Juno News - February 18, 2024


Is the legacy media dying？ (ft. Kris Sims)


Episode Stats

Length

7 minutes

Words per Minute

188.74466

Word Count

1,488

Sentence Count

100


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I've told my story on the show time and time again about how bloated CBC is, about how
00:00:14.240 many people they have doing jobs that even their private sector competitors at CTV and
00:00:19.480 Global do not have, let alone independent media startups like yours, Truly and True
00:00:24.480 North. But the reason I bring that up is to say that these, these operations have not done in many
00:00:30.200 ways, the work that they've needed to do to downsize and trim down in a sustainable way.
00:00:37.460 Now, again, I don't celebrate people being out of work, but you know what? The folks that,
00:00:42.420 you know, run the printing presses are not as valuable as the folks that run the digital for
00:00:47.120 newspapers. A lot of TV reporters have to shoot their own videos. So there are not a lot of jobs
00:00:52.600 for camera operators compared to what they're usually, they're used to be historically. And
00:00:57.060 at some larger players, they may be. All of this is tragic for individuals, but it is part of an
00:01:02.340 evolution. And when you get government trying to delay the inevitable, it is a recipe for exactly
00:01:08.860 what happened on Friday. So government, I think, has to take its hands off. Now, that means that
00:01:14.880 companies will either sink or swim. I have a hard time believing the doomsday scenario that there is
00:01:19.920 no business model for news. I think the existence of organizations like True North proves there is a
00:01:24.640 business model for news, but you have to be creative, you have to be nimble, and you cannot
00:01:28.960 rely on the state, and you cannot rely on old practices. Now, this is something that I think
00:01:35.840 the government desperately, desperately needs to learn as a lesson. We just have a few minutes left
00:01:40.440 in the show here, but we'll bring in our friend Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
00:01:45.720 Chris, you know, I think there's a cautionary tale in all of this, that government is
00:01:49.260 delaying the inevitable. And when government gets involved in subsidizing, all of a sudden,
00:01:54.640 it adds a new dimension into business decisions, which is that the government can turn around and
00:01:59.140 point to Bell and say, well, hang on, you don't have the right to do that because we've been giving
00:02:03.160 you money. So this is entirely inevitable, in my view. Yes, you must be shaking your head because I
00:02:09.060 think you and I have had this warning conversation now for the past five, six, maybe more years than
00:02:14.080 this. This is what happens when you start relying on the government for your payroll. It's even worse,
00:02:19.460 Andrew, when you have a trade like journalism, we have a calling like journalism. So I know a lot of
00:02:26.760 us who went to journalism school, and some of us who didn't, who truly feel journalism is a calling,
00:02:30.960 we want to speak truth to power. We want to comfort the afflicted. We want to find the answers to our W5
00:02:37.900 questions. Let that show rest in peace. Very sad to see that show go. But then you become beholden to
00:02:44.040 the very thing you're supposed to be holding accountable, the state. And look what's happened.
00:02:49.800 Full disclosure, I worked for CTV for many years, the vast majority of the time, everything went really
00:02:56.320 well. So it's not a sour grapes thing. I'm appealing though, to my former colleagues, some of whom have
00:03:02.180 lost their jobs, to take a look at this funding structure and realize what has happened in that
00:03:08.280 your mother corporation, okay, has taken money while saying, unless you do this, we're going to cut jobs
00:03:14.260 and news. And they've turned around and done that anyway. Two weeks after, I don't know if you noted
00:03:19.160 this earlier in your show, Andrew, two weeks after Bell Let's Talk, right? What worse thing for mental
00:03:25.420 health happens than losing your job? Very few things. And it used to be a little thing among the
00:03:32.420 newsrooms. It was kind of grim and macabre, but they used to joke among the rank and file workers of,
00:03:38.340 oh, Bell Let's Talk days coming up, because they knew that's often when the company would time layoff
00:03:43.660 notices. After, right after. I'm not joking. So I've carried that bag out of my drawer at my desk.
00:03:52.440 I've cleaned that out many times, quite often leaving Bell. Again, not fired, but laid off,
