News industry's ethics are increasingly flexible and, in the Trudeau era, no longer recognizable
Similarities in coverage hint at coordinated efforts to present certain events in a prescribed manner
A generation ago, I was one of a number of newspaper editors and publishers having a drink at Pearson airport, waiting for our flights home while pondering a fresh set of corporate orders.
“Maybe it won’t be so bad,” said one, trying to look on the bright side. “Remember when we all thought putting ads on the front page was going to be the end of the world?”
Most of us nodded and then another said, “Yes but what if it was and we didn’t notice.”
Some memories, we can agree, are best left suppressed, but ever since February 4, 2021, that one keeps creeping back.
Because that was the day National Post, 16 other Postmedia dailies, the Toronto Star and 70 of its satellite publications posted front pages that were entirely blank but for a banner asking readers to “Imagine if the news wasn’t there.”
The campaign for what became the Online News Act (Bill C-18) was bold, brash and breathtaking. It also triggered a reminder that the world as most of us had known it - the one in which for all their faults news organizations would never use sacred editorial space to propagandize their self interest - was dead.
As News Media Canada (NMC), the legacy media lobbyist that has won more than $250 million in annual tax credits and job subsidies for its members, put it at the time:
“Most Canadians can’t imagine life without a functioning and effective free press. No one wants blank news pages but without government action to address the monopolistic practices of Google and Facebook, this is the reality we face.”
What they were really asking, of course, was for consumers to imagine what the world would look like if Torstar and Postmedia weren’t there anymore and all we had left to be informed by were the CBC, Global, CTV/Bellmedia, Glacier, Black Press, Village Media, Rogers, 700 commercial radio stations, the Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Substacks and around 250 new digital -only independent news platforms like this one.
Still, the campaign was successful in getting the Online News Act passed. It worked. As a result, Facebook no longer allows news posts and Google is financing a $100 million fund in exchange for being exempted.
As part of the deal, Google insisted on the right to choose who would govern that fund and, not surprisingly, it did not select a bid from the collective of people that had accused it of theft. It preferred the bid of a much smaller group representing only a dozen or so organizations. While everyone involved will still get a share of the loot, the shunned collective is now accusing members of the winning collective of being in a conflict of interest due to previous ties to Google even though members of the losing collective used have ties with Google too.
In its report, National Post (which has its own paid influencer in NMC) even cast a suspicious eye at the notion of others being similarly equipped:
“… at Google’s 2022 North American Newsgeist conference in Montreal, Google considered funding a lobbyist to represent independent news publishers and help them push for changes to the Online News Act,” wrote its reporter, whose employer openly campaigned for the legislation.
But there’s another paragraph in that story that catches the eye:
“In a victory for the Liberals, who became one of the first governments to implement a law other jurisdictions around the world hope to adopt, Google complied . . . .”
Because it reads so much like this paragraph in another story published by a fellow member of the failed collective, the Toronto Star.
“All told, it was a partial victory for the Trudeau Liberals, which became one of the first governments to implement a law other jurisdictions around the world hope to adopt.”
The coincidences don’t end there.
Post: “The demands include adding more regulations to ensure that the definition of a “full-time equivalent” employee actually meets the criteria for full-time work, capping the administrative fee that the collective can receive at $500,000, and requiring that new businesses reconfirm their eligibility if the CRTC makes any criteria changes.
Star: “Those asks include adding more regulations that would ensure the definition of a “full-time equivalent” employee actually meets the criteria for full-time work, capping the administrative fee the collective can receive at $500,000, and requiring that news businesses reconfirm their eligibility should the CRTC make any criteria changes.”
To be fair, there are a number of differences between the two stories, which go on to quote different sources. And, hey, a free press means publishers are free to publish as they wish.
But it’s hard to get over the fact both organizations simultaneously used a subjective phrase describing the outcome of the Online News Act as a win for Justin Trudeau’s government and in such similarly complimentary terms. After all, the Post and The Star don’t usually agree on politics.
The truth is that Meta’s blocking of Facebook and Instagram links has cost Canada’s news industry what the tech company estimates was $230 million in annual revenue. That figure has neither been verified nor debunked. Sources within the business definitely agree that whatever the total figure, the move has been extremely costly, particularly to independent startups.
Google’s $100 million was not only a lot less than the $172 million the government hoped for, the deal came very late in the day and only after Google threatened to ban news from search results, which would have been catastrophic. Also gone are the investments both Meta and Google were making with publishers. The exact figures are unknown but, combined, they are considered by expert observers to have exceeded $50 million annually. So, $100 million in and around $280 million out.
Does that sound like a win other governments hope to replicate to you?
Me neither.
Major news providers crossed a bridge in February 2021 that will forever cast doubts upon their industry’s ability to maintain boundaries and are now heavily and, it appears, permanently financially dependent upon government.
Like my generation, the current cohort of editors and publishers may not have noticed when the end of their world arrived. This time, though, the rest of us did.
(This commentary originally appeared in The Hub)
Thanks to Michael Geist for having me as his guest on the Law Bytes podcast, which will be online this week. Now I will be taking a break for a couple of weeks to go sit on an island in the Pacific ocean and watch for whales. Many, many thanks to all the new subscribers who signed up. Feel free to be one of the popular kids and join them.
Peter Menzies is a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, past vice-chair and AB-NWT Commissioner at the CRTC, former editor-in-chief and publisher of the Calgary Herald and a National Newspaper Award winner. He also worked as executive director of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum.