EDITOR'S NOTE: This opinion piece first appeared in The Globe and Mail
If you’ve been following the debate on whether technology platforms like Facebook and Google should compensate news companies, you might be feeling a bit dizzy.
All hell has broken loose since Australia proposed a mandatory bargaining code in December that would force Google and Facebook to pay a fee for every link to designated Australian news services.
A high-stakes faceoff between the Australian government, Big Tech and big media resulted in Facebook temporarily pulling news content from its platform in a bid to secure 11th-hour changes to the legislation. Now, tech companies are hastily cutting backroom deals with Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and a handful of other Australian media giants in an attempt to stave off regulation.
In late January, Canada’s Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault vowed to introduce similar legislation this spring.
Amid the chaos, we fear that the most important thing is being overlooked: what’s best for journalism and the public?
A February campaign by News Media Canada (Canada’s newspaper lobby group) involved newspapers across the country publishing blank front pages, accusing Google and Facebook of unfairly profiting from their content and featuring the message: “If nothing is done, the journalism industry will disappear.”
The reality is much more nuanced.
Many new and innovative business models are succeeding. Take Village Media. The digital-native company started in 2013 and now employs 105 full-time staff. The Sprawl in Calgary is primarily funded by its readers and doubled its paying monthly members in 2020. Vancouver-based The Tyee has been a pioneer in the digital media space since 2003 and increased revenue from readers by 58 per cent last year. IndigiNews, launched in 2020 by The Discourse and APTN, has grown to a team of eight — doubling the number of Indigenous journalists reporting in B.C. in a single year. Canada’s National Observer and The Narwhal have amassed a tidy pile of awards reporting on climate change and the environment.
Toronto's West End Phoenix. Halifax's The Coast. Quebec's La Converse. The list of independent successes, most owned or led by journalists, is so long that Maclean’s recognized “independent media” on its 2021 “Power List.”
In December, nine of our organizations came together to launch Press Forward, a new association that advocates for innovation in Canadian media.
First, our outlets are reinvigorating relationships with readers by publishing journalism people are willing to pay for. We’re also working to earn trust by attempting to tackle issues of diversity that many legacy newsrooms have failed to address.
Second, we provide quality journalism to the public more efficiently than traditional players. Without the burden of legacy operating costs, executive bonuses and debt payments, independent digital outlets spend 50 to 80 per cent of their budgets on producing journalism. That stands in stark contrast to the roughly 12 to 20 per cent that traditional outlets pay on journalism production, according to media analyst Ken Doctor.
The growth of independent news should be seen as a sign of hope. Governments and tech companies looking to ensure the public has access to quality journalism should invest in accelerating this exciting trend.
Replicating the Australian approach to supporting journalism threatens to hinder this growth and innovation. The outcome of the standoff between Big Tech and the Australian government?
Ninety per cent of what Big Tech has agreed to pay media so far is going to the country’s three largest media companies. That means the majority of that cash is destined for purposes other than sustaining actual journalism jobs and tilts the playing field away from smaller publishers — which is bad for democracy.
We’re heartened to see that Canada’s federal government is willing to show leadership and stand up to Big Tech to support journalism. To be clear, Big Tech needs to be regulated and taxed fairly.
We also applaud government initiatives that provide support earmarked to pay journalists such as the Local Journalism Initiative and the Canadian journalism tax credit. While there’s room to improve these programs to ensure large media don’t disproportionately benefit, we urge the government to build on this approach.
More clearly needs to happen to support journalism. But if our goal is to ensure the public gets access to more and better journalism, we shouldn’t look to Australia for our silver bullet.
Emma Gilchrist is chair of Press Forward, a new association for Canada’s independent news organizations, and co-founder of The Narwhal, a non-profit online magazine. Village Media is a founding member of Press Forward.
