Tag: Online News Act

It’s the Pot Calling the Kettle Black: US State Dept Human Rights Reports Criticizes Freedom of the Press in Canada

A kettle labeled 'CDA' next to a pot labeled 'US' over an open flame, surrounded by smoke in a natural outdoor setting.
Image: Shutterstock (AI assist)

Earlier this month the US State Department released its annual report on Human Rights in over 190 countries. As usual, there was a country report on Canada. What was less usual was the report’s negative focus criticizing the state of press freedoms in Canada. It seems that as press freedom has declined in the US under Trump 2.0, the MAGA interpretation of how other countries should conduct themselves has ramped up. If there was ever a case of “the pot calling the kettle black”, this is it.

The US Government, through its various departments, issues a number of annual reports, most of them mandated by Congress. Many of them, such as the National Trade Estimates Report on Foreign Trade Barriers or the Special 301 Report on intellectual property (IP), both issued by the Office of the US Trade Representative, are commentaries on the practices of other countries. While these reports can be useful in highlighting trade-distorting measures or areas of weak IP enforcement or legislation, no-one could accuse the US Government of consistency between the practices it identifies and comments on, and many of the practices that the United States itself follows. One good example is in the area of copyright law, where the annual Special 301 Report takes various trading partners of the US to task for numerous transgressions and/or loopholes in copyright protection. But as I pointed out in a blog last year (The USTR “Watch List” Designation You Will Never See), the US hardly has clean hands when it comes to some key copyright issues, such as an unwillingness or inability to institute a site-blocking regime to fight offshore streaming piracy, something that more than 40 other countries have managed to do, and the inadequacy of US law in protecting performance rights of US and non-US artists for music played on terrestrial radio stations, among other issues. The fact that the US is the leading source of online piracy globally with 13.5 billion visits to piracy sites annually does not seem to be enough to get a US site-blocking regime over the goal line in Congress.

The same is true in spades for the trade sector with the advent of the Trump Administration and its practice of unilaterally, arbitrarily and seemingly randomly setting import tariffs (Brazil 50%, Canada 35%, Mexico 30%, China 30%–for now, EU 15%, Japan 15%, Australia 10%, etc,) in defiance of just about every international trade agreement the US has ever signed.

The most recent example of this phenomenon of “say one thing but do another” is the US State Department’s Report on Human Rights in Canada particularly with respect to Section 2 and its hypocritical criticisms of Canada’s “Freedom of the Press”.  A particular bugbear for the State Department is the Online News Act (ONA), legislation that came into force in 2023, based on similar legislation in Australia. (Note that the State Department’s report on Australian human rights does not even mention the similar Australian legislation as an issue). The objective of the ONA, to quote the Canada Gazette, is to seek “to capture the largest and most prominent digital platforms that operate in the markets that have a strategic advantage over news businesses” in order to introduce “a new legislative and regulatory framework that ensures fair revenue sharing between digital platforms and news businesses”. Certain market criteria were applied to scope in the targetted platforms (annual global revenue exceeding $1 billion, must operate a search engine or social media market, minimum 20 million average monthly unique visitors in Canada). As a result, only two entities were subject to the legislation, Google and Meta (Facebook, Instagram). As noted, the ONA mirrored similar legislation passed in Australia a couple of years before. It was also very similar to legislation introduced, but not passed, in the US Congress, (the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act) and to legislation enacted in California. Basically, it required the large digital platforms to pay for their use of news content, content that the platforms used to attract viewers and thus sell ads.

It would be fair to say that the results of the ONA in Canada were mixed. After much uncertainty, threats and lobbying, Google carved out an exemption for itself by agreeing to contribute (CAD) $100 million annually to a fund to support Canadian journalism (while eliminating contributions it was already making to some chosen journalistic enterprises). META took an alternate route by supposedly exempting itself from the reach of the legislation by blocking all coverage from Canadian news sources, claiming that it derived no commercial benefit from having news coverage on Facebook or Instagram. This seems to reflect a global decision by the company to refuse to acknowledge any value from–or willingness to pay for–news content. META’s earlier deals in Australia are not being renewed. Australia is not amused and is considering various courses of action.  

