We don’t get the money, but some do

From this people have concluded the federal government is not going to give money to the newspapers that cover it, in the way that it now gives money to magazines, and the CBC, and the film and television and book publishing industries. And no, it does not appear as if the government is going to give money directly to the newspaper publishers, notwithstanding their promises of what they would do if it did or their threats of what they would do if it did not. Not this year, at any rate.

But that does not mean it will not start paying for the news, or that it will not be assisting newspaper publishers in other ways — or that these could not include direct financial support in future. And all of the objections that apply to direct handouts to newspaper publishers apply to the measures announced in the budget.

Take that $50 million. The good news is they’re not giving it to us. The bad news is they’re giving it to someone else. The budget proposes to give the money to “independent non-governmental organizations that will support local journalism in underserved communities.”

Leave aside the failure to demonstrate any practical necessity for this, or any comprehensible meaning to “underserved.” (What is preventing readers in these communities from paying for news if they choose, or entrepreneurs from supplying that demand? Nothing — except, perhaps, for the money the government already provides their competitors in the CBC.) Think rather of that phrase “independent non-governmental organizations.”

We have seen how independent these organizations have tended to be in the past, or how Liberal governments define independence generally. It may not mean “card-carrying Liberal who will take the Liberal party line on every matter.” It does not need to.

There is a difference between Liberal in a partisan sense and liberal in an ideological sense, but there is also a high degree of overlap. The time-honoured practice of Liberal clientelism is to distribute public funds to organizations across the country that, though officially non-partisan, can be depended upon to promote the liberal, and Liberal, worldview. Let us just say the Liberals have not been displeased with the results.

Journalism, especially that of a “democracy-enhancing nature,” inevitably implies ideological choices, intentional or otherwise, no matter how hard those involved try to be fair. Every choice of “what’s a story,” or how it will be framed, is necessarily freighted with ideological assumptions.

Very well. Does anyone seriously believe that one dollar of the money these “independent NGOs” will be handing out will go to cover the news from anything but a liberal status-quo perspective, let alone a smaller-government, is-this-spendingnecessary perspective? For starters, you’d have to be willing to take the subsidy. And if you were not? Then you’d be competing against people who were. Only now it wouldn’t just be the CBC. (I’m also against its $1-billion annual subsidy lest there be any doubt.)

It’s only $50 million? For starters, yes. This is a big, indeed unprecedented step. Had the government weighed in with a boatload of cash all at once, it might have put people off. But the beachhead having successfully been established, does anyone really think it will stop there? With that sum? With those rules? That client list? Why?

And let the newspaper publishers not be too downhearted. “Over the next year,” the budget says — the year before an election, in case that slipped anyone’s mind — “the Government will be exploring new models that enable private giving and philanthropic support for trusted, professional, nonprofit journalism.” These could include granting newspapers “charitable status for not-for-profit provision of journalism, reflecting the public interest that they serve.”

Again: what sort of journalism do you think will be provided by these not-forprofit, charitable-status, public-interest outfits? I’ve no objection if anyone wants to run a newspaper on that basis (at the National Post, we like to say we’ve been working in the non-profit sector for years), though I confess a bias for the sort of writing that is driven by an urgent desire to separate the reader from his money, rather than issued by highminded public servants.

But charitable status means free of tax, together with generous tax credits for donors. No bailout? Hardly. They’re just going to launder it through Revenue Canada.