Juno News - Liberals promise another $129 million to legacy media

00:00:00.000 Chris Sims is the Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and joins me

00:00:13.240 as always on Mondays. Chris, I'm pulling you away from a staff meeting today,

00:00:17.700 so I don't know if I should say thank you or you're welcome.

00:00:20.980 I can say thank you for now.

00:00:24.180 All right. Well, let's start with the basics here. What has the government announced on

00:00:28.700 this media bailout, which seems to be a continuous plan of theirs now?

00:00:32.600 Yes. To your point and all excellent points on this, Andrew, as always, so far up until now,

00:00:38.720 the so-called media bailout has been just shy of $600 million for journalists outside of the CBC.

00:00:47.460 Keep in mind, viewers, this is other than CBC reporters. So up until now, they would get on

00:00:53.200 average around $14,000 or so per reporter. So per newsroom employee, if they had this so-called

00:01:01.200 bailout money that was coming from the Trudeau government in a newsroom, they would get between

00:01:05.900 $13,000 and $14,000 per reporter. Now, this entire time, a lot of these big media companies had a lobby

00:01:14.480 group that was working on their behalf in Ottawa hand out asking for more money. Lo and behold,

00:01:21.100 during the budget update last week from Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland slipped in there to

00:01:27.140 protect the free press, if you can believe it. They have now more than doubled that amount. So by the

00:01:33.880 time the smoke clears, it looks like each reporter or each newsroom employee will be getting around

00:01:41.500 $28,000 or $29,000. This is again coming from the federal government. So the Taxpayers Federation are

00:01:50.680 super ticked off for two reasons. One, this is an enormous waste of money. There is no way in hell

00:01:55.980 that one nickel of taxpayers' money should go to any private corporation. We're opposed to all corporate

00:02:01.820 welfare, much less media companies. Two, this is a huge and obvious conflict of interest.

00:02:08.740 And Coyne himself has said this directly in newspapers, basically saying,

00:02:14.680 we'll be seen as bag men for the government if we take this money, folks. This is a huge conflict

00:02:21.560 of interest. So to see him sort of changing his tune a little bit on the ad issue panel is pretty

00:02:27.000 disappointing. At the end of the day, this means more money for journalists who are on the payroll

00:02:32.840 already of the Trudeau government. Well, and the one part of this that I find the most ridiculous is that 0.68

00:02:38.300 there is no measure at all of success. And more importantly, there's no target for sustainability

00:02:45.900 because, you know, everyone knows that old saying about teach a man to fish and you feed him for a

00:02:50.200 lifetime versus when you give him a fish and you feed him for a day. Well, this is government giving

00:02:54.480 journalists fish year after year after year. The problems that plague newsrooms, the reason that

00:02:59.140 these newsrooms are in such dire straits and are laying off people is because they don't have a viable

00:03:03.880 business model. This subsidy doesn't charge it, which means it becomes a permanent fixture

00:03:08.420 in the Canadian economy unless a politician comes along and says, well, I'm going to cut you guys off,

00:03:14.420 which then is it's very easy to end the government program politically, as we know.

00:03:18.600 Yeah, for sure. And in fact, I'll go a step further. It's the subsidy itself, I think, that is helping to

00:03:25.520 destroy their businesses. So as we've seen government funding of media creep up over the last few years,

00:03:32.420 we have seen the people's trust in media tank. Just absolutely tank. I've never seen it this bad

00:03:41.040 before. And surprise, the two are obviously related. So the last poll I saw, it was this big

00:03:48.020 in-depth dive. They do it for the past 20 years. It's this corporation in Canada that does a survey on

00:03:53.840 trust. And the last number I saw, I think it was 64% of Canadians now think that journalists are

00:04:02.160 actively trying to mislead them with statements they know to be false. As a journalist, that hurts

00:04:09.920 a lot because you're supposed to lose sleep over a mistake, over a typo, over getting a number or a

00:04:17.020 date wrong, by accident, by innocent mistake. No, no, no, forget that. Now, a big chunk of a majority

00:04:24.200 of Canadians now think that they're actively trying to mislead them. And that's likely connected to the

00:04:30.840 fact that they're on the government's payroll. And what's really disappointing about this, Andrew,

00:04:36.260 is that this doesn't have to be about politics. This could be a left-wing journalism organization

00:04:42.340 or a right-wing or one that tries to stay straight down the middle. You shouldn't take a nickel from

00:04:47.840 the government. Because one of your roles as a journalist is to speak truth to power.

