>
<p>A “<a href="https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/transcripts/1999/tb0318d.htm">Save Our Station</a>” committee was formed to pressure both CBC and the Canadian government to preserve the Windsor operation. Some limited news service was established because of these protests, but other communities once served by the CBC had no such luck.</p>
<p>Private broadcaster CTV <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/02673231211014986a">has eclipsed</a> the CBC as Canada’s most-watched television network. And according to the independent media database IMDb, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?companies=co0080139">CTV’s top programs</a> are all American productions; mainly police and medical dramas.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A blonde woman sits in front of a TV screen that says Nashville with the CTV logo at the bottom." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528967/original/file-20230530-27-6hdgbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528967/original/file-20230530-27-6hdgbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528967/original/file-20230530-27-6hdgbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528967/original/file-20230530-27-6hdgbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528967/original/file-20230530-27-6hdgbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528967/original/file-20230530-27-6hdgbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528967/original/file-20230530-27-6hdgbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">American-produced shows have long been CTV’s most-watched.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The European way</h2>
<p>Europe suggests a better path. <a href="https://www.ebu.ch/news/2022/01/protect-public-service-media-to-protect-democracy">A recent study</a> by the European Broadcasting Union shows a strong correlation between a country’s democratic well-being and robust public service media, including online media. </p>
<p>Social media policy in the United States has generated echo chambers of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-021-09734-6">misinformation and conspiracy</a> and has certainly not curtailed the erosion of civic knowledge. <a href="https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/americans-civics-knowledge-drops-on-first-amendment-and-branches-of-government/%22%22">A 2022 study</a> by the Annenberg Public Policy Center reveals that while many Americans are angry about politics, less than half of those surveyed understood the basics of U.S. government.</p>
<p>And in Canada? According to <a href="https://www.statista.com/topics/2729/social-networking-in-canada/">Statista</a>, Canada is one of the world’s most connected online populations, with a social media penetration rate of 89 per cent of the Canadian population.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://reviewlution.ca/resources/canadian-social-media-statistics/">most popular</a> media sites in Canada are also U.S.-based — Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443847/original/file-20220201-22-1a82oie.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A protester holds a sign of Justin Trudeau's face behind bars." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443847/original/file-20220201-22-1a82oie.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443847/original/file-20220201-22-1a82oie.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443847/original/file-20220201-22-1a82oie.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443847/original/file-20220201-22-1a82oie.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443847/original/file-20220201-22-1a82oie.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443847/original/file-20220201-22-1a82oie.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443847/original/file-20220201-22-1a82oie.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=861&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A protester holds an anti-Trudeau sign near Parliament Hill in Ottawa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>U.S.-based, advertising-driven social media sites designed to stoke outrage are not creating more informed Canadians. <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/social-mediea-convoy-protests-emergencies-act-inquiry-1.6668543">The actions of the so-called Freedom Convoy</a> illustrates this phenomenon.</p>
<p>And, unfortunately, similar to American civic illiteracy, a recent <a href="http://poll.forumresearch.com/post/2990/canada-day-2019/">Forum Research Poll</a> suggests only one in 10 Canadians would pass the Canadian citizenship exam. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/canadas-legal-disinformation-pandemic-is-exposed-by-the-freedom-convoy-176522">Canada’s legal disinformation pandemic is exposed by the 'freedom convoy'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Looking ahead</h2>
<p>The future of advertising-driven media does not bode well for democracy. Even <a href="https://thehill.com/newsletters/technology/4007422-chatgpt-chief-issues-ai-warning/">Silicon Valley leaders are warning</a> against a laissez-faire U.S. policy approach in terms of generative artificial intelligence/large language models like ChatGPT.</p>
<p>The American threat to Canada continues not because of U.S. power, but because Canadian leaders have not put in place policies to foster and protect Canadian democracy.</p>
<p>Civic organizations of all stripes need to come together to demand a new approach to media that’s informed by lessons from Canada’s past and by the obvious mistakes evident south of the border.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206251/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Lloyd does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A hundred years ago, civic organizations of all stripes came together to demand a new Canadian approach to media policy. Canada has done it before — it must do so again.Mark Lloyd, Associate Professor, Communication Studies, McGill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2018622023-04-05T20:51:06Z2023-04-05T20:51:06ZHow the Online Streaming Act will support Canadian content<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519204/original/file-20230404-404-nq3k5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C0%2C997%2C666&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Online Streaming Act aims to level the playing field between streaming giants and legacy Canadian radio and television broadcasters.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>After two-and-a-half years of debate in Canada’s Parliament, two proposed versions of the bill (<a href="https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/43-2/c-10">C-10</a> and <a href="https://www.parl.ca/LegisInfo/en/bill/44-1/c-11">C-11</a>) and <a href="https://sencanada.ca/en/sencaplus/news/the-online-streaming-act-in-the-senate/">careful scrutiny by the Senate</a>, the <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/modernization-broadcasting-act.html">Online Streaming Act</a> is close to becoming law. </p>
<p>Once it receives <a href="https://sencanada.ca/en/about/procedural-references/notes/n6">royal assent</a>, the bill will trigger significant — and for some, long-awaited — changes to Canada’s <a href="https://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/B-9.01/">Broadcasting Act</a>, which was last updated in 1991.</p>
<p>The Online Streaming Act aims to <a href="https://www.thewirereport.ca/2023/01/12/online-streaming-act-will-modernize-broadcast-laws-crtc-commissioner/">adapt Canadian broadcasting regulation for the 21st century</a>. It does this by accounting for digital technologies and the diversity of the Canadian population. Few could argue with the necessity of updating broadcasting legislation that was last changed <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/internet">before internet use became widespread in Canada</a>. But <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/online-streaming-act-cancon-future-1.6749795">some fear the bill will have negative impacts</a> on freedom of expression for digital content creators and the variety of content Canadian audiences see.</p>
<h2>What the act will and won’t do</h2>
<p>The Online Streaming Act aims to <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books/reviews/article-the-failure-to-protect-canadian-culture-in-the-digital-age-makes-for/">level the playing field</a> between streaming giants like Netflix and Spotify and legacy Canadian radio and television broadcasters. In this sense, the bill serves as a legislative counterweight to the thus far <a href="https://doi.org/10.22230/cjc.2020v45n3a3901">under-regulated world of digital platforms</a> in Canada.</p>
<p>Like their legacy counterparts, online streaming services may need to register with the <a href="https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/home-accueil.htm">Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission</a> (CRTC) once the Online Streaming Act is law. This is a major incentive for regulating online broadcasting since streaming services will be required to contribute financially to the <a href="https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/cancon/mandate.htm">CanCon (Canadian Content) system</a>. This is a regulatory framework that supports the production of content <a href="https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/cancon/c_cdn.htm">certified as Canadian</a>. </p>
<p>The objective is to financially support cultural production by Canadians which would otherwise be hard to sustain given the small Canadian market. This cultural policy measure also aims to amplify homegrown content to strengthen a sense of what it means to be Canadian. For example, <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/hockey-night-in-canada"><em>Hockey Night in Canada</em></a>, which has served as a national symbol since the 1930s.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519200/original/file-20230404-572-x0olw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A smart phone showing app logos for online streaming services." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519200/original/file-20230404-572-x0olw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519200/original/file-20230404-572-x0olw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519200/original/file-20230404-572-x0olw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519200/original/file-20230404-572-x0olw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519200/original/file-20230404-572-x0olw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519200/original/file-20230404-572-x0olw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519200/original/file-20230404-572-x0olw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Under the act, online streaming services will need to obtain a licence from the CRTC to operate in Canada.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like other sectors of the economy, Canadian cultural industries need a boost from policies like CanCon quotas set by the <a href="https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/cancon/c_system.htm">CRTC’s regulatory framework</a>. What underscores these measures is a desire to grow cultural industries and uphold a sense of national identity.</p>
<p>Online streaming services will be required to feature a certain amount of Canadian content and to increase its <a href="https://cmf-fmc.ca/now-next/research-reports/discoverability-toward-a-common-frame-of-reference/">discoverability</a>. This does not mean that Canadian audiences will be force-fed Canadian content or that barriers will be placed onto the licensing of international content. In conventional broadcasting, Canadian content quotas serve as a discoverability measure, ensuring that minimum amounts of Canadian programs are broadcast to the public.</p>
<p>Canadians may see more Canadian music or shows pop up in the feeds of their favourite streaming service. However, the Online Streaming Act does not define discoverability and leaves it up to the CRTC to set parameters and targets. This could be difficult because of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/205630511881918">multifaceted nature of discoverability</a>, which involves a combination of user interface, software design, algorithmic governance and individual choices.</p>
<p>There has been confusion about <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLQ0ZffdKjo&t=17s">whether the Online Streaming Act opens the door to censorship on social media</a>. The current version of the bill clearly specifies that non-commercial user-generated content posted to social media platforms will be excluded from the regulatory framework. Government intervention, beyond banning things like <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/department-justice/news/2021/06/government-of-canada-takes-action-to-protect-canadians-against-hate-speech-and-hate-crimes.html">hate speech and harassment online</a>, would be anti-democratic. </p>
<p>The House of Commons <a href="https://openmedia.org/press/item/mps-remove-user-protection-amendment-from-bill-c-11">recently rejected the Senate’s proposal</a> to cast a wider net with this exemption. In the spirit of the act, Parliament has maintained the possibility of regulating commercial uses of social media. The act clearly distinguishes between social media posts made by the average Canadian and other uses like commercial TV broadcasts made available on YouTube. </p>
<h2>Why regulate online broadcasting?</h2>
<p>When it was <a href="https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/ResearchPublications/201139E#a2">introduced in 1932</a>, the Broadcasting Act <a href="https://cbc.radio-canada.ca/en/your-public-broadcaster/history">established the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)</a> and created a regulatory framework for radio communications. The aim was to create a country-wide communication system that would connect Canadians from coast to coast and develop a sense of shared national identity.</p>
<p>This <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/nationalism-and-ethnicity-cultural-nationalism">cultural nationalist</a> approach to broadcasting regulation addressed different geo-political challenges facing the young Canadian nation. Namely, Canadians’ consumption of and association with American culture and the lack of a unifying sense of Canadian-ness.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519201/original/file-20230404-543-k992e9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C4486%2C2997&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A hand holding a remote in front of a TV" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519201/original/file-20230404-543-k992e9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C4486%2C2997&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519201/original/file-20230404-543-k992e9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519201/original/file-20230404-543-k992e9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519201/original/file-20230404-543-k992e9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519201/original/file-20230404-543-k992e9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519201/original/file-20230404-543-k992e9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519201/original/file-20230404-543-k992e9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Canadians may see more Canadian music or shows pop up in the feeds of their favourite streaming service.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Broadcasting Act of 1958 introduced Canadian content regulations for private broadcasters. Since then, <a href="https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/cancon.htm">CanCon regulation</a> has developed into a complex system overseen by the CRTC. It has the twinned objective of financially supporting Canadian media and of ensuring that they will be seen and heard by Canadians. </p>
<p>This is done by mandating private commercial broadcasters to finance agencies like <a href="https://cmf-fmc.ca/">Canada Media Fund</a>, <a href="https://telefilm.ca/en">Telefilm Canada</a>, and the <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/funding/music-fund.html">Canada Music Fund</a> and by setting Canadian content quotas for television and radio broadcasts.</p>
<h2>A step in the right direction?</h2>
<p>Although it aims to regulate the brave new world of online broadcasting, the Online Streaming Act reproduces the regulatory logic and framework that Canadians have known since the 1930s.</p>
<p>The act will <a href="https://cjc.utpjournals.press/doi/10.3138/cjc.2022-0006">reproduce a settler colonial framework</a> that <a href="https://theconversation.com/online-streaming-act-claims-to-level-the-playing-field-but-for-whom-179051">fosters systemic inequities</a>. Canadian cultural policy has been developed to serve the needs of a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2015.1043294">settler-colonial nation state</a> who has deployed strategies to develop a sense of Canadian cultural identity based on “<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/june-25-2017-the-sunday-edition-with-michael-enright-1.4171552/canada-had-three-founding-peoples-not-two-1.4171577">two founding nations</a>.”</p>
<p>Bias in favour of white Anglo- and Franco-colonial heritage is still evident in cultural policy today, including in the Online Streaming Act. Whereas the Act includes important measures that will support Indigenous languages and content produced by BIPOC creators, it reinforces the dominance of anglophone and francophone content. </p>
<p>This logic is particularly evident in the act’s emphasis on the protection and promotion of French content. This reiterates the dominance of <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/official-languages-act-1969">Canada’s official languages</a> and could exclude members of other minority communities. As with the <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/corporate/transparency/open-government/standing-committee/dm-transition-material-2021/indigenous-languages-act.html">Indigenous Languages Act</a>, the Online Streaming Act’s approach is aspirational when it comes to supporting First Nations, Inuit, and Métis cultures. However, Canadian heritage programs still view supporting official bilingualism as more important than supporting other Canadian languages. </p>
<p>The Online Streaming Act is a step in the right direction. It could create a more equitable broadcasting landscape, but it is not enough. In order to truly modernize broadcasting policy, Canadians need to revisit fundamental assumptions about what Canadian culture is, why it matters and how we should foster and safeguard it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201862/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mariane Bourcheix-Laporte has consulted for the CRTC on research related to the Online Streaming Act.</span></em></p>The Online Streaming Act is set to soon become law in Canada. The act is a step in the right direction, but more needs to be done to support BIPOC content.Mariane Bourcheix-Laporte, PhD Candidate, School of Communication, Simon Fraser UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2010802023-03-13T18:03:00Z2023-03-13T18:03:00ZThe Online News Act could give Google and Meta too much influence over Canadian news organizations<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514325/original/file-20230308-26-w339ir.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C5%2C3653%2C2429&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Online News Act, or Bill C-18, is Canada's attempt to address the imbalance between digital platforms and news publishers.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/the-online-news-act-could-give-google-and-meta-too-much-influence-over-canadian-news-organizations" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p><a href="https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/c-18">Bill C-18, the Online News Act</a>, could give Google and Meta greater influence over Canadian news media in the form of new agreements between online platforms and news organizations. </p>
<p>The act would require digital platforms that make news outlets’ content available in Canada to negotiate with those outlets to provide compensation for their news content. It would apply to platforms that have a significant bargaining power imbalance with news businesses — in other words, Google and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. Advertising revenue has shifted away from news, and in 2020, <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/806895/canada-google-facebook-ad-market-share/">more than 80 per cent of online advertising revenue</a> in Canada went to Google and Meta.</p>
<p>Bill C-18 <a href="https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/c-18">would require</a> compensation agreements with Canadian news organizations in “all markets.” This would include non-profit and for-profit sectors, local and regional markets all across Canada, anglophone and francophone communities, official language minority communities, racialized communities, and Indigenous news outlets. Few news organizations would be left behind.</p>
<p>One option is for Google and Meta to stop making news outlets’ content available in Canada, which is a path they have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/02/google-blocking-news-canada-online-news-act-link-tax-facebook">testing</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/meta-block-news-liberal-online-bill-1.6776485">threatening</a>. The other option will be to come to agreements.</p>
<h2>What could these agreements look like?</h2>
<p>There are several types of agreements between news organizations and online platforms. First, there are those already in place between news organizations and Google and Meta. We don’t know what these look like because they are private between the parties. </p>
<p>Second, if Google and Meta continue making news available in Canada, and C-18 passes (it is currently in the Senate), there will be a new set of agreements sparked by Bill C-18 with news organizations that don’t currently have agreements with Google or Meta. This is seen as the major benefit of Bill C-18; it gives organizations that have been left out a chance to get in on the funding. </p>
