Canadian Heritage Committee on May 17th, 2016

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Now we go to Mr. Nantel from the NDP for seven minutes.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Clearly, we're into a changing market.

Thank you for being here and sharing an interesting perspective, that of managers of various news services.

I have noticed that the media sector is changing. When your organization was created, the television had just become mainstream. It suddenly became a professional media service, along with print media. As my colleague Ms. Dabrusin pointed out, you are now in competition with members of new media and you are trying to include them in your organization. They have changed things.

The fact that we are receiving less and less information makes it seem as though the news is at risk, as though democracy is at risk. I noticed again this morning while watching TVA, that the same journalist was assigned to cover the story of the fires, the engineers' strike in Montreal, and the arrival of refugees at the Trudeau airport. There are no longer any specialized journalists. They have to be prepared to cover any story at any time. The same thing is happening at the CBC.

It seems as though journalists and new directors are providing information to you directly. Are you also working with international organizations? We know that this is a global problem. The democratization of information is a global phenomenon, particularly with YouTube, which is designed to allow people to see themselves on screen. This calls the entire system into question.

Are you in touch with other organizations similar to yours in countries other than the United States?

[Ian Koenigsfest]

Our main link is with the RTDN in the United States. At this time, we don't have any formal links with international organizations. However, as part of our outreach we've actually started working locally with the Canadian Association of Journalists and Journalists for Human Rights, and our goal is to encounter and dialogue with international groups in the future.

You are absolutely correct in your point about people being expected now to cover everything. The nature of the specialty beat—someone who covered city hall or covered the police department—has gone, particularly in small communities. The danger of that is losing the relationships and networking and being able to know when things were not how they should be. That's how exclusive stories and scoops happened. That is something that we are extremely concerned about.

[Andy LeBlanc]

I would add that social media doesn't replace mainstream media. At the local level, it is a wonderful thing, a great advance that the local town hall is available as a webcast perhaps, so that any of the citizens can watch. The reality is that most citizens aren't watching, and no one is necessarily there to watch or pay attention—not to what is happening on camera, but to know more about the other questions that hold local officials to account, or the various spin-off stories that might happen out of a town hall meeting.

If we don't have the boots on the ground in every local community, then are we really able to generate the kinds of local news that perhaps isn't quite as interesting? It's not going to have the same number of clicks and reach the trending top of Google or Facebook, but it is nonetheless important for the people at that very local level.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Your association represents journalists. It is basically made up of news desk editors and news directors.

Would it help to join forces with community television to gather information? Is that an option? It might not be the best option for workers in the industry, for journalists. However, we are trying to determine how we can maintain regional coverage by small media in small markets.

What do you think of that idea?

[Andy LeBlanc]

Collaboration with any journalistic organization absolutely is an option. At RTDNA, we believe we are about journalism and trying to maintain good standards and ethics in what we practice. Many other organizations have similar objectives. We can work together, and as journalists we should work together, to bring the quality of journalism up if possible, but at the very least to sustain the level of journalism that is happening out there. The community television stations play a role in distributing that kind of information, as do CAJ, JRH, and so on. There are a number of organizations that do that. We do have communication from time to time with most of these organizations, but wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all sit down together and actually—

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

With regard to print media, we know that articles from The Canadian Press are being used more than ever. The same article is sometimes printed in three different newspapers because of a lack of resources. This type of news syndication is good for editors. Obviously, media workers also care about the survival of the medium that employs them.

You are saying that a code of journalism ethics is needed and that startup capital must be invested to encourage the next generation. You are offering to administer a fund to collect money. Could you tell us more about your third recommendation, please?

[Andy LeBlanc]

We would all like to say that we have enough money to do things. Where the money comes from, I think, is the nature of the question.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

What's your third recommendation? Could you elaborate on that?

[Ian Koenigsfest]

It is to administer a fund that would help maintain the existence of viable local news. We would need to find money, as we said, in collaboration with industry. We're not sure where it would come from, but once we have have found it and have access to that fund, then our association could help administer the protection of local journalism in communities across Canada.

I think the networks and news managers agree with us that the protection of local news is important. It's a matter of finding a sustainable way to do it that would be reasonable and economically viable. If there were a fund developed specifically for local news, as there has been in the past for the movie industry and the entertainment sector, we think that would move in the right direction in terms of the protection of local news.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

The next person is Seamus O'Regan for the Liberals for seven minutes.

