Lobbyists pushing Bill C-18 said that the law would solve news desert problems. Instead, we got consolidation and layoffs.
When debate of the then Bill C-18 was at a fever pitch, the mainstream media lobbyists top bullshit artists promised the moon. They claimed that if Bill C-18 was passed, there would be a new golden age of journalism in Canada marked with mass hirings and a rejuvenation of the entire sector. If only the government would just ignore all the evidence and believe every word that they say, then the government would be responsible for a miracle in the Canadian news sector.
Lawmakers, in their bid to win as many “fell for it again” awards, believed the lobbyists, ignored the evidence, and, in 2023, passed the Online News Act to facepalming of the experts. It was exasperating stupidity made possible by a mountain of lies.
Naturally, the consequences of this action by the government played out. Experts had long warned about things like litigation (which happened), the dropping of news links by Meta (which also happened), the international trade challenges from the US (which is happening), and the fact that this legislation was going to solve little (which is the reality). The government, in their infinite gullibility, acted all surprised that all of these predictable outcomes, well, happened. In response, well, they just buried their heads in the sand and pretended that this whole debate was behind them. Hey, at least people like us are no longer being called “shills for Big Tech” now that our predictions came true, so there is that which is nice.
Of course, one of the things that lobbyists constantly bleated about was the problem of news deserts. News deserts were expanding at a shocking rate and more people will be left without local news. Where these lobbyists were right is the fact that news deserts are continuing to be a problem. News rooms are, in fact, shutting down and more people are left without a local news outlets. Where they misled was that Bill C-18 would fix this problem. It had precisely zero chance at solving this problem.
Indeed, the problem of news deserts is a very complicated one. News organizations go under for a whole variety of reasons. Some go under because they are led by idiot management who think things like how the internet is just a stupid waste of time and that the internet will eventually go away on its own. Others go under because of massive media consolidation where the conglomerate corporation decides that it’s not worth it to keep maintaining the local news entity and shut it down. Sometimes, it’s local economic forces where the local saw mill shuts down, killing a huge portion of economic activity and causing local residents to move elsewhere to find jobs, leaving behind a ghost town. A great example of that would be what happened to Mackenzie, BC. I can’t even begin to appreciate how awful that moment must have been for the people of Mackenzie.
Some might look at situations like this and wonder why on earth is this not a problem that can’t be solved by throwing money at the media companies. Simply put, the problem here is the way the math works when it comes to determining how the salvage money from Google works. Essentially, the more full time employees a news organization has on staff, the more of the salvage money pie that the organization got. This is great news if you are an organization like CTV or Global which, of course, has lots of those. If, however, you are a small mom and pop shop that can only afford part time staff, congratulations, you are shit out of luck.
Of course, small media companies didn’t need someone like me to point this out. During senate hearings, the few small media companies that were allowed to speak for themselves pointed out that they were going to be left with, at best, crumbs if anything at all. They were bang on correct with that assessment and that is exactly what they got left with. In short, the Online News Act was essentially a method to transfer money from Google directly over to the largest media players. All of the smaller players got screwed – especially if any of your business model revolves around getting visibility on a platform like Facebook (which is a lot of news rooms, actually).
That is why the Online News Act had zero chance at solving the news desert problems. A lot of the communities under threat depend on smaller outlets to deliver the local news and those outlets are the ones that got screwed the hardest. Not only did they lose access to Facebook, but they got, at most, an insulting amount of money for compensation for the loss of audience access. Lobbyists banging the drum about news deserts were simply using it as an excuse to help themselves to a whole stack of free money.
To the surprise of no one paying attention, the problem of news deserts is persisting with more and more shut downs. One of many examples includes CHAT-TV shutting down earlier this year, threatening to leave the community with fewer choices when it comes to local media. Other communities aren’t so lucky thanks to some of them seeing their last news outlet shut down.
Recent analysis is basically confirming that news deserts continue to be a growing problem. From Signal Halifax:
April Lindgren is the founder and co-director of the Local News Research Project, a combination of content analysis and digital mapping which explores the role of local news across Canada. She started the project back in 2008, when local journalism was the “poor stepsister of journalism research because people were more occupied with national and international coverage.”
“There is a great awakening to the fact that reporters, editors and news organizations that told people’s stories to each other at the community level, that held local power accountable, built a shared sense of community, were extremely important and part of the critical infrastructure of a successful city, town, or rural municipality,” Lindgren said in an interview.According to a report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the proportion of Canadians with one or no local outlets has doubled since 2008, rising from three per cent of the population to seven per cent today.
Lindgren says the decline in local news can’t be solely blamed on corporate acquisitions of smaller outlets.
“There are bad actors at every level of the news system,” says Lindgren.
Data from a Local News Map shows that of 603 local news outlets in 338 Canadian communities that have closed since 2008, 440 were local newspapers. Of the total, 325 were direct closings and 115 were closings due to mergers.
There is precisely zero surprise to be had here as far as I’m concerned. If anything, things like the Online News Act only made matters worse for outlets who used to have traffic come from a platform like Facebook. While it isn’t the only factor, it certainly didn’t help matters here.
If anything, I only expect things on this front to continue to get worse. There are many outlets that are simply focused on being in survival mode with little to no hope of expanding operations and being a healthier business. As the clock winds down and time runs out for more businesses, the problem of news deserts is only going to increase from here on out. Thanks to the government seemingly moving on to other things like international trade, it’s unlikely things are going to improve any time soon.
(Via @PolicyAlternatives.ca)
