The collapse of Canadian media
The collapse of Canadian media
A one-hour special with Jen Gerson - Canadian journalist, co-founder of The Line and contributing columnist to The Globe and Mail newspaper
Appears in this episode
If you listen to this podcast, you know that the Canadian media is in serious trouble. But in recent weeks, that crisis has intensified, with wave after wave of bad news for the industry. Bell Canada laid off 1300 staff. And, when this was episode was recorded, merger talks between the two biggest newspaper publishers were ongoing — negotiations have since broken down.
Add to that, in the wake of controversial new legislation, Bill C-18, Google and Facebook announced they would remove links to Canadian journalism from the platforms. (Though, just as this episode closed, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez announced that the government was drafting regulations that would set a cap on what Google and Facebook would be required to pay to our news industry).
So today, given all that’s going on, we have a special, hour-long episode of Lean Out. And my guest is here to help me unpack these developments — and to think through the state of our press, from lost public trust and pandemic mistakes, to the rise of independent outlets and the future of the CBC.
Jen Gerson is a Calgary journalist, a contributing columnist at The Globe and Mail, and co-founder of the Canadian outlet The Line. She’s currently writing a book about moral panics.
Jen Gerson is my guest, today on Lean Out. Transcript to come for paid subscribers.
The collapse of Canadian media
Once again thank you for this posting.
20 years ago, I was a CBC addict, a Globe & Mail reader, and a passionate consumer of information. I lost confidence, as I started to see more & more incidents where the reporting was simply untrue. At first this was simply sensationalizing stories by deliberate conflating of issues. (So a picture of the homeless shelter was shown when the story being covered had nothing to do with the homeless). I then would see stories where in depth reporting would be done on say "Fifth Estate", then immediately contradicted in the news cast. This was followed by distraction reporting, where a solicitous reporting would be done to distract people from a story that made a powerful entity look bad. (Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction & events in Iraq).
It then got to the point, where MSM would report things that I knew to be untrue because it fit their narrative. (Ukraine would be case & point, where events that were reported in 2014 such as the Odessa Union Hall Fire are denied in 2022)
It has only gotten worse since then.
It should come as no surprise Canadian media is collapsing as we are a boring colonized country where the news and opinion is heavily censored. My news and opinion sources are outside the country, especially with the world crisis which our media does not report on and is not qualified to cover. For news, like everything else, we become cross border shoppers.
Where there is no sovereignty there is no freedom of the press, or integrity.
As a colony we are living another countries existence and become part of it.
Canadian media is pining for the old days when news paper barons could rake in fortunes on advertising, those days are gone and Google and Face book are not to be blamed. News and journalism should never be about making profits it should be about honest reporting and integrity.
The collapse of the Canadian media coincides with the collapse of the Western media- both have whored themselves to the gods of war and endless lies and propaganda.
Our government is actually a colonial satrap and until that changes nothing else will. As the world is in rapid change, only the nimble will survive. There will be more casualties to come.
As usual, the Liberals are patching tires when the whole car needs a major overhaul.