Last week the Trudeau Government did a good thing. They reached an agreement with Google that will provide mainstream media with $100 million a year for news stories that are picked up by Google. That seems only fair. Hopefully, a similar deal can be made with Facebook (Meta) which is currently blocking Canadian news sources on their network. Like any other business, news outlets are entitled to be paid if their product is used by others.
But a few weeks ago, the Trudeau government did a bad thing. In their Fall Economic Statement, they provided $129 million to legacy media by allowing a 35% tax credit for news employees with salaries of up to $85,000 per year. This is in addition to the more than half a billion dollars of bail-out funds committed to legacy media by the Liberals during the last election campaign. On top of all of that, of course, is the $1.3 billion the government provides annually to fund the CBC.
And so, the question must be asked, at what point does government funding of mainstream media become an incentive for news stories and editorials to be slanted toward the source of their financing? Would you bite the hand that feeds you? I doubt it. And as much as major news outlets shout about their independence from government, the hard fact is they are not when they depend on it for financing.
Mainstream media outlets have become reliant on government handouts. It is therefore a fair question to ask how it is that they can remain neutral or fair.
With a few exceptions, such as the Toronto Sun, any reasonable assessment of overall news reporting and editorializing by mainstream media, on balance, leans toward the current federal government—the hand that feeds them. This occurs in several ways, not just in their reporting, but also in what is not reported or highlighted, and in how they portray and report on political parties that oppose the government. Some of it may be subliminal, but it is there.
I am sure that many of my friends whose political views are more to the left are not generally opposed to current legacy media coverage and government funding. But things change folks. If the shoe were on the other foot, as it has been in the past and may well be in the future, where media may be dependent on a right-of-centre government for funding, would you be okay with that?
To deal with the CBC for a moment, I am sure that there are some who read this article that will conclude that I support Pierre Poilievre’s declared intention to defund the CBC if he becomes Prime Minister. I do not, at least not in its entirety. The CBC is more than just a news source. In many ways, it highlights and defends Canadian culture and history. It has programs of importance to Canadians in both official languages that cannot be funded through the free market and therefore deserve government support.
But, when it comes to the delivery of hard news, CBC should not be funded for this purpose by the government. At best, this is a conflict of interest and at worst, it is a propaganda arm for the party in power. On this part of its operations, CBC should compete with everyone else on an even playing field without special funding.
In my view, we get into trouble when governments try to be all things to all people. They are, of course, responsible for public safety, economic stability, helping those who cannot help themselves, national defense, some aspects of health care, and the protection of our environment.
But when it comes to supporting the media, what is the government’s responsibility? Media, especially mainstream media, plays a huge role in the formation of public opinion. Public opinion, in turn, determines who will form a government through the electoral process.
To me, the overall principle of government financially supporting media is somewhat chilling. It is a relatively modest incursion now, but where is it heading? It is a natural instinct not to bite the hand that feeds you. Government funding of major media outlets could influence their desire to hold that government accountable.
In a survey conducted this past Fall by Angus Reid Polling, 59% of Canadians indicated they were opposed to government funding of newsrooms. I agree with them. Government funding of the media is a slippery slope.
Media freedom is a fundamental concept of democracy. The more that government gets involved in this, the less freedom of the press there is. At its apex, it becomes state-controlled media.
Of course, we are not there yet, but surely, we never want to be. However, history teaches us that communities can change and deteriorate one step at a time until it is too late.
That must not happen here.
Hugh Mackenzie
Hugh Mackenzie has held elected office as a trustee on the Muskoka Board of Education, a Huntsville councillor, a District councillor, and mayor of Huntsville. He has also served as chairman of the District of Muskoka and as chief of staff to former premier of Ontario, Frank Miller.
Hugh has also served on a number of provincial, federal and local boards, including chair of the Ontario Health Disciplines Board, vice-chair of the Ontario Family Health Network, vice-chair of the Ontario Election Finance Commission, and board member of Roy Thomson Hall, the National Theatre School of Canada, and the Anglican Church of Canada. Locally, he has served as president of the Huntsville Rotary Club, chair of Huntsville District Memorial Hospital, chair of the Huntsville Hospital Foundation, president of Huntsville Festival of the Arts, and board member of Community Living Huntsville.
