Western Standard - June 15, 2023


Subsidized media is controlled media

Topics
government subsidies and media control legacy media collapse
Mentioned
Tucker Carlson Elon Musk Bill C-63 Trudeau Stalin
MPC Daily Market Update June 14, 2023 MPC Daily Market Update June 16, 2023

Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

194.65

Word count

1,092

Sentence count

67


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In Canada, the government is trying to take control of the media. Bill C-18 is a bill that would force social media platforms to pay certain media outlets when they provide links to them, and could spell trouble for independent media outlets.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Lots of folks are probably familiar with that old saying, he who pays the piper calls the tune.
00:00:04.440 Well, in Canada, the government's paying the piper with your tax dollars, the media piper, anyways,
00:00:09.580 and it's calling the tune through regulations.
00:00:12.700 I mean, the CBC, they've pretty much nearly completed their transformation into a true state media outlet.
00:00:19.080 I mean, newscasts, pundits, and stories on CBC, they sound more like communications for the governing Liberal Party
00:00:24.600 than actually reporting news anymore.
00:00:26.460 But legacy media outlets, they aren't that far behind now.
00:00:29.860 They're getting increasingly dependent on federal subsidies to keep the lights on.
00:00:34.740 Now, face it, subsidies, they stunt innovation, and this is a time when we need it.
00:00:39.580 The older media outlets should have been changing their business models to adapt to a digital world.
00:00:44.160 Instead, they've been honing their lobbying skills and becoming, you know, getting better at accepting handouts
00:00:49.980 and putting that into their budget.
00:00:51.820 Now they're beholden to the government, and it shows.
00:00:55.240 And the controls the government has on them can be subtle, but they're there.
00:00:58.000 I mean, since 2019, the government's been paying out payroll subsidies to those they consider qualified news organizations.
00:01:05.840 So this money comes with strings attached, of course.
00:01:08.440 In order to be qualified, applicants must prove, and this is from their document here,
00:01:13.940 a consistent practice of providing rebuttal opportunity for those being criticized,
00:01:17.940 including the government of Canada.
00:01:20.600 So what that's led to, though, is an obligation now.
00:01:23.340 When government agencies, they make demands on the media outlets to counter anything they may report.
00:01:28.660 The Federal Department of Health issued hundreds of what they call corrections to media outlets
00:01:33.540 over the course of the last couple of years.
00:01:35.080 Hundreds.
00:01:36.260 Other media, I mean, other departments of the government surely have been doing the same sort of thing.
00:01:40.340 Critical discourse on health issues has been gagged since the beginning of the pandemic.
00:01:45.220 Government agencies have their own agenda, particularly the health department,
00:01:48.340 and now they've got the power to muscle in on legacy media outlets.
00:01:51.900 If they don't like the media messaging, they'll put the pressure on.
00:01:56.240 This has trained a lot of those outlets to avoid reporting on any commentary
00:01:59.940 that might run afoul of the health department or the government itself.
00:02:02.880 I mean, if an outlet garners too many of those corrections,
00:02:05.340 they might find themselves not qualified anymore and bumped from the subsidy train.
00:02:09.940 Bill C-18.
00:02:11.300 Of course, we've been hearing about that one.
00:02:12.940 That's even more bold and sneaky as a means of controlling the media.
00:02:16.180 With that bill, the government wants to force social media platforms
00:02:19.020 to pay certain media outlets when they provide links to them.
00:02:23.660 The outlets that will qualify for those payments, of course,
00:02:25.860 they'll be determined by a government committee,
00:02:28.100 and that committee will be appointed by the liberals.
00:02:30.840 This way, the government keeps its thumb on the media
00:02:32.980 and forces somebody else to pay the bill for them on top of it.
00:02:36.460 Stalin would have blushed with such a move.
