All’s “fair dealing” now as struggling Liberals employ clips from funded media without protest
Plus! CP forgets the fundamentals in its rainbow coverage, the CTF lays a beating on the CBC and Christmas book tips!
Ah, the best laid plans. I was going to lead this week with my engagement with Bari Weiss in Vancouver, but she got the flu, the gig was cancelled and I stayed home.
Still, there’s rarely any shortage of material, so let’s get after it.
It strikes me as passing strange that mere days after launching a lawsuit against OpenAI’s ChatGPT for using its content without compensation, news organizations were defenceless when the Liberal Party of Canada used clips from their sites to promote the Trudeau government’s GST holiday legislation.
The CBC once famously sued the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) in the final days of the 2019 federal election campaign for using its clips in ads. The Tories - who have very long memories on this issue - eventually had their right to use the material upheld when a judge ruled against the CBC and determined the CPC was well within its rights under “fair dealing” provisions of the Copyright Act.
The frame grab above shows just the CBC portion but there are also clips from Canadian Press, the Toronto Star, CTV News, Noovo, National Post and CPAC in the ad/post, which you can view here if you choose.
How, I wonder, could these parties object to OpenAI using their material for gain and not be publicly jumping up and down when the governing party does the same?
And then I remembered that either through lump sum, the Journalism Labour Tax Credit, the Online News Act, the Canada Periodical Fund, the Local Journalism Initiative or a critical infrastructure fund all are subsidized by the government. So I guess that’s, as they say in the copyright world, fair dealing.
If you are looking to understand why so many in the Canadian industry are suing Open AI, this explanation during Harrison Lowman’s appearance on Jesse Brown’s Canadaland is as good as any.
“You have money and we don’t. It’s a shakedown (Brown) … Looking for a life raft instead of fixing the damn boat that’s sinking. (Lowman)”
As Holly Doan of Blacklock’s Reporter put it in an X-post: “Nails it.”
Sometimes we find journalism that is biased. Sometimes, it’s just plan bad but every now and then, it’s both.
Canadian Press (CP) is a national news aggregator and distributor, but also creates original work. It describes itself as Canada’s number one source for news, states that “accuracy is fundamental” and is fully dedicated to the goals of diversity, equity and inclusion.
It is owned by the Globe & Mail, the Toronto Star and La Presse and believes that “part of our responsibility as journalists is to ensure we don’t do anything that demeans the craft or weakens our credibility.”
A noble goal but one which it failed to achieve last week in its report on a municipal referendum in Barrhead, a town in northern Alberta. The story was distributed nationwide and picked up in major outlets such as CTV News, Global News, The Star and the Globe.
The initial report carried a headline declaring that “Residents of Barrhead vote in favour of bylaw banning rainbow flags, crosswalks” which would have nicely confirmed the prejudices of those who view rural Albertans as irredeemable rednecks.
The entire story, which is brief, can be read here and is notably missing one rather important thing: a description of what people actually voted on. How a hole that big in a story could get past people who get paid money to edit news copy is quite beyond me.
Certainly the effect of the bylaw being approved - and the vote was forced by a petition - eliminates rainbow flags from civic display and from official crosswalks. And obviously those who assigned, wrote and approved the report believed the presence of Pride regalia is what people were really voting on. But the bylaw in question says nothing about rainbows. It is a neutrality bylaw that ensures “public buildings, crosswalks and flags on public property remain neutral.”
So, going forward, crosswalks are a standard black and white and only the Canadian, Alberta and Barrhead flags can be flown. As a result, Royal Canadian Legion and Treaty 6 flags, for instance, also cannot be flown. Rainbow flags are not, as a CTV headline declared in October, banned in Barrhead except on the town hall flag pole. People are free to rainbow or Free Palestine as much as they want. Barrhead council, though, can’t pick who can and who cannot use public infrastructure to do so.