In business, Hugh Mackenzie has a background in radio and newspaper publishing. He was also a founding partner and CEO of Enterprise Canada, a national public affairs and strategic communications firm established in 1986.
Currently, Hugh is president of C3 Digital Media Inc., the parent company of Doppler Online, and he enjoys writing commentary for Huntsville Doppler.
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Brian Thompson says
Hugh:
This article is interesting to me on a few fronts. As both you and I have been involved in the media during our working lives I find there are certain areas of your opinion that I agree with and some I question. Fundamentally I agree that news media should not be government funded or supported for the reasons you point out.
As for Poilievre’s assertion that private radio can provide the same program as the CBC is beyond absurd….you and I both know from our years in private radio that comment is beyond absurd.
CBC is my mainstay and I think for many others the go to place for cultural information and arts programs. Asking local radio to provide a Quirks and Quarks program, Mary Hines, Eleanor Wachtel, on radio and then the Thursday “At Issue” with Rosemary Barton on CBC TV would not, could not and will not happen with private radio or TV. Radio programs such as Cross Country Check-up provide some of the glue that Keeps this country
Your issue seems to be about news content!!! So on this point I suggest a solution. It might be to separate the News Rooms, both Radio and TV from the CBC Mother Ship and make them require to self-sustain through advertising. (Although I’m sure private media would complain about that as well)…That should give the newsrooms the required independence from “The Hand that Feeds Them”.
As for the print media being subsidized, I’ll leave that up to you..my experience in that field pales in comparison to yours.
BTW Hugh, I get my print news by subscribing to the Toronto Star…$3.33 a month, The CBC (No Charge), the Globe and Mail ($10.00 a month), The NYT’s $4.00 a month and the Doppler $20.00 a month.
Erin Jones says
Years ago, I remember a British citizen who was visiting N. America, commenting about our American cousins’ custom of commercial, private corporations sponsoring the news (such as, “Here’s the news, brought to you by General Motors” or the like). Being used to the BBC, he made the mild observation, “I always assumed that there was enough merit in an informed populace that the news needed to present itself.”
Apparently, In the past, in the U.S, there was a custom of having a very clear separation between the reporting of facts–i.e., the news’ “who, what, why, when, where” of happenings, and OPINION about those facts. There was also a definite wall between news departments and advertising departments in those organizations. All “editorial” content was overseen by editors who were zealous defenders of the independence and objectivity of the “news side” from the commercial side of the news business. The death knell of editorial independence was sounded when the President of ABC News (his name escapes me at the moment) voiced the startling opinion that he did not think it wrong for the news departments to exclusively reflect the opinion of their advertisers!. Many honest journalists of the past were probably spinning in their graves at the mere suggestion that the independence of the news organizations should be compromised in that way.
The answer may be that perhaps ALL funding should go to a separate organization, made up of a committee of editors dedicated to the notion of objective and independent reporting of fact and let the
various outlets continue to express their opinions about them, clearly marking them as opinion. Selective reporting of facts in order to support one’s opinion of them is going to eventually result in propaganda and the manipulation of the public by means of such.
Hugh Holland says
Hugh, does your theory suggest the CBC had a right-leaning bias during the Mulroney and Harper years?
Like the Supreme Court, CBC board members are appointed by the government of the day in overlapping tenures, so over time, any bias will be neutralized and over the long-term it will reflect the general bias of the voting population. Is there a more democratic way to do it?
The BBC and the CBC provide some of the world’s most valuable programming. And its such a pleasure to listen to or watch a program that is not interrupted continuously by mindless advertising.
Brian Tapley says
Look outside Canada.
The USA has many more media outlets and networks, but whom do you trust?
News like on ABC consists of 80% advertising, even breaking the news show to advertise the news show!
Then the actual “news” is only shown if there are some exciting (often read “gory”) clips and these clips are seldom more than 10 seconds long and there is precious little real explanation to go with them and (last but not least) there is seldom much follow up.
