I have quite a few creative ideas, but am too tired to write them down rn. I’ll go the easy, lazy way (and write about more legislation ideas tomorrow):
Proportional representation like Germany. In every election, the voter votes for an individual and a party. The individual is chosen to represent the riding through STAR voting (my version). After all MPs are elected, to ensure proportional representation according to the party votes (the second vote that voters cast), individuals from party lists are put into parliament.
This way, we get riding representation and party representation.
You think a state funded media outlet, that has organizational control separations from direct government influence, is worse than corporate media? History and every level of academic inquiry very much disagrees .
Those aren’t the only two options. Local media. Independent media. Crowd funded media. At least I know their bias is their own and not part of a larger agenda created in a board room.
And state funded media may have organizational control separations from overtly obvious DIRECT gov influence but if you dont believe that the gov has strong influence you must be naive - there are clear cases of the gov communications offices creating and sending out press statements even BEFORE an event has taken place so they can control the narrative. And as someone who has dealt with media directly with my own press releases, I know that the majority of reporters are happy to get a press release, change a few words to make it seem like they earned their paycheque and release it as given. The idea that there’s ‘independence’ from gov control is an utter fallacy.
The other obvious control is on what the gov funded media does NOT report. There are quite a few members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery - all the big names are there: CBC, CTV, Global, CPAC, Canadian Press, Reuters - but there is only one Blacklock’s Reporter outlet. And if you subscribe to Blacklock’s you would be shocked to see the DAILY release of information that never hits the big name papers. Because they cover the events going on behind committee doors, the incredible tax wastage, the in-house decisions that show just how messed up some parts of our gov really are, but not the things that the gov wants the general public to see. Blacklock’s is subscription only so they are beholding to no one - they can speak the truth without concern about losing funding.
Blacklock sues government and other publications for sharing their content as they want to maintain their content behind a paywall. It’s deliberately not an open media outlet for broader public consumption, making it a terrible comparison to pubic media outlets (corporate or government owned). They may have found a model that works within a very narrow context, but it’s also a model that would not work at scale within the capitalist media landscape.
Many news outlets do simply use government or corporate provided press releases as the competition for clicks is extreme and taking time to be more journalistic can undercut their ability to meet algorithms. Press releases are, however, only a portion of news content. CBC has their press room that largely reports on daily occurrences, but they also have teams of investigative journalists that produce articles critical of all levels of government and the parties therein. It’s not either/or.
I am all for media regulation reform that will place more emphasis on distributed, independent, and local media journalism. I very much supported the digital services act, as it sought to overcome the challenges that local media faces, where it’s content is used for the profits of Google, Facebook, etc. without compensation. How are local outlets expected to function when they largely being stripped of any revenue function? Other than subscription based models that are highly susceptible to corporate control and/or buyout, how do you propose we fund a this independent and local media while ensuring reporting can be held to acceptable levels of accuracy and fairness?
Except that even with ONLY reading their free multiple morning emails, which are a short paragraph each, I learn FAR more about whats going on behind the scenes on the Hill than I do from all other media. And I don’t have to pay for that, its their teaser.
How do you get people to pay for media? Provide valuable content. I paid for Blacklock’s for a couple of years til honestly, it got too depressing to see how MUCH news was not being reported by mainstream media. Infuriating to realize that most of the time we’re getting talking points and sound bites, but a great deal of the backroom and under table news was going unreported.
Also, provide BALANCED news reporting. My prime example would be last year when Transgender Awareness Day happen to fall on Easter Sunday. I emailed the CBC to ask WHY there were THIRTEEN articles about transgender issues on their site that day and ONE about Easter - one is relevant to over 50% of the Canadian population and the other is 0.3% but you couldn’t tell from CBC’s incredibly unbalanced coverage. They wrote back to point out that I had missed another CBC Easter article and sent a link - it was one story about what stores were closed on Easter Sunday. Yeesh.
What a about Easter is every news worthy? Beyond a losing of water egg hunts or religious services, why would any journalist cover Easter? Meanwhile trans issues are front and center in civic discourse as they are being debated at the frontier of personal freedom of expression. The stakes involved with trans rights extreme to how we structure society and set expectations for one another. Easter, meanwhile, is a non-contentious religious celebration that’s become focused on candy and maybe having a ham with family. No one cares because nothing is at risk with Easter. No one is telling any Christian that they shouldn’t, or worse can’t, celebrate Easter, unlike being trans.
Its the ratio I objected to. THIRTEEN articles? Who needs 13 articles about ANY topic on the same day? And as much as being trans is the trendy controversial of the day, the fact is that it affects a tiny minority of the population. But that’s the CBC’s forte: As ex CBC producer Tara Henley once stated (after she left) “People want to know why, for example, non-binary Filipinos concerned about a lack of LGBT terms in Tagalog is an editorial priority for the CBC, when local issues of broad concern go unreported.”
And there’s nothing controversial about Easter but there are still interesting things to report: Ever heard of the Scoppio del Carro (Explosion of the Cart) in Florence, Italy? A small rocket in the shape of a dove, is lit inside a Cathedral during the Easter Mass, it flies along a wire stretched through the cathedral, exiting the church doors and hits a large, ornate cart packed with fireworks, causing it to erupt in a massive, noisy display of fireworks and smoke and then flies back into the church.
Of course I found that on youtube after a link on facebook. Not likely to see that on CBC.
Do you think a 1000+ year old tradition is “news”? If so, why don’t we have a dozen “news” articles about the opening of every single farmers market in every city across the country, or just as many news articles about the every 10k fun run across the country? Because they’re not interesting or impactful to anyone in society. There’s nothing at stake. They have thousands of firework events every year in cities across the globe. It’s normal and generally accepted as normal. If the powers that be decided to stop allowing fireworks displays, then maybe it would actually be news worthy, as it would be a change and something of interest where the reasons for and against keeping the tradition would be part of broader social discourse. Trans rights important because they are neither granted broadly around the world, nor in Canada. They are interesting because the discourse occuring alongside them is involved in discussions of how we contemplate our identity as individuals. They are reported on because governments are making decisions regarding them. If they are as important as other government deliberations is subjective. Our main mechanism for deciding what is news worthy is capitalism - if it gets clicks, it gets pushed. If anything, government funded media is a bastion of resistance against treating media as a winner takes all sport. It affords a small group of journalists funding and an apparatus to do investigative journalism with a modicum more freedom than most media outlets afford. Sure blacklock might be a small example of other models that can work for niche markets, but their reach and impact (as you note) are non-existent in comparison to the big media corps. We could impose very strict rules about content percentages focusing on local, hyper local, national or international topics, but I suspect you would also be opposed to quota requirements of the like. So otherwise, what’s your solution?
The very root of the word news is new. The tradition of a rocket powered bird is indeed new to you and to me and therefore worthy of being reported.
Haha - ok, you got me. No one could possibly be so seriously obtuse 🤣