Canadian news media and newspapers have been struggling for a very long time. A new law passed by the current Liberal government, designed to put news companies back in business, promises to ring the death knell for all providers of news in Canada.
The news business is really quite straightforward when you think about it: report on what’s happening in the world, give people the facts and nothing but the facts, and hold those in power to account. But in Canada, like pretty much everywhere else too, newspaper editors, journalists and others in the news business have lost their way and become activists, rather than objective and neutral observers and reporters of facts.
The Canadian state broadcaster, the CBC, for example, regularly manipulates the news to fit its extreme-leftist views. When you turn on CBC News these days, all you hear about it is wokeism and “man-made climate change” (yep, the Big Fat Lie, which serves to introduce extreme communism and anarchy à la George Orwell’s 1984 through the back door without anyone noticing). Needless to say that if it were left to its own devices, surviving on advertising and ratings alone, it would have shuttered its operations years ago.
There are also news media of a conservative bent, such as the newspapers in the Postmedia group. What the CBC does for the extreme left, Postmedia does for the moderate right. But that company is struggling too, closing down and selling offices, and has stopped printing and publishing its daily newspapers seven days a week.
Years ago, when the whole world shifted online, particularly after the arrival of mobile devices like the iPhone or iPad, newspapers were hopeful. They thought that designing their own apps for those devices would help them reconnect with readers, while making truckloads of money through ads placed inside and all around news content. Some newspapers, such as La Presse in Québec, decided to stop printing new editions and became “tablet newspapers”. That newspaper, for example, now exists solely on the Internet and as an app for mobile devices. It also happens to be the only newspaper app in Canada that has been designed well and actually works. Every other Canadian newspaper app (e.g. National Post, Toronto Star, Globe & Mail) is completely useless.
The problem with such an online strategy is that it’s predicated on readers/users not only scrolling past online ads, but actually clicking on them. While an online ad that is seen by an X number of users will still yield some, puny, advertising revenue, news providers won’t get their money’s worth unless users click on ads and follow wherever such a link takes them. Most people can’t be bothered.
It was so much easier in the “good old days”, wasn’t it? You sold advertising and classified ads space in your newspaper, and people would pick up and purchase the newspaper at the store, and it didn’t matter if they ever looked at any of the ads or classifieds inside the newspaper. You had made your money, and your only responsibility was to ensure that as many as people as possible would keep buying your newspaper.
It doesn’t work like that anymore. What people look at, and click on, inside your online newspaper matters a great deal, because you won’t make any serious money unless your readers find you, connect with you, perhaps even create user accounts, and then click on as many ads as possible. As already mentioned, this rarely happens. I can’t even remember the last ad I clicked on—must have been years ago. As a result, many publications have opted for pay walls, making high-quality content, in particular, available only to those site visitors or app users who agree to take out a weekly, monthly or annual subscription or who don’t mind paying a buck or two for individual articles they wish to access and read. The problem with pay walls is that they can be bypassed, and you don’t have to be a hacker or coder to pull that off.
It seems that publishing online is a money-losing proposition. Many years ago, I experimented with it myself, and after something like three months, I had earned $100 from Google Ads on my website. Woo-hoo! I’m rich! Not! So, extrapolating for the readership that the big news sites have, I know that they make a lot more, but, essentially, they’ll be making nothing more than multiples of my $100. Given their overheads, the extent of their operations and number of staff, even such multiples won’t make them enough dough to turn a profit, let alone break even. Apart from that, I also found that running Google Ads on my website slowed it down, sometimes even crashed it, or otherwise interfered with my own content. Dropping Google Ads from my site was an easy enough decision for me.
Sure, you might say, Werner doesn’t need to make money off his websites, he has other sources of income, but all those newspapers don’t have that luxury. That’s true, which is why they have to keep going with the current model. And that model requires a steady and substantial stream of traffic: visitors, users, eyeballs!
