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CBC Leads Call for New Government Regulations to Support “Trusted” News Sources

Last month, the Broadcast and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel report sparked an immediate outcry as it recommended that the CRTC identify “trusted” news sites and require news aggregators to link to them:

We recommend that to promote the discoverability of Canadian news content, the CRTC impose the following requirements, as appropriate, on media aggregation and media sharing undertakings: links to the websites of Canadian sources of accurate, trusted, and reliable sources of news with a view to ensuring a diversity of voices; and prominence rules to ensure visibility and access to such sources of news.

In fact, notwithstanding Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault’s attempts to walk-back initial comments that regulating news websites and services was “no big deal”, the reality is the regulatory structure envisioned by the panel also empowers the CRTC to require these organizations to disclose financial information, consumption data, and algorithmic information. It would also be given the power to regulate commercial negotiations between news providers and these sites and services.

Notwithstanding the public backlash against the proposals (including a House of Commons petition), there is another lobbying effort to get the government to regulate in support of “trusted” news sources. Led by the CBC, the initiative has succeeded in bringing the Toronto Star, Postmedia, Winnipeg Free Press, La Presse, Le Devoir, and others on board.

Open letter on trusted news sites, appearing in the Hill Times, February 19, 2020, p. 12

 

The open letter warns ominously about the impact of Internet platforms and calls on the government to establish “fair rules on competition, copyright, and taxation.” The involvement of the CBC, which over the past two years has supported website blocking, characterized Netflix as a cultural imperialist, and sued the Conservative Party during the federal election, continues to demonstrate that the public broadcaster has lost its way on public policy and the public interest.

The government has already committed hundreds of millions of dollars toward these groups (and over a billion dollars for the CBC alone) with the local journalism fund, tax credits for journalists, and a host of other measures. Yet the CBC and these media organizations apparently want more, including a link tax (which has proven unsuccessful in Europe and was not supported in the Canadian copyright review), new tax reforms that would make Internet advertising more expensive for small and medium sized business, and “competition” reforms that includes more regulation of algorithms and those that operate online.

The CBC and the news media organizations do not spell out how to determine who is a “trusted” news source, but the obvious implication is that they are the ones to be trusted and that the government should move to regulate their online competitors. When combined with the Broadcast panel report, the twin campaigns represent a massive lobbying effort by news and cultural groups (backed by the Public Policy Forum, which released the flawed Shattered Mirror report in 2017) to regulate freedom of expression online, undermine net neutrality, and increase consumers costs. The government should swiftly reject further calls for news regulation to support “trusted” sources as the effort serves as a reminder that all that trusting the CBC and self-interested news organizations on public policy invariably leads to are never-ending demands for hundreds of millions in tax dollars.

11 Comments

  1. Pingback: CBC Leads Call for New Government Regulations to Support “Trusted” News Sources | Sassy Wire

  2. All they want is a policy that is fair, but what they mean by fair is a policy that benefits them at the expense of others.

    Instead of calling for protection, the news media outlets need to learn from those that are succeeding, like The Athletic, and make changes accordingly. Protecting outdated, failing models will only delay the inevitable.

    • These organizations are saying their content does represent the interests of their nation state audience.

      They will be taking courses… learning to code… or accepting Canada’s new basic income.

      This could not happen to a more deserving group. [Pre 9/11 I was an ardent CBC supporter. Since, I advocate for UN-funding the complete organization. Not even rural Canada needs this organization.]

  3. Pingback: CBC Doubles Down, Calls for "Trusted" News Sources and Regulating The Rest

  4. As a Canadian independent journalist, this scares the crap out of me. What the CBC calls “fairness”, all I see is an existential threat. Trying to maintain a small news site is tough enough, but what if my analysis that suggests extending copyright terms is a bad idea lands me in a position of not being a “trusted” news source. Can raising points be considered political and subject me to massive new taxes on top of everything else? Could I be shut down for pointing out that Internet censorship failed in Australia and, therefore, should not even be considered in Canada?

    Either way, not cool CBC, not cool.

  5. Jean-Luc Picard says:

    “With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured…the first thought forbidden…the first freedom denied – chains us all, irrevocably.” Jean-Luc Picard

  6. I have ZERO sympathy for CBC and the Mainstream Propaganda Outlets. They are there precisely because they stifle freedom of expression and censor information. I have seen this for myself firsthand and will only say this: they brought this loss in viewership on themselves.

    To pretend they represent ‘true information’ is preposterous and insulting to the intelligence of viewers. They should wake up and realize people can read now and won’t take their BS for pablum anymore.

    With the advent of the Internet, we are assisting to a second coming of sorts of the printing press revolution and CBC and the Mainstream Establishments with their whining look more and more like the Spanish Inquisition.

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  8. Pingback: Why the sudden push to regulate 'trusted sources' of news in Canada?

  9. Pingback: News of the Week; February 19, 2020 – Communications Law at Allard Hall

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