Now, it is certainly understandable that some people might interpret the Barrhead vote as a backlash against the promotion of Pride. But the role of journalists is to present readers with the facts as they are, not as reporters and editors perceive them to be. If there was a case to be made that Barrhead’s vote was intentionally gay-unfriendly, make it. Don’t just assume it and lazily write it in. That’s - I’m struggling for the technical term here - bullshit.
Proper journalism allows readers, viewers and listeners to draw their own conclusions. By eliminating any mention in its report of the wording that Barrhead residents actually voted on, CP failed to live up to its vow not to diminish public faith in the craft. And it did so by abandoning the discipline required to fully and fairly inform the public and allow it to reach its own conclusions. Some of the follow up stories were more professional, but the initial damage was done - from coast to coast.
Kris Sims of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation gave a rollicking rundown of why news organizations - specifically the CBC - should not be funded by the governments they are expected to hold to account. She also did a very good job in handling Heritage Parliamentary secretary and Liberal MP Taleeb Noormohamed, a man whose resume has proven to be much more impressive than his performance.
Appearing before the House of Commons Heritage Committee, Sims cited three main concerns - the cost of the CBC, the fact that hardly anyone watches the CBC and the principal that journalists should not be taking any money from those in power.
In the latter case, almost every journalist in the country can now be said to depend upon Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ever-expanding subsidy regime (see above). Yes, there are a few laudable exceptions but organized opposition to this appalling, trust-destroying arrangement appears to have stalled and as things stand it’s probably only a matter of time before the numbers of the righteous dwindle further.
News organizations increasingly fail to disclose their financial interest in legislation while the government continues to up the money available to them.
Still, they apparently sleep at night. I have no idea how.
Former head of the CBC Richard Stursberg appeared last week before a Senate committee and explained how he had addressed bias by commissioning a report from an independent panel. He said the report, done back in the early years of the Stephen Harper government, showed a very slight bias towards the Conservatives (back then CBC was interviewing experts from think tanks such as the Fraser Institute). His bigger point, though, was that there’s no reason a report like that can’t be done every year. You can watch here if you like. Or not. Thanks to Howard Law at mediapolicy.ca for passing it along.
Off topic a bit but if you are looking for a good book for Christmas, I have some tips. I have known Ted Morton for a long time and he has written an excellent book that tells the story of his journey from young Kibbutz-dwelling lefty into a leading conservative intellectual while breaking down the fall of Alberta’s Progressive Conservative dynasty. Strong and Free My Journey in Alberta Politics (University of Calgary Press) is well worth the investment if you are a political junkie. Another U of C prof emeritus, Karla Poewe, has produced an extraordinary work. Her life’s journey and recollection of horrifying years as a pre-schooler in the land of her birth - Nazi Germany - is overwhelmingly gripping and tells a story most of us have never heard, but should have. Defeat as Childhood Experience (WWII’s Shadow Remembered, Revisited and Researched) is a compelling read and the subject of a review I did for The Catholic Register. I have not read my brother Graeme Menzies’s book yet - Bones (The Life and Adventures of Dr. Archibald Menzies 1754-1842). It’s available for pre-order though on Amazon and yes, l’il bruv, I’ve bucked up and bought a few! Last but not least, Alexandra Posadzki’s Rogers v Rogers: The Battle for Control of Canada’s Telecom Empire is a ripping good yarn that is now being adapted for the stage. Would make a dandy opera, too.
(Peter Menzies is a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, former vice chair of the CRTC, current Senior Fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and a consultant and commentator on media and regulatory affairs)
All these news outlets clutching their pearls about the Barrhead vote: did any of them report on the 50 year old trans man from Guelph who repeatedly swam in competitions against teenage girls? I think the Post and the Sun ran one or two pieces about it. No one else even bothered. Newsflash - no one cares about Pride flags outside the media and professional activist class.
I spoke to a CFA yesterday. One of his clients who sells models will pay 10k to accommodate this horrible gst partial holiday. Some of his wares qualify as toys. Others do not. It is a logistics nightmare. The same cfa tells me a second client has several stores and is investing 50k to alter all his point of sales. A plotted war on small businesses.