Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good afternoon to the committee. Thank you for inviting me to participate in your study on a national forum on the media.
My name is Tara Henley. I am a journalist and author in Toronto, and I am the host of the Lean Out podcast, a subscriber-supported weekly current affairs interview show that hosts guests from around the world, including many journalists. I have been a journalist for 22 years, with experience in newspapers, magazines, digital, radio and television, as well as in publishing a current affairs book.
For the past year, one of my central lines of inquiry at Lean Out has been on the collapse of the media. I've interviewed researchers, authors, historians and professors; I've read reports and covered journalism panels and forums; I've read a large volume of emails and comments from the public; and I have spoken with journalists in both legacy and independent media, as well as opinion writers across the political spectrum and media entrepreneurs. I am currently writing the 2024 Massey essay on the state of the media, to be published in the Literary Review of Canada this spring. The focus of that essay is on declining trust in the media.
As this committee has already heard, the problems facing Canadian media are complex and multi-faceted, and our newsrooms are under enormous pressure. We know that the collapse of the Canadian media is largely economic. The Internet has disrupted our industry and the advertising business model has imploded. We also have heard from witnesses at this committee that the industry faces challenges with ownership and consolidation. We have seen mass outlet closures, dwindling audiences and mass layoffs. By some estimates, there are now just 10,000 to 12,000 journalists in this country.
Government intervention in the industry has also presented challenges for some players, including independent and digital outlets, and has resulted in Meta pulling out of news in Canada. We heard powerful testimony on that recently from media CEO Brandon Gonez.
The media are in a profoundly weakened state, and there are consequences to this. Good journalism involves revealing inconvenient facts, airing unpopular perspectives and challenging dominant narratives. The volatility of our industry risks breeding conformity and caution, both in leadership and in our press corps, and this can erode the quality of coverage. In the current climate, the training for the next generation is also jeopardized, as there are fewer mentors and outlets—particularly, fewer local news outlets—for journalists to train at.
An important point is that the economic precarity of journalism means that young people without family financial support are less likely to go into the business and do internships or poorly paid jobs in the expensive cities where our media are now concentrated. This reduces the diversity of perspective in our newsrooms at a time when we most need to increase it.
As the industry is collapsing, the public relations industry is exploding. Cecil Rosner, formerly of The Fifth Estate at CBC, notes in his recent book that journalists are now outnumbered by PR professionals by a ratio of 13:1. We in the media are facing not just catastrophic economic and structural pressures; we're also grappling with a serious decline in public trust and a citizenry that is increasingly tuning out from the news and is increasingly hostile towards journalists.
These are all major problems for maintaining a robust and healthy press, so I very much support the idea of a national forum on the media, especially one that would have meaningful participation from the public. If we want to save the Canadian media, we're going to have to listen to the public and we're going to have to forge a journalism centred on the public interest as the public understands it, as witnesses Sue Gardner, Jen Gerson and Colette Brin have already persuasively argued before this committee.
I do not believe the government should have a role in facilitating a news forum, and I especially don't think it should fund it. In my view, any funding from the government that flows to the media at this point would hinder our attempts to rebuild trust. There is evidence to suggest that subsidies have created an environment in which segments of the public believe the media have been bought off by the government. We heard this view at committee as well in words from Unifor’s Lana Payne, who said that her members face complaints that they are a “tax-funded mouthpiece for the PMO”. We know from a 2023 Angus Reid poll that most Canadians—59%—oppose government funding of private newsrooms, believing it compromises journalists' independence.
I do want to be clear: I do not believe subsidies result in direct editorial interference, but that doesn’t mean they don't impact trust. As an industry, we have a duty to insulate ourselves from the power that we are meant to hold to account. The media derive their credibility from their independence from power, particularly government power, and maintaining public confidence in that independence is of paramount importance, as important as maintaining the independence itself. We must contend with the public perception of government funding and understand that it likely erodes trust at the exact moment, unfortunately, that the Canadian press most needs to rebuild trust.
Without trust, we have no audience. Without an audience, we have no revenue. Without revenue, we have no path forward for the Canadian media, and without the media, we do not have an informed electorate or a functioning democracy.
The Canadian media do need to be saved. That is very true. My message is simply that the government cannot save us: We have to save ourselves.
Thank you very much.