Canadians expect free news
Report suggests people trust traditional media reporting, but will no longer pay for it
OTTAWA— People trust traditional journalism but want it for free, even as the industry withers in the digital age, according to the creators of a new report that paints a dire picture for the Canadian news business.
“Canadians hold journalists in high esteem. This is clear from our research,” said Ed Greenspon, president and CEO of the Public Policy Forum, which published its report Thursday in Ottawa.
“They feel badly that they’re not willing to pay, but they’re quite clear that this is a free marketplace, the culture of the marketplace has changed and that they’re not going to foot the bill.”
Greenspon outlined the somewhat paradoxical public opinion on the news business and the predicament it is in.
He based his conclusions on six focus groups and an online poll of1,500 Canadians from the Earnscliffe Strategy Group that were conducted for the report, as well as other studies from outside sources.
The Earnscliffe poll found that a majority of respondent Canadians “completely trust” or “mostly trust” news from TV, radio, newspapers and their respective websites.
At the same time, Greenspon said, most Canadians don’t want to pay for the news they read and watch and listen to online. A Reuters poll from last year included in the report found that just 9 per cent of Canadians pay for online news.
On top of that, Greenspon said the public is “confused” about any crisis facing the news industry. Fewer than half of participants “have heard, read or seen anything about the news industry being in financial difficulty,” while 93 per cent said they get more news today than ever before, said Allan Gregg, principal at Earnscliffe, who conducted the poll and focus groups for the study.
“The public isn’t particularly engaged in this and that’s part of the industry’s conundrum,” Gregg said Thursday, adding that his poll suggests the public isn’t sold on direct government financing of struggling news organizations, hence the recommendation to give money to an independent fund.
“They tacitly reject the basic premise of a lot of the industry’s claims, that is that the death of news gathering organizations will be the death of news,” Gregg said. “They don’t make that linkage that somehow no revenue means no journalists.”