In short, if it is not sensationalist, it won’t show up on the news.
Then there is the matter of trust. Is what they are showing even fully true?
Of course, the USA only covers what matters to the USA. The rest of the world is at an order of magnitude less important, always has been.
BBC tends to be more balanced, more worldwide.
CBC always seemed to be the anchor for Canada. It was not flashy, verging on boring at times but one could usually count on fairly scrupulous accuracy in their flagship shows.
This type of reporting is expensive to research and produce in any form of fair manner.
To think this could be replaced with private networks operating for profit and able to cover the whole country the way CBC does is ludicrous at best. It is an idea that will not work.
I think CBC and to a significant extent CTV, Global and other networks are a cut above the average USA product and we benefit from this as a nation.
When you turn the media over to private, for profit, operators you get things like Facebook or X or whatever it calls itself today. A swimming page of all kinds of junk, none of which can be trusted unless you have time to do a lot of fact checking and where, exactly, does one even go to “fact check” nowadays?
These platforms are such a mess I try to avoid them entirely.
But I am old, I like news I can read and understand, written in good enough language and with some trustworthiness included.
I still totally fail to see how one can hope to govern a nation like the USA using two line “tweets”, issued at random with no trust that they are even true! This concept represents a near total failure of their system and we don’t want to go there in Canada.
Joanne Tanaka says
The hands that feed private media are the businesses that advertise with them and must surely influence what gets published and editorial biases, and perhaps major shareholders – not so much all the ordinary citizens of a broader geographic, economic, social and ethnic population as the CBC is responsible for serving. CBC has correspondents everywhere, not just Toronto. If you think the function of media is important to democracy and telling our own Canadian stories ( not dependent on U.S. products) we need the CBC news, investigations and culture programs. Not everyone can afford subscriptions to various news publications. The real problem is the loss of professional journalism, local or otherwise vs questionable internet information sources.
Ruby Truax says
Our Prime Minister himself, perhaps inadvertently, revealed the relationship between his government and the media outlets when, during Question Period on November 29th, he remarked that the media hadn’t given his government’s Fall Economic Update the positive coverage he’d expected. That slip was an insight into the fact that the subsidized media are expected to be an extension of government.
Patrick Flanagan says
Contrary to Ruby Truax’s assertion, the PM did not say that he expected “positive”coverage. Here are his exact words from Hansard: “Mr. Speaker, I will admit openly to you and to others in the House that the media did not cover our fall economic statement as much as we would have liked last week because they were so busy talking about what a terrible week the Conservative Party had on Ukraine, on allegations of terrorism, and on attacking Stellantis and jobs in southern Ontario. Yes, the media were totally wrapped up in the Leader of the Opposition’s terrible week.”
Greg Reuvekamp says
My reaction to the news today that CBC will be cutting 600 jobs, possibly including that shameless excuse for a “journalist”, and Liberal cheerleader Rosemary Barton?: “Huzzah!”
Allen Markle says
I think the CBC does a reasonable job of delivering the news. As Hugh Holland points out, it’s somewhat disingenuous to say the news is biased with a Liberal in power, but it seemed okay when a PC was at the helm.
Mr. Mackenzie identifies as a Conservative, as do I, but what the Pierre Poilievre is delivering in policy seems to be simply anti Trudeau. The man is not like any conservative I admired or gravitated to. But I can see how people will lean toward him. Under his rule, the skies will clear; the grass will green; each stream will yield fat trout. Or, so he says. How can we even wait. He brings salvation!
But we’ve had these hallelujah hypes before, with both majority and predicted majority governments. Even a ‘common sense revolution’. Mike Harris. Remember him. And Doug Ford. A sort of reincarnation of ‘Tricky Dickie”. Also Dalton McGuinty, among others who skipped out while the voters searched for a tree and a rope.
But Greg Reuvekamp’ your comment has to be the most —-startling. Thinking it great that 600 people should lose their jobs, hoping there is the possibility of a ‘shameless Liberal cheerleader’ being among them!!
That’s pretty cold man.