My grandfather was Ken Fathers. When I returned to Windsor following a stint in Vancouver and started working in here, I can’t remember the number of times that someone asked me “Are you related to Ken Fathers?”
The answer was yes. The reason why they knew who Ken Fathers was, because he was the sports writer at the Windsor Star for over 40 years. If it was a big high school basketball or football game or a big Lancers Game, my grandfather probably covered it (plus the Tigers and Lions for Star/Canadian Press). I heard over and over from people saying “We knew it was a big game because grand dad was there”. I wasn’t from Windsor, I couldn’t answer the “What high school did you go to” question that everyone asks, but my grandfather’s role in the city gave people a connection to me.
This doesn’t make me a media expert, but I do look at public policy for a living and understand the role of local journalism. C-18 is bad policy from a government that I generally support, but this is a government that has no idea what it is doing on this file. Meanwhile, Google and Facebook’s responses to it are completely predictable, rational and now we are trapped as MPs go on summer vacation.
What does C-18 Try to do:
A longer read from Dr. Sue Gardner from the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill breaks down how we got here very well. Other informative and expert reads are Michael Geist (law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law) and Nitish Pahwa in the Slate also provides some good insights.
As I understand it, C-18 requires that Tech companies – social media as well as search engines – to pay media companies for their links. Note: the links can be paywalled so if an average reader could see a link on their platform, have to pay for it, and it still not be able to access for the general public to access. Significant fines can be levied by regulators (CRTC) if they do not pay the source companies. The bill does not set a specific “link tax” fee but rather use the stick of significant fines to “digital platforms” to strike business agreement with specific media companies. These agreements would not be public.
One of the hopes is that this follows the Australian model where platforms backed down and started paying but as the posts above outline the Canadian legislation is different than Australia and the outcomes are trending in a different direction.
Here is part of the problem: How does the Rivertown Times access this? Small independent journalism start ups are expected to negotiate revenue from Google? No of course not, because it is designed for legacy companies to get paid not to support local media. From my understanding “new businesses” would have to meet eligibility criteria and be identified/registered with the CRTC in order to receive these funds. Even if a small media company meet these criteria you expect a start-up with two or three people to negotiation with multinational tech companies? The criteria obviously creates barriers to entry and the legislation by trying to bring about voluntary relationships between media and internet organizations will stifle innovation to maintain legacy players.
The problem with this is that it still doesn’t guarantee that local media will be supported. Postmedia will negotiate on behalf of the Windsor Star – a paper it owns – money will go to the parent company (owned by a US hedge fund) and maybe it will trickle down to local papers or it might go to a paper in Winnipeg or St John’s. Great the Toronto Star might get funded, doesn’t mean they are going to open an Essex County branch.
Tech Company Responses
Now the internet, has disrupted journalism and media as a whole no one disputes that. The reason you are reading this here is because of that disruption, the ability for individuals to project their opinions and thoughts to a audience online and maybe go viral has completely changed media. A cellphone camera makes you a journalist, a microphone and app turn you into a broadcaster and a website can make you a publisher.
The internet is built on platforms and data, the reason why media collapsed is because their advertisers went to the more efficient platform. The data collected via web platforms is far more valuable to advertisers than the name, address, phone number and payment information the local paper had for me. The money flowed where it was most impactful, as it always does.
For the tech companies, they are making a business choice, they are under no obligation share every possible link because they haven’t been properly regulated and taxed on a national and international level – government(s) failed. There was also no obligation when the shopping mall killed the downtown business, or when Amazon shuttered small businesses by outcompeting them, Uber disrupted taxies, Airbnb with pressured hotels hotels. Government was late to all of those disruptions but this one, the longest one running, one of the first, is only now an issue because of the crisis in legacy media. To be frank lobbiest got involved and begged for help.
If Uber chooses to not operate in a city -what then? If DoorDash decides to not serve a certain restaurant- what then? Generally the void gets filled by something else. The platforms can choose where and how they operate, this is their power and it is a business choice and frankly government hasn’t regulated them to date. You also have to remember these same evil companies were welcomed with open arms a few years ago when announcing new offices in Canada – Meta and Google. I doubt the federal government was complaining about their jobs, investment and technology then?
Now Journalism is different than where I book to stay on my vacation or get my takeout, there is a common good from journalism, but government allowed this industry to atrophy and choose not to take action until it was practically too late. Their solution in my opinion is to primarily supports a handful of major media conglomerates not the broader media landscape. They haven’t protected and nurtured local journalism even in their own behaviour (Access to Information anyone), so why is forcing big tech to pay legacy media which is already on it’s last leg the best answer here?
So far only Meta and Google have been named but realistically switching browsers won’t solve this problem. Apple News, Twitter, Reddit, TikTok are all going to have to comply as the CRTC is going to compile a list of companies that are “digital platforms”. The government picked these companies because they they are the largest but also for political reasons. You have an aging liberal government and no body likes tech companies these days. They are a good villains to prop up but at a time when trust in media and news is at its lowest point in Canada, what happens if the news goes away and no-one misses it?
