We ignore the decline of serious print journalism at our peril

Why are Canadian politicians unwilling to support newspapers when they already support broadcast media and magazines?

Isn’t it curious that the same politicians who spend more than $1.5 billion on public broadcasting in Canada, and grant nearly a $1 billion to private program producers and broadcasters, and tens of millions more to magazines, are the same ones who sneer at the idea of supporting serious print journalism? They flippantly dismiss “failing business models” when discussing Canada’s largest serious newspapers. They miss the irony, clearly, as they peck at their iPhones for the stolen headlines from those same newspapers. The crumbs thrown to Canadian journalism in this federal budget are almost insulting — $10 million for local journalism. That could add perhaps two reporters at 100 local papers — or less than 2 per cent of the journalist jobs lost in the past decade. Why is it that Canadian politicians are happy to support Canadian television, radio and digital domains, but not the newspapers that form the foundation of serious journalism in every country? The “failing business model” insult is mere Trumpian foolishness: the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall St. Journal, are each approaching 100 million online readers in Canada and the U.S. alone. To get there, each has had external financial support. Who has smacked the Trump administration almost daily for 15 months? CNN? Instagram? No, the three newspaper giants, just as they did on Watergate and the Pentagon Papers a generation ago. Who was it who broke the thalidomide victims’ stories, or those of the victims of sexual abuse by the Canadian police and justice system? Who was it who undid Toronto’s most humiliating mayor, who remains relentless about accountable policing? Was it HuffPo, Global News or talk radio? Please, don’t insult Canadians who care about serious journalism. Those tough stories are almost always the work of a large serious newspaper. Following the investment of hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars of investigative reporting time, were these painful stories and the political damage they caused hailed by any minister or any premier? Well, not so much. So perhaps here we have the answer as to why some politicians and their staffs snicker to each other about the sight of senior editors and publishers, from formerly rich and powerful news organizations “blushingly holding out their begging bowl,” as one of them had the cheek to put it privately to friends. When challenged for their hypocrisy these politicians mutter about the “sacred independence of Canadian journalism.” Oh, really? How many politicians have you seen, who have given genuine priority to the survival, let alone the “sacred independence” of their daily scolds: serious journalists? Exactly. Every developed nation in the world — except the Anglosphere, curiously — provides direct and indirect support to serious journalism: extra tax credit to ad buyers and volume subscribers, intern and training support, accelerated depreciation allowances, wage supplements, even discounts on newsprint, distribution and ink costs. The array of policy tools is as long as your arm. No one would claim that Le Monde, Die Zeit or Aftonbladet, each supported by some of these tools, were shills for any political party. The ‘independence’ concern is nonsense. No, here is the question that voters concerned about one of the most important guardians of democracy — that is serious journalism, meaning serious newspapers, most fundamentally — need to ask of their politicians. “What are you doing to ensure that the men and women who work hard to ensure that the hard truths are told, are not being driven out of business by those who steal their intellectual property — done with your legal complicity, and my tax dollars?” When I was a whey-faced TV news script writer more than 40 years ago, my first job each day was scalping the headlines from the Toronto newspapers for our lead that night. The only thing that has changed in the intervening years is that the scalpers now are vastly richer and more powerful digital monopolies, who can steal content and ad dollars, in seconds and seem blind to the risk of killing their own news suppliers. The continuing neglect of this slow-moving collapse of one of the pillars of every democracy by our governments is not acceptable.