[Seamus O'Regan, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

When talking about local news and the media, you said something very interesting about social media and local news, that the mainstream is still more dominant, or at least more beneficent towards local news than social media. Yet it seems that what we're seeing more and more often is that social media is media. It's increasingly becoming mainstream, when you look at how young people now acquire their news.

I agree with you on aggregators: they are not the same as those who produce content. That's for sure. But you can understand the challenges that confront this committee as we face a demand from our constituents for local news. They want more local news. They've never had access to more media than they do now, and yet when we look at the state of local news, what they actually get, and the cuts that these organizations have had to succumb to, we're trying to square that circle. I know you know that I know a bit about it, and I'm telling you that despite my years of experience, I don't know. We look to organizations like yours.

I know this stuff probably keeps you up at night. How do we square that circle, given that there is a generational change, given that this is the future and that the future is happening now?

[Andy LeBlanc]

We've had many discussions with so many people about this, starting with the very basic separation that all journalists are part of the media, but social media isn't part of journalism necessarily. If you're practising social journalism, you may be completely accurate in reporting what just happened, but you may not. You may have another motive. You may be trying to skew the information.

There is a certain amount of citizen justice that takes place when someone is very wrong on media, and we've all seen that. It equates to the social media equivalent of public stoning. People can get controlled.

The key is that at the very local level, we fear a time when the only news coming out of a community, the only information about things that are happening, is from people who have motives and specific bias. They're not putting it through the kind of filter that a journalist has, who has had years of experience understanding how to filter things that are happening and ask the other question. We fear a day when that doesn't happen at the local level.

I think we could probably say that at the very localized level, many small communities in this country do not have any local media representation, as in a journalist in town who writes about what is happening in town.

[Seamus O'Regan, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Therefore, there is an incredible amount of competition between accredited journalists who have to fight to get that story out as quickly as possible and are under an incredible amount of pressure from the newsrooms, and the people who are out with their iPhones taking pictures. They try to hold themselves up to those standards, but they're under so much pressure to get stuff out fast that they can't be as accurate as they perhaps desire to be.

All that said, I think we recognize the problem, but what do we do?

[Ian Koenigsfest]

I think part of it is trying to spread the level of accountability that the proponents and those who use social media, who may not be affiliated with news organizations.... Our appeal is to try to bring them under our code of ethics so there is some level of accountability.

If journalism is expected to and does hold public officials to account, so journalists should be held to accounts as well. We feel the playing field is no longer level because, as you point out correctly, networks are competing with individuals with iPhones.

If there's a way to bring more people into the tents who understand and sign off on a code of ethics, at least we have a greater level of accountability amongst our profession. It's to try to find a way in which, regardless if you work for a network or for a local radio station, you have agreed to operate in an ethical way that will serve everyone.

[Seamus O'Regan, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Let me interject because we only have so much time.

What does your membership, of which I was once a member, tell you about what we need to do to fund local news, to make sure that local news has the resources it needs to be held up to these standards that you rightly put forward?

[Andy LeBlanc]

The starting point is that we do need more research. In the U.S. in particular, and in the U.K., there are organizations like the Knight Foundation that are doing research. They are gathering tons of data, to say this is what's happening, this is what people think, this is what trust is. All of these questions are being analyzed. I don't believe we have anything near that degree of research happening in Canada.

The other part is essentially putting the code online. If we have someone who is handling a local town hall and writing a blog on that, one may not consider that person to be a journalist. However, if he agrees to abide by the code of ethics and is held accountable to the code of ethics and produces town hall reports that are in line with that, then I would be willing to call him a journalist. Not only that, but it brings credibility to the site.

[Seamus O'Regan, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

I want to get back to money.

[Andy LeBlanc]

On the money, I know that that the Canada Media Fund exists, and there are a number of different categories in there. There isn't something that specifically says “news”.

Is there a category that would apply to startups of local news enterprises in small communities that are right now not serviced by any journalists on the ground? Would there be an entrepreneurial journalist who wants to begin covering the news in whichever location, say Saskatchewan, and be the journalist of the community who asks the right questions of the mayor and of others in the community?

[Seamus O'Regan, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Large companies that own the majority of the outlets your membership works for, whether it be Bell, Rogers, CBC, are saying that they don't have the money they used to have for local news and, therefore, they're cutting and cutting. We've all been there, and two of us at least have been in the front lines of it.

What do we do about that? What is the answer to that? It is obvious to the audience that it is hurting local news and the ability of these fine people to do their jobs.

[Ian Koenigsfest]

Well, perhaps—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have two seconds in which to answer that.

[Seamus O'Regan, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

And there you go—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!