Evidence of meeting #27 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 newspapers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Founding Editor, iPolitics Inc
We do not. I think the only time we did was in the 2011 election. I am trying to remember how we worded the policy. It was things like Elections Canada, which have a public service message. The culture of the government had turned so much that any advertising seemed partisan, so we decided just to have a blanket refusal of it. That said, I'd like to say we had the choice more often than not. We didn't. No one was calling us.
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
You mentioned public interest journalism. What is your recommendation to us, once we wrap up our report and make some recommendations, on what we can do to encourage more?
Founding Editor, iPolitics Inc
There are a lot of people and a lot of foundations.... You can look at what's happening in the U.S. There are some very interesting funding models for groups like GroundTruth, which is a foreign correspondence network based in Boston. There is ProPublica, which does investigative journalism and also instruction. It teaches young journalists to become investigative journalists.
Those types of innovative projects are available to us, but the clamping down at the CRA on the definition of charities and what they can or can't do.... Well, some of it is absolutely legit. There were some serious—
Conservative
Founding Editor, iPolitics Inc
You want to keep the advocacy out, but I think if there are people who can get into it, they should, and the government could match that if it wanted to.
Conservative
Conservative
Peter Van Loan Conservative York—Simcoe, ON
Talk of limiting a subsidy to the CBC is invigorating to some over here.
I'm trying to understand something, and you could give me the arguments for it. You say you don't want the competition. How is that any different from the competition on the regular broadcast side that they gave to other broadcasters over the years who faced that unfair subsidy? What's the policy rationale behind it, and what are the impacts in terms of local coverage? How would that help us get better local coverage in far-flung remote corners of the country or even in places like mine, which CBC ignores these days?
Founding Editor, iPolitics Inc
I'm not here saying you should pull back the cheque. I'm saying that the unfettered CBC will take money and it will plunk it close to the manager to whom it's assigned. That will be people in Toronto, people in Ottawa, or people in Vancouver, and it will not get out to your areas. I couldn't agree more.
My other feeling is.... It's not a feeling; we see it every day. The CBC management is graded on all the same metrics that a commercial media manager would be: page views, revenues, various entirely commercial metrics. I think that is a problem for us, because they're going to look around and say, “How do I make sure I get my bonus? I'll just squish this bug over here.” That is what they do. I can't blame them. That's how it's set up.
When it comes to the broadcast, I don't want to fight Izzy Asper's battles for him. He made his case. They did instead manage to get reductions in Canadian content and things that served their purposes. In our case, there's no chasing the CBC out of digital, but it's perfectly reasonable to have the same kinds of undertakings, which is to say that digital coverage has to be in a place where there is a scarcity or there is unlikely opportunity for competition. I think that would be my take on the CBC. I'm not saying don't cut them a cheque. I'm just saying cut it with pretty clear parameters regarding how they're allowed to use it.
Founding Editor, iPolitics Inc
In the digital space, it should be put in rural markets where there is a lack of resources being put by Metroland and others. I would also say don't take advertising. Give them enough money that they don't have to come in and take our advertising. I would say charge a nominal subscription. They're allowed to put basic news upfront maybe, but for any of their in-depth stuff, why is Chris Hall's opinion allowed to go out for free when the rest of us need to pay Michael Harris and Brent Rathgeber and others to—
Founding Editor, iPolitics Inc
Well, we do have to pay them. Realistically, they do have to be paid.
Conservative
Founding Editor, iPolitics Inc
It's not a competitive market. The CBC gets money from the cable fund. They get money from you, and they get money directly from the GR.
Conservative
NDP
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
At the last meeting, I was struck by what was said by the people from The Tyee magazine, a type of non-profit organization that produces news.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
It's mostly a not-for-profit movement in information. It might be because I am nostalgic, but I wonder if I should rely on goodwill. Nothing is free. If the person is there for goodwill, then there is probably some other price I will pay somewhere. So I'm asking you this. I see Tasha Kheiriddin, for example, on your list of contributors. Is she there as a contributor because she thinks your cause is worth contributing to? Or is she so well paid that she wants that job again and she wants to add this task to her workweek?
Founding Editor, iPolitics Inc
Tasha is a good example. She is paid for her column on a weekly basis, and she does one for us and one for the National Post at the same rate. She also has a radio show. She's stringing together a life, a little bit here, a little bit there. The term in the news business is “stringers”. You get pieces of string and you eventually pull together a rope. That's how you build a career in most modern businesses. I've been a freelancer far more than I've been gainfully employed in a newsroom. That's just the nature of the business.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
I agree with you when you describe yourself as one of the last baby boomers, not having all these things our fathers and mothers had as far as security goes.
May I ask you, what precisely are you looking for in the copyright bill? Are you one of the few who can explain to us precisely what is the issue in the copyright bill?
Founding Editor, iPolitics Inc
Everything is the issue. I'd like anything that makes it harder for people to take not just your words—we know plagiarism is direct copy—but the essence of your work and represent it as theirs. This is done by a great many big and extremely profitable operations, but they're profitable because stories are often sent maybe to Bangalore, which has huge banks of very capable journalists. They're paid to take the story and rewrite it and then they put it up as theirs. That's copyright infringement in my view.
I would welcome anything you can do that disincentivizes people from reading something and saying they could put out a version of the same thing that would be just as good or better and make them some money.
