Bailout will not save the media

Fund will not be a white knight for journalism

NComment ow here’s a story. Says here “Canada’s newspaper industry unites to advocate for Canadian Journalism Fund.” That’s what they’re calling the $350 million the papers want the federal government to give them every year to, well, let’s let them tell it.

According to Bob Cox, chairman of News Media Canada, “the industry has come together in an unprecedented way to” … What? Lobby for public funds? Plead for a rescue? No, to “support Canadians’ continued access to real news.”

Wait, there’s more. “In an unprecedented show of strength,” Cox says elsewhere, “our membership has come together to ask the government to” … Bail us out? Save our cushy jobs? No, to “modernize the existing Canadian Periodical Fund to address the current issues and crisis facing the dissemination of Canadian perspectives.”

By modernize, the industry means to expand, which is to say nearly quintuple a fund that was originally set up for magazines and small community papers to include the big-city dailies. That might sound a little self-serving, so the industry is keen to let you know that’s not what this is about. It’s not to save us. It’s to “save news.”

But if this is about saving news, it’s odd that the publishers should have such a narrow definition of it. Anyone who follows the news these days knows it comes from a vast array of sources: not only traditional newspapers and broadcasters, but Facebook, Twitter, online news outlets like Vice and Buzzfeed, personal or group blogs, and on and on, in every size and configuration.

Who, by contrast, would be eligible for the proposed Canadian Journalism Fund? Well, they’d have to be “taxable corporations,” first. No non-profits, co-operatives, sole proprietorships etc. They’d have to be “majority-owned” by Canadians, second. So a foreign-owned publication, even if it hired only Canadian staff and wrote exclusively about Canada, would also be out.

Not that Canadian ownership would be enough: they’d also have to be “edited, designed, assembled and published in Canada.” So no use of foreigners anywhere in production, even if that made it possible to report more news about Canada for Canadians. They’d have to have “completed at least one uninterrupted 12-month publishing cycle.” So no startups. They’d have to “employ journalistic staff or contractors beyond the owner-publisher.” So no blogs.

And so on, through dozens more qualifications and exclusions, all of which add up to something that looks a whole lot like … the existing Canadian newspaper industry. That’s who would have exclusive access to this fund devoted to “the dissemination of Canadian perspectives,” to the detriment of any competitors, and their perspectives. No wonder they all “came together.”

But remember: it’s not for us. It’s for “journalism.” To be eligible, news organizations would have to engage in “regular and significant production of original reporting,” as if there were some objective or agreed-upon definition of “significant,” “original,” or even “reporting,” as opposed to commentary. They’d also have to report on “civic news,” worthy things like city hall and the courts, though there’s no stipulation of how much of this sort of reporting they would have to do.

And, in perhaps their boldest flourish, the publishers insist the money could not “be put toward non-editorial corporate uses such as dividends, interest payments and executive compensation.” Rather, it could only be used to pay the cost of labour: a 35 per cent rebate on journalists’ salaries up to an $85,000 ceiling.

Except … there’s no requirement that this be for new hires. It could all be marked against existing payrolls — could and, given the state of the industry, would. And … money is fungible. It doesn’t come with little labels on it. So yes, you could say the money went to reducing the cost of labour, leaving all else unchanged. Or you could say it went to pay for other things, and hold payroll costs constant.

In practice, it’s just free money: the $190 million for “Canadian Civic News,” the $75 million for “Business Innovation,” all of it. No doubt some of it would be dealt away to the industry’s unions at the bargaining table — in higher salaries for existing employees, that is. Who knows? Some of it might even find its way into executive bonuses.

The one thing it will not do is save the industry. It won’t fix our problems. It will just make them easier to avoid. Worse, it will draw us into the political arena, not just as observers but as an issue in our own right.

Suppose the Liberals are mad enough to accept the publishers’ plea for a bailout, albeit in some modified or disguised form. The Tories are on record firmly opposing any government support for the news business: “Government measures to support media,” the party observed in dissenting from the recent Commons Canadian Heritage committee report on the subject, “are intrinsically contrary to the concept of a genuinely free and independent media.”

That’s pretty unequivocal. So the next election could well be one in which the Liberals run on government support to “save the news” — support the industry plainly regards as making the difference between life and death, or if you’re a journalist between employment and unemployment — while the Tories promise to cut us off.

Is it really to be supposed the industry, its owners and staff, would remain indifferent on such an existential question? More to the point, would the Tories really dare to antagonize us by taking away our funding — not just the CBC now, but the entire Canadian media?