I lost trust in the Media about 20 years ago. I lost trust in the CBC 15 years ago. Getting my trust back, and having local media that I personally have a connection to, are the same thing. Having a City Hall reporter, and a community reporter, and a local sports reporter who investigate what is happening in my community is where it starts. It also starts by getting rid of "Narratives" and "Overton Windows". I understand that messaging is what governments and business people do, but for me the media's job is to tear apart that messaging. As a consumer, I want to be able to decide who is trustworthy.
How to pay for it? Perhaps by making subscriptions tax deductible? Or perhaps, we could take the communications budgets for all the levels of government, divide it by the number of taxpayers, and put a little tick box on the tax form designating which media organization gets each tax payers portion of the communication budget. Why do I want governments to have no communications budget, because I am sick of having my tax dollars used to propagandize me and my neighbors.
Especially regarding our governments propagandizing against their own citizens. After having my provincial and federal governments tell me I am a bad man for two years why should I ever listen to them again.
In its impeccably Canadian way this interview dances around the real issue which is that the CM has died the death of a thousand cuts starting with its basic integrity. As a blogger my material is gathered almost exclusively from international sources as Canada's media is heavily censored and too much of it is babble, infotainment and far from being an objective window on the world.
It is so typically Canadian to refuse to recognize that we are a colonized country and no more than an American echo chamber. America still has freedom of the press but you have to go shopping for it , not found on the MSM, but with the gutsy independents willing to speak truth to power. Canada desperately needs an independent media reflecting the real world we live in.
With the current world crisis the the Western media is in full collapse and the Canadian collapse is just one chapter. It has become no more than propaganda for corporatist war mongers .
At a time when the world is going through tumultuous change, Canada is a mole in its hole with doors locked and windows shuttered.
Another great interview Tara. I’m a happy subscriber to Blacklock’s Reporter (and your Substack) as well as many other independent media sources. When the Canadian MSM took the subsidy, that was the end. Hell, even Coyne thought it was a bad idea 😂 Keep rolling ladies!! 👏🏻🤛🏻✊🏻
Holly is unsparing in calling the shots based on facts and reporting her team has already done. This is the chaser to Tara's interviews with the tiresome and provincial Gerson and Menzies. I especially like calling Ottawa "Lumbertown." Take Holly's recommendations here and implement them asap. I'd love to opine here more but Holly is quite correct, the internet is full of them. I am so glad to have been lucky enough to subscribed to Holly and Tara, though I must say that her reference to Paul W. is eye rolling. He is a bore and predictable. Newsflash to all the digital transformers out there, If you follow Holly's prescription and stick to facts with occasional opinion (vs. the opposite) your potential for eyeballs is much more than the audience than you think.
The Hamilton Mountain MP is wrong. There are independent journalists that cover City Hall issues. For example, her own city has Joey Coleman who specifically covers Hamilton City Hall issues. To the point that the city council hates him for video recording their public meetings (which the city should have been doing in the first place). He runs his own site The Public Record and was asked to guest teach journalism at UofT a few years ago. The question is not who will cover local issues. Its how would you find their writings? Search Engines are not good at finding small local news gatherers.
The current model for future media publications is individual journalists turning their Substacks into publications. This may work, it seems to be working for American substacks like The Public, The Free Press and Racket News...so far. It may work for Canadian publication like The Line, or Paul Wells or even Trish Wood. Its useful for other substacks like Woke Watch Canada that focuses on Canadian School Boards, but are a niche substack and with a declining birth rate and high immigration it is tricky to grow. But the pool for eyes on substack is still small comparatively and people are still being cheap even with a $5 a month threshold. This may in fact work but it still goes back to the original problem of how do you find the local new gathers? Most search engines only have a geo-search feature at the national level not local, even sub-national is rare.
I swear newspapers could succeed if they just start taking substack articles and print them instead of the nonsense that is currently in the newspaper.