The funding from Google was welcomed by Canadian media outlets, many of them small. As in the US, most news media enterprises in Canada, whether print, digital or broadcast, are struggling as digital platforms have taken over the ad markets that previously supported news media and news journalism. Consumers have gone online for news yet are reluctant to pay for it. The Google funding, plus taxpayer-funded Local Journalism Initiative Funds and tax credits allocated to “Qualified Canadian Journalism Organizations” (QCJO), have helped prevent more areas of the country from becoming news deserts. According to CBC, eligible media outlets employing a qualified journalist will receive between approximately $14,000 and $17,000 annually per journalist from the Google funding, with smaller and digital outlets being on the higher end of the scale. You would think that these efforts to preserve independent journalism would be considered a good thing and might even be applauded by the US State Department in its report on Canadian press freedoms. You would be wrong.

The State Department’s most current (2024) criticism of Freedom of the Press in Canada contains four essential points;

  1. The Government of Canada used a variety of mechanisms to fund public and private sector media in the country.
  2. The Online News Act empowered the CRTC to set mandatory guidelines between digital platforms and news businesses.
  3. The Federal Court upheld the government’s decision to deny tax credits to an “independent news organization” (Rebel News–not specifically named in the State Department report) because it failed to meet the program’s criteria as a qualified journalism organization.
  4. The “Changing Narratives Fund” component of the Local Journalism Initiative, designed to support “diverse communities” (defined as including Indigenous, Black, racialized, ethno-religious minority, people with disabilities and 2SLGBTQI+ communities) discriminated against journalists who fell outside these “favored” categories. 

Let’s look at these allegations in turn. The Government of Canada, as is the case with many governments including, until recently, the US Government (which fully or partially funded media organizations including National Public Broadcasting, PBS, and Voice of America), provides various support measures for Canadian media and publishing, such as the Canadian Periodical Fund, the Local Journalism Initiative (LJI) and the Journalism Tax Credit. To ensure that only bona fide organizations qualify for the tax credit, there are transparent criteria to become a Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization (QCJO). An independent advisory board composed of journalism experts drawn from current and retired faculty members from post-secondary journalism schools across Canada, as well as some in the journalism industry, makes recommendations as to who qualifies . As for the LJI, it is also adjudicated by an independent panel of experts.

With respect to government support programs, the State Department alleges that “News organizations faced direct and indirect pressure to conform their political speech in order to gain or maintain access to these funds, leading to self-censorship”. How did they reach that conclusion. Who knows? Not the slightest evidence is put forward to support this dubious proposition.

As for the Online News Act, the report states that “The law empowered the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission to set mandatory bargaining guidelines between platforms and news businesses and to otherwise enforce and set regulatory guidance for the act, including codes of conduct and eligibility of news businesses to participate, powers which could be used to discriminate against political speech or disfavored independent media outlets.” Huh? The only funding that emerged from the ONA was Google’s $100 million. The CRTC has no role in its distribution. It is administered by a non-profit organization, the Canadian Journalism Collective, established for this purpose by a group of independent publishers and broadcasters, and selected by Google to manage distribution of the funds. As for META, which stonewalled the ONA process and eventually picked up its ball and went home, blocking distribution of Canadian news on its platforms to avoid paying a nickel to support news gathering in Canada, the State Department manages to blame Canada for the resulting news blackout, which it equates with “censorship”;

Rather than participate in government-mandated bargaining, some American digital platforms announced that they would no longer make news content available to Canadian users, leading to substantial censorship of news content including local news content.

This is a quibble, but censorship is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news etc that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable or a threat to security“. What META did by blocking all Canadian news was certainly unacceptable but it definitely wasn’t censorship.

