News media’s dependence on Liberal subsidies cited as sign of democratic decay

Plus! How legacy news organizations shrugged and left the digging on Carney's investments up to the "fringe" while columnists stayed mute

Grok illustration of PM Mark Carney protected by two walls

There aren’t many traditional places left where Canadians can freely express concerns regarding the inappropriate relationship between media and those who wield power.

The Globe and Mail has, from time to time, allowed Andrew Coyne to express his dislike of government subsidies for news organizations. But that’s it. The Toronto Star, to the best of my knowledge, has only published pieces critical of the Online Streaming Act but very little if anything on news subsidies for years. So, nothing there. Postmedia, near as I can tell, has declined to post commentary opposed to the Online News Act or any other government handout for which it might qualify. It used to fight corporate bailouts hammer and tongs and prior to the implementation of the current buffet of benefits, Terence Corcoran of Financial Post wrote passionately in opposition to the abomination of subsidies. CBC says it doesn’t publish opinion pieces and CTV has clearly given the topic a pass.

This pattern of behaviour makes it exquisitely clear that media dependence on the government negatively impacts democratic discourse and that’s why this Substack exists. I was down to a handful of holdouts in The Line, The Hub and Western Standard - God bless them all - as platforms that would post commentary on the ethical dilemmas posed by media dependence on government. I wasn’t sure how long they’d be able to hold out, as it’s not easy to compete when the government is paying 30 per cent or more of your rivals’ salaries.

So with all that in mind, I wasn’t at all surprised when my attention was drawn to a well-crafted op-ed by respected University of Windsor political science professor Lydia Miljan on the Juno News feed. In this piece on the erosion of democratic norms in Canada, she mentions media subsidies as one of her primary concerns.

“After the 2019 election, which resulted in a minority government, the strategy shifted toward direct financial support. Citing pandemic-related revenue losses, the government introduced “temporary” subsidies for media organizations. These programs have since become permanent and costly, with $325 million allocated for 2024/25,” wrote Miljan, who co-authored the book Hidden Agendas: How Journalists Influence the News with the University of Calgary’s Barry Cooper in 2003.

“There’s growing concern that legacy media outlets—now financially dependent on government support—may struggle to maintain objectivity, particularly during national elections. This dependency risks undermining the media’s role as a watchdog of democracy.”

The irony of all this is, of course, that News Media Canada - the publishers’ lobbying arm - and the Liberal government sold the public on the need for the Journalism Labour Tax Credit, the Local Journalism Initiative and the subscription tax credit based on the public good news media represent as “defenders of democracy.”

If Miljan, whose voice now appears to be confined to the alleged fringe, is right, then we’ve all been sold a bill of goods by the people we are supposed to be able to trust to tell us the truth.

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Before we completely despair concerning legacy media integrity, it should be pointed out that Jamie Sarkonak, writing in the National Post, has picked up on the fact the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has attached strings to its Independent Local News Fund (which has been expanded to include 15 Corus/Global News stations).

Citing Mediapolicy.ca, Sarkonak points out that “the fund collects about $18 million annually. Fund-eligible stations, CRTC-watcher Howard Law has observed, collectively spend about $27 million on news every year, which means that the CRTC is covering around 70 per cent of their collective news budget.”

In its review of the fund, she wrote “the regulator determined that eligible broadcasters should be given incentives to bring about “increased production of online content responding to the needs of members of equity-deserving communities, Indigenous communities, and (official language minority communities).”

Sarkonak describes all this as “a critical threat to media independence in Canada.”

Well, I guess it’s a start and it’s important for the public to know, so thanks to National Post for that but, as The Rewrite first reported last fall, the Ministry of Canadian Identity and Culture already has similar strings attached to its “Changing Narratives Fund.” That addition to the Local Journalism Initiative “prioritizes funding for the hiring of diverse (i.e., Indigenous, Black, racialized, ethno-religious minority, people with disabilities and 2SLGBTQI+ communities).” That’s a fund to which the National Post and other newspapers are eligible to apply, if they haven’t already, so they can help the government shape the national conversation to its liking.

So it will not be a surprise when even more subtle suasion along those lines is adopted by the Ministry and the CRTC. For instance, News Media Canada is currently lobbying for advertising in non-Canadian platforms such as Facebook and YouTube to be ruled ineligible for tax deduction as a business expense, assuming advertisers will then have no choice but to return to newspapers. The price for winning such a battle could now conceivably be a requirement to “serve” the communities outlined above, which would further reinforce Miljan’s concerns.

It would be comforting to be assured that Sarkonak - or anyone else in legacy media - will be given the green light to write about the “critical threat” such current and future tradeoffs pose. Or, will we be left to depend on op-eds in Juno News?

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Media were pretty slow out of the gate when, the morning following US President Donald Trump’s escalation of tariff threats, details of the Ethics Commission’s report on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s gobsmacking conflicts of interest were announced.

Initially, headlines in the Toronto Star (“Carney agrees to conflict of interest screen”) and CTV Online treated the never before seen revelation of 103 conflicts of interest as a routine matter while the Globe and Mail (“Carney’s ethics filing shows more than 100 entities under conflict-of-interest screen”) and others took a more professional approach.

One would have expected a lot of criticism from leading commentators given the vehemence with which Carney denied - before and during the election - that he could be conflicted (who can forget his chiding of CBC News Network’s Rosemary Barton for even asking the question). Instead, a collective “meh” rolled across the nation’s opinion pages.

Oh, for sure, there were exceptions and Brian Lilley of Postmedia was an outlier in setting a critical tone. But while one might have expected news organizations to be pouring over the filings and noting, for instance, apparently hypocritical investments in the oilsands and a relatively low confidence in Canadian stocks, it was left primarily to amateurs on Twitter and a self-described “random guy on YouTube” intense partisan like Dave, aka Moose on the Loose to fill the void. Yes, I know, he thinks Carney vacationed at a spa in northern Australia, but it was only when referred there that I was tipped to check out that yes indeed the two men designated to act as the prime minister’s “screen” may themselves need a “screen” once the ethics commissioner has finished reviewing their filings. They are Chief of Staff Marc-Andre Blanchard and Michael Sabia, Clerk of the Privy Council.

While Western Standard did chase some of the juicer angles, by Tuesday the Star had relegated the story to its newsletter’s “What Else” category and by Wednesday it was dead. The Globe’s parliamentary team was more interested by then in working up a fluff piece promoting the launch of a new company by Carney’s campaign manager and CBCNN’s Power & Politics was making the case that the real issue facing the nation is not the Prime Minister’s impossible conflicts of interest and massive US investments but Conservative hypocrisy. It even found The Logic’s Marty Patriquin, who said out loud that there was nothing in the Ethics report that wasn’t already known during the election campaign.

Yup, it was that ugly.

(Peter Menzies is a commentator and consultant on media, Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow, a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, a former vice chair of the CRTC and a National Newspaper Award winner.)