<p>Third, there are additional agreements, which I’ll call side agreements, dealing with matters other than paying for content. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A cell phone displaying the Facebook page of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514570/original/file-20230309-22-9hwpw0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514570/original/file-20230309-22-9hwpw0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514570/original/file-20230309-22-9hwpw0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514570/original/file-20230309-22-9hwpw0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514570/original/file-20230309-22-9hwpw0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514570/original/file-20230309-22-9hwpw0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514570/original/file-20230309-22-9hwpw0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Online News Act would grant the CRTC some powers over agreements between digital platforms and news organizations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To pass muster with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), <a href="https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/third-reading">content agreements will need to provide</a> “fair compensation” for news content that intermediaries make available. Agreements will have to contribute to Canadian news market sustainability, and they must ensure an “appropriate” part of the compensation is used to support news production. </p>
<p>The CRTC will also be charged with ensuring such agreements do not “<a href="https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/third-reading">allow corporate influence to undermine the freedom of expression and journalistic independence enjoyed by news outlets</a>.” </p>
<p>Does this provision on journalistic independence go far enough?</p>
<h2>How much influence do platforms have?</h2>
<p>Agreements sparked by Bill C-18 are expected to provide cash payments based on the size of newsrooms. However, under Bill C-18, there is nothing stopping a number of worrying developments that could give digital platforms a growing influence over news organizations. </p>
<p>These could appear in existing agreements, new agreements sparked by Bill C-18, or side agreements. For example, Meta or Google could provide remuneration (or part of the remuneration) in the form of training, technical support, technologies or technology licensing discounts that would deepen the integration of news organizations with digital platform data and technologies. </p>
<p>Such technologies could not only allow data and information about users and news to flow back to platforms (the bill makes no mention of privacy), but also shape how newsrooms view and evaluate their own activities.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A computer screen displaying several people on a video call" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514557/original/file-20230309-23-ak0c82.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514557/original/file-20230309-23-ak0c82.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514557/original/file-20230309-23-ak0c82.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514557/original/file-20230309-23-ak0c82.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514557/original/file-20230309-23-ak0c82.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514557/original/file-20230309-23-ak0c82.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514557/original/file-20230309-23-ak0c82.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Google Canada’s Sabrina Geremia, Vice-President and Country Manager, and Jason J. Kee, Public Policy Manager, appear as witnesses at a Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on March 6, 2023. The committee is looking into the activities of Google in reaction to Bill C-18.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The door is also open for platforms to invest in specific capital or projects rather than (or as well as) paying in cash. This would result in platforms gaining influence over the structure and infrastructure of news organizations and/or the content they produce.</p>
<p>Nothing in Bill C-18 stands in the way of platforms providing compensation in the form of payments tied to specific journalistic endeavours or programs, or revenue-sharing based on innovative journalism projects, short of arrangements that would undermine freedom of expression or journalistic independence. </p>
<h2>The power to shape news</h2>
<p>Bill C-18 will also not stop digital platforms from paying news organizations based on engagement — or another metric based on a platform’s current business model. Agreements could incentivize a certain type or amount of content on digital platforms, such as video content. </p>
<p>Allowing platforms’ business models to potentially shape news in this way can be bad for news quality. It can result in newsrooms pursuing clicks and platform incentives rather than stories and formats that are important to an informed electorate and citizenry. </p>
<p>Even if such activities would impede journalistic independence in some ways, prohibiting such activities could equally be portrayed as eroding journalistic independence. Some news organizations may seek out or welcome such measures.</p>
<p>Bill C-18 provides little grounds for public intervention unless it can be portrayed as eroding freedom of expression or journalistic independence. This may be a very high bar.</p>
<p>News organizations’ platform dependency <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820926472">has grown over time</a>, even prior to Bill C-18. It varies by size and type of news organization, with smaller and more independent news organizations less insulated because they have less control over their own data infrastructure and distribution avenues.</p>
<h2>How will we know if things are going wrong?</h2>
<p>Under the Online News Act, agreements between platforms and news organizations will not be made public. This means the public won’t know the content of agreements or side agreements, except for the information platforms and news organizations decide to reveal. </p>
<p>The CRTC may have some insight into the nature of these agreements, and an independent auditor will prepare a high-level annual report on the act’s impact. However, it’s doubtful this report will give real insight into the kinds of arrangements and integrations between news organizations and digital platforms that form.</p>
<p>The Online News Act may deepen platform-newsroom integration, transforming the Canadian media landscape broadly and quickly, out of public view — and not necessarily for the better.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201080/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sara Bannerman receives funding from the Canada Research Chairs program, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and McMaster University. </span></em></p>The Online News Act could result in the formation of new agreements between news organizations and digital platform giants, which could give rise to a number of worrying developments.Sara Bannerman, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Communication Policy and Governance, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1971882023-03-12T12:42:56Z2023-03-12T12:42:56ZRogers-Shaw case unexpectedly rewrote merger law, but there’s still time to change that<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514049/original/file-20230307-2497-ocsgvb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=338%2C287%2C4073%2C2710&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Rogers-Shaw deal is the largest merger to be challenged before the Competition Tribunal. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly two years after it was announced, the <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/03/15/2192622/0/en/Rogers-and-Shaw-to-come-together-in-26-billion-transaction-creating-new-jobs-and-investment-in-Western-Canada-and-accelerating-Canada-s-5G-rollout.html">$26-billion takeover</a> of Shaw Communications by Rogers Communications remains in the news — and in a state of limbo.</p>
<p>Rogers and Shaw have pushed the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/rogers-shaw-deadline-extended-march-31-1.6751886">closing date of the deal</a> to March 31 as they wait for Canada’s Minister of Innovation François-Philippe Champagne to approve the transfer of wireless spectrum licences from Shaw to Quebecor’s Videotron subsidiary.</p>
<p>Champagne is in a <a href="https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/rogers-shaw-takeover-expert-says-industry-minister-likely-mulling-optics-of-approval-1.1888729">delicate position</a>. Ever since the Competition Tribunal <a href="https://decisions.ct-tc.gc.ca/ct-tc/cdo/en/521175/1/document.do">rejected the Commissioner of Competition’s application to block the deal</a> on Jan. 24, 2023, opponents of the deal have urged Champagne to override the tribunal decision.</p>
<p>Regardless of what Champagne decides, the tribunal decision — endorsed by the Federal Court of Appeal — has created a new rule that raises significant questions about merger review going forward.</p>
<p>With a <a href="https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/strategic-policy-sector/en/marketplace-framework-policy/competition-policy/consultation-future-competition-policy-canada">consultation on the future of competition policy in Canada</a> underway, it is vital to seize the opportunity to correct a problematic new precedent.</p>
<h2>Implications for merger law</h2>
<p>Most experts thought <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-with-shaw-deal-competition-monitor-airs-views-on-corporate-vs-consumer/">the Rogers-Shaw case would focus on</a> the controversial efficiencies defence, which has been a <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-the-takeover-law-that-has-bay-street-rattled-complicating-the-rogers/">primary target for reform</a>.</p>
<p>Unique to Canada, the efficiencies defence allows a merger to proceed if economic efficiencies, such as cutting staff and combining business units, are sufficient to compensate for the higher prices and less consumer choice caused by the merger.</p>
<p>In the end, there was no need to consider whether the efficiencies would compensate for any anti-competitive effects, since the tribunal dismissed the application. The tribunal was unconvinced the merger would negatively affect competition for wireless services in British Columbia and Alberta.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man in a suit gestures while speaking" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514060/original/file-20230307-22-lm8vq4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514060/original/file-20230307-22-lm8vq4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514060/original/file-20230307-22-lm8vq4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514060/original/file-20230307-22-lm8vq4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514060/original/file-20230307-22-lm8vq4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514060/original/file-20230307-22-lm8vq4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514060/original/file-20230307-22-lm8vq4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Innovation, Science and Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne rises during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa in February 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Patrick Doyle</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the surface, this looks like an open and shut case, but something unprecedented happened — the original deal <a href="https://decisions.ct-tc.gc.ca/ct-tc/cdo/en/item/520922/index.do">challenged by the commissioner in May 2022</a> — a one-step complete takeover of Shaw by Rogers — was replaced by a two-step process, announced in June and <a href="https://corpo.videotron.com/en/pressroom/rogers-shaw-and-quebecor-sign-definitive-agreement-sale-freedom-mobile">finalized in August</a>, in which Rogers would sell Freedom Mobile to Videotron before acquiring Shaw.</p>
<p>Based on its interpretation of the law and applying “common sense,” the tribunal decided the merger review must look at the deal the parties <em>actually intend to do</em>, even though the new deal is the result of a change made after the commissioner started litigation.</p>
<p>The commissioner asked the Federal Court of Appeal to overturn this part of the decision. <a href="https://decisions.fca-caf.gc.ca/fca-caf/decisions/en/item/521096/index.do">The Court refused</a>, saying it would not have changed the outcome of the case because the tribunal had rejected all of the commissioner’s evidence. </p>
<h2>Merger review process</h2>
<p>In Canada, mergers are not subject to formal approval. The purpose of the Competition Bureau’s review of mergers is to identify and resolve problems. </p>
<p>Our merger regime has two parts: <a href="https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/competition-bureau-canada/en/how-we-foster-competition/education-and-outreach/publications/merger-review-process-guidelines#s3_4_3">notification</a> and <a href="https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/competition-bureau-canada/en/how-we-foster-competition/education-and-outreach/publications/merger-enforcement-guidelines">enforcement</a>. Most merger review happens at the notification stage when <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/competition-bureau/news/2023/02/pre-merger-notification-transaction-size-threshold-to-remain-at-93m-in-2023.html">the bureau reviews transactions by parties</a> to see if a deal raises competition concerns. </p>
<p>Most of the time, the bureau has none and takes no action. But when cases do raise concerns, the bureau may ask for more information to better understand the impacts of the merger. Usually merging parties have suggestions for how to remedy concerns ahead of time, and the commissioner and the parties can reach a resolution without needing litigation.</p>
<p>Very rarely, the gap between the commissioner and the parties cannot be bridged and the commissioner will challenge the merger. The commissioner can challenge any merger, including <a href="https://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-34/page-16.html#docCont">those completed within the last year</a> or those, like the <a href="https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/14603/index.do">Tervita case</a>, that don’t have to be notified. </p>
<p>The commissioner starts a challenge by applying to the Competition Tribunal for an order to fix the anti-competitive problems caused by the merger. The commissioner must prove the deal will likely cause a “substantial lessening or prevention of competition.” </p>
<p>Once he does that, he must show how his proposed remedy will bring the level of anti-competitive harm below the substantial level.</p>
<p>Parties that propose alternatives to the commissioner’s remedy must convince the tribunal their remedy is adequate and achievable. Sometimes the commissioner and the parties are able to agree on a remedy to settle a contested case. This can then be filed as a <a href="https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/competition-bureau-canada/en/how-we-foster-competition/education-and-outreach/publications/competition-bureau-mergers-consent-agreement-template">consent agreement</a>, which is binding on both sides.</p>
<h2>Upending the merger review process</h2>
<p>The Rogers-Shaw decision upends the merger review process in two ways. First, allowing post-litigation changes removes the incentive for parties to work with the commissioner to resolve competition issues in the early stages of merger review. </p>
<p>For parties seeking a remedy the commissioner objects to, a late deal change is a way they can propose a remedy. Baking a remedy directly into a deal means the remedy isn’t looked at separately from the overall question of whether the deal is anti-competitive. </p>
<p>This means parties don’t have to show their remedy is likely to work — it’s assumed to. More importantly, since the remedy is not enshrined in a formal tribunal order, there is no legal mechanism to ensure the parties follow through.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-quebecor-working-with-federal-government-on-details-of-pledge-to/">Crafting effective alternatives to court orders</a> to ensure parties keep their promises is difficult, as we have seen in the continued delay in the final approval of the Rogers-Shaw deal by Champagne.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two men in suits stand before a table with name cards sitting on it" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514047/original/file-20230307-299-6u6iun.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514047/original/file-20230307-299-6u6iun.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514047/original/file-20230307-299-6u6iun.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514047/original/file-20230307-299-6u6iun.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514047/original/file-20230307-299-6u6iun.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514047/original/file-20230307-299-6u6iun.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514047/original/file-20230307-299-6u6iun.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tony Staffieri, president and chief executive officer of Rogers Communications Inc., right, and Paul McAleese, president of Shaw Communications Inc., arrive at the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology investigating the proposed acquisition of Shaw by Rogers in Ottawa in January 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Second, merger challenges take months of preparation. To do this properly, the Competition Bureau has to know what deal it’s looking at so it can build a strong case. </p>
<p>When a deal is substantially modified after the commissioner files a formal application, he has to adjust his evidence and strategy on the fly. In Rogers-Shaw, the tribunal and the Federal Court of Appeal said there was no unfairness to the commissioner, but this ignores the potential for strategic abuse of the rule in future cases. </p>
<h2>Proposals for reform</h2>
<p>While it can sometimes take years to change judge-made rules, the second phase of competition law reform, expected in the coming year, gives us a chance to nip the issues raised by Rogers-Shaw in the bud.</p>
<p>Here are two ideas for how to strike a balance between the need for flexibility when deals change after litigation starts, and ensuring merger review serves the public interest.</p>
<p>First, when post-challenge deal modifications incorporate remedies, parties should have to convince the tribunal these remedies are sufficient to address any anti-competitive concerns, unless the commissioner agrees they are adequate. </p>
<p>This ensures private parties cannot choose their own remedy without convincing the commissioner or tribunal it’s in the public interest. This should discourage self-serving low-ball remedy offers.</p>
<p>Second, there must be conditions that determine when a deal change is too late or too significant to be folded into an ongoing merger challenge, without putting an unfair or unreasonable burden on the commissioner or harming public interest.</p>
<p>One solution is to create a default rule saying major post-challenge changes to the original deal require a new notification, triggering a fresh review, unless parties can prove it’s not needed. This would allow the commissioner to study a new deal properly, ultimately leading to a faster resolution without litigation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197188/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Quaid holds research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and the chair of the Legal Committee of Transparency International Canada. </span></em></p>The Rogers-Shaw decision is proving to be a legally significant case for Canada by setting a precedent that might make merger challenges harder in the future.Jennifer Quaid, Associate Professor & Vice-Dean Research, Civil Law Section, Faculty of Law, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of OttawaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2011312023-03-08T20:56:07Z2023-03-08T20:56:07ZMontreal Gazette: A case for the local ownership of community news media<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513834/original/file-20230306-1219-30sx50.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2941%2C1881&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Copies of the 'Montreal Gazette' are shown on a newsstand in Montréal on Feb. 16, 2023. Local Montréal businessman Mitch Garber has expressed interest in buying the newspaper. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Montréalers awoke on Feb. 16 to the news that a local <a href="https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/businessman-mitch-garber-pitches-taking-over-montreal-gazette-as-paper-faces-more-cuts-1.6276114">businessman and lawyer was trying to buy the <em>Montreal Gazette</em></a>, the city’s only anglophone daily newspaper.</p>
<p>No doubt many missed this news in the swirl of information at our fingertips, especially considering the <em>Gazette</em> is now a mere shadow of its former self. </p>
<p>The latest indignity the <em>Gazette</em> faced was a series of layoffs. Initially, <a href="https://rover.substack.com/p/postmedia-scales-back-gazette-layoffs">10-12 layoffs were expected</a>, but the hit was scaled back to six after <a href="https://montreal.citynews.ca/2023/02/12/petition-postmedia-montreal-gazette/">public pressure</a>, leaving just <a href="https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/advisory-council-will-keep-journalists-in-the-newsroom-at-montreal-gazette-postmedia-1.6287942">32 journalists and three managers</a> covering a metropolitan area of four million.</p>
<p>This marks a tremendous change for the <em>Gazette</em>, whose well-known writers have included <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/mordecai-richler">Order of Canada recipient Mordecai Richler</a>. Its fame has even been enshrined in bronze, in the form of a statue of a man reading the newspaper that stands in one of the city’s anglophone enclaves.</p>
<h2>News industry challenges</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A statue of a man leaning against a building and reading a newspaper" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513822/original/file-20230306-14-igwd0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513822/original/file-20230306-14-igwd0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513822/original/file-20230306-14-igwd0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513822/original/file-20230306-14-igwd0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513822/original/file-20230306-14-igwd0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513822/original/file-20230306-14-igwd0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513822/original/file-20230306-14-igwd0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A statue in Westmount, Que. of a man reading the ‘Montreal Gazette.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <em>Gazette</em> has suffered the familiar challenges of the news industry. It hasn’t been locally owned since 1968 <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/montreal-gazette">when it was bought by Southam</a>. A list of chain owners followed: Hollinger acquired it in 1996, Canwest in 2000 and Postmedia in 2010. </p>
