Weekend reads: Minding the media

A Liberal MP flexes on a Canadian journalist, reminding her who pays her salary

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For some time now, some of us in the independent media have been warning about the federal government’s payroll subsidies for private newsrooms, signing on to the Ottawa Declaration on Canadian Journalism and urging our peers to reject these subsidies in order “to ensure Canadians have access to news free from the appearance of government influence, and therefore more likely to garner public trust.” But now fears about the erosion of a free and independent fourth estate have come to fruition — with a recent overstep from a politician demonstrating the pitfalls of tying the media’s fate to those in power.

Unsurprisingly, the incident involves the government’s objections to journalists, well, criticizing the government.

Earlier this month, the Liberal Member of Parliament for Vancouver Granville, Taleeb Noormohamed, publicly chastised The National Post’s new senior comment editor, Terry Newman. She had slammed the immigration minister, who’s been under fire lately, tweeting: “Incredible how much damage a party and minister can do to a country in 9 years.” Noormohamed has an aggressive style (you can watch him question me over my lack of support for media subsidies at the House of Commons Heritage Committee in February here). And he clapped back at Newman, tweeting: “Your paper wouldn’t be in business were it not for the subsidies that the government that you hate put in place — the same subsidies your Trump-adjacent foreign hedge fund owners gladly take to pay your salary.”

It was an astonishing move. Are the Liberals that arrogant about their ability to overcome the terrible optics of taking such a stance? Are they that desperate to quash dissent? Are they that oblivious to the current mood in the country?

Let’s take a moment to think this through: As Lean Out guest (and Ottawa Declaration signee) Peter Menzies points out in his column about the incident at The Line, Noormohamed is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Heritage, Pascale St-Onge, “in whose office most of the decisions regarding the plethora of funding arrangements for Canadian news media are made.” These subsidies, originally intended to be temporary, have been extended and expanded, and now total roughly half a billion dollars a year. “In other words,” Menzies writes, “Noormohamed holds the media’s ass in his hands.”

You can see, then, how improper it was for him to take to Twitter to chide a journalist. Newman was not cowed, responding: “Okay. You win. You pay my salary. I’ll stop criticizing your government now. Please don’t fire me.” But what about other journalists watching? How could such behaviour not lead to a chilling effect?

I’m not arguing in defence of The National Post, which is indeed controlled by U.S. hedge funds. If the outlet is unable to sustain itself on its own merits, it should not be protected from bankruptcy. I am, however, arguing in favour of a press corps that can operate without fear of government interference.

We are in an era where the Canadian public has little sympathy for a media it largely distrusts. Support for the subsidies keeping media afloat is low, and recent polling suggests that these subsidies could, in fact, further erode public trust. (According to this polling, from The Hub and Public Square Research, “Over 70 percent of supporters of all major political parties agree that having the government paying journalists’ salaries could undermine journalist objectivity.”)

Spend any amount of time online and you will encounter this sentiment. As The Globe and Mail’s Andrew Coyne, who also signed the Ottawa Declaration, told me a while back, the first thing that disgruntled readers on Twitter fire back with is: “Oh, I guess you’re waiting for your paycheck from the government.”

Imagine how difficult it becomes to battle that perception when one of the MPs associated with that very funding is also on Twitter, reminding a journalist that she is getting her paycheck from the government.

After seeing such an exchange play out, how can Canadians be sure that we in the press are not influenced by a government that quite literally pays our bills — and vocally reminds us of this fact?

Indeed, Noormohamed’s overreach should concern anyone working in media in this country. Credit is certainly due to the opinion editor at The Toronto Star, Richard Warnica, for highlighting this on X. “I am a huge advocate for publicly supported journalism, have been for many, many years,” he tweeted. “I cannot think of anything that would more effectively undermine that idea than a government MP tweeting this.” Canadaland’s Jesse Brown also pushed back, tweeting: “One day this government’s accidental destruction of the independent press will be studied as a cautionary tale.” But few others have bothered to comment on this debacle, much less write about it.

As Menzies notes in his media criticism newsletter, The Rewrite, the incident got little coverage — with, I would add, the main exceptions coming from outlets who declined subsidies. That begs the question: Why the silence from our subsidized colleagues? And what are the Canadians they serve supposed to take from it?