On this episode of the podcast, we are joined by former Canadian Press editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail, Peter Bergen, to talk about the government's attempts to get control of the internet, Bill C-18, the CRTC, and much more.
00:00:00.000C-18 came in this week. Prior to that, C-11, which was a year ago called C-10 before the government fell, was reintroduced. We've still got the online harms bill to come.
00:00:13.480The government seems very determined to control the internet, and that kind of makes me sad because the internet is such a dynamic and wonderful thing. Yes, it has problems. Yes, there are issues with it.
00:00:30.100Yes, there are areas that, you know, in terms of privacy, data collection, and that sort of stuff with big tech that you want to look at for regulation.
00:00:38.260But these guys are kind of funny. They keep saying that free speech will be protected in one breath, and in the next breath, they say, well, we have to do this to stop disinformation.
00:00:49.980So one of the problems, one of the things you have to live with, with free speech is a certain amount of disinformation.
00:00:55.940So there you go. That's, you've got, you're looking down three barrels at the moment, and I'm really quite concerned that the interaction between funding for media and that sort of stuff is going to interfere with the debate.
00:01:17.120Well, that's something I was kind of ranting about before. I mean, in a bit of a self-serving way, but it's the truth.
00:01:22.880You're going to be beholden to whoever pays your bills, and if that turns out to be the government at some point, well, then chances are you're going to be a lot less inclined to be critical of the government at the time because you just don't want that boat to be rocked.
00:01:35.120Right. I mean, Bill C-18, you know, for your viewers and listeners who aren't familiar with it, it forces big tech companies like Facebook and LinkedIn and Google to pay money to news organizations.
00:01:50.520Not just any news organizations, but we're going to approved news organizations that the federal government has set up a panel to approve what is a real news organization and what isn't a real news organization.
00:02:05.280You guys applied for that just to see what would happen. You got a couple raised eyebrows, but a nod, and then you politely declined to take the cash, which I think speaks well of you because as a former newspaper man, I'm shocked at the extent to which today's publishers are willing to accept this contradiction in their independence.
00:02:35.280To their independence like that. Anyway, C-18 forces the Facebook, et cetera, to feed money to these companies for a fantasy commercial exchange, and it really puts the big publishers in the pocket of the government in, not directly, but in indirectly enough that it's going to make,
00:03:01.900I think it's going to undermine their credibility with their readers and listeners.
00:03:06.900Well, absolutely. I mean, they're kind of pointing out, some pointed back and said, well, I see the standard qualified, you know, they're not unfair as a committee.
00:03:13.900But the thing was, if we had accepted that, and then we became dependent on that shakedown, as the term has been put, for the social media giants to get that money, well, we are always going to be fearful, though, of losing our status as an approved media outlet.
00:03:26.900So, I mean, if that rug could be yanked out from under us at any given time, we're not going to be fully independent, and we're going to always have that in the back of our minds, even if unintentional when reporting on anything, and that's not good.
00:03:37.900Yeah, and, you know, even if you are pure as the driven snow, people who consume your product will wonder if you are, right?
00:03:48.460So, like, these conflicts of interest, like, really interesting going back, been involved in a few of these, you know, you hear people say, hey, I know when I'm in a conflict of interest, you know, I'm okay, you know, it doesn't matter that, you know, this story is about the priest at the church I went to, I can still report on it fairly.
00:04:05.640Well, you know, perhaps you can, but the point is, you should not, because other people will think you can't, and that's the way conflict of interest works.
00:04:15.480So, that's what happens with these sort of connections, where you are always thinking about it in the back of your head, and it informs your behavior, right?
00:04:27.000I mean, one of the things with C-18 as laid out, right, the Facebook, let's use Facebook as an example, has to come to an agreement with, call it the National Post, right?
00:04:39.840And as part of that agreement, they have to assure that the money they are sending them is spent on national, you know, Canadian news, right?