<p>In 2014, 100 people lost their jobs when printing was outsourced. But the real damage came after Chatham Asset Management, a New Jersey hedge fund, acquired a two-thirds stake in Postmedia in 2016. The <em>New York Times</em> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/business/media/hedge-fund-chatham-mcclatchy-postmedia-newspapers.html">reported that Postmedia cut 1,600 jobs across Canada</a> in the first four years of Chatham’s ownership. </p>
<p>As a society we have expressed concern about newspapers that have closed — 470 of them since 2008 in Canada, <a href="https://localnewsmap.geolive.ca/">according to the Local News Research Project</a>. But we are increasingly paying attention to the growth of <a href="https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/reports/expanding-news-desert/loss-of-local-news/the-rise-of-the-ghost-newspaper/">“ghost newspapers”</a> — publications that still exist, but whose newsgathering activities have shrivelled to almost nothing. </p>
<p>The <em>Gazette</em> is certainly not a ghost, producing lots of excellent local coverage every day, but it’s undoubtedly trending ghostward. We also know life is worse in communities with less local news: local journalism <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03003930.2013.834253">increases voter turnout</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108950930">reduces polarization</a> and <a href="https://www.cjr.org/q_and_a/investigative-reporting-value.php">saves communities money</a>. </p>
<h2>Mitch Garber’s offer</h2>
<p>This brings us back to the businessperson who offered to purchase the <em>Gazette</em> in February, Mitch Garber. He is an investor and a minority owner of the Seattle Kraken NHL team. </p>
<p>When news of the recent layoffs broke, the <em>Gazette</em> staffers <a href="https://www.thestar.com/business/2023/02/16/prominent-businessman-mitch-garber-pitches-local-ownership-for-montreal-gazette.html">reached out to him</a> for help. In a series of since-deleted tweets on Feb. 15, Garber declared he would consider buying the newspaper.</p>
<p>“I never really wanted to own a newspaper,” <a href="https://www.iheartradio.ca/cjad/audio/mitch-garber-explains-importance-of-montreal-gazette-calls-out-advisory-council-1.19260566">he told CJAD radio</a>. “Do I have a plan? No. But I want to do what I can to help,” he <a href="https://rover.substack.com/p/knives-out-at-the-montreal-gazette">told <em>The Rover</em></a>. “I am a capitalist, I believe in smart investments and I know that investing in the print news business isn’t a big money-making investment. But some things are more important than money and I think this city needs an English language daily.” </p>
<p>Postmedia CEO Andrew MacLeod <a href="https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/postmedia-ceo-not-sure-it-s-the-right-time-for-local-ownership-of-montreal-gazette-1.6277293">dismissed the offer</a>, noting that sharing printing, distribution and stories across newspapers makes it hard to remove one of them. </p>
<p>It’s worth taking Garber’s suggestion seriously, even if not in the short term. Chain ownership might lower costs. If the purpose of a newspaper is to build up local democracy, it’s important to consider what the true cost of these savings is, and whether they outweigh the tremendous shrinkage of the newsroom. I know what my answer is. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man speaks into a microphone while another man, who is bald, looks on" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513845/original/file-20230306-18-h3ki0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513845/original/file-20230306-18-h3ki0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513845/original/file-20230306-18-h3ki0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513845/original/file-20230306-18-h3ki0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513845/original/file-20230306-18-h3ki0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513845/original/file-20230306-18-h3ki0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513845/original/file-20230306-18-h3ki0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Businessman Mitch Garber, right, speaking at a news conference in Montréal in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although Garber has invested in a range of industries, he appears to have no background in media. “Some things are more important than money,” is a promising statement, and anyone who is willing to put their own money on the line to save a community asset has my attention. </p>
<p>But individual owners can be capricious. While local ownership, no matter its structure, brings a level of accountability to the news business, it is worth taking a moment to think about how to actually build a more responsible, community-focused news source. </p>
<h2>Are non-profits the future?</h2>
<p>The <em>Gazette’s</em> local competition offers examples worth examining. <em>La Presse</em>, a French-language, online-only publication became a non-profit in 2018, meaning all profits generated are put back into the editorial process. </p>
<p><em>La Presse’s</em> owners left $50 million in its accounts before the conversion and its circulation <a href="https://nmc-mic.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/SNAPSHOT-2022-REPORT_Total-Industry-01.31.2023.pdf">has been rising</a>. </p>
<p><em>Le Devoir</em>, a French-language newspaper published in Montréal, <a href="https://www.lesamisdudevoir.com/fr/les-amis-du-devoir.html">has been owned by a non-profit trust for over 100 years</a>.</p>
<p>Joseph Atkinson left the <em>Toronto Star</em> to a charitable trust in 1948, <a href="https://www.thestar.com/about/history-of-the-toronto-star.html">a move that was overturned by government legislation</a>, but whose charitable spirit was preserved through the trustees <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/05/the-toronto-stars-owner-once-dreamed-that-it-would-be-a-nonprofit-now-its-being-sold-to-a-private-equity-firm/">who owned it until recently</a>. </p>
<p>And reaching further back, revenue from the operations and eventual sale of the <em>Toronto Telegram</em> <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1t88wsq">helped support Sick Children’s Hospital</a>. (Today, of course, it’s newspapers that are the charity case.)</p>
<p>South of the border also has plenty of interesting examples. One of the oldest examples is the <em>Tampa Tribune</em>, <a href="https://www.poynter.org/history/">left to a trust by its owner</a>. </p>
<p>H.F. Lenfest, a prominent businessman and benefactor, <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/business/museum-of-the-american-revolution-lenfest-institute-for-journalism-philadelphia-20220419.html">created a non-profit to house <em>The Philadelphia Inquirer</em> in 2016</a> to ensure the newspaper would remain locally owned. Lenfest also created the <a href="https://www.lenfestinstitute.org/">Lenfest Institute for Journalism</a> that same year to fund local journalism.</p>
<p>This non-profit has contributed to what is one of the most vibrant news ecosystems in the United States, a goal that all newspapers should strive for. Anyone talking about bringing a chain newspaper local would do well to examine the history of <em>The Philadelphia Inquirer</em>.</p>
<h2>News media sustainability</h2>
<p>Postmedia is perhaps doing us all a service by putting the brakes on Garber’s offer. <a href="https://www.postmedia.com/2023/02/16/postmedia-announces-gazette-community-advisory-council/">The chain has put together an advisory council</a> to work on promoting the sustainability of the newspaper. </p>
<p>While a little late, this might be a move in the right direction for what should be a community-focused organization. If we’re serious about it, Montréalers would do well to put together our own process to figure out what we want and need from the <em>Gazette</em>. Perhaps this could even lead to a standing community advisory board, a check that a new owner would do well to encourage and listen to.</p>
<p>In any case, we can expect little from Postmedia, especially while Chatham Asset Management is involved. Local ownership seems worth a try. Garber seems like a good candidate, and he would do well to read up on what’s worked elsewhere so that he can ensure the <em>Gazette</em> remains an important local asset.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201131/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Magda Konieczna does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Local media ownership brings a level of accountability to the news business and offers benefits to communities by increasing voter turnout, reducing polarization and saving communities money.Magda Konieczna, Assistant Professor of Journalism, Concordia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1961022022-12-06T20:53:47Z2022-12-06T20:53:47ZDisinformation is an epidemic. We’re the vaccine.<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499366/original/file-20221206-2849-rtiqpd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5591%2C3177&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p>Disinformation is the common denominator to many of the problems facing our democratic society. Disinformation is the wicked sister of misinformation: the latter happens when someone spreads false information, perhaps unwittingly; the former is a deliberate attempt to deceive by propagating misleading or fabricated facts. We’ve all encountered both in our daily lives, <a href="https://theconversation.com/5-ways-to-help-stop-the-infodemic-the-increasing-misinformation-about-coronavirus-137561">especially over the last three years</a>. </p>
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For the first time, we are asking readers if they can help support our mission to share knowledge in order to inform decisions.Scott White, CEO | Editor-in-Chief, The Conversation CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1924672022-11-23T16:04:44Z2022-11-23T16:04:44ZHow to decolonize journalism — Podcast<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497076/original/file-20221123-24-8zq33s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C57%2C1902%2C1020&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Duncan McCue, left, walks with Rocky James, a podcast guest on CBC's 'Kuper Island.'
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Evan Aagaard/CBC Podcasts)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe height="200px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/e7d12b26-7189-4da9-a83b-09e54f131b65?dark=true"></iframe>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-572" class="tc-infographic" height="100" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/572/661898416fdc21fc4fdef6a5379efd7cac19d9d5/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Despite the jokes about our egos, many of us journalists got into the business because we felt a need to call out powerful institutions. </p>
<p>But journalism itself is one of those powerful institutions, and it has failed time and again to address criticisms around who gets to tell the news and whose perspectives get left out. </p>
<p>Some researchers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190067076.001.0001">have called this a crisis of journalism, a “digital reckoning.”</a> And they are not talking about economics — with local newsrooms and news budgets on the decline — though that is part of it. </p>
<p>When it comes to reporting and covering Indigenous Peoples, journalism’s institutions have failed. For example, a good part of the reason so many <a href="https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2022/06/20/how-familiar-are-canadians-with-the-history-of-indigenous-residential-schools.html">Canadians are not familiar with the history of the Indian Residential Schools</a> is because Canadian media failed to tell those stories. We failed to address the ongoing colonialism and that has meant that urgent Indigenous issues have been ignored or sensationalized.</p>
<p>And journalism schools only recently began teaching their students how to think critically while covering stories like these. </p>
<p>Our guest <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/episodes/decolonizing-journalism">on this episode of <em>Don’t Call Me Resilient</em></a> has been working on correcting these issues both in the newsroom and in the classroom. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492213/original/file-20221027-40102-xuwshh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492213/original/file-20221027-40102-xuwshh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492213/original/file-20221027-40102-xuwshh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492213/original/file-20221027-40102-xuwshh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492213/original/file-20221027-40102-xuwshh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492213/original/file-20221027-40102-xuwshh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492213/original/file-20221027-40102-xuwshh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492213/original/file-20221027-40102-xuwshh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Duncan McCue has published Decolonizing Journalism, a new book to help journalists contend with the bias in news media.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Duncan McCue is an award-winning Anishinaabe journalist. </p>
<p>He has worked at the CBC for over 20 years reporting for <em>The National</em> and as the host of <em>Cross Country Checkup</em>. </p>
<p>Duncan was part of a CBC investigation into missing and murdered Indigenous women that <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/cbc-mmiw-investigations-hillman-prize-1.3501398">won the Hillman Award for Investigative Journalism</a>. Most recently, he has produced and hosted <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/1062-kuper-island"><em>Kuper Island</em></a>, an eight-episode podcast that focuses on four students of a residential school in B.C. — three who survived and one who didn’t. </p>
<p>As an educator, Duncan has taught journalism at the University of British Columbia and Toronto Metropolitan University. And he just published a new book, <a href="https://www.oupcanada.com/catalog/9780190164263.html"><em>Decolonizing Journalism</em></a>.</p>
<h2>Follow and Listen</h2>
<p>You can listen to or follow <em>Don’t Call Me Resilient</em> on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/dont-call-me-resilient/id1549798876">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9qZFg0Ql9DOA">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/37tK4zmjWvq2Sh6jLIpzp7">Spotify</a> or <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com">wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts</a>. <a href="mailto:theculturedesk@theconversation.com">We’d love to hear from you</a>, including any ideas for future episodes. Join The Conversation on <a href="https://twitter.com/ConversationCA">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheConversationCanada">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/">Instagram</a> and <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@theconversation">TikTok</a> and use #DontCallMeResilient.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/four-corners-how-many-more-reveals-the-nations-crisis-of-indigenous-women-missing-and-murdered-193216">Four Corners' 'How many more?' reveals the nation's crisis of Indigenous women missing and murdered</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-toronto-star-is-making-the-right-move-by-renaming-the-lou-marsh-trophy-191831">The Toronto Star is making the right move by renaming the Lou Marsh trophy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/canadas-shameful-history-of-sterilizing-indigenous-women-107876">Canada's shameful history of sterilizing Indigenous women</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/thunder-bay-local-news-is-important-for-conversations-on-reconciliation-114875">Thunder Bay: Local news is important for conversations on reconciliation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/stanley-trial-highlights-colonialism-of-canadian-media-91375">Stanley trial highlights colonialism of Canadian media</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/media-portrays-indigenous-and-muslim-youth-as-savages-and-barbarians-79153">Media portrays Indigenous and Muslim youth as 'savages' and 'barbarians'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Sources</h2>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/decolonizing-journalism-9780190164263?cc=ca&lang=en&"><em>Decolonizing Journalism</em></a> by Duncan McCue</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/seeing-red"><em>Seeing Red</em></a> by Mark Cronlund Anderson and Carmen L. Robertson </p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/2953-our-history-is-the-future"><em>Our History is the Future</em></a> by Nick Estes</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190067076.001.0001"><em>Reckoning: Journalism’s Limits and Possibilities</em></a> by Candis Callison and Mary Lynn Young. </p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492346/original/file-20221028-13-w3hbdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492346/original/file-20221028-13-w3hbdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492346/original/file-20221028-13-w3hbdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492346/original/file-20221028-13-w3hbdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492346/original/file-20221028-13-w3hbdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492346/original/file-20221028-13-w3hbdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492346/original/file-20221028-13-w3hbdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492346/original/file-20221028-13-w3hbdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">From the left: Seeing Red by Mark Cronlund Anderson and Carmen L. Robertson,
Our History is Our Future by Nick Estes and Reckoning by Candis Callison and Mary Lynn Young.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Transcript</h2>
<p>The unedited version of the transcript is available <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/episodes/decolonizing-journalism/transcript">here</a>.</p>
<p><em>Don’t Call Me Resilient is produced in partnership with the Journalism Innovation Lab at the University of British Columbia and with a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192467/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Canadian journalist institutions have failed to address their ongoing colonialism and that has meant that urgent Indigenous issues have been ignored or sensationalized.Vinita Srivastava, Host + Producer, Don't Call Me ResilientLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1888752022-09-06T20:01:28Z2022-09-06T20:01:28ZWhy Ottawa’s efforts to get Google and Facebook to pay for news content misses the mark<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480433/original/file-20220822-76838-aw9uc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=31%2C0%2C5145%2C3445&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bill C-18, the Online News Act, is trying to get the dominant digital platforms to negotiate mutually-acceptable agreements with Canada’s online news outlets. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/why-ottawa-s-efforts-to-get-google-and-facebook-to-pay-for-news-content-misses-the-mark" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>We have seen drastic changes in the media industry over the last two decades. Between <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/news/2022/04/government-introduces-a-bill-to-ensure-fair-compensation-for-news-media-and-the-sustainability-of-local-news.html">2008 and 2021, more than 450 news outlets closed</a> across Canada and at least one-third of journalism jobs disappeared. </p>
<p>The digital platform giants — notably Google and Facebook — are very much part of this media ecosystem, but are they positive contributors? </p>
<p>By reproducing or linking to articles they don’t create, but earn ad revenue from — they claimed <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/news/2022/04/government-introduces-a-bill-to-ensure-fair-compensation-for-news-media-and-the-sustainability-of-local-news.html">80 per cent of online ad revenues</a>, or almost $10 billion, in 2020 — these big tech companies seem to deprive news publishers their rightful due. So should publishers be compensated for the use of their content? </p>
<h2>The Online News Act</h2>
<p>Many countries have debated this question; few have acted. In 2019, the European Union <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/31/europe-efforts-to-curb-internet-giants-only-make-them-stronger">instituted a so-called “link tax”</a> — essentially a licensing fee that search engines and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/news-aggregator">news aggregators</a> have to pay publishers for using their content. In 2021, Australia <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-56163550">brought in a law</a> that compels Google and Facebook to negotiate deals with the country’s news publishers.</p>
<p>Now, Canada is weighing in. In April, the federal government tabled legislation that channels Australia’s approach. Bill C-18, the <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/news/2022/04/backgrounder--government-introduces-legislation-to-ensure-fair-compensation-for-news-media-and-the-sustainability-of-local-news.html">Online News Act</a>, is a sharp-elbowed nudge to get the dominant digital platforms to negotiate mutually-acceptable agreements with Canada’s online newspapers, magazines and TV and radio broadcasters. </p>