As for the State Department championing Rebel News (an alt-right website often compared to Breitbart News in the US) in the website’s attempt to qualify for the journalism tax credit, is the US State Department implying that the Canadian court system does not support freedom of the press? These are the facts. Rebel News appealed the denial of QCJO status to the Federal Court. It lost for good reasons. The Federal Court upheld the decision of the Canada Revenue Agency to deny the outlet’s application for QCJO tax credits because it failed to meet the key criteria of producing original news content. On a review of 483 articles published by Rebel News, less than one percent was deemed original, the rest being either opinion or republished material. (These are the very same tax credits that earlier in the Report were criticized for leading to self censorship of news organizations, so according to the State Department, it’s bad if you take them and it’s bad if you can’t get them.).

As for the Changing Narratives Fund, it is an additional $10 million (i.e. new money) in funding over 3 years provided to the Local Journalism Initiative. It is hard to understand how that undermines press freedom in Canada.

Let’s look at the equivalent State Department Report on Canadian human rights in 2023, which had this to say about press freedoms;

“An independent media, an effective judiciary, and a functioning democratic political system combined to promote freedom of expression, including for media members. Independent media were active and expressed a wide variety of views without restriction”.

Gee, how could it all go so wrong in just a year? The tax credits and local journalism funding have been around for quite a while. The ONA brought in around $100 million in new funding to journalism. There is room for valid criticism of the role of the press and press freedoms in Canada (the RCMP have been pretty heavy-handed with journalists at protest sites for example) but what really changed was the arrival of the MAGA crowd in Washington.

But if the criticisms of Canada’s press freedoms reek of the Trump Administration’s domestic US agenda, it is the hypocrisy of attacking the freedom of the press in Canada that really sticks in my throat given the current declining state of press freedoms in the US. Apart from the fact that– according to the Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index— the US places 57th out of 180 countries (Canada ranks 21, UK 20, New Zealand 16, Australia 29), there is plenty of evidence that press freedoms in the US are on a steep decline, despite the courage of some US media outlets in fighting back. I personally don’t give the Press Freedom Index that much credibility (it strains credulity to place the US below Panama, Moldova, North Macedonia and a few others), but it is more difficult to dismiss the views of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists who report that 100 days into Donald Trump’s administration, press freedoms in the US are no longer “a given”. The Committee’s Special Report, “Alarm bells: Trump’s first 100 days ramp up fear for the press, democracy”, states clearly that;

“The first 100 days of the Trump administration have been marked by a flurry of executive actions that have created a chilling effect and have the potential to curtail media freedoms. These measures threaten the availability of independent, fact-based news for vast swaths of America’s population.”

Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit against CBS, cravenly settled by Paramount, is one prominent example. There are many others. The White House banned Associated Press reporters from the press pool after the outlet refused to follow an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. The Wall Street Journal was banned from the press pool covering Trump’s recent trip to Scotland over its coverage of the Jeffrey Epstein affair, which Trump didn’t like. As Donald Trump has weaponized the US government against any elements of the US media he doesn’t like, at any given moment in time, the US reputation as the “gold standard” for press freedom and investigative reporting is dropping like a stone. Now it appears that the US State Department has been enlisted to do the Administration’s dirty work, and to peddle its view of how the world should be run, through its Human Rights Report.

I don’t really blame the authors of the report. If they hadn’t already been fired for not being doctrinally correct, they were just doing what they were told to do—push the Trump agenda by whatever means available. In picking on freedom of the press in Canada, they come across as particularly hypocritical and biased, undermining whatever reputational impact the State Department’s Report on Human Rights used to have.

If this is not a case of the pot calling the kettle black, (with very little substantiating evidence to back up the accusation) then I don’t know what is. Maybe it’s just a lot of hypocritical hot air.

© Hugh Stephens, 2025. All Rights Reserved

Digital Platforms and News Content: Australia Takes Off the Gloves

Image: Shutterstock

Canada infamously tried to take a leaf from Australia’s book in dealing with large internet platforms, like Google and Meta, that benefit from news media content without paying for it. In 2023, Canada introduced the Online News Act (Bill C-18), a Canadian version of Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code. The Australian approach, first introduced through legislation in late 2021, was initially very successful. Rod Sims, the author of the Code from his then position as Commissioner of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), testified before the Canadian House of Commons Committee studying C-18, pointing to the success of the initiative in generating some AUD200 million in financial support for Australian media annually. Although there had been pushback by both Google and Meta in Australia, both eventually came onside, especially after the spectacular flop of Meta’s news blackout campaign. The threat of being designated under the Australian code was enough to get the two platforms to negotiate agreements with most Australian media in the form of funding to support journalistic output. As a result of the agreements reached, neither platform was designated under the Code and thus was not subject to “final offer” arbitration imposed by the ACCC.