00:04:51.320And then, after that, the CRTC has to approve that agreement, right?
00:04:59.160So, just like you said, when you're building that agreement about how that money gets spent, you're going to build it knowing that you are seeking the CRTC's approval, right?
00:05:10.720So, essentially, through this system, whether intended or otherwise, you have the behaviors of the newsrooms of the nation being, they are being overseen by an arm of government.
00:05:26.200And I just find that, no matter how benign the intentions, I just find that terrifying.
00:05:35.820And, I mean, any developed democracy always will have a clause somewhere in their constitution or their charter or whatever, making sure to protect free press.
00:05:43.900I mean, they recognize how important it is to have media feel comfortable with the ability to be critical of their own government.
00:05:51.900If you lose that, you can be into a great deal of trouble.
00:05:55.080And, of course, whether well-meaning or not, you know, authoritarian regimes do not like a free press.
00:06:01.100So, that's one of the first things they'll always control.
00:06:17.740Russia TV, you know, was in the news recently, RTV, right?
00:06:21.620I mean, the Russians claim it's a free and independent media.
00:06:24.140One of the things we have to be careful about when we do these things is, well, we may assume that we have the high moral ground on things that we do, is that we are not using the exact same arguments as other nations who are less democratically inclined than, say, we are and think it's okay because we're better.
00:06:45.320You know, the argument is either good or the argument is bad.
00:06:48.540So, you either have an independent press or you don't.
00:06:51.800Just because you're getting your money from a Justin Trudeau government as opposed to a Vladimir Putin government doesn't mean you're not taking the government's money.
00:07:04.400And, I mean, I understand people are also mistrustful of some of these social media giants.
00:07:07.320I mean, they exert a great amount of influence on the information that's going out and our abilities.
00:07:13.220Facebook frustrates us to no end with the Western Standard because they're very essential to us to be able to share our stories to a broad audience.
00:07:19.980But, at the same time, you know, it's a symbiotic relationship.
00:07:24.880I mean, we're providing content for them.
00:07:27.300And they provide a platform for us to share it out.
00:07:30.240But we can be pushed around a bit by some of those bigger ones as well.
00:07:34.080But, I mean, you know, letting those relationships evolve on their own should be able to let the chips fall the right way.
00:07:39.680We don't need the government in there stirring it up in the meantime.
00:07:41.940Yeah, but, I mean, you raise a good point there.
00:07:44.460And you raise one in which I think there's a legitimate case for some oversight.
00:07:49.160Not by the government itself, but from, you know, an arm's length agency.
00:07:53.820And, like, I'm a senior fellow with the MacDonald-Laurier Institute.
00:07:57.820And my former chairman at the CRTC, Conrad von Finkenstein, is a senior fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute.
00:08:04.640And we actually created a policy paper that said, okay, if you're going to do this stuff, this is how you should do it.
00:08:10.580And we called it the Social Media Responsibility Act.
00:08:16.080And the idea behind that is to make sure that companies like Facebook who are, let's face it, are in a pretty dominant position in the marketplace, right?
00:08:25.800It's not a full monopoly, but it's as close as you're going to get, right?
00:08:32.920If you want to reach audiences, you don't have too many options other than to go through Facebook.
00:08:36.800It's to make sure that they're behaving themselves and they're treating everybody equally and fairly and they're upholding free speech.
00:08:45.620That's a different approach than the one that the Canadian Department of Heritage has been taking, which is much more hands-on.
00:08:53.120We want to make our suggestion is that if you're going to regulate the Internet, you make sure that you regulate not the Internet, but these large dominant companies to make sure that they are treating people fairly and giving everyone an equal voice.
00:09:09.320So if you get booted off for saying something bad, somebody on the other end of the spectrum gets booted off for saying the same thing that's bad.
00:09:20.940You have the same rules and the same application of the rules.
00:09:23.700Yeah, which is, you know, always difficult to come up with, but not impossible.