<p>If they cannot come to terms, the parties would have to enter a binding arbitration overseen by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the arm’s-length regulator. If enacted, would Bill C-18 “contribute to the sustainability of the news market,” as the government promises? </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-paltry-number-of-canadians-are-paying-for-online-news-118651">A paltry number of Canadians are paying for online news</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It’s true that news outlets have <a href="https://citap.unc.edu/local-news-platforms-mis-disinformation/">struggled to make money</a> ever since the internet upended their gravy train — classified ads and print subscriptions. But it’s also true that search engines and aggregators have expanded the online news market. They direct substantial traffic to the publishers’ websites, particularly traffic from casual readers that otherwise would not take place.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man browses on an iPad." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480434/original/file-20220822-65891-rlafhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480434/original/file-20220822-65891-rlafhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480434/original/file-20220822-65891-rlafhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480434/original/file-20220822-65891-rlafhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480434/original/file-20220822-65891-rlafhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480434/original/file-20220822-65891-rlafhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480434/original/file-20220822-65891-rlafhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">News outlets have struggled to make money in recent years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A look at the ‘link tax’</h2>
<p>There is no evidence that shows news outlets are worse off because of Google, Facebook and other aggregators. If anything, evidence (and lots of it) shows that, overall, news outlets would be in worse shape without these digital platforms.</p>
<p>That’s what I found in <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2837553">a study I undertook with economist Joan Calzada</a> of the “link tax” imposed by Spain (before the EU-wide directive was instituted in 2019). </p>
<p>In 2014, Spain began forcing aggregators such as Google News to pay a link fee to original publishers. Google responded by shutting down its Spanish edition. We found that after the shutdown, <a href="https://smith.queensu.ca/insight/content/research_brief_a_google_tax_may_be_a_bad_idea_after_all.php">Spanish news outlets experienced a reduction in the number of daily visits</a> of between eight and 14 per cent. </p>
<p>To add insult to injury, advertisers stopped placing ads on their sites, causing a collapse in ad revenues. Particularly hard hit were smaller news publishers — lower-ranked sites with a larger share of casual readers. </p>
<p>During the same period, Germany instituted a link fee as well. In this case, Google News required German publishers to waive the linking fee. A <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4158137">study from the University of Munich</a> found that publishers deciding to opt out from Google indexing faced disastrous consequences: daily visits to their sites significantly dropped and traffic was diverted to competing sites that opted into indexing. </p>
<p>These and <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w28746">other studies</a> show news publishers benefit from the Googles of the world. So would Bill C-18, as it currently stands, really change anything for the better? </p>
<h2>Right side of policy</h2>
<p>The current debate is based on a false premise, that news outlets are not already being compensated, instead of focusing on the rightful split of joint revenues between the platform and the content creator. </p>
<p>If Bill C-18 passes, we can expect big publishers to receive most of the funds — that’s what happened in Europe and Australia. Smaller media outlets with low brand awareness will suffer unless they band together and bargain collectively with the digital giants. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An illustration shows hands holding a phone that reads news." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480435/original/file-20220822-76834-d44eah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480435/original/file-20220822-76834-d44eah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480435/original/file-20220822-76834-d44eah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480435/original/file-20220822-76834-d44eah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480435/original/file-20220822-76834-d44eah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480435/original/file-20220822-76834-d44eah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480435/original/file-20220822-76834-d44eah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Between 2008 and 2021, more than 450 news outlets closed across Canada.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We can expect Google, Facebook and their ilk to adjust their market behaviour. What would stop them, for example, from tweaking their algorithms to benefit news publishers offering the most favourable arrangements? </p>
<p><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/npict8uzrow3sk3/AABO5qZ8qEnEEphhmlVOE-8la?dl=0">Recent evidence</a> shows Google Australia started recommending less “expensive” content after the law was passed in Australia. </p>
<p>Alternative policy responses must be considered. In the past, when Google faced similar legal trouble, France and Belgium set up lump sum funds that were shared by news publishers based on a predetermined formula. Such an approach ensures a fair distribution of funds across content creators and doesn’t distort market behaviour of the platforms involved.</p>
<p>Bill C-18 is just one of three pieces of legislation now being considered by the House of Commons. There is also a proposed bill that addresses hate speech and other online abuses and another that brings online streaming services under the Broadcasting Act. </p>
<p>It’s clear Canadians approve; <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-liberal-internet-regulation-bill-c-11/">polling</a> shows a majority support greater government regulation on the internet. While it’s good to be on the right side of public opinion, it’s better to be on the right side of policy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188875/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ricard Gil received funding from the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition (CTIC) and Warren Center for Network & Data Science to study the impact of search engines on the online news market. </span></em></p>There’s no evidence that news outlets are worse off because of Google, Facebook and other aggregators. If anything, evidence shows that, overall, news outlets would be in worse shape without them.Ricard Gil, Associate Professor, Smith School of Business, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1895132022-08-30T18:09:29Z2022-08-30T18:09:29ZGrey hair: Fine for George Clooney but not Lisa LaFlamme?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481623/original/file-20220829-8654-tx2s1p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=32%2C0%2C982%2C335&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In the aftermath of her dismissal, alleged statements about Lisa LaFlamme's grey hair by CTV executives have ignited debates around the expectations placed on the physical appearance of women. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Bell Media)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hillary Clinton once said: “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/21/nyregion/commencements-at-yale-mrs-clinton-ponders-hair-and-politics.html">Pay attention to your hair, because everyone else will</a>.” </p>
<p>It’s been two weeks since the shocking news that longtime CTV News anchor Lisa LaFlamme was <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-longtime-ctv-anchor-lisa-laflamme-blindsided-as-bell-media-ends/">dismissed after 35 years</a> with the network. It’s still not clear why she was let go. </p>
<p>But in the aftermath of LaFlamme’s departure, there were allegations LaFlamme’s decision to <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-lisa-laflamme-ctv-grey-hair/">allow her hair to go grey</a> was questioned by executives.</p>
<p>LaFlamme’s termination, and the allegations that newsroom executives made comments about her hair, have angered many. More than 70 prominent Canadian journalists, activists, politicians and artists have <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-open-letter-bell-media-laflamme/">signed an open letter</a> condemning LaFlamme’s dismissal.</p>
<p>Bell Media, which owns CTV, has denied that LaFlamme’s removal had anything to do with her age or going grey. The company says that terminating LaFlamme’s contract was a <a href="https://toronto.citynews.ca/2022/08/28/bell-media-lisa-laflammes-departure/">“business decision”</a>. </p>
<p>In a post on LinkedIn, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6969086677784915968/">Bell CEO Mirko Bibic said</a>: “The narrative has been that Lisa’s age, gender or grey hair played into the decision. I am satisfied that this is not the case.”</p>
<p>Amid backlash over LaFlamme’s dismissal, Michael Melling, vice president of news at Bell Media, is <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2022/08/26/ctv-executive-michael-melling-to-take-leave-in-wake-of-lisa-laflamme-firing.html">on a leave of absence pending the outcome of a workplace review</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1559238644317167618"}"></div></p>
<p>Whatever the cause of LaFlamme’s dismissal, the episode has once again highlighted the gendered ageism many women continue to face. </p>
<h2>Aging and gender</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, this story is nothing new in the world of ageism. Ageism is negative stereotypes, prejudice or discrimination <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-016-0409-9">directed toward aging people</a>. Issues surrounding ageism continue to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(19)30035-0">be widespread</a> in our society and mainstream media.</p>
<p>Though ageism affects all older adults, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08952841.2021.1899744">women are subject to the greatest discrimination</a>. The standards for attractiveness in our consumerist culture are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X07007003">defined by youthful characteristics and are constantly portrayed through the media</a>.</p>
<p>How women are judged compared to men in terms of physical appearance varies immensely. </p>
<p>Take the famous (and relatively new) term dad bod. <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/5/14/8607369/what-is-dad-bod">A “dad bod” is a male body type</a> that is described as “softly round.” It suggests that, because a man has found a partner and fathered children, he doesn’t need to worry about maintaining a sculpted physique. Dad bods have been celebrated because men like <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/shirtless-leonardo-dicaprio-shows-dad-22991075">Leonardo DiCaprio</a> have made them popular. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1562408903551467520"}"></div></p>
<p>Where is the equivalent for women? Is there a mom bod? Of course there is, but a mom bod is usually a woman who has “let herself go” as she’s aged and is no longer desirable. </p>
<p>This gendered ageism is particularly apparent when it comes to physical appearance. The unrealistic pressure and expectations put on women in terms of beauty and youthfulness is part of the rise in the importance of <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203740248-24/aesthetic-capital-sylvia-holla-giselinde-kuipers">aesthetic values</a> in society. </p>
<p>These values influence the notion that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017%2FS0714980811000274">grey hair on a woman produces one of the least desirable personas in Western society – an old woman</a>.</p>
<p>“Ideal” images and media representations of women exaggerate our expectations of female physical attractiveness: forever youthful, thin, light-skinned and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2019.01.010">toned</a>. This is a physical appearance that is not representative of the majority of women, especially not older women. </p>
<p>The double standard when it comes to aging speaks to the reality that aging women are judged the harshest in society. The loss of youthfulness (which is associated with attractiveness) <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojn.2016.63026">makes women less desirable</a>.</p>
<p>These harmful standards of beauty and aging have ignited calls for an intersectional approach to address the cultural expectations of ageism and physical appearances. Leading feminist scholars like <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520240544/unbearable-weight">Susan Bordo</a> have stated that as women are socialized to be more worried about their physical appearances and aging, the more damaged their self images and confidence will be. </p>
<h2>Grey is for men but not women</h2>
<p>LaFlamme and her alleged experience of gendered ageism makes for some interesting comparisons. There are <a href="https://www.wonderwall.com/celebrity/hot-celebrities/countdown-15-hottest-celeb-silver-foxes-29210.gallery">entire articles</a>, forums, hashtags and social media sites that celebrate “silver foxes” (older men with grey or white hair). What is the equivalent of a silver fox for women? There isn’t. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"877707747684270080"}"></div></p>
<p>Anderson Cooper continues hosting his show on CNN with grey hair. <a href="https://regalgentleman.com/blogs/blog/george-clooney-proves-that-silver-hair-should-be-embraced">George Clooney</a> and <a href="https://time.com/4834526/steve-carell-grey-hair-internet-reactions/">Steve Carell</a> are praised and labelled as attractive for their grey hair. Most notably, LaFlamme’s predecessor, Lloyd Robertson, was allowed to stay in the anchor’s chair long after his hair turned grey, all while being able to leave on his own terms <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2022/08/16/heres-how-other-famous-news-anchors-in-canada-and-the-us-bid-their-final-farewells.html">when he was 77</a>.</p>
<p>This is because aging men are seen as <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2015/02/17/10-reasons-grey-haired-men-are-hot-5065945/">suave, distinguished and sophisticated</a>. Women are just seen as old. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08952841.2021.1899744">“Whatever a woman does or does not do with her hair will affect how others respond to her and thus her social power”</a>, meaning that women have a choice: let the natural process of aging take over and go grey (and be socially dismissed), or dye their hair to look younger and be more “socially accepted.”</p>
<h2>#KeepTheGrey</h2>
<p>LaFlamme’s experience is the spark that has started a fire.</p>
<p>Brands that joined in solidarity with LaFlamme include <a href="https://wtop.com/business-finance/2022/08/heres-why-wendys-in-canada-has-given-its-iconic-red-headed-mascot-gray-hair/">Wendy’s</a> (their iconic red head logo switching to grey hair), <a href="https://swimsuit.si.com/swimsuit/model/maye-musk"><em>Sports Illustrated</em></a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/DoveCanada/status/1561503357889568768?">Dove Canada</a> (tweeting #KeepTheGrey). </p>
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<p>These companies have taken a step in the right direction. Though this matter seems like a <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/in-wake-of-laflammes-exit-brands-should-be-wary-when-jumping-on-hot-topics-experts">grey area</a>, it is much deeper than the colour of LaFlamme’s hair. It is a deeply complex matter of gendered ageism. </p>
<p>With more women (and aging women) in the work force, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/avivahwittenbergcox/2022/08/27/companies-beware-grey-hair-rising-fire-the-older-at-your-peril/?sh=126e32ff2910">companies need to learn how to retain, respect and develop older employees</a>. Responding to the mistreatment of LaFlamme and making her an inspiring role model is the beginning of a positive change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189513/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For many men, grey hair is just part of getting older, but for women, going grey can have major consequences.Victoria Atabakhsh, PhD Candidate in Aging, Health, and Well-Being/Director of Lifestyle and Programs, University of WaterlooJoe Todd, PhD Candidate in Recreation and Leisure Studies, University of WaterlooLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1855412022-06-24T10:55:23Z2022-06-24T10:55:23ZThe untold story of Canada’s journalism startups<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470368/original/file-20220622-34601-35c970.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4013%2C3024&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Conversation Canada is celebrating its fifth anniversary. It's one of dozens of digital news organizations that has found a niche in the changing media landscape in Canada.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(THE CONVERSATION)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/the-untold-story-of-canada-s-journalism-startups" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The fifth anniversary of the launch of <em>The Conversation Canada</em> is an opportunity to reflect on an untold story of the Canadian news media.</p>
<p><em>The Conversation Canada</em> is one of more than 120 novel English-language digital-born journalism organizations to launch since 2000. That’s more than the number of daily newspapers that populated the country in the latter part of the 20th century. </p>
<p>In reflecting on the past five years <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-time-to-start-the-conversation-in-canada-79877">as co-founders</a> and journalism researchers, we locate <em>The Conversation Canada</em> as part of <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3621685">an emergent journalism infrastructure</a> populated by a new group of vital contributors who range from cottage industry to larger-sized established organizations. </p>
<p>These players — such as <em><a href="https://thelogic.co/">The Logic</a></em>, <a href="https://mediaindigena.com/"><em>MediaIndigena</em></a>, <a href="https://thenarwhal.ca/"><em>The Narwhal</em></a>, <em><a href="https://www.sprawlcalgary.com/">The Sprawl</a></em>, <em><a href="https://thetyee.ca/">The Tyee</a></em> and <em><a href="https://www.villagemedia.ca/">Village Media</a></em> — are shaping what it means to be a journalist and what journalism could and should do in this country. They have taken advantage of low barriers to entry online and the potential of a digital space that affords a place to experiment with diverse approaches. </p>
<p>Yet the decline of legacy, commercial media has been a singular focus of policymakers and journalism coverage even as these new digital-born journalism organizations are winning recognition at industry awards and filling gaps in news coverage.</p>
<h2>Tackling critical issues</h2>
<p>Our research for the past two years has focused on identifying and understanding this wave of digital-born entrants. We’ve found that the majority of the new digital news organizations are still up and running, even though many startups fail in their first few years. Like <em>The Conversation Canada</em>, more than half have launched since 2015.</p>
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<img alt="Climate activists holding up a variety of signs demonstrate in downtown Calgary" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470671/original/file-20220623-52182-2w9vtx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470671/original/file-20220623-52182-2w9vtx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470671/original/file-20220623-52182-2w9vtx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470671/original/file-20220623-52182-2w9vtx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470671/original/file-20220623-52182-2w9vtx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470671/original/file-20220623-52182-2w9vtx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470671/original/file-20220623-52182-2w9vtx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Some of the new digital news organizations in Canada have focused coverage on specific issues like the climate crisis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh</span></span>
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<p>A majority of the new journalism organizations are located in British Columbia and Ontario, although they are largely in non-urban centres. Some 40 per cent have a national and/or international outlook in their coverage, which is a surprise given the fears about the loss of local news.</p>
<p>Many of these new organizations are consciously mission-driven, with some acknowledging their roles as a response to urgent global concerns and living in a settler-colonial nation state. Some take explicit stances on harms and fault lines in legacy media reporting including justice for Indigenous peoples, racial injustice, the climate crisis, the economy and more.</p>
<p>Just under two-thirds of the new digital-born news media were started by a mix of veteran and emerging journalists, and the rest by media makers, business people or activists. </p>
<p>This new system is, however, not without its challenges such as sustainability, scale, living wages, attracting audiences and the influence of funders, to name just a few. </p>
<p>The increase in the past two decades in the number and range of journalism entrepreneurs and owners is important because there is evidence the concentration of ownership has contributed to a limited diversity of perspectives and types of organizations that could and have engaged in journalism in Canada. </p>
<h2>Trend towards not-for-profits</h2>
<p>Our research shows a shift to not-for-profit organizations doing journalism in the past two decades, including <em>The Conversation Canada</em>. </p>
<p>The evolution in types of ownership and business models is significant given the highly concentrated nature of Canadian journalism ownership, which has been a concern since the first government committee <a href="https://publications.gc.ca/Pilot/LoPBdP/BP/prb9935-e.htm#A.%20The%20Daveytxt">explored the issue in 1970</a>. </p>
<p>Contemporary Canadian journalism has also had a largely commercial orientation, despite the important presence of a public service broadcaster, with <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/comparing-media-systems/B7A12371782B7A1D62BA1A72C1395E43">professional ideals of objectivity and independence</a>.</p>
