By: Reet Arora
Open three Canadian news sites on any weekday morning and something feels off: the same headline, the same photo, the same story- mirrored across the country with uncanny precision. You will read about issues happening in major cities, places you know, problems that you are already aware of.
Think of smaller towns like Orangeville or Elmira, when was the last time that name appeared on the television, unless it was a breaking news.
It’s the quiet imprint of media consolidation, where a handful of companies now shape most of the country’s news. What used to be competing voices has slowly narrowed into a single, repeating echo.
“We’re just having a huge loss in terms of the number of media operations that exist in Canada whether it’s newspapers, television, radio, or any online formats. So, to me, that’s a bigger problem,” Canadian Senator for Ontario, Andrew Cardozo says.
Cardozo raised an inquiry to the senate inviting them for a discussion on the future of Canadian news media.
The inquiry is to look for options for a long-term financial model for news media, discuss whether independent media should have access to public funding, the current state and future potential of the emerging online-only news media ecosystems and the effect on democracy of the reducing presence and standards of news media.
“The issue of concentration is yesterday’s story. We are concentrated. We didn’t do enough about it and here we are,” he says.
Cardozo shares how there is an increasing number of small-town councils and city councils, but no media coverage for issues they are discussing. There might be a few reporters but not enough to report on every issue.
He says even when a certain reporter does try to cover multiple issues during one council meeting, they’re not so much in depth.
Cardozo says it becomes a real problem for democracy when there is no coverage for smaller areas.
He believes there is very little left to consolidate in the broadcast world, but radio might be where more consolidation can still take place, considering small radio startups with a great audience that get bought off when no one wishes to continue it.
“I was a commissioner back by 20 years and during the period I was there, (CRTC’s rules) became very lax and the radio companies kept coming to the CRTC, saying back then 20, 25, 30 years ago, we’re saying it’s very hard to make a living. We need to have more radio stations, independent stations can’t work,”
– andrew Cardozo
He explains how commercial stations do very little media but are still part of the news media ecosystem and that does not help.
Cardozo discusses the issue with the funding model for CBC, he says he doesn’t disagree with the fact that it should get more funding but in the current climate of austerity he doesn’t see governments being able to provide more to CBC.
“I think CBC has got to do a deep dive and really search for other kinds of approaches, in terms of how they run their budget. $1.4 billion is a fair amount and I think they can do a better job,” he says.
He says they should focus on more local programming, so local issues get national awareness. Cardozo says the six federal programs that provide support to media need to get consolidated to some extent but need to be moved into an agency at arm’s length from the government.
He believes it must be the government to set up a criterion through the Parliament and then further send it over to an agency to administer it.
Cardozo says the decline in local journalism is resulting in less scrutiny of democracy. The other part is just simple debate without getting to the issues of oversight and scrutiny and holding people accountable.
“In the U.S., even in Canada, where there are election debates. They just get a lot of criticism and I think that they’re so important,” he says.
Cardozo calls out CBC for having an anti-conservative bias. He says he doesn’t think it is a widespread issue, but it is there and he believes and it is more so the reporters that have a bit of a pro government bias than the corporation.
He says the public broadcaster must make sure that they have a healthy debate on their channels which they can achieve by having more programs where there are people from very differing viewpoints.
Unifor’s Media Director, Randy Kitt shares how speciality television was booming back in 1995 when he used to work for TSN and Discovery Channel.
Kitt says there started to be a trend to convergence to vertically integrate. There were prospective buyers, and the CanWest was one of them which did not go through. TSN and Discovery’s parent company NetStar Communications was later acquired by CTV in the year 2000.
He believes that workers do not have control over shaping policies on these types of mergers and acquisitions and it is generally not usually in their benefit.
Kitt argues the Competition laws in Canada are not very robust. He says the workers have better protections in the anti-trusts in the U.S., even though they are not very good for them.
“Facebook, Google (and) Amazon pretty much own the world. So even where there are more robust competition laws than Canada, these huge companies are allowed to buy up and to create monopolies. And workers are often left behind,”
– Randy KItt
He says current workers are not consider when trying to fill a new position when merging takes place. Redundancies, inefficiencies and wanting to increase productivity, which essentially means letting two people handle the workload of five for the same amount of pay.