Canada thought it would “improve” on the Australian precedent by making the process somewhat more transparent in terms of funding offers, and by requiring the platforms to self-designate. Whether it was the tweaked Canadian legislation or, more likely, a reappraisal of the value and cost of the agreements (particularly when it became apparent that the Australian precedent was likely to be followed elsewhere, with Canada being the first out of the gate), both platforms dug in. Meta in particular refused to engage with the Canadian process and declared that it would “comply” with the legislation by removing all links to Canadian media. That is not what the Government of Canada or Canadian media had in mind when Bill C-18 was introduced. Meta has held that line, although the extent to which it is fully complying is under review by the regulator, the CRTC. Various workarounds to allow news content to appear on Facebook have been employed by both Facebook users and some news providers, and META seems willling to turn a blind eye. Why that doesn’t trigger the Online News Act requirement to reach funding agreements with news content providers is a question that cries out for a response. (CRTC take note: We are waiting).

Google was slightly more amenable to striking a deal with the Government of Canada, agreeing that in return for exemption from the legislation, it would contribute $100 million (CAD) annually for five years (adjusted to inflation) to a fund that would provide support to qualified Canadian media enterprises. The $100 million subsumes existing contributions Google was already making to some Canadian journalism programs, so the net result is not $100 million in new money. Google has now begun to disburse this funding through the Canadian Journalism Collective (CJC), an entity established by what could legitimately be called “non mainstream media”, i.e. many small digital startups. The CJC was selected by Google as the executing agency for its funding, thus snubbing the organization representing the major media enterprises, News Media Canada. There are likely to be disputes over whether some of the “little guys” actually qualify as bona fide journalists. The more mouths there are to feed, the less there is for each supplicant and the big players are not happy to see the Google revenue stream diluted.

Meanwhile, back in Oz, Meta has announced that once they expire it will not renew the media agreements it reached back in 2022. Many will end this year. It appears Meta has decided it will adopt a consistent global position by insisting that news media content provides it with no value. Zero. None. And therefore it will not pay a cent. In part, this is to head off similar moves in the US where news media providers would like to bring in an arrangement similar to that instituted in Australia, or Canada. A separate initiative in California ended up with an outcome close to the one in Canada, with Google reluctantly agreeing to contribute funding to local journalism while Meta walked away. The Australian government has seen where this is heading, and it is not happy. It is taking the gloves off.

The Albanese government has announced it will be taking measures to require that any internet company that refuses to negotiate with publishers or removes news from its platform will be forced to pay, regardless. This is the big stick to counter META. What happens next is a consultation process, beginning now, to determine how what is being called a “news bargaining incentive” will actually be applied, retroactive to January 1. All digital platforms with annual revenues of AUD250 million annually will likely be subject to it. This will expand the net to include ByteDance (Tik Tok) and Microsoft (Bing, LinkedIn) as well as META and Google. Google has already said it will carry on and will renew the deals it signed with Australian media, allowing it to be exempted under the Code. META is not backing down.

The so-called “incentive” will take the form of a discounted penalty or fine. The initial proposal is that companies that sign deals amounting to 90% or more of the total of the fine that would otherwise be levied will be exempt. In other words, find ways to strike deals that in the end will save you money. Simply refusing to carry news content, as META has done in Canada, will not let a designated platform off the hook, a significant variation from the Canadian legislation, which many have criticized as being flawed. Rod Sims, now back in academia, fully supports the new incentive initiative. It appears the only way META can avoid payment is by closing its business in Australia. Given META’s track record, this might even be a card it is prepared to play. One can expect it to pull out all the stops to oppose the “incentive”, from legal challenges to threatening a pullout to seeking to invoke the support of the Trump Administration.