<p>These elements have contributed to a widely shared and relatively homogenous perception of journalistic roles among public and legacy media. Largely, described as “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/canadian-journal-of-political-science-revue-canadienne-de-science-politique/article/abs/is-there-a-distinct-quebec-media-subsystem-in-canada-evidence-of-ideological-and-political-orientations-among-canadian-news-media-organizations/835FC4D4BDAAF96976B53F28D0A05619">monitorial</a>,” journalism roles in Canada have focused on a five-point “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/canadian-journal-of-political-science-revue-canadienne-de-science-politique/article/abs/changes-in-canadian-journalists-views-about-the-social-and-political-roles-of-the-news-media-a-panel-study-19962003/535827D9F0BF053D9BA3D17A59E50FC3">creed</a>”: “accurately reporting the views of public figures, getting information to the public quickly, giving ordinary people a chance to express their views, investigating activities of government and public institutions, and providing analysis and interpretation of complex problems.”</p>
<h2>‘A single newspaper agenda’</h2>
<p>Such professional commercial logics span Canada’s anglophone and francophone media systems. A recent study by scholars in Québec found the perception of similar content focus in Canadian media. These scholars suggest this finding validates prior research that there is “<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210428185800id_/https:/www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/835FC4D4BDAAF96976B53F28D0A05619/S0008423920000189a.pdf/div-class-title-is-there-a-distinct-quebec-media-subsystem-in-canada-evidence-of-ideological-and-political-orientations-among-canadian-news-media-organizations-div.pdf">a single newspaper agenda in Canada</a>,” with the caveat that this agenda is “beyond Québec-specific issues.” </p>
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<img alt="People walk by two newspaper boxes in downtown Toronto" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470457/original/file-20220623-51459-5mozlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470457/original/file-20220623-51459-5mozlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470457/original/file-20220623-51459-5mozlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470457/original/file-20220623-51459-5mozlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470457/original/file-20220623-51459-5mozlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470457/original/file-20220623-51459-5mozlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470457/original/file-20220623-51459-5mozlo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">As legacy newsrooms in Canada have struggled and downsized, a new crop of digital-born organizations have launched across the country.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Kevin Frayer</span></span>
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<p>These are important considerations because there is evidence the relationship between journalists’ professional ideology in Canada and perception of partisanship and politicization is paradoxical. While journalists ascribe to neutrality, audiences perceive them as partisan.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/canadians-trust-in-the-news-media-hits-a-new-low-184302">Canadians' trust in the news media hits a new low</a>
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<p>This paradox is timely as it coincides with a <a href="https://www.cem.ulaval.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/dnr22_can_eng.pdf">decline in public trust</a> in the news media. Anglophones’ trust in journalism has dropped to a low of 39 per cent compared to 55 per cent in 2016 and to 47 per cent from 55 per cent over the same period among francophones.</p>
<p>Perceptions of trust are related to “<a href="https://theconversation.com/canadians-trust-in-the-news-media-hits-a-new-low-184302">perceived lack of diversity in media ownership</a>”, as well as concerns about the media’s independence from political or business influence.</p>
<h2>What journalism can be</h2>
<p>The fifth anniversary of <em>The Conversation Canada</em> is an opportunity to express our deep gratitude to the many individuals, including its editors, who have contributed to its success — and to its <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003140399-6/university-giant-newsroom-alfred-hermida-lisa-varano-mary-lynn-young">meaningful contributions to journalism in Canada</a>, from the coverage of <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/topics/covid-19-82431">COVID-19</a> to the podcast <em><a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/">Don’t Call Me Resilient</a></em>. </p>
<p>Our goal in co-founding <em>The Conversation Canada</em> was to explore how non-commercial journalism values affect what journalism could and should do in this country. (We are both tenured professors at the University of British Columbia and we have not earned any revenue from <em>The Conversation Canada</em> or our roles in it.)</p>
<p>It was an initiative to see what journalism could be if written by experts in their fields and edited by journalists, deliberately welcoming those critical studies and perspectives from scholars who have been excluded and/or had to operate on the margins of the media. </p>
<p>Our approach sought to address established power relations in journalism, extending how the newsroom and its presence within a commercial landscape, <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780190067076.001.0001/oso-9780190067076">largely created by white professional journalists</a> in Canada, has been habitually conceptualized, understood and practised. </p>
<p>Canada is not alone in trying to decide on policy responses to legacy journalism economic challenges while seeing the rise of newer players all trying to survive alongside the dominance of platforms such as Facebook and Google. Countries such as Australia, Belgium and others are grappling with how best to support quality journalism today to various degrees of success.</p>
<p>Our research is ongoing as part of <a href="https://journalisminnovation.ca/about">a number of related studies</a> in Canada and Australia about the impact and use of <em>The Conversation</em> content nationally and globally, funded by a Canadian federal government research grant. </p>
<p>The evidence is clear that national social, economic and political conditions have an impact on the nature of our media systems. The question for Canadians is what choices they have or should have about the kinds of journalism that are available to them, now and in the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185541/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary Lynn Young receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council. She is co-founder and a former member of the board of The Conversation Canada.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alfred Hermida receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council. He is co-founder and a member of the board of directors of The Conversation Canada.</span></em></p>Canada is home to a growing number of new digital-born journalism organizations, even though government policy aimed at helping the news industry has focused mostly on the decline of legacy media.Mary Lynn Young, Professor, School of Journalism, Writing and Media, University of British ColumbiaAlfred Hermida, Professor, School of Journalism, Writing, and Media, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1758052022-03-15T14:33:01Z2022-03-15T14:33:01ZBottom-up, audience-driven and shut down: How HuffPost Canada left its mark on Canadian media<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449035/original/file-20220228-3997-1dqpiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5982%2C3997&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">HuffPost Canada was abruptly shut down on March 9, 2021, by Buzzfeed as part of a broad restructuring plan for the company. This closure came two weeks after two dozen workers filed for union certification.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>From prioritizing diversity to a bottom-up editorial process and using traditional marketing practices to develop journalistic stories, <em>HuffPost Canada</em> was a digital-first innovator. Then <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/huffpost-canada-closing-1.5942533">it was shut down</a>.</p>
<p>It’s now been a year since the small newsroom closed. Trying to make a big impact, <em>HuffPost Canada</em> fought against the narrative that it prioritized free content over quality journalism. Those who worked there thought they were playing an important role. Now that it’s shuttered, they’re moving on to different newsrooms, bringing experience that could influence practice across Canadian media.</p>
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<p>I undertook interviews with <em>HuffPost Canada</em> employees as part of data gathering for the <a href="https://www.journalisticperformance.org">Journalistic Role Performance project</a>, an international effort between 37 countries exploring if there’s a gap in <a href="https://j-source.ca/ideals-versus-practice-the-complex-roles-of-modern-journalists/">journalistic ideals compared to practice</a>. </p>
<p>After collecting thousands of stories in 2020, then coding them and surveying journalists from the news organizations who produced those stories, we’re now getting to the analysis stage. And, by coincidence, we captured some of the last days of <em>HuffPost Canada</em>.</p>
<h2>A different kind of newsroom culture</h2>
<p>With wood-planked floors, high ceilings, exposed brick and lots of natural light, <em>HuffPost Canada</em> had a different look and feel to it than many legacy news organizations. It was less utilitarian, more a place you’d want to hang out even if you weren’t working. </p>
<p>Another reason was the young and diverse staff.</p>
<p>Although some strides have been made industry-wide in terms of newsroom diversity, there’s still a long way to go based on a recent report from the <a href="https://caj.ca/images/downloads/diversity_survey_report.pdf">Canadian Association of Journalists</a>. </p>
<p>Of the more than 200 Canadian newsrooms that participated in its survey, almost half “exclusively employ white journalists.” About 90 per cent have no Latin, Middle Eastern or mixed race journalists, about 80 per cent have no Black or Indigenous journalists and about two thirds have no Asian journalists.</p>
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<p>At <em>HuffPost Canada</em>, the focus on diversity didn’t stop with the people working in the newsroom, but flowed through to the use of sources and experts. One <em>HuffPost Canada</em> editor said: </p>
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<p>“Our big thing is that we normalize diversity. We don’t have special sections, we just do it — and if that approach can influence other media, that’s a marker of success for us.”</p>
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<p>In terms of newsroom hierarchy, one reporter said there was a “striking difference” at <em>HuffPost Canada</em> compared to legacy newspapers. At her previous job, the editorial process was completely top-down: decisions about what was covered were based on what editors “felt” should get published. At <em>HuffPost Canada</em>, the reporter was able to come up with their own ideas. </p>
<h2>More than meets the eye</h2>
<p>A study participant from another news outlet acknowledged <em>HuffPost Canada</em> did some good work, but questioned why it was part of our research. He said they were “national” only because anybody could “click on them” but their “reportorial footprint” was “pretty thin.” </p>
<p>Addressing this perception, one <em>HuffPost Canada</em> editor said it was a small team and there was “no illusion” that they could cover everything. They relied on agencies like <a href="https://www.thecanadianpress.com/"><em>The Canadian Press</em></a> for stories they didn’t have the resources for and encouraged reporters to focus on what they were passionate about and develop stories they’d be “remembered for.”</p>
<p>He stressed they weren’t just going for “cheap clicks” and that speaking “truth to power” and giving a “voice to the voiceless” was their “brand.” However, he also said there was no shame in doing viral stories and didn’t understand why they were somehow considered “dirty” or labelled as “clickbait.” </p>
<p>My observations echoed his statement. At an editorial meeting I attended, there was a lot of talk about what was trending, but there was also a lot of discussion about politics, including an investigative piece coming out of Ottawa.</p>
<h2>Reader-focused content</h2>
<p>Most news organizations collect demographics to help better understand who their audience is. <em>HuffPost Canada</em> went beyond this, using data to create profiles of imaginary readers like Adam, a middle-aged millennial who had a partner named Taylor, and Adela, a young millennial who was on Instagram at 10 p.m. Before starting a story, reporters were supposed to use these imaginary profiles to “put a face” to the specific segment of the audience they were writing for.</p>
<p>Its understanding of its audience allowed <em>HuffPost Canada</em> to recognize that topics considered “lighter” or less “important” by other news outlets — like parenting — were actually important to its readers. One editor said that they always asked two questions about their content: “How does this affect me and why should I care?”</p>
<p>The editor said <em>HuffPost Canada</em> focused on making content as accessible as possible for readers, noting that information shouldn’t only be for those who can afford subscriptions or have a certain reading comprehension level. Serving only the most educated and affluent news consumers, and the use of paywalls in journalism, have both been noted as growing concerns by the <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/journalism-media-and-technology-trends-and-predictions-2022">Reuters Institute of Journalism</a>.</p>
<p>Building community was important at <em>HuffPost Canada</em>. On a Facebook page they hosted dedicated to housing, for example, information was shared no matter where it came from, including other news organizations. Additionally, they responded to corrections from readers to try and “show a human face.”</p>
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<h2>A lasting legacy</h2>
<p>I’m sure there were downsides to working at <em>HuffPost Canada</em>. As a former journalist, I’ve seen a laundry list of serious issues play out in a newsroom. However, I didn’t get to spend enough time there to get the full picture —particularly for those who might have been doing contract or freelance work. </p>
<p>But they undoubtedly exemplified priorities and practices that should be reproduced in other newsrooms: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/10776958211062683">amplifying diverse voices</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2021.1942148">connecting with the community</a> and breaking from traditional formats <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/3084381.3084404">to engage more deeply</a> with their audience.</p>
<p>When asked to describe the impact of the closure of <em>HuffPost Canada</em>, one study participant emailed this response:</p>
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<p>“We combined relevance with irreverence, having fun with the news when appropriate, and digging in with our considerable editorial talents on investigations whenever possible. We prioritized diverse communities’ perspectives and sought out — and featured — the voices not often heard from, and Canadians are seeing less of that without <em>HuffPost Canada</em>‘s contributions to the landscape. That feels like the greatest loss, and hopefully as our journalists and editors get snapped up by other outlets, is a change that’s soon seen elsewhere.”</p>
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<p>I hope so, too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175805/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The JRP Canada study has received funding from Mitacs, Centre d'études sur les médias, X (also known as Ryerson) University, and Ryerson Journalism Research Centre.</span></em></p>From prioritizing diversity to a bottom-up editorial process to using traditional marketing practices to develop journalistic stories, HuffPost Canada was a digital-first innovator.Nicole Blanchett, Associate Professor, Journalism, Toronto Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1628872021-07-06T15:54:07Z2021-07-06T15:54:07ZImplicit bias within Canadian media often means providing excuses for white accused<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407718/original/file-20210622-15-1vml92t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=29%2C0%2C3964%2C2245&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Structural racism in media is deeply embedded, and resolving it will require frank discussions.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Canada celebrates itself as a multicultural and inclusive nation, yet when it comes to media representation, the different portrayals of Muslims and white people disguise a culture of <a href="https://perception.org/research/implicit-bias/">implicit bias</a> and racism.</p>
<p>Take, for example, two high profile crimes in which vehicles were used to kill people.</p>
<p>On Dec. 31, 2020, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-police-andrew-harnett-1.5859221">a police officer in Calgary was killed when struck by a vehicle trying to flee a traffic stop</a>. On June 6, <a href="https://theconversation.com/muslim-family-killed-in-terror-attack-in-london-ontario-islamophobic-violence-surfaces-once-again-in-canada-162400">four members of a Muslim-Canadian family in were killed</a> when they were out for an evening stroll in London, Ont.</p>
<p>In the Calgary incident, those arrested and charged with first-degree murder were two Muslim teenagers. The suspect in the London attack is a 20-year-old white man.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-child-psychiatrist-who-knew-those-killed-in-the-london-terror-attack-offers-advice-on-helping-kids-deal-with-trauma-162761">A child psychiatrist who knew those killed in the London terror attack offers advice on helping kids deal with trauma</a>
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<p>Canadian news outlets captured these two crimes in very different ways.</p>
<p>In the incident about the killing of the Muslim family members, some news outlets illustrated a story about the accused by using a photo of him <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/06/09/suspect-in-attack-on-muslim-family-laughed-during-arrest-report/">from a recent fishing trip</a>. </p>
<p>While the Crown would add a charge of terrorism <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-terrorism-charge-filed-in-the-london-attack-is-the-first-of-its-kind-in-canada-162739">in addition to the murder charges</a>, news outlets became a channel for the accused’s family and friends to <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/christian-terrorist-mowed-down-muslim-180540029.html">send out their positive thoughts about him, praise him and deny his Islamophobia and racism</a>. </p>
<p>Friends spoke about a recent fishing trip and how the accused was “<a href="https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/who-is-nathaniel-veltman-accused-in-alleged-london-hate-killings">happy as ever</a>,” how he had “trouble with the steering of his truck” and was distraught over a death in the family.</p>
<p>Eventually, news outlets cited the accused’s <a href="https://www.iheartradio.ca/610cktb/news/court-documents-portray-london-attack-suspect-as-prone-to-anger-medicated-for-mental-illness-1.15391880">mental illness, anger management and parent’s separation</a>.</p>
<p>In the Calgary incident, no friends or family of the accused were quoted by the media. No one spoke of their character or offered any other personal information about them. Photos used in media stories were <a href="https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/alberta-s-top-court-reserves-decision-on-bail-for-suspect-in-hit-and-run-death-of-calgary-officer-1.5480543">police mug shots</a>. </p>
<h2>Delegating responsibility</h2>
<p>Research has shown that in cases of mass killings where the accused is white, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0022427818787225">the media often cite mental illnesses as a possible explanation for the crime</a>.</p>
<p>The media’s delegation of responsibility of the crime to mental illness reduces moral panic. It provides peace of mind for readers that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0022427818787225">“normal” white people would not commit such crimes</a>. </p>
<p>At the same time, the sympathetic image of a mentally ill individual becomes an asset for the defence <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854818794742">during the trial and sentencing</a>. </p>
<p>Nancy Heitzeg, a professor of sociology and critical studies of race and ethnicity at Saint Catherine University in Minnesota, notes there is a “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10282580.2015.1025630">double standard</a>” when it comes to the white people versus people of colour when they commit the same crime.</p>
<p>When a white individual is committing a crime, she explains, there is always a life story that gives characteristics to the accused. However, when a minority individual is committing the crime, there are no backgrounds, no excuses and no side stories. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/muslim-family-killed-in-terror-attack-in-london-ontario-islamophobic-violence-surfaces-once-again-in-canada-162400">Muslim family killed in terror attack in London, Ontario: Islamophobic violence surfaces once again in Canada</a>
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<hr>
<p>Journalists are influenced by their own perceptions of race when creating content. They are <a href="https://sophia.stkate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1478&context=msw_papers">embedded within societies that are impacted by racial tensions and misperceptions</a>. This can translate into stories that reinforce stereotyping.</p>
<p>While news outlets should be a neutral source of information, research has indicated that <a href="https://www.crrf-fcrr.ca/en/resources/research-projects/item/23532-racist-discourse-in-canadas-english-print-media-en-gb-1">Canadian media shows implicit biases and racism</a>. In particular, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895813476874">articles describe crimes against white victims with significantly more fearful language</a>.</p>
