This article originally appeared in the Hub.
By Peter Menzies, October 31, 2024
The Canadian news industry’s dependence on the federal government has taken another deeply uncomfortable step away from the ideals of a free, independent, and trusted press.
The Trudeau government’s new Changing Narratives Fund announced by the Department of Heritage shifts funding away from agnostically subsidizing news organizations and into the realm of financing favoured topics created by preferred people. Frankly, it’s outrageous.
Promised as part of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s 2021 election campaign platform, the fund will provide an additional $10 million annually to “support diverse communities (i.e. Indigenous, Black, racialized, ethno-religious minority, people with disabilities and 2SLGBTQI+ communities) to share their stories, experiences, and perspectives so that their voices are accurately and authentically represented in the media, and culture sectors in Canada.”
To meet their goal the plan is to provide mentorship, training, and professional development opportunities to “diverse communities.” This includes prioritizing the hiring of diverse Canadians in newsrooms to produce journalism for these communities. Implied in this is that journalists of a particular background should be focused on reporting on people from that same background.
Suggesting those folks are currently inauthentically represented, these new dollars will, ominously, feed into the Local Journalism Initiative and the Canada Periodical Fund, as well as the Canada Media Fund—most easily described as the Canadian content film and TV production fund. In both the former cases, “more information will be available in Winter 2025.”
The Department of Heritage doesn’t specify—yet—exactly what perspectives, stories, and experiences it has in mind, but I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that what Heritage Canada imagines has little in common with the views of people like National Post columnist Rahim Mohamed (tick boxes racialized and ethno-religious minority), Macdonald-Laurier Institute senior fellow Melissa Mbarki (Indigenous/racialized), or journalist Eva Kurilova (2SLGBTQI+).
Because, after all, they say things like:
Mohamed: “Harjit Sajjan is less a politician than a walking red flag. A controversial rookie should have never been handed the highly sensitive defence portfolio to begin with.”
Mbarki: “Numerous First Nations want a stake in pipelines. When Keystone XL was rejected on U.S. President Joe Biden’s first day in office, Trudeau did not defend Alberta or the First Nations who invested in the line.”
Kurilova: “It’s time for the other perspective to be offered. I am a married lesbian and I support [Alberta Premier Danielle] Smith.”
What Heritage Canada probably has in mind is more likely in line with the views of Hill Times columnist Erica Ifill, “Once neoliberal economic policies came in, feminism got corporate, and it stopped caring about the working class. Definitely didn’t care about racialized women. It left a lot of women behind. Feminism became a quest for powerful white women to gain more power vis-a-vis powerful white men.”
There are still a few news organizations—The Hub among them—that refuse to take advantage of any form of journalism subsidy from the government. This is because they believe—correctly—that doing so damages citizens’ trust in the information they are receiving.
The Toronto Star parent company Torstar’s journalistic standards illustrate the point:
Independence from those we cover is a key principle of journalistic integrity. We avoid conflicts of interest and the appearance of conflicts. Torstar news organizations believe in paying the costs incurred in gathering and publishing news. In circumstances where that may not be possible, we disclose information that could create the perception of a conflict of interest. Transparency with our readers about the potential for conflicts should guide our considerations about real or perceived conflicts.
But that hasn’t stopped the Toronto Star from enjoying subsidization, or from lobbying for more of it. But that’s for its conscience to wrestle with.
The Changing Narratives Fund just makes that perception worse. It is clearly aimed at altering the media’s existing reality. You may think of that as a good thing and believe it’s about time. Or you may not. But what is undeniable is that the government is now planning to pay news organizations to promote a designated stream of content or “beat”—a development that should concern anyone who adheres to the ideals of a free and independent press and the role it plays in our democracy.
Something similar recently took place in Ireland, where they actually have a media minister. The Irish Independent, to its credit, backed out of the pay-for-play scheme there and blew the whistle on those who took the cash to enhance coverage of “climate change and the rise of populism.”
To the best of my knowledge, only the Western Standard (and now The Hub) along with the industry platform Cartt.ca reported on the Changing Narratives Fund, an indication of how routine and secretive political funding of journalism has become.
Newsrooms across the country, driven by market forces and demographic change, have been competing for the best and brightest voices from within the government’s targeted demographic groups for years. Universities and other employers do the same.
The CRTC and the Canada Media Fund already have a number of supports such as the Black Screen Office Fund. There are numerous Indigenous-specific funds from the Rogers Indigenous Film Fund Program to the Indigenous Screen Office. In media, there are Indigenous radio stations and newspapers across the country, incentives for Indigenous (and other minorities) in a great many if not all CRTC broadcast licenses, and an entire subsidized TV network—the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN). Add to this a plethora of CBC initiatives, not the least of which is CBC North, which broadcasts in multiple languages.
There are literally dozens of licensed ethnic radio stations across the country and heaven only knows how many unlicensed, online-only operations serving multicultural communities in foreign languages.
Then there’s this whole Internet thing. There, anyone can launch, without prejudice, a website, Facebook page, podcast, TikTok, or YouTube channel about whatever it is they want to talk about. For free.
It is as difficult to discern the necessity for the Changing Narratives Fund as it is easy to perceive its true mission.
All it does is line a few pockets while further normalizing and enhancing the government’s grip on the newsrooms of the nation. As a result, public trust in the integrity of journalism takes another hit, and a further sturdy nail is driven into a wobbly industry’s coffin.
