Local news organizations help sort fact from fiction
In an open letter to members of Parliament last week, the news industry warned that more needs to be done to support “healthy, independent, diverse news companies as the backbone of our democracy.” This kind of misses the lead, as we say in the news business.
It is access to timely, verified, independently produced journalism that MPs must safeguard. Like safe drinking water, well-maintained roads and good schools, journalism is essential to the well-being of communities.
Since news companies at the moment are the main source of this content, they need to survive. As the pandemic has made abundantly clear, journalism is not just “nice to have.” People want — and need — to know the latest COVID-19 infection numbers, what’s happening to relatives in long-term-care homes and whether schools will open or close.
In these extraordinary times, when health, livelihoods and lives are at stake, the majority of Canadians in search of reliable information have embraced news. A Statistics Canada survey last summer found that 63 per cent of respondents used news or online newspaper sites to find COVID-19 information while 35 per cent used social media posts by news organizations.
Almost one-third of respondents tapped the social media posts of other users or influencers to find out what was going on. This means they also had to sort fact from fiction because, in addition to official pandemic updates, they no doubt encountered Uncle Joe’s posts about how the vaccine is a plot to insert trackable microchips into people.
What’s worrisome is that residents in a growing number of communities have no choice but to sort local fact from local fiction on their own. The latest data from the Local News Research Project at Ryerson University shows that, since 2008, 423 news operations (including 328 community newspapers) have closed while only 159 have launched.
The losses are widespread. Newspapers, broadcast operations, or online news sites have closed in more than 300 communities. In Toronto, 20 sources of local journalism have disappeared while just four have launched. Smaller places face even bigger challenges: 160 communities with fewer than 15,000 people have lost a local news outlet that in most cases was not replaced.
In some instances, the losses mean little or no local news is available. In others, there may still be a newspaper or radio station in town, but the net effect is fewer journalists on the ground.
Why does this matter? The erosion of local journalism has been linked to declines in voter turnout, greater electoral success for incumbents, less accountable politicians and more limited opportunities for people to get involved in government decision-making.
The loss of quality local journalism also makes it more difficult to govern, as municipal officials in High Level, Alta., have discovered. The Echo-Pioneer weekly newspaper, which serves a local population of about 4,200, once had two full-time reporters. Now there’s just one freelancer covering the northern Alberta community. The nearest radio station is three hours away so there’s little else in the way of local coverage.
“It causes a real problem for … governing when everybody has a different story,” said Bill Schnarr, the town’s communications co-ordinator. “There’s a lot of gossip and conspiracy theories … (and) people who feel like you are lying to them all of the time.
“It can make for a very angry populace when attempts are made to put new initiatives in place,” said Schnarr, who until 18 months ago was a full-time reporter for the Echo-Pioneer.
To get more information to residents, the town recently stopped advertising in the newspaper and used the savings to purchase a subscription for every household. In return, it gets one page per edition for municipal announcements. The goal, Schnarr said, is to get the town’s information “onto everyone’s coffee table.”
The High Level example demonstrates the desperate state of local journalism even when there is still a local paper in town.
News Media Canada, the industry lobby group behind last week’s open letter, is calling for new legislation requiring Google and Facebook to pay news companies when their content appears on the tech platforms.
This is not a panacea: Some proprietors will just pocket the additional revenue. Others, however, will hire more reporters and that’s why the legislation should be passed as soon as possible. Not because we need the news industry per se. But because we need journalism.