00:03:57.780 downturned, furloughed, all those things. And so we're in a massive change right now when it comes
00:04:04.020 to government, okay? We're seeing the state broadcaster, CBC, coming under heavy fire for
00:04:09.960 taking all this government money and still blowing Canadians' money on bonuses and wastefulness with
00:04:15.540 their CEO. We're seeing more and more mainstream journalists going on government payroll, and we're
00:04:21.220 seeing trust just take a nosedive. People aren't watching, they're not listening, they're tuning out
00:04:25.840 of mainstream media. And here on the other side, hopefully we're seeing a rebirth. We're seeing a
00:04:30.900 resurgence of independent journalism. That's my hope, is that we can get shows like this becoming
00:04:36.080 viewed more and more often. Yeah. And look, I mean, one of the things that I would point out here
00:04:41.880 for people is that there is money available in media. You look at the number of people that are making
00:04:47.400 big money on Substack. You look at people that are, I wouldn't say making big money,
00:04:52.960 but people that are able to make a decent living through podcasting and through other work. And
00:04:58.700 it's different. And, you know, there are questions that you can raise about the journalistic rigor of
00:05:03.440 all of that is, you know, Barry Weiss's Substack to the same standard as Glenn Greenwald's The Intercept,
00:05:09.020 to the same standard as your local paper. And these are questions that consumers, I think,
00:05:13.320 that readers have to adjudicate for themselves. So I think the problem here is that there's been a lot
00:05:18.580 of coasting on legacy credentials that have been taking place where we are the baseline, we are the
00:05:24.860 benchmark, we are the gold standard. And that, I think there's been a bit of denial there, which
00:05:29.720 has contributed to where we are. Yes. Yes. And it's hard because I've been back and forth. I've done
00:05:36.740 mainstream media. I've done kind of this mix of independent and mainstream, which was Sun News Network,
00:05:41.320 which has given birth to a lot of different new independent shows. And so I've been through that
00:05:46.220 rigmarole and I've been through the agony of losing your job, having your network shut down,
00:05:51.020 CRTC getting involved, all that stuff happening. And so again, my hope is that both through,
00:05:57.800 okay, here's one thing. I think we need to take a long, hard look at the clubs that are journalists
00:06:03.620 within capital cities. Okay. That includes the parliamentary press gallery of which I was a member for many
00:06:09.360 years. We need to break up those cool kids clubs because it causes groupthink. Okay. It makes them
00:06:16.180 think that number one, they all need to say the same thing and ask the same and write questions.
00:06:21.160 And if you don't, you're not a cool kid. Okay. Cause you get peer pressure there too. It kind of
00:06:27.000 insulates them from the realities and the storms of what is going on in the rest of the media world.
00:06:33.560 And it makes them start thinking that they don't need to change and that they don't need to alter
00:06:38.140 their formats and they don't need to change their command structure. And they do, they clearly do.
00:06:43.240 And that going to government is not going to help them. It's not going to save them.
00:06:48.000 Pierre Polyev just addressed a lot of this, conservative leader, opposition leader,
00:06:51.900 addressed a lot of this in the last press conference he just did on Arrive Can. And he held
00:06:57.180 forth on the problem of the government handing over millions of dollars to the media, yet the media
00:07:03.600 turning around and axing people's jobs anyway. And this is not CBC. Again, I can't believe we're
00:07:09.380 having this conversation. This is supposedly private media corporations. So I can see all of this kind
00:07:14.920 of coming to a pointy end within the next year or so. I think you're going to see a big, a big shakeup.
00:07:20.760 Yeah. Very well said. We'll have you back on next week as always. Although it's family day in Ontario.
00:07:27.060 So next Monday, so we'll have to, can we get you on next Tuesday? I can do Monday or Tuesday. My kids
00:07:32.280 can wait. They're good. Well, I'm not doing Monday. So you'll be here wondering where the show is to
00:07:37.820 introduce you, but we'll, we'll figure it out. Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
00:07:42.020 Always a pleasure, Chris. Thanks for coming on. Likewise. Thanks, Andrew.
00:07:44.720 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North
00:07:49.600 at www.tnc.news.