So, how does one generate site traffic? Well, you make sure that your site is indexed in search engines and shows up in the top search results (search engine optimization). Or you design a mobile app for your newspaper. Whatever you do, the one thing to keep in mind is that the more sites link to your content, the higher up it gets pushed in search results. Being linked to is not only a nice ego boost, but in fact vital to the survival of the website or app.
This is why a journalist working for a newspaper will link to articles from several social media and other online platforms. Once the journalist’s followers start sharing those links, this activity will generate a fair number of links bouncing around the Internet—a snowball effect that creates eyeballs.
Social media, therefore, have turned out to be a godsend for newspapers, even though the latter keep berating and condemning this phenomenon. Nothing generates more link-based traffic than all the content that is being shared by users via social media. As a matter of fact, social media have begun to play a much bigger role in all this than search engines like Google or Bing. Regardless of where one stands on the issue of social media, there’s no denying the fact that sites and content won’t find an audience unless they are linked to from a gazillion social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter and company.
Do I want to be on Twitter or Facebook, for example? Not really, but for me it is a necessity if I want to continue making important contacts and continue building networks for my business and other interests. I simply do not have the luxury to say, I’ll quit Twitter.
After earmarking a substantial amount of taxpayers’ money and handing it to newspapers and news operations around Canada, the Liberal government under Justin Trudeau felt that it needed to do more to help those news media stay in business. That effort gave birth to what is now known as the Online News Act, or Bill C-18. Claiming that tech giants like Facebook had been stealing content from Canadian news media without paying their “fair share” for it, the Liberals drafted C-18, which says that giants like Facebook or Google will have to pay for the links they provide to Canadian news content. The Internet giants were taken aback, scratched their heads and said, “Sorry, but this is not how the Internet works. First of all, we don’t steal content, but merely link to it. We don’t copy content and present it as our own, but instead provide free advertising by driving traffic to Canadian news sites.”
And they were right. Without such free advertising, many Canadian news operations would have sunk and disappeared years ago. But despite all that free link-based assistance, as well as the generous subsidies provided by taxpayers (who were never asked for their permission), companies like Postmedia are now on the verge of bankruptcy (according to very recent reports, Postmedia doesn’t have any spending money left in its accounts, not even enough for coffee and doughnuts for staff).
But Liberals never admit when they’re wrong (which is about 95 per cent of the time), and when pushed, will double down on a bad bet. This is why C-18 has now become law, with all the input provided by Facebook and other tech companies during hearings in Ottawa having been ignored in its entirety.
In response to C-18, Google and Facebook started experimenting with blocking Canadian news content for their users, and now Facebook has been the first to announce officially and publicly that such content will no longer be available to Facebook users in Canada—that is, for the entire duration that the Online News Act remains in force. Google is expected to make a similar announcement very soon.
When Justin Trudeau was first elected in 2015, one of the slogans that went around the country was: because it’s 2015. Well, we are now in 2023, and it seems the Liberals still don’t know and understand how the Internet works. You don’t pay for posting a link to, and in this way promoting, a website. If anything, it should be such a website that pays the individual or organization that links to it. But that would also be nonsense and would bring the Internet to its knees. The Internet is, after all, a collaborative effort, one of mutual assistance and respect. On a smaller scale, we see that on social media, when one person starts following another, and that person follows back in return. Without this kind of reciprocity, the Internet would simply stop working, and any online search on Google or elsewhere would produce more or less useless results.
When a law like C-18 requires a company like Facebook to pay up or be fined, such a company really has no other option than to remove itself from Canada. When the government behind such a law declares publicly, in a show of its ignorance, that Facebook and Google have been stealing content, when all they have done is provide links that people can click on to read articles on the originating websites, such as of newspapers, it’s not only a case of libel, but also yet again proof that Justin Trudeau and the people around him are utterly clueless.
Unfortunately, is not only politicians in Ottawa that fail to understand the true nature of the Internet, but many of the newspapers in Canada have also jumped on the bandwagon and come out in full support of this new law. They probably understand how the Internet works, but since most of them are on the verge of declaring bankruptcy, they probably figure that the Online News Act holds out the best hope of rescue.