The problem I keep thinking about is how can we make digital media feel more rooted in the local community and less like a faceless corporate entity on a fleeting data stream. Local news got subverted because people are taught to think about global/national issues and ignore their local issues which are more pressing. Maybe people should just print the articles they like and put them in their neighbors mailboxes.
Here is the history in a nutshell of Conrad Black who presided over Hollinger International Inc. group of newspapers empire. I remember in the 1980's and 90's Conrad Black was buying up newspapers in Canada and around the world. After purchase he sent in his henchman to walk through the newsroom and fire every other reporter. Blacks goal was to fill the spaces between ads with cheap news stories. Wire services did well, investigative journalism did not. He lobbied Buckingham palace for a knighthood and was later stripped of it after being convicted of defrauding company shareholders of $6m dollars. That is the history in a nutshell of the third largest MSM company in the world in the 90's
Thankyou Tara for the interview with Holly Doan. I dont usually read every word in your columns but I certainly did for this story. I subscribe to Blacklock's Reporter and appreciate their honesty. I have repeated some their findings in the comments section of some of the substacks I subscribe too along with Fox news (that also appears headed into the toilet).
Your interview did not touch on the dishonesty that many Canadians feel exists in the mainstream media as it appears to be a propaganda arm of the Liberal party. The liberals announced the subsidies in 2018 a year before the Canadian federal election which seems very self serving, especially when I consider that Pierre Poilievre announced he would cancel the bail out money to MSM if elected and the NDP will never form the government. When I go to my sole MSM news source, CTV online I feel they are brainwashing me. I have also reproduced a nutshell history of Hollinger Group who was the worlds 3rd largest Newspaper Company back in the 1990s. This history may help explain to readers how the MSM quality deteriorted. I posted this comment elsewhere this morning and it was a handy grab for me.
I lost trust in the Media about 20 years ago. I lost trust in the CBC 15 years ago. Getting my trust back, and having local media that I personally have a connection to, are the same thing. Having a City Hall reporter, and a community reporter, and a local sports reporter who investigate what is happening in my community is where it starts. It also starts by getting rid of "Narratives" and "Overton Windows". I understand that messaging is what governments and business people do, but for me the media's job is to tear apart that messaging. As a consumer, I want to be able to decide who is trustworthy.
How to pay for it? Perhaps by making subscriptions tax deductible? Or perhaps, we could take the communications budgets for all the levels of government, divide it by the number of taxpayers, and put a little tick box on the tax form designating which media organization gets each tax payers portion of the communication budget. Why do I want governments to have no communications budget, because I am sick of having my tax dollars used to propagandize me and my neighbors.
Agree.
Especially regarding our governments propagandizing against their own citizens. After having my provincial and federal governments tell me I am a bad man for two years why should I ever listen to them again.
In its impeccably Canadian way this interview dances around the real issue which is that the CM has died the death of a thousand cuts starting with its basic integrity. As a blogger my material is gathered almost exclusively from international sources as Canada's media is heavily censored and too much of it is babble, infotainment and far from being an objective window on the world.
It is so typically Canadian to refuse to recognize that we are a colonized country and no more than an American echo chamber. America still has freedom of the press but you have to go shopping for it , not found on the MSM, but with the gutsy independents willing to speak truth to power. Canada desperately needs an independent media reflecting the real world we live in.
With the current world crisis the the Western media is in full collapse and the Canadian collapse is just one chapter. It has become no more than propaganda for corporatist war mongers .
At a time when the world is going through tumultuous change, Canada is a mole in its hole with doors locked and windows shuttered.
Predictable Canadian. Impeccable is undeserved.
Another great interview Tara. I’m a happy subscriber to Blacklock’s Reporter (and your Substack) as well as many other independent media sources. When the Canadian MSM took the subsidy, that was the end. Hell, even Coyne thought it was a bad idea 😂 Keep rolling ladies!! 👏🏻🤛🏻✊🏻
Coyne being "broken clock" correct is to be expected. Fellow subscriber to Holly and Tara here :0
“My opinion is that our government is afraid of the growth of independence.”