00:02:39.100 Independent media outlets are still springing up and expanding,
00:02:41.900 despite the government.
00:02:43.380 These outlets have shunned government subsidies
00:02:45.260 and tapped into the private market to pay their bills,
00:02:48.080 whether through subscriptions or advertising,
00:02:49.820 or both like we do here at the Western Standard.
00:02:52.660 This allows the outlets to maintain full independence from the government.
00:02:56.880 Independent outlets are dependent, though,
00:02:58.620 on social media platforms to aid with their distribution.
00:03:01.540 Independent outlets don't have mandatory carriage on cable channels,
00:03:06.220 as legacy outlets do,
00:03:07.460 and they don't have the means for broader advertising
00:03:10.020 to draw readers and viewers like some of those legacy media outlets do.
00:03:13.360 We need Twitter, YouTube, Meta, Google,
00:03:15.820 all of those ones to get to people out there.
00:03:18.480 The government's recognized this,
00:03:19.700 and now they've seen a way to shut down independent media outlets with C-18.
00:03:24.060 Because, I mean, not only will the media outlets
00:03:25.300 be forced to pay out certain media outlets,
00:03:29.220 I should say the social media outlets be forced to pay that out to media outlets,
00:03:32.240 they'll be leaving the independent outlets out to dry.
00:03:36.160 They won't be able to compete.
00:03:37.060 They might not even get links through them.
00:03:39.380 Now, right now, Meta and Google are threatening
00:03:41.140 to drop links to all news sites,
00:03:43.400 whether independent or legacy,
00:03:44.600 as a response to the Trudeau government's heavy-handed approach.
00:03:47.280 And can you blame them?
00:03:49.200 I mean, come on, they're putting the screws to them.
00:03:50.480 What else do they get to say?
00:03:51.060 Well, fine, we don't have to give links.
00:03:52.740 We'll just stop.
00:03:54.160 This response, though, is going to harm everybody.
00:03:56.240 It's tougher than ever to access a broad spectrum of news coverage and analysis.
00:04:01.340 But hope is on the horizon in some ways.
00:04:03.320 Elon Musk, I mean, he's proven to be a disruptor
00:04:05.640 indifferent to the establishment, and I love that.
00:04:07.960 He's willing to go against the grain
00:04:09.560 and stir up the social media world.
00:04:11.700 And Musk has the means to take,
00:04:13.840 and that's the reality of it,
00:04:14.920 the financial beating that comes with going into such a battle.
00:04:18.660 Now, whether, for example, one likes Tucker Carlson or not,
00:04:21.260 it doesn't really matter.
00:04:21.980 The unfolding, though, story from his firing from Fox News
00:04:25.620 and his streaming his show on Twitter now is remarkable.
00:04:29.400 Carlson's first episode of Tucker on Twitter
00:04:31.420 garnered 114.8 million views
00:04:34.620 between June 6th and June 12th.
00:04:37.500 Now, to put that in perspective,
00:04:39.580 the average CNN show draws about 500,000 viewers.
00:04:43.860 Just blew them completely out of the water.
00:04:46.220 A whole new broadcast medium is exploding on the scene,
00:04:49.860 and it's already leaving the conventional media behind.
00:04:52.840 If a show, of course, whether it's Tucker or anything else,
00:04:54.980 can gather millions or tens of millions of viewers,
00:04:57.920 it will draw advertising and revenue.
00:05:00.700 The show won't need tax dollars.
00:05:02.760 If the platform's owned by somebody as intransigent as Elon Musk,
00:05:06.260 you know, it won't capitulate to government control,
00:05:08.940 at least not easily, if ever.
00:05:11.220 The battle for free media versus government control media
00:05:13.580 is just heating up in Canada.
00:05:14.880 It's going to take some time,
00:05:17.120 but the legacy media outlets will collapse eventually
00:05:19.400 for lack of viewership, despite the government subsidies.
00:05:22.540 And we will see independent media outlets.
00:05:24.520 Some will come, some will go,
00:05:25.480 but eventually they will establish
00:05:26.980 the new order of media provision.
00:05:29.020 The only question now, though, is how long will it take
00:05:31.400 and how much damage will the government cause
00:05:33.260 in trying to maintain an obsolete status quo
00:05:35.720 for its own benefit?