The Canadian government is being called upon by the Public Policy Forum (PPF) to “urgently” address the competition challenges local, independent and national news media are experiencing in the shadow of the broad reach and influence of the big-tech giants..News media groups in Canada have been experiencing a slow decline in revenue and readership rates as they battle digital leviathans such as Facebook/Meta, Twitter and Google for audience attention..The report, titled The Shattered Mirror: 5 Years On, discusses the merits of negotiated compensation agreements between digital giants and news media, such as those that have benefited media groups in Australia..The recent report is an update on the PPF’s publication of its predecessor report of 2017, The Shattered Mirror. In the earlier report, the PPF sought to address the dire state of affairs in the legacy media with regards to diminishing readership and overall revenue..“This Public Policy Forum report looks at the state of a much weaker news media in a very different environment, severely disrupted by the digital age,” wrote the Forum in the 2017 report..Five years on and the PPF draws two main conclusions on the ever-worsening revenue decline among Canadian news media corporations and the resultant pressure on the healthy status quo of original, public-interest, and unbiased news journalism..“The problem and the risks it poses to the vibrancy of our democracy have not relented and have particularly grown in intensity at the local level — the more rural and remote, the more acute. We are seeing some green shoots of innovation, but too little yet from which to take comfort,” says the new report..The coronavirus pandemic precipitated a sharp economic downturn that caused the Canadian reader population to tighten its collective belt, but the economic slow-down only served to exacerbate the larger problem of the steady decline of advertising revenues that were, and still are, flowing sideways to the big tech social media platforms’ coffers. Facebook and Google now account for a considerable proportion of the Canadian digital advertising market expenditure.. smal-bank-phrom-Tzm3Oyu_6sk-unsplash1Bank Phrom .The second conclusion points to some ground being made in Western media employing evolving policies that attempt to tackle the challenges facing the industry..“The policy menu democratic countries are applying to the challenge has continued to evolve. Five years ago, the conundrum was how to secure public finance support for a floundering industry that was also an essential public good, while guaranteeing government would have no influence on news coverage. Today, the conundrum is how to ensure a re-balancing of revenues from private digital hegemony for this still-floundering industry that remains an essential public good, while guaranteeing the digital duopoly has no influence on news coverage,” the report stated..The Public Policy Forum expressed its satisfaction that in 2017, The Shattered Mirror report successfully laid out the issues and got the ball rolling on policy debate on the threats to healthy journalism and robust democratic debate..“To the extent public policy has a role to play, it should be focused on maintaining the flow of information essential to a healthy society and ensuring the development of the digital arteries of the new information systemâ—ânot preserving the press as we know it. The digital revolution is real, but with it have arisen challenges — fragmentation, distortion and adjusting to new business and storytelling models,” the PPF argued in its report..The PPF offered 12 main recommendations that included the establishment of a research institute whose remit would be the study of journalism and democracy. The PPF’s partnership in the Digital Democracy Project and the new Centre for Media, Technology, and Democracy at McGill University’s Max Bell School of Public Policy would facilitate progress in the endeavour..Other recommendations include an adjustment of copyright rules to strengthen the rights of news originators, the cultivation of philanthropic support for journalism in Canada, and the use of taxation tools like GST and HST for foreign digital services providers..The Canadian government subsidizes the mainstream with more than $600 million and give CBC more than $1 billion annually..The Western Standard does not accept any for of government subsidy..Amanda Brown is a reporter at the Western Standard
