Good afternoon, members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me to share my views with regard to your study on the national forum on the media.
It won't be news to anybody present that the news media is teetering on the precipice of what is likely an extinction-level event. A decades-long decline appears to be accelerating, with ever more layoffs and shrinking revenues.
In the next five minutes, I plan to briefly outline the challenges that my industry faces and focus on one that I believe demands urgent and honest examination.
There are fundamental questions before us now. Do we want to save the industry? Do we believe in an independent media that is not a propaganda tool for any political party or for any vested agendas that do not serve the public interest? Do you as MPs believe journalism is an important function of democracy? Do you believe Canadian society would function more justly if we had eyes on city council, on the police, on the health and education systems, on indigenous affairs, on federal affairs and on you?
If the answers are yes, then comes this question: What are the challenges facing the industry? In broad terms, I would put them into two buckets. One is financial troubles. The other is trust.
The financial troubles facing the industry are well known. Indeed, internal town halls in newsrooms have long been filled with doom and gloom for more than a decade. These troubles stem from a steady drop in ad revenue, subscription models that have never been the lifeblood of news organizations but are being relied upon now to rescue companies, consumers who have been burnt out by information overload on social media and may not find news relevant enough to support it, and social media sites that are no longer promoting news articles.
Solutions to financial challenges may look like but are not limited to non-profit models for news companies, soliciting donations rather than subscriptions, the government facilitating licensing agreements with AI companies to use the content that the news industry creates, and perhaps facilitating private funding for independent investigative journalism.
However, the point I wish to focus on is the second one: trust in the media.
A study in 2022 produced by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford found that trust in Canadian news media had dropped 13% since 2016. The study's authors wanted to measure public perceptions of polarization on the media landscape, so they asked respondents if they thought the news media was independent from undue political and business influences “most of the time”. Instead, they found that half of the respondents said they considered mainstream news organizations to be politically close to each other. That response suggested that one of the many causes of distrust is the perceived lack of diversity in both media ownership and the perspectives offered.
Another U.K. study found a relationship between a lack of trust in journalism and low levels of news literacy among the population. Its recommendations to build confidence and trust among audiences involved improving journalism standards and ensuring that the regulation of news standards be operated independently of the news industry.
These studies and reports confirm what journalists like me see on the ground, which is that the fundamental gatekeeping function of a news organization—the daily decisions that answer the question “What is news?”—is perceived to be biased, that people on various sides of the political spectrum do not see the media representing their viewpoints or interests, that historically excluded communities continue to be misrepresented in the news and that journalists disproportionately come from homogenous backgrounds.
The latest survey by the Canadian Association of Journalists found that Canadian newsrooms are still overwhelmingly white, with 75.5 % of their staff coming from that racial background. It gets worse at the supervisory level, which is 84% white. In addition, Black journalists are the most likely to work in part-time or intern roles compared to full-time or supervisory roles. Far too many newsrooms have no indigenous journalists, and while women make up more than half the workforce, they are more than 60% likely to be in part-time roles.
As much as the diversity of journalists is about racial and ethnic backgrounds, it is also about economic backgrounds. A U.K. study found that 80% of its journalists had a parent in one of the three highest occupational groups, compared to 42% of all U.K. workers. In Canada, too, industry norms such as unpaid internships, poor full-time job opportunities and poorly paid full-time jobs create substantial barriers for aspiring journalists from lower-income backgrounds.
However, there is little purpose in bringing people from different backgrounds if the perspectives they bring are not valued. This was apparent in the coverage of issues such as #MeToo, the racial reckoning of 2020, gender identity issues today and the COVID pandemic. One current example is the coverage of Israel's assault on Gaza, which itself stemmed from Hamas' attacks in Israel on October 7. North American analysis shows media outlets are found to be overwhelmingly skewing their coverage in favour of Israel.
The continuing reality is that women and other minoritized journalists who challenge the status quo are disproportionately at the receiving end of harassment, threats and abuse, a phenomenon that has been adequately documented, even by the United Nations. Where they were trolled initially by strangers, the attacks that led to dog-piling then began to come from journalists and other professionals and are, regrettably, being normalized by politicians. These intimidation and silencing tactics create a chill in the free expression of a diversity of perspectives. This, in turn, feeds a distrust of media within communities. To counter these effects, government should boost laws and regulations that robustly support journalists who are under attack.
When the audience does not feel connected to fact-based news, it leaves little incentive for individuals to financially support it. In other words, without trust or without the idea that ordinary citizens benefit from the news media, there is little hope of financially resuscitating the industry through them.
In conclusion, anyone embarking on solutions to rescue the news industry will have to wrestle with how to support fact-based news in an information ecosystem that rewards polarity, how to invest in diverse perspectives in news, making—
