A new 'bailout' for the sinking ship of legacy media surfaced this past week..As Western Standard's Matthew Horwood reported last Friday, upcoming Bill C-18 “would compel Google and Facebook to pay newsrooms a portion of ad revenues generated by linked stories.”.Not suprisingly, the CBC would take the biggest piece of the $329 million pie..So, we have another Hail Mary pass from the government, an apparent act of blind faith in the face of ample evidence that legacy media's days are numbered..Newsrooms are half the size that they were two decades ago. Newspaper circulation was halved as well. The 2021 Edelman Trust barometer suggests 59% of respondents in 28 countries believe journalists deliberately try to mislead the public by reporting information they know to be false. And according to Pew Research, a quarter of U.S. adults regularly get their news from YouTube, and 27% of them turn to Twitter.. Edelman TrustEdelman Trust survey shows declining trust in institutions. .Yet, our government pours more tax dollars, more virgins, what have you, down the magic well, and in so doing only solidify for skeptics the belief legacy media can't be trusted — that it has been corrupted, captured by the state..Take, for example, the hard-won new payouts for legacy media from Google and the like come at the very time our government is aiming to censor non-legacy outlets online..The typical defense of these platforms has been they aren't publishers; they are more like bulletin boards. A channel, albeit a channel that sells our data. But now that bulletin board is paying for news. What do they get in return?.As it stands, it couldn't be a more perfect deal for the CBC, all in the name of protecting naive Canadians from non-Canadian content and 'disinformation.'.Step right up, mister: Buy advertising on the CBC's unique website that's both subsidized by the government and protected under new censorship legislation. You wonder why they're charging you a lot? Its prime real estate, man, walled up, secure and safe from free market competition..Censorship legislation like Bill C-11, which will at the very least adjust the algorithm to promote state-sanctioned Canadian content, will be a boon to the profits of already subsidized media companies..And we thought press conferences were a big group hug already..But media consumers are increasingly wise to the shenanigans. MainStreet Research recently surveyed 1,247 Albertans on their media use, and though the findings contradict the government's investment wisdom, they are not surprising. Forty-two percent of respondents use alternative and independent media, while 33% still turn to mainstream media (and 40% of those are over 65). Importantly, 26% are not sure — a big group in flux, perhaps using both forms of media, but who are unlikely to loyally return to the nanny embrace of the CBC..Alternative media users — a full 46% of them — are in the 35-64 age range. Demographic-wise, these readers are typically college-educated young adults, who are earning well and independently minded..It is this group — media users who are both disenfranchised and independently minded — which the bloated legacy media of government bailouts don't seem to understand..They've missed the boat..Activist journalism won't stop the leaks, nor will the massive corporate and concentrated ownership of, say, Bell, Postmedia, and Torstar..The fact is, the days of the words “Trust CNN” resonating in the deep voice of James Earl Jones are gone..And never again will a grey-haired news anchor, a la Peter Mansbridge or Walter Cronkite, end a newscast with “And that's the way it is,” without anyone under 50 chuckling and turning to their Youtube channels, Twitter or Facebook... or Rumble..That's not the way it is. We do get our news elsewhere. We do question the narrative..And we do so, no matter how much the state pretends otherwise.