<p>Implicit bias is often in the details left out. <a href="https://www.unlv.edu/news/article/unpacking-how-media-influences-our-views-racism">Structural racism in media is deeply embedded</a>, and resolving it will require frank discussions, diverse workforces and a confrontation of racism’s roots.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162887/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shila Khayambashi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Existing racism and implicit bias in Canadian media downplayed the terrorist attack by a white accused while exaggerating and staying silent on the reasons behind a hit-and-run by Muslim teens.Shila Khayambashi, Ph.D. Candidate, Communications and Culture, York University, CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1557282021-02-22T22:06:45Z2021-02-22T22:06:45ZFacebook vs. Australia — Canadian media could be the next target for ban<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385674/original/file-20210222-15-1pd7lhw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=164%2C117%2C5002%2C3407&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Facebook blocked Australians from sharing news stories, escalating a fight with the government over whether powerful tech companies should have to pay news organizations for content. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Shortly after <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2021/02/changes-to-sharing-and-viewing-news-on-facebook-in-australia/">Facebook nuked news from its platform in Australia</a>, I spent an hour on the phone with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-chan-m-s-m-5a13b140">Kevin Chan</a>, head of public policy for Facebook, Inc., in Canada.</p>
<p>He told me he’s “working really hard to prevent that outcome in Canada.” In other words, if Ottawa <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-legislation-coming-this-year-to-force-google-facebook-to-pay-for-news/">follows Australia</a> and tables <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bills/r6652_third-reps/toc_pdf/20177b01.pdf">a bill forcing tech giants to share revenue with the news business</a>, Facebook would drop the A-bomb on Canadian journalism as well.</p>
<p>Chan would prefer to work out partnerships with Canadian journalism. He said Facebook gave $10 million to various news projects in the past four years. He pledged “in 2021, we’ll do quite a bit more.” But don’t put a gun to our head, he basically said, or we’ll fight back.</p>
<h2>Render unto Caesar</h2>
<p>I actually share many of Chan’s views. Here’s one. Last fall, the lobby group representing the news industry in Canada published a report <a href="https://www.levellingthedigitalplayingfield.ca/"><em>Levelling the Digital Playing Field</em></a> that contends a law similar to Australia’s would garner $620 million per year in Canada. It also says “such a pathway would make up for much of [our] revenue decrease,” implying that the web giants somehow divert advertising dollars from the news business.</p>
<p>This premise is false. What actually happened is that Google and Facebook have much better adapted to the digital era the business model that helped legacy media thrive in the analogue era, when print and the airwaves ruled the world.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Scan of a line from the Washington Post annual report in 1972: ... a quality product to our audience and a quality audience to our advertisers ..." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385584/original/file-20210222-13-1npzdma.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385584/original/file-20210222-13-1npzdma.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=120&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385584/original/file-20210222-13-1npzdma.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=120&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385584/original/file-20210222-13-1npzdma.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=120&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385584/original/file-20210222-13-1npzdma.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=151&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385584/original/file-20210222-13-1npzdma.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=151&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385584/original/file-20210222-13-1npzdma.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=151&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Quote from The Washington Post Company’s 1972 annual report which sums up the 20th Century media business model.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Washington Post)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A quote from The Washington Post Company’s 1972 annual report sums it well: “… a quality product to our audience and a quality audience to our advertisers …” Newspapers and broadcasters were <a href="https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/64/">attention merchants</a>. They’ve been spectacularly upstaged by the web behemoths. </p>
<p>Four out of every five dollars Google earns are ad dollars. In the case of Facebook, it’s 98 per cent! In 2020, <a href="https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/20210203_alphabet_10K.pdf">their advertising revenues</a> <a href="https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001326801/4dd7fa7f-1a51-4ed9-b9df-7f42cc3321eb.pdf">represented a formidable $310 billion worldwide</a>, including $7.6 billion in Canada alone.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Advertising revenues reached $7.6 billion in Canada in 2020 for Facebook and Google combined." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385669/original/file-20210222-19-16uvzhb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385669/original/file-20210222-19-16uvzhb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=178&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385669/original/file-20210222-19-16uvzhb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=178&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385669/original/file-20210222-19-16uvzhb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=178&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385669/original/file-20210222-19-16uvzhb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=223&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385669/original/file-20210222-19-16uvzhb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=223&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385669/original/file-20210222-19-16uvzhb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=223&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Advertising revenues for Google and Facebook over the past three years, in millions of Canadian dollars.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Data from Facebook and Google annual reports, and the Canadian Media Concentration Research Project)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Journalism is worth something</h2>
<p>While I applaud their success, Google and more critically Facebook must in turn acknowledge some of that success rests on the shoulders of others. The attention they sell ads with is generated, in part, by news content. I asked Chan, how much. “Zero,” he answered. The value, to Facebook, is in the social link. “It is not true that news has value for Facebook.”</p>
<p>And this is where we diverge. In the scholarly journal <em>About Journalism</em>, Tristan Mattelard <a href="http://www.surlejournalisme.kinghost.net/rev/index.php/slj/article/view/415">documented, play by play, how Facebook courted news organizations in order to attract quality content on its burgeoning platform</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/facebook-profits-from-canadian-media-content-but-gives-little-in-return-146385">Last fall</a>, I estimated 5.3 per cent of Facebook ad revenues between Jan. 1, 2018, and June 30, 2020, had been generated thanks to news content. I’ve repeated the exercise during the past weeks, but with a larger sample of 1.9 million posts published in 2020 on Facebook pages administered in Canada.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Data from 2020 show news posts drive less interactions than other posts on Facebook" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385586/original/file-20210222-17-gmncn7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385586/original/file-20210222-17-gmncn7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385586/original/file-20210222-17-gmncn7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385586/original/file-20210222-17-gmncn7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385586/original/file-20210222-17-gmncn7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385586/original/file-20210222-17-gmncn7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385586/original/file-20210222-17-gmncn7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Number of posts and sum of interactions from media and non-media pages in 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Data from CrowdTangle)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There’s a lot of news on Facebook. Just short of 20 per cent of all posts in my sample were from media pages, from CTV News to the Lake Cowichan Gazette. But news is Facebook’s broccoli. It drives far less interactions than the viral content usually found on the platform. </p>
<p>Only 7.3 per cent of the total interactions in my sample was from media pages. I apply this more reasonable proportion to Facebook’s advertising revenue in order to estimate that Mark Zuckerberg’s company made $210 million thanks to Canadian journalism in 2020.</p>
<p>I acknowledge this figure is an imperfect estimate. It is based on the few data Facebook allows researchers to access. But it is the least imperfect one. When <a href="https://www.lapresse.ca/affaires/medias/2021-02-16/revenus-publicitaires-de-facebook-et-de-google/280-millions-par-an-avec-les-medias-d-information-selon-un-expert.php">asked by a <em>La Presse</em> journalist about it</a>, Chan said my methodology was based on “incorrect hypotheses,” making my “conclusions erroneous.”</p>
<p>Chan told me Facebook doesn’t sell ads with content. More interactions don’t translate to more dollars. I understand that: if I read a <em>Le Devoir</em> article three times, it doesn’t bring in more advertising dollars. Facebook sells eyeballs.</p>
<p>Yet, those eyeballs turn to Facebook, in part, to know what goes on in their community, their province, their country. It’s in that sense that I don’t believe news has zero value to Facebook. Justin Osofsky, Facebook’s vice-president of global operations, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/2680958112120337/">wrote in 2013 that</a>, “People come to Facebook to not only see and talk about what’s happening with their friends <em>but also read news and discover what is going on in the world around them</em>” (my emphasis).</p>
<h2>A matter of power</h2>
<p>Platforms feel the heat and respond by using a carrot or a stick. Google has chosen the carrot strategy and <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/world/australia/2021/02/15/major-australian-media-company-strikes-google-news-pay-deal.html">struck a deal with News Corp.</a>, Australia’s largest publisher. It is also actively working on similar partnerships with Canadian media. One Québec publisher I spoke with told me the deals could start in the summer of 2021 and translate into “millions” of dollars.</p>
<p>But it’s a poisoned carrot. What guarantee do we have that such partnerships will last without a legislative framework? In the small print of those deals, I saw a clause mentioning Google could pull the plug with a 90-day written notice.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An empty Facebook page." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385381/original/file-20210220-21-h1750.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385381/original/file-20210220-21-h1750.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385381/original/file-20210220-21-h1750.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385381/original/file-20210220-21-h1750.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385381/original/file-20210220-21-h1750.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385381/original/file-20210220-21-h1750.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385381/original/file-20210220-21-h1750.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Facebook page for the Australian newspaper ‘The Age’ on Feb. 18, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Author provided)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There’s a tremendous imbalance in power, here. On one side, two international companies whose combined revenues in 2020 was a little more than <a href="https://data.oecd.org/gdp/gross-domestic-product-gdp.htm">the GDP of New Zealand</a>. On the other, media are being read like never before by Canadians — <a href="https://www.levellingthedigitalplayingfield.ca/">news publishers’ websites have seen their unique visitors increase 80 per cent between 2017 and 2020</a> — but their revenue keeps tanking in spite of their success. They are at a disadvantage when asking Facebook to transfer some of the revenue generated by Canadian journalism.</p>
<p>The Australian approach aims to correct that imbalance. The clash between Canberra and the platforms is a historic struggle between public interest and private interests. The public interest is one of journalism’s core values. I always tell my journalism students: “You’ll work in various organizations, but you’ll all work for the public.” </p>
<p>Asking Facebook to share its revenues is not an attack on the internet. Let’s remember <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/long-live-the-web/">Tim Berners-Lee warned us in 2010 that Facebook’s “walled garden” was a recipe for abuse</a>. It isn’t a 20th-century remedy to a 21st-century problem either. It’s legislation to support an institution working in the public interest.</p>
<p>Facebook’s move in Australia is an abuse of private power to counter a public body acting in the public interest. If there was one reason for Canada to follow Australia’s lead, that would be it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155728/count.gif" alt="La Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jean-Hugues Roy est membre associé de la Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec (FPJQ).</span></em></p>Facebook recently removed Australian news stories from its site. If Ottawa follows Australia’s lead, Facebook might do the same in Canada.Jean-Hugues Roy, Professeur, École des médias, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1457482020-09-10T05:02:34Z2020-09-10T05:02:34ZPlatform regulation in Australia is just the start. Facebook and Google are fighting a global battle<p>Google and Facebook have launched a nationwide public relations campaign in response to the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission’s draft news media bargaining code. </p>
<p>Rather than agree to negotiate with media companies to pay for using news content, Google has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/aug/18/google-urges-youtubers-around-the-world-to-swamp-accc-with-complaints-about-australias-news-code">launched petitions</a> and written an <a href="https://theconversation.com/googles-open-letter-is-trying-to-scare-australians-the-company-simply-doesnt-want-to-pay-for-news-144573">open letter complaining of the “risk” to its services</a>, while Facebook has threatened to <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/facebook-threatens-to-remove-news-from-platforms-in-australia-20200901-p55r6n.html">stop distributing news on its platform</a>.</p>
<p>At first glance, these responses might look like overreactions. For multinational companies with <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/facebook-q2-earnings-2020-7?r=US&IR=T">billions</a> of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/technology/alphabet-google-earnings-coronavirus.html">dollars</a> in revenue each quarter, paying for Australian news would be small potatoes. </p>
<p>But their more pressing concern may be that whatever happens in Australia could set a precedent for other countries. Other nations are holding inquiries on how best to regulate big tech platforms, and they are watching developments in Australia very closely.</p>
<h2>Platforms and the plight of news</h2>
<p>These inquiries address a range of issues, from <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/final-report-high-level-expert-group-fake-news-and-online-disinformation">disinformation</a> to <a href="https://judiciary.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=14921">antitrust </a>. But some have specifically examined the relationship between platforms and news publishers. These include Canada’s <a href="https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/110.nsf/eng/home">Broadcasting and Telecommunications Review</a> and the United Kingdom’s <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/779882/021919_DCMS_Cairncross_Review_.pdf">Cairncross Review</a>. </p>
<p>Both reviews call for new regulations to manage the relationship between platforms and news publishers. The UK specifically mentions a code of conduct. The Canadian inquiry discusses the possibility of a code but also suggests that online platforms could pay money into a fund to support Canadian content (including news). </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/suck-it-and-see-or-face-a-digital-tax-former-accc-boss-allan-fels-warns-google-and-facebook-145041">'Suck it and see’ or face a digital tax, former ACCC boss Allan Fels warns Google and Facebook</a>
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<p>However, neither government has yet taken up these reforms. One reason for the delay in the UK is that the government there has a busy policy agenda around digital platforms, and is waiting for recommendations from multiple reviews before introducing major regulatory reform. </p>
<p>The second reason is that the UK and Canada are watching and waiting to see what happens in Australia. </p>
<h2>Similar countries may adopt similar rules</h2>
<p>Watching Australia makes sense. Canada and the UK have similar <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparing_Media_Systems">media systems</a> to Australia. All three countries also share a common law heritage and often turn to each other for policy ideas. </p>
<p>As a result, it would be relatively easy for these countries to translate aspects of the ACCC’s draft bargaining code to their own codes of conduct. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/googles-open-letter-is-trying-to-scare-australians-the-company-simply-doesnt-want-to-pay-for-news-144573">Google's 'open letter' is trying to scare Australians. The company simply doesn't want to pay for news</a>
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<p>Canada is already being influenced by the Australian reform process. The country been quite active on the <a href="https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2020/09/04/bill-morneaus-pitch-for-the-oecds-top-job-hell-take-on-big-tech.html">international stage</a> and has tried to establish global cooperation around platform regulation through its participation in the <a href="https://www.cigionline.org/igc">International Grand Committee</a>. The Committee has brought together legislators from around the world who are working together to establish baseline regulatory principles for the internet and share policy solutions.</p>
<p>However, Canada is starting to move away from these international discussions and consider national solutions. Canada’s heritage minister Steven Guilbeault recently <a href="https://financialpost.com/telecom/media/those-who-use-media-content-should-pay-fair-share-heritage-minister">called on platforms to pay for news content</a>, which suggests Australian developments might be <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/ottawa-likely-to-face-pressure-from-google-facebook-on-news-sharing-rules-following-threats-against-australia">informing</a> Canada’s regulatory response. </p>
<h2>Europe is already pushing Google to pay</h2>
<p>Another problem for platforms is that countries without a shared legal heritage with Australia are also pursuing similar reforms. France is the most notable example: in April its competition authority ordered Google to <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/09/frances-competition-watchdog-orders-google-to-pay-for-news-reuse/">pay publishers for news</a>. </p>
<p>The decision essentially forced Google to engage in a bargaining process like the one proposed in Australia. However, Google has been accused of not bargaining in good faith, and French publishers are returning to the regulators to <a href="https://www.usine-digitale.fr/editorial/les-medias-francais-intensifient-leur-bataille-contre-google-sur-la-remuneration-des-contenus.N999809">reset the negotiations</a>. </p>
<p>French publishers have also tried to streamline the process by joining with their German colleagues with the goal of establishing a <a href="https://www.ouest-france.fr/economie/les-editeurs-francais-et-allemands-s-allient-face-aux-geants-du-numerique-6923136">one-stop shop</a> for bargaining. </p>
<h2>An international approach</h2>
<p>This combination of active reforms and dormant inquiries helps to explain why Google and Facebook have reacted so dramatically. Australia is engaging in a “<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/accc-s-sims-hopes-to-set-global-precedent-on-google-and-facebook-20181210-p50lby.html">world first</a>” regulatory endeavour. However, it is important to remember that Australia is not the only country considering reforms, they are just the first to implement them. The big question is whether other countries are influenced by the Australian response. </p>
