Evidence of meeting #26 for Canadian Heritage in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was digital.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Liberal
Pierre Breton Liberal Shefford, QC
Thank you.
I will add to what Mr. Samson has said.
The Association de la presse francophone said that its members publish verified and verifiable information. Conversely, some unions have denounced the fact that there is no filter to the information posted online and on social media.
Can you comment on the quality of journalistic work on online news sites and on social media?
Professor, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford, As an Individual
I think you have to make a distinction between journalism and information. Journalism involves techniques and practices for dealing with information in order to be able to verify it and ensure that it is accurate and fairly presented. Those are techniques that you have. There are journalists in the digital world working every day who are doing exactly those things.
The digital world allows anybody with access to the digital environment to be able to convey information. Not all information is news, and it's certainly not journalism. Finding some way, as many journalists' groups are thinking about, to have some sort of trademark or Kitemark or something to be able to say “this is done following the journalistic practices” is one way to perhaps mark off the journalism from just information flow.
A lot of what we see in the digital world is just opinion and is not based on facts in any way, shape, or form, so it lends itself to conspiracies and misinformation very quickly.
Liberal
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
Based on your last comment, are you calling into question the validity and accuracy of online journalism?
Professor, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford, As an Individual
I've said “where it's online journalism”, and clearly, online journalism can be every bit as good as off-line. It has nothing to do with the platform it's distributed on. It has to do with what practices went into creating the stories that are put out in a digital world. There's very good online journalism.
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
I have a final quick one. What is vertical integration? Or horizontal integration?
Professor, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford, As an Individual
Horizontal integration is an economic term used in competition policy when you are buying units of the same kind of thing. If you own a newspaper in one city, you'll buy another newspaper in another city, and another, and another. That would be a horizontal integration.
Vertical integration is seen most particularly in broadcasting, when you own a production company that makes a program, you also own a channel, and you also own the cable system on which it is distributed. You're getting vertical integration of all the functions that have to take place to reach people.
Professor, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford, As an Individual
The problem for Canada is that it's extremely high on vertical integration and very high on horizontal integration.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
You are right in referring to our market as a very highly concentrated market in a number of ways. This system has led to good results, in the sense that, instead of just having a slightly distinguishable Canadian market, we have managed to take our place on our screens, our radio stations and our media. We have managed to create a sort of supply management system in terms of culture, and even in terms of news.
Yes, there is not a lot of room for improvising and new players. Do you think there is a way to make a clear distinction between our Canadian culture and other cultures to our major world players such as Alphabet Inc.?
Professor, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford, As an Individual
You're certainly not alone in wrestling with issues of culture.
There are many ways to deal with the cultural issues. Concentration isn't necessary to have good promotion of national culture and national news and information flow, but it's one way to do it, and it has done it. The problem is that it has a lot of downsides, because after a while, if you're heavily concentrating, you stop investing very much.
One of the problems is that Canada has always been so afraid of American media and culture, with good reason, and it's so afraid of English, with good reason, in Quebec and otherwise, that it has allowed concentration, even saying, okay, well, at least it's not these others. The problem is that it should have undertaken mechanisms to ensure that more Canadian companies were involved, rather than fewer Canadian companies. It has done very well in broadcasting with Canadian content laws, and in other such things, they have done quite well.
You're not alone in this. Take the position of Ireland, which struggles dramatically because it gets hit from both sides of the Atlantic. It gets hit with English from the U.K. The Irish Republic is not too comfortable with that, for a variety of political reasons. It gets hit with everything from the U.S. and some from Canada, so it really has trouble being Irish. There are other countries that wrestle with these problems, including Austria, with the Germans, and it is important to deal with them, but concentration is not necessary to do it.
There are a lot of cultural policies that can be used and a lot of media-specific policies that can be used to ensure that you have adequate cultural production domestically.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Would you say that in the situation we are in now we're back to square one? In small rural areas, for example, where there's not much Internet service, they are into that passé mode of a printed newspaper, the local hebdo or something like that. In my own riding, grocery stores are the place where we see “looking for my cat” and “car for sale” and other small advertisements. Should we in some ways go back to basics?
Professor, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford, As an Individual
There are those basics. I was in a small English village last fall. I was asking people about how they find out what's going on in the town and how they communicate with the mayor when they need to chat. They said they go to the local pub. Life is very much that way.
One of the issues is that we often think about the Internet as something where we have to rely on fixed lines and broadband services, but actually, the Internet as an information source is being jumped over by mobile Internet services coming through the wireless networks that have gotten very good. Even in many very small rural communities, you actually have reasonable wireless services. That is another mechanism.
If there is a location where people normally congregate, and that is the shopping centre, the community centre, and others, those become good information sources, and you need to promote them along the way as well.
The key for democracy is to make sure that there are locations and facilitators who are ensuring that a range of the kinds of issues that need to be discussed for local governance are there. What's happening in the schools, in the commissions, and in the water districts? All of those are really important developments at the local level. What councils are doing is critical. Somebody has to be facilitating that information flow. In larger communities, it tends to be commercial media, but in smaller communities, you have to find other ways to do that.
NDP
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
I want to thank Dr. Picard very much for giving us almost an hour of his time.
We learned a lot from you. Thank you again.
Mr. Van Loan.
Liberal