What position will the Trump Administration adopt? Donald Trump certainly has no love for the news media, as evidenced by his current and threatened lawsuits against US media outlets for providing coverage he doesn’t like. On the other hand, NewsCorp, which has strong holdings in Australia, has in recent years built its reputation and business model on catering to Trump’s vanity and desires. Trump also is not fan of Facebook, but Mark Zuckerberg has smelled the coffee and has donated a $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, after having kissed the ring by dining with the President-elect at Mar-a-Lago. So in the end, who knows where the US government will be on this question? All I can say to the Australian government’s expressed intention to deal head-on with META’s scorched-earth tactics is “good on ya, mate”. I wish Canada had the gumption to do the same.

© Hugh Stephens, 2025. All Rights Reserved.

Tech Platforms and News Media: California Cuts a Deal with Google, While Meta Walks Free

Image: Shutterstock (AI assisted)

The ongoing financial tug-of-war between large tech/social media platforms and news media outlets, with governments trying to play a mediator/arbitrator role, has taken another turn with the announcement that California has cut a deal with Google, similar in principle to the one reached in Canada at the end of last year. When Google was fighting being subjected to regulation in Canada under the Online News Act, Bill C-18, it was glancing over its shoulder at impending developments on its own home turf, California. The California Journalism Preservation Act would have instituted a regime similar to that originally proposed in both Australia and Canada by requiring Google to negotiate agreements with news content providers, compensating them for Google’s use of news content links.

The California bill is similar to draft US federal legislation introduced, but not adopted, in the 2022 session of the US Congress. That legislation would have given news media enterprises an exemption from anti-trust laws allowing them to negotiate jointly with the tech platforms while specifying requirements regarding the negotiations, including arbitration in certain circumstances. (That draft US federal legislation made it difficult for Google to enlist the support of the US Government in opposing similar legislation in Canada, as I wrote about here). Google didn’t like the draft legislation in the US one bit and employed various measures to try to stop it. In California it threatened to drop news from Search, (as it did in Canada) and, similar to its tactics in Canada, it trialed blocking links to news sites for some users.

As most readers will know, and as I have written about on several occasions, Google played hardball in Australia and Canada, but in the end came to an accommodation of sorts. In Australia it reached unspecified content deals with the majority of Australian media players. In Canada, in return for avoiding designation under the Online News Act, Google agreed to contribute CAD $100 million (about US$75 million) annually to a journalism fund to support news media outlets, both print and broadcast. While the result was not what the government or the news media had originally expected, it was certainly better than nothing. It was not all “new money”, however, as Google had previously signed some voluntary content deals in a vain attempt to head off the legislation. This pre-existing funding will now be rolled into the $100 million fund. The voluntary deals will be wound up, thus putting an effective cap on Google’s contribution. Its tactics in Canada demonstrate that Google will do just about anything to avoid being made to share revenues for linking to the content of others, seeing this as an existential threat to its business and operating model. The same applies in California.

In return for withdrawal of California’s original legislation—which would have subjected links to compensation—Google has agreed to ante up approximately US$55 million over 5 years to be put into a fund to be managed by the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, contingent on the California legislature also contributing $70 million to the fund over the same period of time. That outcome is by no means guaranteed as the funding must be approved by the state legislature each year. In addition, according to the New York Times, Google has undertaken to provide approximately $60 million over 5 years to an AI Innovation Accelerator Fund, plus maintaining its existing $10 million annual support payments for journalism. That is pretty small change for Google. California’s population, at roughly 39 million, is almost exactly the same as that of Canada although California’s GDP is roughly twice as large. Taking that into consideration, maybe Canada did not fare so badly in getting Google to contribute $100 million (CAD) annually.