<p>The threat of a consistent international approach that would see Google and Facebook pay for news in multiple countries is what has brought the platforms onto the front foot, engaging in a dedicated public relations exercise. The cost of paying for news globally has not been accounted for in their business models, and it’s an expense they are not keen to wear.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/its-not-fair-and-it-wont-work-an-argument-against-the-accc-forcing-google-and-facebook-to-pay-for-news-145391">It's not 'fair' and it won't work: an argument against the ACCC forcing Google and Facebook to pay for news</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145748/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Meese receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is also a member of the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network.</span></em></p>Facebook and Google’s publicity campaigns against Australia’s new media regulations show they’re worried other countries will follow suit.James Meese, Research fellow, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1186512019-06-11T23:09:13Z2019-06-11T23:09:13ZA paltry number of Canadians are paying for online news<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278979/original/file-20190611-32331-5eq9yy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3425%2C2304&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Canadians have trust in their news media, but they're unlikely to pay for online news.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Attitudes towards news media and consumption behaviour in Canada pose a sort of conundrum. In general, <a href="https://www.cem.ulaval.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/dnr19_can_eng.pdf">Canadians have a positive view of journalism and relatively high trust in media</a>, but on the other hand, they are little inclined to pay for digital news sources. </p>
<p>According to the new 2019 <a href="http://www.digitalnewsreport.org">Digital News Report, a survey conducted in 38 countries by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University,</a> only nine per cent of Canadian respondents say they’ve paid for online news in some way or another in the past year (digital subscription, one-off payment or purchase of a news app). </p>
<p>Even fewer respondents, barely one per cent of our sample, made a donation to a media organization in the 12 months prior to the survey. This is not surprising, as non-profit news outlets that solicit donations from readers are still a rarity in the Canadian media landscape. And if people are unwilling to pay for news online, it is likely because free content is abundant.</p>
<p>These findings raise questions about the potential impact of <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/programs/about-canada-revenue-agency-cra/federal-government-budgets/budget-2019-investing-middle-class/canadian-journalism.html">federal tax incentives for subscriptions and donations to online news</a>. Both measures, supplemented by a refundable labour tax credit, are meant to sustain journalism in the highly competitive digital environment. </p>
<p>Newspapers are struggling to develop new funding models to compensate for a 60 per cent decline in advertising revenue, with most ad money now going to large digital platforms. Will we see more paywalls and non-profit structures in the coming years, and will Canadians contribute more substantially to news as a result? </p>
<h2>Younger news consumers more likely to pay</h2>
<p>The survey suggests that the effect will be modest at first, but there is some potential for future growth.</p>
<p>That’s because younger respondents are twice as likely to have paid for online news (18-34: 14 per cent; 35 and over: seven per cent). And more men (12 per cent) than women (six per cent) have paid for news. </p>
<p>But even though one in five respondents who had not paid for news stated in the <a href="http://media.digitalnewsreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/digital-news-report-2018.pdf">2018 Digital News Report</a> that they would consider doing so in the coming year, the percentage of those who did pay (nine per cent) remains identical in this year’s survey. </p>
<p>And when asked if they had to choose a single form of paid online content, respondents were more likely to prioritize entertainment over news: 40 per cent would select a video service like Netflix, 10 per cent a music service like Spotify and only nine per cent would pick an online news subscription (only four per cent for Canadians aged 18-34). </p>
<h2>Trust and satisfaction</h2>
<p>About half (52 per cent) of Canadians told the survey they trust “most news, most of the time.” This figure has fluctuated somewhat since 2016, as the graph below illustrates.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278975/original/file-20190611-32361-1j6uod2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278975/original/file-20190611-32361-1j6uod2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278975/original/file-20190611-32361-1j6uod2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278975/original/file-20190611-32361-1j6uod2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278975/original/file-20190611-32361-1j6uod2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278975/original/file-20190611-32361-1j6uod2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278975/original/file-20190611-32361-1j6uod2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Trust in news as a whole, news consumed, news in social media and search engines, 2016-2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The 2019 Digital News Report</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The decline in trust from the highest recorded point in 2018 (58 per cent, down six percentage points this year) is most dramatic among Francophones (-12) — possibly because the French sample was completed a few weeks later, during intense media coverage of the SNC-Lavalin story — and among Canadians under 35 (-11).</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-the-snc-lavalin-controversy-truly-a-scandal-112208">Is the SNC-Lavalin controversy truly a scandal?</a>
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<p>Respondents are more skeptical of news on social media and search engines than of news in general and especially the news they choose to consume. </p>
<h2>Canada, Ireland at the top for depth of coverage</h2>
<p>Canadians have a relatively positive view of the journalistic content they come across, particularly for breaking news and depth of coverage. Indeed, for this latter consideration, Canada and Ireland are at the very top of the list of countries included in the Digital News Report.</p>
<p>Canadians are slightly less appreciative of the tone of coverage and relevance of topics selected for news stories. A majority (60 per cent) agree that the news media in their country helps them understand news stories — among the highest proportions in the 38 countries surveyed.</p>
<p>Finally, most people seem to guard against disinformation, especially younger respondents. Two-thirds of Canadians (70 per cent) and three out of four respondents under 35 (76 per cent) have checked several sources to compare coverage of a story, decided not to share content when they were unsure of its accuracy or started relying more on sources of news that are considered more reputable, among other practices. </p>
<p>We can only hope that these good habits will continue during this year’s federal election campaign in Canada, and beyond.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118651/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Le Centre d'études sur les médias, organisme sans but lucratif, reçoit du financement du Ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec, de Bell Média par l'entremise du Programme des avantages tangibles du Conseil de la radiodiffusion et des télécommunications, ainsi que du ministère du Patrimoine canadien et du programme Mitacs Accélération. Les partenaires universitaires du CEM sont le Département d'information et de communication de l'Université Laval, l'École des médias de l'UQÀM et l'Université de Montréal.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism receives funding from more than 30 different funders, including foundations, research institutes, media regulators, media companies, industry associations, and technology companies. See more here: <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/funders-0">https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/funders-0</a></span></em></p>Canadians have relatively high trust in their media compared to other countries, but that doesn’t translate into a willingness to pay for online news.Colette Brin, professeure et directrice du Centre d'études sur les médias, Université LavalRasmus Kleis Nielsen, Director of Research, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1073972018-11-27T22:58:18Z2018-11-27T22:58:18ZThe English-Canadian media’s selective outrage on bilingualism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247030/original/file-20181123-149311-is7mj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Québec Premier Francois Legault, left, exchanges hockey jerseys with Ontario Premier Doug Ford at Queens Park, in Toronto on Nov. 19, 2018. Ford's recent cuts to francophone services in Ontario haven't spawned nearly the media outrage that Québec language moves have.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Don’t get me wrong: It’s always nice to see folks in Ontario and the rest of English-speaking Canada say a few words in support of the English-speaking minority here in Québec.</p>
<p>But there are far more endangered, far more precarious, French-speaking minorities in Ontario, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and all nine majority-English provinces. In fact, those minority groups — English-speaking in Québec and French-speaking in the rest of Canada — are what make this country what it is. </p>
<p>There is a huge amount of work still to do on recognizing Indigenous rights and fostering Indigenous languages, of course. Important work is happening on that front, though the country has a long way to go. Maybe it’s time to declare Indigenous languages to be official languages.</p>
<p>In the meantime, however, it’s worth protecting the minority official language communities. But to read leading English-Canadian media, you would think that only one of those communities — Québec’s anglophones — were under threat. </p>
<p>Take the <em>Globe and Mail</em>, the country’s national newspaper. When Ontario Premier Doug Ford recently slashed services to Ontario francophones and axed plans for the province’s first French-language university, the Globe ran a total of five articles by Nov. 21, according to a search of the Canadian Newsstream database. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247031/original/file-20181123-149308-dzztzc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247031/original/file-20181123-149308-dzztzc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247031/original/file-20181123-149308-dzztzc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247031/original/file-20181123-149308-dzztzc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247031/original/file-20181123-149308-dzztzc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247031/original/file-20181123-149308-dzztzc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247031/original/file-20181123-149308-dzztzc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247031/original/file-20181123-149308-dzztzc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Buonanotte restaurant, at the heart of the ‘pastagate’ uproar, is shown in Montréal in February 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes</span></span>
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<p>As <em>La Presse</em> columnist <a href="https://twitter.com/kick1972/status/1064843435847368704">Patrick Lagacé wrote</a> — in English – that’s barely a fraction of the coverage given to the silliness of the <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/pastagate-leaves-bad-taste-in-quebeckers-mouths/article9053403/">“pastagate” story in 2013</a>, in which an inspector from Québec’s French-language watchdog criticized the use of the word “pasta” in a Montréal restaurant (the watchdog quickly backed down and changed its rules). Canadian Newsstream finds 12 articles in the Globe on “pastagate.” </p>
<p>The <em>Globe</em> also issued a <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/globe-editorial-taking-the-hi-out-of-bonjour-hi-wont-save-the-french-language/article37151480/">stern editorial</a> against a Parti Québécois motion in Québec’s National Assembly that criticized the ubiquitous greeting “bonjour-hi.” </p>
<p>The motion was misplaced, but was non-binding and has changed nothing. Was it really — as the <em>Globe</em> editorialized — a call for the word “hi” to be “killed with fire, its ashes buried in lye and the location forgotten?”</p>
<h2>One op-ed in support of Ford’s cuts</h2>
<p>This sort of hyperbole is too common in the English-Canadian press. The <em>Globe</em> has so far issued no editorials against the Ford cuts to francophone services — though it did run an opinion piece in support of Ford’s move written by the <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-doug-ford-was-right-to-cancel-funding-for-new-university-campuses/">president of Trent University</a>. </p>
<p>The <em>Globe</em>, of course, should not be singled out. <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-government-cancels-plans-for-provinces-first-official/">A Postmedia editorial</a> published in the <em>Ottawa Citizen</em> and other newspapers, called the loss of the position of French Language Services Commissioner “unfortunate” in the eighth paragraph of a nine-paragraph editorial. </p>
<p>Otherwise, the newspaper database finds no editorial comment of any sort — let alone the sort of scathing denunciation that descends when Québec’s language laws make headlines in English. “Pastagate” was mentioned 311 times in the Canadian Newsstream index in 2013, the year it made headlines; Ontario francophone services rate 96 mentions since Ford’s cuts were announced.</p>
<p>In some ways, Québec language policy serves as an <a href="https://beautifultrouble.org/theory/the-propaganda-model/">“external enemy”</a> for English-speaking media. Mocking the periodic outbreaks of Québec language-law foolishness sells papers — or in digital terms, poking fun at pastagate is great clickbait. Criticizing the powerful in Ontario when they attack minorities does not produce the same results. </p>
<p>Québec’s anglophone community has chided Ford. The English-language <em>Montreal Gazette</em> criticized the francophone <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-standing-in-solidarity-with-franco-ontarians">services cuts</a>. The Townshippers’ Association, a group of anglophones in the Eastern Townships region of Québec south of Montréal, pointed out that the cuts were “a significant setback for the development and vitality not only of Franco-Ontarians, but for <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/canada/sherbrooke-record/20181119/281556586864913">minority language communities across the country as well</a>.”</p>
<h2>Anglophone universities in Québec</h2>
<p>Let’s not forget, however, that Québec’s anglophone community has spawned three universities, and that the Québec government has made no moves to shut down these minority-language universities — in fact, a revision to Québec’s university funding formula this year helped Bishop’s University in the Eastern Townships, where I teach history, <a href="https://www.universityaffairs.ca/news/news-article/major-changes-to-the-funding-formula-for-quebec-universities/">more than any other institution in Québec</a>. </p>
<p>Outside Québec, there is only one full French-language university, in Moncton, N.B. (A few French-language colleges exist inside English-language universities or in affiliation with colleges, and there are a handful of bilingual institutions.) </p>
<p>Québec’s anglophones have fought to protect their institutions. When the previous government led by Philippe Couillard announced plans to amalgamate school boards, the English-speaking community mobilized to save English-language school boards, successfully. It may need to fight the same battle in the face of renewed plans by the new government under François Legault <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/couillard-school-boards-english-rights-1.4799160">to shutter local school boards</a>.</p>
<h2>Protecting recent gains</h2>
<p>Given this history, it’s no surprise that the Townshippers’ Association announced its “solidarity with our French-speaking counterparts in Ontario” as they mobilize to defend their own institutions and protect recent gains. </p>
<p>The Ford government’s cuts are not primarily about money, as a <a href="https://www.ledroit.com/opinions/votre-opinion/les-nouveaux-habits-de-la-francophobie-391b93d4531d52852816675358e64aa2">recent article by French-speaking university professors</a> points out. Fiscal arguments are a “smokescreen” for a rejection of the very concept of minority rights. (To its credit, the <em>Globe</em> reprinted a <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-francophobia-is-donning-new-populist-clothes-in-canada/">translated version</a> on Nov. 21.)</p>
<p>This is part of a renewed attack on the French in Canada by the rising populist right, exemplified by Ford’s Ontario government and the New Brunswick’s People’s Alliance, which props up the incoming New Brunswick Conservative government. </p>
<p>Anti-Francophone sentiment is nothing new in Canada, as University of Guelph historian Matthew Hayday <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/So_They_Want_Us_to_Learn_French.html?id=zEGICgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">has written</a>. </p>
<p>But it seems to be on the rise — and that will only empower those in Québec, chastened by recent declines in their public support, who might want to crack down on the anglophone minority.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107397/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Webster receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, but that funding was not used for this article. </span></em></p>To read English-Canadian media, you would think that Québec’s anglophones are under greater threat than the rest of the country’s minority language communities. Why the selective outrage?David Webster, Associate Professor of History, Bishop's UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1074352018-11-25T17:23:16Z2018-11-25T17:23:16ZFunding journalism means defining who’s a journalist – not a bad thing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247073/original/file-20181123-149338-u0lkv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Canadian government wants to offer financial assistance to the news industry. How will it define what's journalism?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The federal government’s recent announcement of <a href="https://www.budget.gc.ca/fes-eea/2018/docs/statement-enonce/chap02-en.html#s2">financial support for news organizations</a> has been met with understandably wide-ranging reactions — from relief to skepticism, and worse. </p>
<p>Among other measures, the package will incentivize consumers to sign up for digital news subscriptions and subsidize publishers through a tax credit on salaries paid to journalists.</p>
<p>It’s good news for imperilled news businesses, but even some who share the government’s expressed concern over the sustainability of independent information about public affairs have expressed <a href="http://j-source.ca/article/heres-what-the-journalism-industry-has-to-say-about-morneaus-600-million-bailout/">misgivings</a>. The doubters include many journalists — the very people who stand most to gain from the promised support. </p>
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<p>So what gives? It’s all about definition — and independence. </p>
<p>The argument for taxpayer subsidies rests on an immutable truth: It’s become tough, and sometimes impossible, to turn a profit by providing communities with verified information about public affairs.</p>
<h2>People want free info</h2>
<p>People want information to come free, like so much on the internet, and the economics of online advertising favours <a href="https://nmc-mic.ca/news/research/google-and-facebook-continue-to-dominate-the-canadian-digital-advertising-market/">Facebook and Google</a> over news providers. </p>
<p>This is a problem, according to Ottawa’s fall economic update, because:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“A strong and independent news media is crucial to a well-functioning democracy. It empowers citizens by providing them with the information they need to make informed decisions on important issues, and also serves to hold powerful institutions — including governments — to account by bringing to light information that might not otherwise be made available to the public.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Principled counter-arguments to the government’s plan, however, likewise hinge on a perceived threat to the independence of a free press. To explain, here’s a deceptively simple political-philosophy pop quiz.</p>
<p>Which of the following statements is true?</p>
<p>● Democracy functions best when the relationship of journalists and governments is one of tension, rather than interdependence.</p>
<p>● In a healthy democracy, governments today need to spend taxpayer money to sustain a free and independent press.</p>
<p>● Freedom of the press means that no one needs the government’s permission to produce and publish journalism.</p>
<p>The answer may be “all of the above,” because contrary to first appearances, the three statements aren’t contradictory. </p>
<h2>Public support isn’t new</h2>
<p>The United Kingdom, for example, is arguably home to the world’s rowdiest, most indomitable reporters and editors. Thousands of that country’s journalists benefit from a legislated universal tax (the so-called <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/entries/9637e45d-c96c-36c6-9e3f-af141e81cab4">radio licence</a>) that’s kept BBC’s news division vigorous enough to boast a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2018/bbc-global-audience">global digital audience</a> nearly 10 times bigger than Canada’s entire population.</p>
<p>Closer to home, the federal government has long provided <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/funding/periodical-fund.html">grants</a> to magazines both newsy and not, but not to daily papers, private broadcasters or news websites. And hundreds of journalism
jobs at <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/liberals-pledge-675-million-in-cbc-funding/article29354285/">CBC-Radio Canada</a> depend for their continuance on the largesse (or <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cbc-budget-cut-by-115m-over-3-years-1.1147096">otherwise</a>) of annual federal
budgets, because there’s no Canadian equivalent to the BBC’s longer-term legislated assurance.</p>
<h2>Who’s a journalist?</h2>
<p>Now, the government plans to extend public-purse subsidies directly to the salaries of privately employed journalists. </p>