00:09:28.440Media, though, is in a general period of flux.
00:09:31.520You know, we're in a transition right now that we've never seen before.
00:09:36.380You know, the conventional outlets are having a very hard time.
00:09:40.780I mean, I've talked about that before.
00:09:42.700The advantages we have, we've set up, you know, at some degree of expense, a studio and a broadcast and a publication now and everything, which took some investment.
00:09:52.400But, I mean, not even a tiny fraction of what it would have cost 20 years ago if you wanted to open a television studio or a printing press or things like that.
00:10:01.740So, I mean, the older institutions and the mainstream media outlets that still have those large infrastructure and overhead, they are having a really hard time competing with outlets like ours right now.
00:10:14.340And, again, I mean, I'm a free market guy.
00:10:15.700I just kind of say let the chips fall where they may, but it still is putting a lot of pressure on the entire industry right now.
00:10:21.000So, how can we work with that transition?
00:10:24.480I mean, we're going through a transition right now that's every bit as profound as the invention of the printing press, right?
00:10:29.660I mean, people need to get their heads around that.
00:10:31.680There's a lot of people in the traditional fields who are kind of like, well, this is like the new, you know, Internet.
00:10:38.400This is like the new cable or is this what this?
00:10:40.800No, this is something entirely new, right?
00:10:43.260And it's had a devastating effect on the old newspaper industry and that sort of stuff.
00:10:49.320So, if governments are looking to support, you know, if people are worried about the state of journalism, which is a legitimate worry.
00:10:56.420I mean, you can worry about it for all kinds of reasons.
00:10:59.160But if you're worried about it, you know, and having a financial foundation, what you should be investing in or what you should be getting out of the way of.
00:11:07.640And this is I'm a bit more like you in this is where can government get out of the way, right?
00:11:13.700And and allow for innovation to flourish, right?
00:11:17.160So, like your media and there's some others around, you know, it'll work or it won't.
00:11:23.600Nobody knows yet, but you probably are making adjusting things all the time on the way you go.
00:11:33.220What the government's doing right now with C-18 is it is propping up failed, clearly failed business models.
00:11:40.460What it should be doing, if it does anything, is getting out of the way of innovation for innovators such as yourself and also seeing if these guys, helping these guys transition into whatever it is that's going to work for the next stage.
00:11:54.840But all that big old infrastructure, all those collective, expensive collective bargaining agreements, they're not sustainable.
00:12:02.580No, we just have to accept that it's going to change and some people have to flex and there's still room for some some great media professionals.
00:12:10.500I mean, it's worked in our benefit in some ways.
00:12:12.460You know, we've gotten a hold of Dave Naylor here in our newsroom and we have columnists, people you've worked with, familiar with, such as Makachuk and others.
00:12:20.040And they've moved on to the new format right now, though it's still difficult because, I mean, it's not as lucrative as it used to be.
00:12:25.700I mean, one of the things people forget is classified ads that you would know as well as anyway.
00:12:29.440That was a huge part of the revenue stream for newspapers and they're gone now and they've got to figure out how to cope with that.
00:12:34.880No, and they've been gone for a long time.
00:12:36.380Classified basically paid for the newsroom, right, in terms of profit and maybe even more than that, right?
00:12:43.200So losing that and that's like a remarkable, right, because it's initially you were losing it to other online, you know, revenue or companies and that sort of stuff who were still charging.
00:12:55.580And then Kijiji came along and has given it away for free.
00:13:27.640That's what new companies should be doing.
00:13:31.620One of the things that concerns me about C18 is that by propping up the failed business models, they're actually handicapping entrepreneurs like you.
00:13:41.140Yeah, well, and slowing that evolution.
00:13:44.300I mean, to a degree, you can think it's doing a disservice to some of the established journalists who, you know, unfortunately might have to move on from those legacy outlets, but they delay it too long.
00:13:58.780I mean, I started in the conventional survey industry.
00:14:00.600I had to learn optical survey and all of that.