While Google and the California legislators who brokered the deal were touting its benefits, it received a mixed reaction from some publishers and outright condemnation from unions representing journalists and staff working at news outlets, who called it a “shakedown”. Meanwhile, Meta (Facebook) appears to have walked away scot-free. Meta was one of the targets of the original California legislation, as it was in Australia and Canada. Meta has claimed it gets no value from news links and in Canada “complied” with the Online News Act by blocking news links, thus eliminating any obligation to pay for news content. The result has been perverse, with non-news outlets, like a garbage disposal company in Saskatchewan being allowed to post news to Facebook because technically it is not a news provider, while legitimate professional journalism outlets are blocked. While Meta initially reached some content deals in Australia after its blockage of news content blew up in its face, it is now busy terminating them as renewals come up. The Australian government will have to decide whether to bite its tongue and do nothing or call Meta’s bluff. If they do, there is every likelihood that Meta will block news for Australian users as it has done in Canada.

There are still voices in California calling for ways to “encourage” Meta to make a financial contribution to news media, and the Google offer is not a completely “done deal” although it has support from the Governor of the state. With the California domino having fallen, government attempts to bring Google to heel seem to have sputtered out, at least for now. The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act in the US Congress appears unlikely to go anywhere. The UK is still trying to figure out its approach, as MediaPolicy.ca reported last week. Google and Meta appear to have successfully stared down sovereign governments at the national and state level. While Meta appears to have completely closed its wallet, Google has negotiated payments it can live with as part of the cost of doing business. And given the scale of its business, the amounts it is throwing on the table are exactly that, a business cost that is a small price to pay for its dominant quasi-monopolistic grip on the online advertising market which, at its most basic level, is a vehicle to provide access to content generated by others.

© Hugh Stephens, 2024. All Rights Reserved.

As Journalism Withers, “Garbage” News Takes Over: An Unexpected Result of the Facebook/Instagram News Blackout in Canada

Image: Shutterstock (with AI assist: Note AI misspelling)

The sad, slow decline of professional journalism continues. The most recent manifestation of this in Canada is the announcement that the Saltwire Group, publishers of The Chronicle Herald of Halifax and a number of other daily and weekly papers in Atlantic Canada, is on the ropes with $90 million in debt. The Chronicle Herald has been around for 150 years! Post Media has made a buyout offer of $1 million (less than the cost of the average home in Vancouver). This will keep some of the papers publishing, no doubt with significant staff cutbacks and, reportedly, ending of union contracts and termination of company pension plans. But there seems to be little choice; accept the nasty medicine or expire. Post Media will most likely keep a minimal local newsroom and fill the papers with repurposed content from its flagship daily National Post. Local news will suffer. This is a story that is being replicated all over North America.

Meanwhile small, local online news outlets have been hit by Facebook’s blackout of news for Canadian readers as a result of the passage of the Online News Act, Bill C-18. In the case of New Brunswick’s River Valley Sun, according to the CBC, the free-to-readers, ad-supported, all-digital Sun depended on Facebook to reach its audience as well as to obtain local news that could be added to the online journal. The owner is quoted as saying, “…we started basically from scratch, and because Facebook was free it was wonderful”.

That is the flip side of the narrative accusing Facebook of using uncompensated news content, developed at great expense by professional journalists working for media companies, to attract and hold users’ interest thus keeping them on Meta’s sites (Facebook, Instagram) longer to be able to expose them to more ads. Not so wonderful. That is what C-18 was supposed to rectify, along the lines of the News Media Bargaining Code instituted earlier in Australia, requiring the big social media platforms (in this case Google and Meta) to make a contribution to news gathering if they used news content. Failure to do so would result in compulsory and binding arbitration. While Google ducked and weaved, it eventually agreed to put $100 million into a pot to be doled out to various news organizations by the Canadian Journalism Collective as long as it was given an exemption from the legislation, whereas Meta went to the wall and took down news links rather than contribute. The River Valley Sun is collateral damage, although it could possibly tap into the Google funding if it employs any fulltime journalists (a minimum of two is required).

The Online News Act did result in bringing some additional funding to news outlets, large and small, somewhat along the lines of Australia’s initiative through its News Media Bargaining Code (which was not actually invoked because the two platforms ended up striking content deals with most Australian media). However, it is clear that Meta has had buyer’s remorse about its Australian deals because they are busy unwinding those commitments in Oz. It remains to be seen how Australia will deal with this. There have been some suggestions that the Australian government may be looking at options to force Meta to carry news, and then subject them to the Code. Will Meta get a pass—in which case Google could rightly ask why it should comply—or will news also end up being blocked on Facebook and Instagram for Australian users as well as Canadian?