<p>But who and what is a journalist? This question has stumped some tough minds over the years, including that of former Chief Justice Beverly McLaughlin.</p>
<p>In 2009, she wrote <a href="https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/7837/index.do">a landmark libel judgment</a> that lit a cherished green light for investigative reporters by holding them accountable for the fairness of their methods, rather than demanding literal truth of every word. The new protocol was based on a British precedent that lawyers call <a href="https://rrj.ca/the-law-of-responsible-journalism/defence">“responsible journalism.”</a></p>
<p>This straightforward moniker succinctly captured “the essence of the defence,” McLaughlin allowed, but instead of citing the term “responsible journalism,” she chose a markedly clunkier name for Canada’s version: “Responsible communication in the public interest.” </p>
<p>Why? Because “the traditional media are rapidly being complemented by new ways of communicating on matters of public interest, many of them online, which do not involve journalists.” </p>
<h2>Dearth of local news</h2>
<p>So, Chief Justice, one might ask — what is a journalist? On this, McLaughlin declined to pass judgment.</p>
<p>In 2011, the problem of defining journalists scuppered the country’s first substantial proposal of government support for news media. Laval University Prof. Dominique Payette delivered a <a href="http://www.mcc.gouv.qc.ca/index.php?id=3355&tx_lesecrits_pi1%5Becrit%5D=592&cHash=10a75996d801a5fb86c6a10b2fe460ac">carefully researched and well-argued report</a> to the government of Québec describing a crisis in the availability of local news that escaped attention in the rest of Canada until some years later.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247085/original/file-20181124-149308-i7tdut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247085/original/file-20181124-149308-i7tdut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247085/original/file-20181124-149308-i7tdut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247085/original/file-20181124-149308-i7tdut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247085/original/file-20181124-149308-i7tdut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247085/original/file-20181124-149308-i7tdut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247085/original/file-20181124-149308-i7tdut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A proposal for government to legally recognize the profession of journalism was first proposed in Québec in 2011, but the idea was met with derision from many journalists.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Payette recommended legal recognition of professional status for journalists and taxpayer-funded benefits to organizations that employ members of this order. </p>
<h2>Shot down in Québec</h2>
<p>The idea was initially welcomed by Québec’s government and by many journalists, but eventually got dropped due to <a href="http://j-source.ca/article/titre-professionnel-on-ne-peut-pas-renoncer-pour-de-si-mauvaises-raisons-dominique-payette/">a fractious debate </a> among journalists about how it could be implemented. Opinion among anglophone journalists, meanwhile, was solidly <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/new-rules-for-quebec-journalists-are-a-bad-idea/wcm/c9b098a6-503d-45a0-8d0c-a393198379ac">dismissive</a> — many persisted in misunderstanding the proposal as implying a required “licence” for practising journalism.</p>
<p>Coincidentally, around that time, my research was focused on a search for signs of consensus about what defines journalism. But the only consensus to be found was that a definition was neither needed nor wanted. </p>
<p>For most Canadian journalists, a free press means anyone should legally be allowed to describe their work as journalism. End of story. </p>
<h2>Drawing distinctions</h2>
<p>When I published my theory-building paper on the topic in 2014, I was careful to defer to the prevailing inclusive point of view. I made the case for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2014.882483">defining journalism</a> with reference to, among other things, the <em>work</em> of “independent” discovery. As for defining journalists (the workers rather than the work), my argument discreetly evaded its own obvious conclusion — if journalism can be defined, then a journalist is simply a person who practises journalism. </p>
<p>The inclusive position will no longer be tenable once the government offers tax breaks to companies that employ journalists. The government proposes to establish “an independent panel” to “define and promote core journalism standards, define professional journalism, and determine eligibility.” And who will be on this vital panel of definers? Journalists, of course. </p>
<p>Circularity aside, this might be viable as a short-term pragmatic solution. Most appointees to the independent panel will likely be current or former minions of legacy news brands, disinclined to recognize traces of their traditions in nimbler, edgier upstarts aimed at unconventional audiences.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247086/original/file-20181124-149341-1jc57oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247086/original/file-20181124-149341-1jc57oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247086/original/file-20181124-149341-1jc57oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247086/original/file-20181124-149341-1jc57oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247086/original/file-20181124-149341-1jc57oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247086/original/file-20181124-149341-1jc57oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247086/original/file-20181124-149341-1jc57oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Godfrey, CEO of Postmedia Network, Canada’s largest newspaper company, has joined other publishers in lobbying Ottawa for financial assistance. Godfrey has in turn been criticized for giving himself large bonuses while laying off journalists across the country.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But attention to diversity and terms of appointment will foster open minds and a sense of fairness. So too will a clear mandate, crafted through non-partisan consultation that favours neutral criteria, perhaps including membership of either the francophone <a href="https://conseildepresse.qc.ca">Québec</a> media council or its anglophone <a href="http://mediacouncil.ca">national</a> counterpart. </p>
<p>But long-term, there is a more intuitive and less compromising way by which professions “define” themselves, set “standards” and determine “eligibility” for government recognition.</p>
<h2>A time for self-regulation</h2>
<p>This more conventional system for managing professional recognition works well enough for <a href="http://www.peo.on.ca/">engineers</a>, <a href="http://glcanada.org/resources/practicing-in-canada/governing-bodies/">lawyers</a>, <a href="https://www.scc.ca/en/accreditation/product-process-and-service-certification/regulatory-advisory-councils">plumbers</a> and many others.</p>
<p>Governance for these professions and trades does not involve government-appointed panels, whose own biases must eventually collude or collide with those of their effective employers to foster actual distrust or subtle corruption.</p>
<p>Rather, these other socially important professionals are governed by their peers in legally recognized official bodies usually known as colleges or institutes. Their central goal: To protect the integrity and independence of their profession. </p>
<p>The system is called self-regulation and it already applies to journalists in <a href="http://www.ccijp.net">France</a>, <a href="http://www.odg.it">Italy</a> and many other industrialized <a href="https://ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/resources/publications/trust-factor/introduction">democracies</a> that boast markedly undeferential news cultures. </p>
<p>If self-regulation came to Canada, journalists choosing to enrol would not morph into humble servants, ready to trade away their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms. And those same freedoms would continue to protect, likewise, the right of conscientious non-registrants
to publish news (whether verified or fake).</p>
<p>In short, a system of self-regulation could do no harm and much good. Mostly, it would simply recognize the plain reality that journalists’ work is vital enough to foster, distinct enough to define, and, today more than ever, vulnerable enough to defend.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107435/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This article is in part the fruit of research funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant and of previous research on media accountability funded by Newspapers Canada and Mitacs, which recommended and led to to establishment of the National Newsmedia Council. As a journalism professor, Ivor Shapiro also acknowledges working for an institution that could benefit from enhanced public recognition of journalism as a profession. </span></em></p>The Canadian government has announced a new policy of providing financial assistance to the country’s news industry. With any financial support will come a need to define who exactly is a journalist.Ivor Shapiro, Professor, School of Journalism, Toronto Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1021092018-09-05T23:27:45Z2018-09-05T23:27:45ZTIFF premiere: Sgaawaay K'uuna, the first feature film about the Haida people<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234890/original/file-20180904-45169-1oebv9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">High school honour roll student Trey Arnold Rorick acts in the 'Edge of the Knife.' Rorick also works as a Cultural Interpreter at the K_ay Ilnagaay Haida Heritage Center. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.facebook.com/edgeoftheknifemovie">Facebook</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Sgaawaay K'uuna (Edge of the Knife)</em>, <a href="https://www.tiff.net/tiff/edge-of-the-knife/">premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival</a>, is the first feature film about the Haida people and in the Haida language.</p>
<p>The mystery-thriller, directed by Gwaai Edenshaw and <a href="https://www.tiff.net/the-review/meet-helen-haig-brown-the-co-director-of-edge-of-the-knife/">Helen Haig-Brown</a>, started as a collaboration between myself at the University of British Columbia (UBC), the Inuit film production company Kingulliit and the Council of the Haida Nation (CHN).</p>
<p>We hope the film will be a <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/on-bcs-haida-gwaii-history-is-being-made-with-a-film-in-a-language-very-few-people-canspeak/article35440940/">catalyst for language revitalization</a> as well as community economic development. In 2012, fewer than one per cent of the Haida were fluent in the Haida language and most of those were over the age of 70, so the language was regarded as in crisis.</p>
<p><em>Edge of the Knife</em> emerged out the results of a community planning process our students had been involved in at Skidegate a year earlier, a year of community engagement and envisioning Haida hopes and dreams. </p>
<p>The top three priorities identified by the Skidegate community were language revitalization, the creation of jobs that would keep youth on Haida Gwaii instead of moving to Vancouver and protecting the lands and waters of Haida Gwaii through sustainable economic development. I believed a film in the Haida language could potentially serve all three priorities. I pitched the idea to the Executive of the Council of the Haida Nation and the president, Peter Lantin, agreed. </p>
<h2>Inspiration</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234895/original/file-20180904-45172-1f3gncg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234895/original/file-20180904-45172-1f3gncg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234895/original/file-20180904-45172-1f3gncg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234895/original/file-20180904-45172-1f3gncg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234895/original/file-20180904-45172-1f3gncg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234895/original/file-20180904-45172-1f3gncg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234895/original/file-20180904-45172-1f3gncg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I was inspired by Kingulliit’s success making feature films in the Inuktitut language (most famously <em>Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner</em> in 2001) that showcase the Inuit culture and employ Inuit as actors, costume and set designers, writers and directors. </p>
<p>Developing a partnership with <a href="http://www.isuma.tv/kingulliit-productions">Kingulliit (formerly Isuma)</a> could mean nation-to-nation capacity building in all aspects of filmmaking. Jon Frantz, the producer and director of photography on <em>Edge of the Knife</em>, facilitated Kingulliit’s involvement. Frantz is a former UBC masters student who had moved to Igloolik to work with Kingulliit. </p>
<p>Norman Cohn, a co-founder of Kingulliit with Zacharias Kunuk, suggested working on a dramatic film rather than a documentary. I have a background in screenwriting, having completed an MFA in screenwriting at UCLA in 1989, so I was very enthusiastic about making a feature film rather than a documentary.</p>
<p>We received $200,000 in a Partnership Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). My work explores the power of collaborative storytelling through film, which I hope can expand the potential and room for community planning interventions.</p>
<p>My 2010 documentary, <em>Finding our Way: Beyond Canada’s Apartheid</em>, used a collaborative method to tell the story of two small First Nations in north-central British Columbia, the Cheslatta Carrier Nation and the Burns Lake Band. The process of making that film was the beginning of my re-education about Canada’s history of colonizing and dispossessing Indigenous peoples. </p>
<p>I spent most of the next year on sabbatical and working on Haida Gwaii. The first step was to assemble a Haida Advisory Group composed of elders and other knowledge-holders to oversee the project. </p>
<h2>Community storytelling</h2>
<p>Working with two Haida partners, Dana Moraes in Skidegate and Lucille Bell in Old Massett, we co-designed and facilitated a series of community-based, story-gathering workshops in which community members were asked to suggest what Haida story or stories they would most like to see portrayed in a feature film. </p>
<p>We gathered those ideas and then ran script-writing workshops in the two communities for anyone interested in potentially becoming a writer for the film. After the workshops, we ran a writing contest and Haida community members were invited to submit a short story or film idea.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234891/original/file-20180904-45143-1pcmz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234891/original/file-20180904-45143-1pcmz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234891/original/file-20180904-45143-1pcmz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234891/original/file-20180904-45143-1pcmz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234891/original/file-20180904-45143-1pcmz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234891/original/file-20180904-45143-1pcmz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234891/original/file-20180904-45143-1pcmz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Edge of the Knife/TIFF</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The jury for that contest was made up of both Haida and non-Haida. We read the submissions without names and the unanimous choice of three winners were the brothers Gwaai and Jaalen Edenshaw, who co-wrote a story, and Graham Richard. </p>
<p>We developed a film script which we had only six months to complete if we wanted to submit it for the 2015 application to the Canada Media Fund (CMF). We hunkered down through the winter, working mostly on weekends, to come up first with a three-page story outline, then a 10-page outline. We then mapped out the entire script in story cards and finally wrote the script. We learned the new script-writing software program together.</p>
<p>Vast amounts of junk food and coffee were consumed as we riffed off each other through long days that flew by. Graham and Gwaai often got on the floor to act out potential scenes. </p>
<p>In creating the story, we reflected on all the ideas that had been assembled during the community story-gathering workshops, and we also worked under two important guidelines from our advisory group. </p>
<p>The first was that the story should be roughly balanced between the northern (Old Massett) and southern (Skidegate) dialects to encourage members of both communities to learn their own dialect and to have a film that would showcase both. The second guideline was that the film should showcase Haida culture and technology, pre-settler contact. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234888/original/file-20180904-45151-vix34z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234888/original/file-20180904-45151-vix34z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234888/original/file-20180904-45151-vix34z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234888/original/file-20180904-45151-vix34z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234888/original/file-20180904-45151-vix34z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234888/original/file-20180904-45151-vix34z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234888/original/file-20180904-45151-vix34z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Edge of the Knife/TIFF</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A third significant factor was that the budget could not exceed $2 million, so we needed to imagine a story and a setting that could be portrayed within all these constraints.</p>
<p>Jaalen Edenshaw was also our historical researcher and checked archives online for details, often as we were in midst of writing. We also worked closely with elders and knowledge-holders from both villages to seek advice about specific scenes, such as a prayer of thanks for the first salmon caught that season. </p>
<h2>Production</h2>
<p>By September 2015, we heard that we had been funded $1.89 million. We hired Gwaai Edenshaw and Helen Haig-Brown (a Tsilhqot’in filmmaker now living on Haida Gwaii with her Haida partner and family) as co-directors, and Jon Frantz as producer. </p>
<p>Frantz and other folks from the Inuit film company mentored the Haida in setting up a Haida Production Company, Niijang Xyaalas Productions, which would be the majority owner of the film (with Kingulliit being the minority partner).</p>
<p>Translators fluent in the two dialects set about translating the script. The co-directors set about casting and also holding acting and language workshops. A few months before the film went into production, all the cast had to participate in a gruelling two-week language “boot camp” where they were sequestered in log cabins on the north shore of the archipelago and taught how to pronounce and say their lines. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234889/original/file-20180904-45169-1swtf6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234889/original/file-20180904-45169-1swtf6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234889/original/file-20180904-45169-1swtf6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234889/original/file-20180904-45169-1swtf6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234889/original/file-20180904-45169-1swtf6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234889/original/file-20180904-45169-1swtf6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234889/original/file-20180904-45169-1swtf6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">At the Hiellen Long House, actors practise and rehearse their lines from the script ‘The Edge of the Knife’ written entirely in Haida. These actors trained in a two-week language boot camp reading and speaking the Haida language.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">https://www.facebook.com/edgeoftheknifemovie/</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I was able to witness some of boot camp and I was bowled over by the commitment the new actors displayed in learning this difficult language. Many explained to me that they felt a responsibility to their ancestors to get it right. </p>
<p>The same was true on location, on the site of an ancestral village in the remote north of Haida Gwaii, in June 2017. The cast was dedicated to faithfully rendering Haida life as it was in the early 1800s.</p>
<h2>Keeping Haida alive</h2>
<p>One of the intentions of the Haida film (with English subtitles) is to generate interest, especially among the youth, in learning the language. </p>
<p>We hope that the film and the script will be developed into a one-month language module for high schools, and that teaching and learning relationships between youth and elders will be sustained beyond the premiere of the film itself. We also hope there has been sufficient training, tools and infrastructure set up during this project for future Haida film projects under the newly created production company. A group of writers, actors and producers are energized and inspired by this project; they will take this energy forward and train others in various aspects of production. </p>
<p>In that way, the initial community development goals of the project will eventually be fulfilled. I have a new SSHRC grant (2017-21) to monitor and evaluate the impact of the film in relation to our original goals and hope to share more of what we learned along the way. </p>
<p>I feel so fortunate to have been able to spend time in this resurgent community, Haida Gwaii, a magical place. I have both made new friends and continued with my re-education about Indigenous Canada.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8WwICs7S-AQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A CBC documentary on the making of The Edge of the Knife.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102109/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leonie Sandercock receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for ongoing research on the impact of the film, Edge of the KNife , on the Haida community, on Haida language, employment, and so on.</span></em></p>Sgaawaay K'uuna (Edge of the Knife) is a feature film project that works to entertain audiences and revitalize language.Leonie Sandercock, Professor, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.