Kitt says maybe it’s understandable if it’s payroll, but this is way harder to justify when it’s journalism. If only the major cities are the ones providing news coverage, local voices are lost.
“So, we would lose the diversity of voices across this country because of consolidation. All in the name of redundancies, efficiencies and obviously that’s detrimental to workers and to democracy and as local news as the fundamental component of a healthy democracy,” he says.
Kitt thinks a system where workers had a voice, a voice that was taken under consideration that would be appropriate. He shares how Unifor has participated in CRTC hearings and CRTC approves mergers and consolidations for broadcasters.
He gives an example of Shaw Rogers submission. CTV created Sportsnet and OCTV Sportsnet and they acquired TSN. To this, CRTC says that CTV can’t own two sports networks which is why they sold CTV Sportsnet to Rogers and kept TSN.
Kitt argues that this shows CRTC does have jurisdiction in television to manage convergence and vertical integration but there is certain criterion to when they decide on these things.
He shares a letter filed to CRTC following the proposal for Rogers-Shaw consolidation where Unifor argues that this scope can create inequities in employment markets and in this case local programming and local news coverage.
The letter cautioned the commission on these issues and tried to ensure that should the commission approve this transaction, it will consider the impact on unemployment as well as local programming, specifically local news, that needs to receive sustaining support in an equitable manner.
Kitt says Unifor did not exactly oppose the matter, because to some extent they knew it was going to happen regardless, but they wanted to warn the commission beforehand.
He says the advent of internet changed the media landscape and decimated the advertising market on the print first and then broadcasting.
“I think the Liberal government has seen light on that issue which is why we have C-10 and C-11 and C-18 specifically. C-11 is the online streaming act and that’s the act to bring Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV streaming and the other foreign broadcasters into the Canadian regulatory system, so that they can contribute to the Canadian system […] profiting and not contributing,” Kitt says.
He says it is hard to pinpoint and say who is to blame when it is such a structural problem because broadcasters would not be consolidating as much if they were not under such financial pressures.
“What about the Google money? Well, the Google money’s only five years and it’s temporary and right now it’s really like a patchwork of support. What we need is to think of it as a puzzle and we need all the puzzle pieces to come together. We need the LJI, the Local Journalism Initiative. We need the journalism tax credits,” Kitt says.
He believes we need to improve journalism tax credits and expand them, so they apply to broadcasters and not just print journalism.
Marc Edge, associate professor of Communications at University Canada West and author of eight books says concentration became a phenomenon in the 1960s when chains like Southam and Thomspon began buying up independent family-owned newspapers.
Edge says it had grown so much that by the end of the 1960s the Senator Keith Davey called the Special Subcommittee of Mass Media hearings to investigate it and they published their report in three volumes and they recommended measures to slow the pace of concentration.
He says the committee suggested a press ownership review board whose guided principle would be that any transaction, merger or takeover that increased concentration would be considered a bad thing unless proved otherwise, however, this recommendation was never enacted.
Edge seems to believe that if this had been enacted it would have prevented the events of Aug. 27, 1980, when we saw the simultaneous closure of the Winnipeg Tribune by Southam and the Ottawa Journal by Thomson.
He says this outraged the then Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau to such an extent that he almost immediately called a royal commission on newspapers. Within a week, they recommended a Canada Newspaper Act that Edge believes would have broken up the chains.
“At least Thomson would have been forced to decide between its Globe and Mail and its other newspapers. This was never enacted in the dying years of the Trudeau administration because he was more concerned with the repatriated the Constitution from the Statute of Westminster and enacting the Charter of Rights and Freedom,” Edge says.
He says the press was violently opposed to the Canada Newspaper Act and any limits on the press and Trudeau needed support for enacting the Charter of Rights and Freedom.
Edge says this kind of opened the way for Conrad Black in the 1990 to expand his Hollinger chain. He already owned the Sterling chain but then he bought up shares in Southam sufficient to take over it over.
He says Black also bought the Armadale chain in Saskatchewan but then turned it all to Izzy Asper and CanWest Global Communication in the year 2000.
Edge says convergence began in the 1960s because newspapers were so profitable. Newspaper owners realized this and wanted to buy more and this was known as horizontal integration, buying up more of the same type of outlet.