00:14:02.360And then GPS came along and wiped out all my training.
00:14:05.500A guy could learn in 20 minutes, you know, with a digital unit what took me years of getting abused by a surveyor to figure out how to do with a transit.
00:14:11.620But your options as a surveyor were to embrace GPS and move on to the new technology or be left behind.
00:14:18.580And if somebody had artificially held up the old survey source, some guys would have stuck with it, but they would have paid a bad price for it in the long run.
00:14:28.660I mean, you've got to be able to change.
00:14:30.180And it's very, I remember when I was in the newspaper business, somebody used to say, the moment you see a trend arrive on the pages of a newspaper, you know it's over.
00:14:40.400Which was like, they were big, like oil tanker type vehicles.
00:14:47.900They were very powerful, very strong, very, very rich at their time.
00:14:53.480But they were pretty hard to turn around in a hurry in terms of that.
00:14:58.240So, I mean, you know, the dinosaur analogy isn't fair, but, well, in a sense it is.
00:15:06.440I mean, it wasn't the dinosaur's fault that the asteroid hit, right?
00:15:11.680And, you know, the internet is the asteroid that hit the newspaper industry.
00:16:06.800It's not, you're not on a mission to do anything other than gather the facts and present them in a fair and unbiased fashion to your audience.
00:16:14.780I think, I think that's the prayer people should hold to.
00:16:44.680And, I mean, you know, all this funding going to what we call legacy media and the big companies, Bell and Shaw and Rogers and, I mean, Bill C-18, the biggest beneficiary of that is going to be the CBC, which isn't an extremist at all.
00:17:59.620Well, I think there's still some opportunities left in the committee process, right?
00:18:04.260There's, when you get into that, it's not like question period where people have, or politicians have to perform theatrics.
00:18:12.000And I have seen in the past, once they get into the committee process and people start proposing amendments, that there are points at which somebody might say, you know, you kind of got a point there, right?
00:18:23.660So the legislation will pass, maybe with some impact, but, I mean, people should do their best to follow this, make noise with their MPs and make noise with Heritage Canada and other places, and even with their local media, you know, who are benefiting from this, and ask for more information.
00:18:47.720It's been kind of frustrating for somebody like me, who's, I realize I'm really close to it, and there's some sort of risk of me coming across as too policy wonky.
00:18:58.520But, like, if people can get that upset about wearing a mask, how can you not get upset about losing your freedom of speech?
00:19:05.380How can you not get upset about your media, right, taking money from the government, being dependent on the government, right?
00:19:14.860Like, I'm not saying being upset about a mask doesn't have value or isn't purposeless, but, you know, it's temporary, right?
00:19:25.780This other stuff is going to last for a very long time, and we'll have a creep to it that is worrisome.
00:19:35.960Yeah, it's always a lot harder to get rights back than it is to give them away.
00:19:50.620You know, we'll keep pushing through no matter what, as will a number of other outlets and people with, you know, an integrity and ambition.
00:19:57.540There just might be some bumps in the road along the way.
00:20:54.660I would encourage people to, you know, go online and go to places like michaelgeist.ca.
00:21:02.540Michael's a law professor at the University of Ottawa, the Canada Research Chair in Internet Law, and he is a very articulate critic of this,
00:21:14.400and he manages to analyze it legally but still make his analyses accessible to those of us among the great unwashed when it comes to that sort of stuff.
00:21:26.480So Michael's actually very good at translating things like that.
00:21:30.080I expect there will be some reporting on platforms such as your own, independent platforms.
00:21:39.880I think the line is another group that's not taking the money.
00:21:44.640So find the truly independent media and look for commentary and stories on those posts because I'm afraid we can't expect right now within our major media to see much pushback on any of these bills.
00:22:54.800So that's it makes me angry, I guess it makes me frustrated or I'm disappointed is probably a better way to say it when I see bad journalism, because it drags down the good ones.