When government runs in fear of growth and independence it has crossed a line of insecurity in holding power and is in its most dangerous form.
gov is scared of truth
Holly is unsparing in calling the shots based on facts and reporting her team has already done. This is the chaser to Tara's interviews with the tiresome and provincial Gerson and Menzies. I especially like calling Ottawa "Lumbertown." Take Holly's recommendations here and implement them asap. I'd love to opine here more but Holly is quite correct, the internet is full of them. I am so glad to have been lucky enough to subscribed to Holly and Tara, though I must say that her reference to Paul W. is eye rolling. He is a bore and predictable. Newsflash to all the digital transformers out there, If you follow Holly's prescription and stick to facts with occasional opinion (vs. the opposite) your potential for eyeballs is much more than the audience than you think.
when the state supports the media all you have is state propaganda media in Kanada is a joke
The Hamilton Mountain MP is wrong. There are independent journalists that cover City Hall issues. For example, her own city has Joey Coleman who specifically covers Hamilton City Hall issues. To the point that the city council hates him for video recording their public meetings (which the city should have been doing in the first place). He runs his own site The Public Record and was asked to guest teach journalism at UofT a few years ago. The question is not who will cover local issues. Its how would you find their writings? Search Engines are not good at finding small local news gatherers.
The current model for future media publications is individual journalists turning their Substacks into publications. This may work, it seems to be working for American substacks like The Public, The Free Press and Racket News...so far. It may work for Canadian publication like The Line, or Paul Wells or even Trish Wood. Its useful for other substacks like Woke Watch Canada that focuses on Canadian School Boards, but are a niche substack and with a declining birth rate and high immigration it is tricky to grow. But the pool for eyes on substack is still small comparatively and people are still being cheap even with a $5 a month threshold. This may in fact work but it still goes back to the original problem of how do you find the local new gathers? Most search engines only have a geo-search feature at the national level not local, even sub-national is rare.
I swear newspapers could succeed if they just start taking substack articles and print them instead of the nonsense that is currently in the newspaper.
The problem I keep thinking about is how can we make digital media feel more rooted in the local community and less like a faceless corporate entity on a fleeting data stream. Local news got subverted because people are taught to think about global/national issues and ignore their local issues which are more pressing. Maybe people should just print the articles they like and put them in their neighbors mailboxes.
Here is the history in a nutshell of Conrad Black who presided over Hollinger International Inc. group of newspapers empire. I remember in the 1980's and 90's Conrad Black was buying up newspapers in Canada and around the world. After purchase he sent in his henchman to walk through the newsroom and fire every other reporter. Blacks goal was to fill the spaces between ads with cheap news stories. Wire services did well, investigative journalism did not. He lobbied Buckingham palace for a knighthood and was later stripped of it after being convicted of defrauding company shareholders of $6m dollars. That is the history in a nutshell of the third largest MSM company in the world in the 90's
Thankyou Tara for the interview with Holly Doan. I dont usually read every word in your columns but I certainly did for this story. I subscribe to Blacklock's Reporter and appreciate their honesty. I have repeated some their findings in the comments section of some of the substacks I subscribe too along with Fox news (that also appears headed into the toilet).
Your interview did not touch on the dishonesty that many Canadians feel exists in the mainstream media as it appears to be a propaganda arm of the Liberal party. The liberals announced the subsidies in 2018 a year before the Canadian federal election which seems very self serving, especially when I consider that Pierre Poilievre announced he would cancel the bail out money to MSM if elected and the NDP will never form the government. When I go to my sole MSM news source, CTV online I feel they are brainwashing me. I have also reproduced a nutshell history of Hollinger Group who was the worlds 3rd largest Newspaper Company back in the 1990s. This history may help explain to readers how the MSM quality deteriorted. I posted this comment elsewhere this morning and it was a handy grab for me.