If that happens, consumers will have to find other ways to get access to news that is normally shared on the Facebook platform. Going to the actual websites of news organizations is one good way to do this. What a novel idea! However, many younger consumers won’t do this; if news is on a social media feed, they might read it, but they will not proactively search for it. Facebook also remains an important go-to source for breaking local news related to weather and climate-change events such as flooding and fires. Hosts of Facebook pages distributing information on the local impact of natural disasters have had to resort to workarounds such as posting photos of news articles on Meta or copy-pasting articles into their Facebook page. (Ironically, such actions could possibly constitute violations of copyright whereas posting a link is not). But workarounds are not going to help news outlets like the River Valley Sun.

Perhaps the journal should take a leaf out of the book of Just Bins, a waste recycling firm in Regina, SK, a garbage collection company that seems to have picked up news distribution as a sideline, benefiting from the free online exposure. It does not distribute mainstream media; it creates its own news content that it features on its website, even employing its own drone footage. Because it is not a news site, it is not blocked by Facebook. It has edgily reported on traffic accidents, problems at City Hall, homelessness, and even suicides. In fact, it was voted best online news source in a recent poll taken for the annual “Best of Regina” awards. Not that it takes its journalism role all that seriously—and that is part of the problem—since fact-checking, journalistic ethics and balanced reporting seem to have been put out with the recycling bins. Just Bins has taken the old adage of “garbage in-garbage out” to new heights. This is yet another byproduct of the Facebook ban, a further kick in the shins for reputable journalism. If the River Valley Sun could just sell pizza on the side, maybe they could slip through the Facebook net and post online as Just Bins is doing.

Just Bins is not the only quasi-news source that has managed to squeeze through the Meta news blockage. This week Howard Law’s media blog MediaPolicy.ca reports on the Meta news ban (“The leaky Meta news ban is roiling Canadian journalism”) and highlights a study conducted by researchers at McGill University on the impact of the ban a year after it went into effect. The McGill study notes that many Canadians continue to use Meta as a source of “news” despite the ban. Three-quarters of the Canadian public is apparently unaware of the ban, yet Canadian news outlets have lost 85% of their engagement on Facebook and Instagram and almost one third of local news outlets are now inactive on social media. How this apparent contradiction is possible is explained in part by workarounds such as those referred to above, but also because Meta allows sites that declare themselves to be non-news outlets to continue to post content. Mediapolicy.ca discusses the case of Narcity.com, a “chain of local news and lifestyle websites” that has recently been reinstated on Meta. Narcity was denied government tax credits as a “Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization” (QCJO) because of insufficient first-hand reporting. With this rejection in hand, it then applied to Meta to be reinstated on its platform on the basis that if it didn’t qualify for QCJO credits, it must not be a news provider under the Online News Act, C-18. It’s a clever argument, one that possibly the River Valley Sun could take advantage of.

One can argue that Canada’s attempt to require Google and Meta to enter into good faith negotiations with news providers to license content was either a valiant and imaginative attempt to come to grips with the painful decline of journalism, riding to some extent on what at the time appeared to be the successful coattails of Australia’s initiative, or a colossal miscalculation and poor timing as the platforms decided to draw a line in the sand in case media interests in the US decided to follow suit. Google and Meta will do everything possible to avoid going down that road. If sending a signal to US media interests requires them to call the bluff of the Canadian government, they will do so.

In the end, the results are mixed. Legitimate media in Canada, big and small, will get some help from Google’s contribution, although the amount Google is providing through the Canadian Journalism Collective has to be offset against pre-existing voluntary agreements that both Google and Meta had with some journalistic outlets. The Meta subsidies are now gone, and the previous Google contributions have been folded into the $100 million that Google has agreed to put on the table. Meanwhile, in Regina, Just Bins has found the garbage loophole, serving up its version of trashy journalism and news on Meta, going where bona fide journalists cannot. Sad.

© Hugh Stephens, 2024. All Rights Reserved.