Alberta Premier Rachel Notley’s blacklist of journalists she doesn’t like has been suspended in the face of national condemnation. But it may return: Notley has asked a retired newspaper editor to make recommendations about “the government’s media policies.”
In Canada though, governments don’t have media policies. The only real accreditation necessary is found in the Charter of Rights using its guarantee of a free press. Notley’s desire to regulate journalists – whether through sheriffs and Department of Justice letters, as she did last week, or through high-priced advisers, as she’s trying in a few days – smacks of banana republic socialism.
But even when Alberta’s NDP government backs down from attacking journalists it does not like, there is a larger condition in Canadian media: governments sponsoring journalists they do like.
The CBC may be the obvious example. Within the recent federal election, the NDP and Liberals battled for the hearts and minds from the CBC’s journalists. Thomas Mulcair started the bidding having a promise of a $115 million annual CBC bonus if he were elected. To not be outdone, Trudeau upped the ante to a whopping $150 million. The politicians were brazen: they were providing the journalists who cover them successful fee if they were elected. It is just human nature the countless CBC journalists who have been focusing on the election would consider what that cash would mean. Not really a week goes by without news of deep cuts in Canadian media and $150 million annually would save lots of jobs. Overlook the natural ideological affinity between your left-leaning CBC and Trudeau. It was about bread and butter.
We don’t have to speculate whether journalists were affected by this legal bribe. The Canadian Media Guild, the journalists’ union that dominates the CBC along with the Canadian Press newswire, formally registered like a “third-party” campaign group with Elections Canada, much like U.S. SuperPACs. Every unionized journalist covering the election was contributing part of their own salary to an anti-Harper election effort. Of course, CBC election reports didn’t disclose this conflict of great interest.
It’s a gentle type of corruption, when politicians spend the money for journalists who cover them
It’s not just CBC journalists who are corrupted by being politicians’ pets. Journalists at private media are, too. As they nervously polish up their LinkedIn resumes, they cannot help but observe that the only major, national news organization still hiring may be the CBC – this week it posted a want ad for a newspaper-style editor for “features and columns.” How many private sector journalists are tailoring their own work how to mirror the editorial type of the CBC where they hope to be in six months?
And there are hundreds of private sector journalists who top-up their income with appearances as freelance guests on CBC radio or TV. It is a soft form of corruption, when politicians pay the journalists who cover them. It is the carrot, compared to Rachel Notley’s stick. However the CBC hasn’t just editorially compromised itself. Within the age of the web, its very existence undermines its private competitors.
In yesteryear, private Radio and tv stations overcame the CBC’s government-funded advantage with government gifts that belongs to them, granted through the CRTC. For instance, in 1997, the federal government ordered every cable company in English Canada to carry CTV Newsnet, and each cable subscriber to pay for it, whether or not they wanted it or not. CTV is around the dole, too. All TV and radio information mill. To acquire protection.
Related
- Jen Gerson: Notley’s about-face a rare reversal on a stupid decisionTristin Hopper: If I were Rachel Notley, I would welcome The Rebel with a season’s pass to all press eventsAlberta NDP says ‘it’s clear we designed a mistake’ in banning Ezra Levant’s The Rebel
-
-
-
But newspapers were free – no government licences needed, no government competitors to crowd them out. Before the Internet converged all these worlds into one. How could magazines and newspapers, the hardest-hit media companies today, compete on the Internet against a CBC that dumps all its subsidized TV and radio content online for free? The CBC is mindful of its artificial advantage, and sometimes rubs it in. Once the Calgary Herald first tried to implement a subscriber paywall, gleeful CBC journalists within the city took to Twitter boasting that unlike the Herald, their content was free. No it isn’t – they simply place their fee from taxpayers by force. And there is no CRTC for newspapers using the capacity to order every Canadian to purchase newspapers whether or not they would like them or not.
When technology disrupt the old, it’s called creative destruction; candles are substituted with light bulbs. There’s lots of that going on using the Internet. But there’s also a large amount of government favouritism happening too. That’s not just deciding which companies live and die. Nearly as much as Rachel Notley’s machinations, that sends a signal to journalists by what they have to say editorially, if they wish to survive.
Ezra Levant may be the publisher of www.TheRebel.media