00:04:53.520 And if you're counting on the people in the halls of power for your paycheck, you are not being

00:05:00.340 accountable to the people. You are not speaking truth to power. You are not comforting the afflicted

00:05:05.900 and afflicting the comfortable. You're asking the comfortable for a handout. That is not real

00:05:11.780 journalism. And further, there's no way then that people who support organizations like the Taxpayers

00:05:18.200 Federation who watch True North or even people on the left. There's no way then, if we have more

00:05:23.660 journalists going on the government payroll by the day and them getting more money by the day,

00:05:28.020 there's no way for them to hold the government to account using these organizations. How are they to

00:05:34.340 believe the numbers and the reports coming out of the parliamentary press gallery when they're

00:05:39.640 wondering in the back of their mind, all right, how much of your paycheck is counting on Justin Trudeau?

00:05:43.960 Yeah. And I think that's where, and I'm glad you gave credit where it's due to Andrew Coyne on this.

00:05:48.960 He has been fairly good on this issue because it does undermine the good journalists who are just

00:05:53.920 trying to be there that are not beholden to this, but are now part of a climate that is.

00:05:58.600 And I've said the same in the past about Unifor membership. A lot of print reporters in Canada are

00:06:03.600 members of Unifor. Unifor declared itself the official opposition effectively to the Conservatives in the

00:06:09.320 last two elections. And if you're a reader, how are you not supposed to wonder, well, hang on,

00:06:13.960 is this union steward at this local newspaper not in the bag for one particular side as well?

00:06:20.780 Yeah, exactly. And it's to your point of perception here. And right now, I hope that there are some

00:06:28.000 journalists watching this and thinking about it, because I know there must be by the law of numbers

00:06:33.860 and the people I've worked with in the past of various media organizations, there must be people

00:06:38.360 right now thinking, A, I'm not really comfortable with this as a reporter, or B, I'm doing my job,

00:06:44.980 I'm trying really hard, I'm being balanced. That doesn't matter. That doesn't matter. Because just

00:06:51.580 as in ethics, it is the perception of corruption which matters. Now, because people know that an

00:07:00.180 increasing number of reporters are on the government payroll, it clouds everybody with suspicion. And so

00:07:06.620 it's truly really sad and unfair for those reporters who are doing their damnedest to keep all their W5s

00:07:13.400 straight, to keep their facts straight, to be as balanced as they possibly can. It doesn't matter.

00:07:17.900 They'll be perceived as being on the payroll of the federal government nonetheless. And this is

00:07:23.480 critically important because it's happening simultaneously, along with a crackdown on

00:07:29.100 independent media voices. So with one hand, it's picture it like a vice grip, okay, like the ones

00:07:35.040 that you use in shop class. On the one side of that metal panel, we've got Trudeau increasingly funding

00:07:41.120 certain media organizations and certain reporters. On the other side, he's tightening this vice on

00:07:48.700 online journalism and independent journalism using things like C11 and C18. So C18 is the reason why

00:07:57.180 you suddenly can't see news on Facebook anymore. Google has said they're going to follow suit and

00:08:02.540 pull their news links off the internet. That's because of the Trudeau government. And two, C11 is now

00:08:08.620 passed and the CRTC is rolling out its regulations. And they have announced that platforms that host

00:08:16.400 podcasts, including shows like this, are now going to need to register in order to be regulated.

00:08:23.680 What that means, as far as free expression goes, we don't know, which is why we're super concerned

00:08:28.840 about these two things happening at the same time. Very well said. I'm just flattered you think I was

00:08:34.300 in shop class, rather than the theater, arts, music nerd that I was. I did four years of metalwork,

00:08:40.740 including auto mechanics. I understand what a vice grip is, at least. We didn't need a cello

00:08:45.900 analogy to speak my language. But nevertheless, thank you so much, Chris Sims. I'll let you get

00:08:50.460 back to your staff meeting. Send my best to your wonderful colleagues, and we will talk to you soon.

00:08:54.340 Thanks, Andrew.

00:08:54.920 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North

00:08:59.360 at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - December 02, 2023

Liberals promise another $129 million to legacy media

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