Peter Menzies: Those cheering on the Liberals’ plans for the CBC should think twice

Welcome to my Full Press column, a bi-weekly round-up of the interesting stories in media worth paying attention to. Be sure to catch The Hub’s accompanying Full Press podcast.

Why should Canadians pay twice for government-funded news?

Paul Deegan, the mastermind behind Canadian media’s dependence on taxpayer assistance, was quick—maybe too quick—to praise the Liberals’ new plan for the CBC.

Yes, it was introduced by outgoing Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge. But seeing as new Prime Minister Mark Carney was getting preferential briefings by cabinet members at the expense of his rivals throughout the Liberal leadership campaign, we can assume he’s onside, just as he must be OK with the orgy of appointments made by Justin Trudeau in his final hours as prime minister.

Deegan, head of News Media Canada, said he was delighted with the Liberal proposal to ban CBC from selling ads adjacent to television and online news content. He and the newspapers he represents assume CBC won’t retain that revenue and it will instead flow to them.

Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Money goes where it’s happy and if that means it stays with CBC or flows instead to Facebook, Deegan, the Toronto Star, Postmedia, and other Liberal-funded media can always just ask Carney for more.

But they should be careful. Because if the thinking behind the proposal on CBC subscriptions is anything to go by, they could be risking a hit.

The plan laid out by St-Onge envisions increasing CBC funding by $1.1 billion to more than cover the cost of any lost revenue. She would also ban CBC from charging subscription fees, as it does for enhanced digital services like GEM. She said this is because taxpayers “shouldn’t have to pay twice.”

Whoa. If that’s the case, cash-conscious Canadians may wonder why they should have to pay for a subscription to the National Post, Toronto Star, or the Globe and Mail which, along with many others, already benefit from their support as taxpayers through the Journalism Labour Tax Credit, the Local Journalism Initiative, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s diversion of advertising spending.

I only subscribe to one of those—the Globe. I have other subscriptions, but they are all with companies like The Hub that refuse, God bless them, to take money from politicians.

Still, my taxes—as do yours—go to support the Star and Postmedia papers whether we buy them or not. So why, using the Liberal “shouldn’t have to pay twice” logic, do Canadians not deserve to read those newspapers for free?

Deegan’s got some work to do if he hopes to preserve his members’ paywalls and the revenue they earn from them.

Because right now they are batting on a sticky wicket.

The Liberals and the media are content to keep cozying up—whether Canadians like it or not 

The public seems very aware, according to a report for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), of bias in media and the increasingly close ties between the Trudeau/Carney Liberals and the journalists expected to hold them accountable. Much of that, apparently, comes from independent media sources, several of whom, like The Hub, have refused to owe favours to politicians.

Perceptions Of Canadian Programming And News reported that only 14 percent of those asked responded with “very well” when asked, “How well do Canadian news sources report on a variety of political views?”

There’s some chance that those taking the money simply don’t care. Because so long as the Liberals stay in power and ever more money keeps rolling in, why would they?

Where’s the outrage? 

The days of media outrage over appointments appear to be long past. I remember when there was considerable noise in the press over the appointment to the CRTC of Marc Patrone as a national commissioner because, while he had never run for office, he had once obtained a Conservative Party nomination in Halifax. There wasn’t so much as a peep when former TV anchor Nirmala Naidoo, who twice ran unsuccessfully as a Liberal in Calgary, was appointed as the CRTC’s Alberta and Northwest Territories commissioner in 2020.

In February, with Parliament prorogued and more than five months before the expiration of their terms, she and Atlantic commissioner Ellen Desmond were re-appointed for an additional five years, making the CRTC safely Liberal on the off chance the Conservatives win an election. But, just as no one seemed to care that an unelected person, Carney, was getting preferential confidential cabinet meetings, not a single government-funded media eyebrow was raised.

Doug Ford won a convincing mandate—right? 

The CBC’s Rosemary Barton has a longstanding reputation for rubbing Conservatives the wrong way. Given that, it was difficult to understand why she would go out of her way to, as noted by Conservative online activist Stephen Taylor, attempt to portray the Progressive Conservative’s recent victory in Ontario as reason for Premier Doug Ford to worry.

“This is not the sweeping super majority that we’ve been talking about,” Barton told her colleagues and audience after it was clear Ford had not only won a third straight majority but did so with the largest percentage of the popular vote since Mike Harris’s wins 30 years ago.

Rubber-shoe journalism still works 

Finally, a tip of the hat to the National Post for checking as to whether Carney had told the truth when he said he had resigned from all his outside associations in mid-January. Turns out that he didn’t. Some old-school shoe-rubber journalism there.

A final plug (or two) 

Be sure to check out my Substack, The Rewrite for more media monitoring, and don’t miss the Full Press podcast coming up March 13 with Tara Henley, Harrison Lowman, and yours truly.