What does Independent Media Say?
Below is a tweet from Jen Hassum, Executive Director of the Broadbent Institute and Publisher of Press Progress
A thread by Jen Gerson a co-founder of The Line:
Jen Gerson at the Line wrote this piece that pretty much predicted this exact scenario.
A thread by Joey Coleman who covers municipal politics in Hamilton
A thread from JMM at TVO one of the smartest policy reporters in Canada IMO.
Jessie Brown Editor in Chief at Canadaland:
If you are wondering, I pay for some of these outlets, and read many of them regularly.
At the same time what is legacy media doing:
- Post Media and the Toronto Star are trying to merge, despite being owned by a hedge fund (in the case of Post Media) and a Billionarie in the case of Toronto Star. Who profit from C-18?
- Post Media sold the former Windsor Star printing plant for $7.4 million, is that going to get invested back into local reporting? That could probably cover the operations of the Windsor Star for years I am sure.
- Bell has asked the CRTC to remove the local news requirement from it’s broadcast license. This would mean no longer needing to have local journalism at CTV Windsor and AM800. You have to remember that Bell is a Telecom company and it’s role in the cell phones and internet oligopoly print money.
- Global News Layoffs this past spring had the union speaking out on the threat to democracy.
A cynical view is summed up here by Jesse Brown in response to a tweet from Canadian Association of Journalist.
The government has effectively wedged Journalism and Tech against one another and the only savior for “journalism” is government. This is not a healthy relationship for a democracy where the only lifeline for coverage of the government is the very same government.
Yet this is where we are. A bad policy designed to demonize foreign companies that were championed not long ago, through the lobbying of legacy media companies. The outcomes will be to only delay their inevitable decline.
What was the other path?
Local media is vitally important, so how does it get saved? In 2017, Public Policy Forum tackled this issue with their Shattered Mirror Report. The outlined the need for digital media taxes on foreign subscriptions and services to generate revenue for a national digital media program and trust. Now some of this has been done with the local media initiative which funds journalists at news organization across Canada (none in Windsor Essex this year). That being said there are certainly other models of news coverage that are successful from non-profit/journalist co-operatives, to micro scaling of local news which almost brings us back to the days of the daily paper in every little town.
The Line Experimental Podcast talked about this a couple of weeks ago and they had a number of thoughts but my favourite are:
- Change the CBC mandate and funding structure.
- Split the Entertainment and News divisions, leverage the infrastructure that has across the country to become a hub news innovation while making it’s journalism copy right free and open use. Prevent it from competing with non-government media by limiting/removing it’s ability to take advertising revenue.
- Using the BBC trust model every cable, satellite, Netflix and phone bill etc. in Canada could have a few dollar fee to fund strict and local journalism from the CBC.
- These journalists would become the backbone for local coverage, they would go out and cover stories, but any other media group could use that coverage so long as they give recognition.
- CBC then becomes a mentor for local media innovation, providing space, expertise, mentorship. Its office spaces and studios are opened to the community for training and experimentation.
- The other thing think about is the next disruption: AI
- Pretty soon a reporter will no longer need to watch a city council meeting. Upload a transcript or video ask AI to provide a 700 word summary, do some fact checking, get a supporting quote or two and your story is done. One reporter could suddenly cover an entire region of city/town council meetings in the time it takes for one meeting to end -without going to one of them.
- Most media right now is just taking a press release and re-writing the copy. That is going to be AI job.
- You are going to continue to see the fragmentation of local media. It’s quite possible you will see independent publishers arise from the ashes from local legacy media but their shape and form will look different.
- Podcasts, Substacks, blogs etc. are going to continue to grow and become peoples primary sources of media. I know a few people already whose only engagement with Windsor political news comes from Rose City Politics – whether that is good or not, I don’t know. People will support what they want to support.
- Finally The CRTC actually needs teeth.
- Bell can’t be allowed to remove their local news requirement from their broadcasting license.
- Part of the reason we are in this mess is because the CRTC has allow media companies to merges with phone companies and buy TV stations and sports teams. We are country run by oligopolies.
What’s Next
To me this whole process reads like a government that is struggling to keep media alive – not because it is the right thing to do- but because they don’t want to be blamed for it’s demise on their watch. The need a villain to blame – so it is big tech’s fault when there hasn’t to my understanding been significant regulation or taxation of these entities in Canada. I only need to look at EU Regulation on Data, Privacy and AI to see what could have been done to curtail tech companies.
I don’t know what happens next, someone has to blink. Personally, I would love the write for some newspaper like my grandfather did, well maybe not sports. I am not a journalist, I am just a guy with a blog so who knows if I should or not. Journalism is needed but the legacy model is already too far gone and C-18 isn’t going to save it. Heck, I don’t even know if I will be able to share posts from this site during this period so you should subscribe (email box on the right side bar) if you don’t want to miss an update.
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