The worst part about those newspapers is that they themselves set up Facebook pages and publish all of their articles there. People then comment on them and share them. So, for the record, it is not actually Facebook that grabs any of this content; it is the newspapers themselves that put it there. But now, whenever people share those articles on Facebook with their friends, Facebook is supposed to pay for that or face a fine if it refuses to do so? Think about it. I have a Facebook page for my translation business. I publish my content on it. People like it and leave other feedback, and others share it. Does this give me the right now to send an invoice to Facebook for allowing this kind of positive PR and advertising to happen? I could probably send an invoice to Facebook, but they would simply laugh in my face and most likely ban me from Facebook. But this is exactly the kind of scam that Justin Trudeau and Canadian news media are now trying to pull.
Here is the thing: companies like Facebook and Google cannot be blackmailed into paying ransom for free advertising that they have been providing by way of links. If the cost and burden of doing business in or with Canada becomes too excessive, any company worth its salt will pull out and forget about the Canadian market. And this is already the case, and has been for decades, which is why many of the most popular services and companies in the U.S. are still not available in Canada. The recent brouhaha over Taylor Swift leaving Canada out of her upcoming tour may be yet another symptom of that “Canadian disease”. The amount of red tape, not to mention various types of taxes, charges and regulations, in Canada can indeed put artists off performing in Canada. Another example would be Sir Patrick Stewart’s upcoming book tour, which also completely ignores the Canadian market.
The same applies to the other law that was passed, regarding online streaming, which seeks to impose excessive regulatory requirements on Netflix and other streaming services outside of Canada, such as requirements for diversity hiring and similar (woke) nonsense. It is doubtful that Netflix or Apple will take their marching orders from Canada with respect to whom they can or cannot hire. No, they will simply walk away, and Canadian consumers will end up being the big losers. It will be interesting to see the reaction of Canadian voters, after having lost access to Netflix, Apple and other streaming services. They tend to be quite tolerant, even in the face of corruption and scandal in government, but when government action causes them to lose the ability to watch their favourite shows or movies, they will no longer be so tolerant. Mess with Netflix, or any other service that may happen to be the most popular option at any given time, and the Liberals might well be reduced to zero or near-zero seats after the next federal election.
All of this gives Canada a bad name, and other countries are given a very clear impression that Canada does not operate within the recognized parameters of the law. When you yourself put content on a platform and have it shared by your users, but then try to bill the platform for all that sharing, you not only come across as a con artist and criminal, but you are a con artist and criminal. It is therefore not far-fetched to assume that very soon a lot of online services will not be accessible for Canadians, because other countries will have them geo-blocked to prevent Canadians accessing them. You know, for fear of receiving an invoice from the Canadian government.
There are, indeed, websites and platforms that steal other people’s content and then represent it or even sell it on as their own. Neither Facebook nor Google does that. As such, they’re not guilty of anything, and they are certainly not liable to any charges or payments.
This is the same kind of overreach that we’ve also seen in the European Union, which always seems to believe that it has authority over American companies, for example, conveniently forgetting that its jurisdiction is Europe only, and not the world. For instance, the EU has no business telling Apple which plugs or chargers to use; that is a business decision that is solely the responsibility of Apple and no one else. And if any government did have a say, it would be the U.S. government, but not Europe.
Unfortunately, Justin Trudeau suffers from the same type of megalomania. He honestly believes that he has the right to tell other countries and companies in other countries how to do things and run their business. One can argue that this is a gross example of interference, the kind that is forbidden under international law. The only thing he achieves by this is to make himself look like a crazy dictator in a banana republic. If this keeps getting worse, some other country, especially the United States of America, may decide to take action, the way it has often done in the past whenever it saw democracy at risk and felt it necessary, as the “policeman of the world”, to restore order.
One thing is very clear: the steps taken by Justin Trudeau and his government will have a limiting effect on the choices and options available to Canadians. As for news, in particular, with Canadian news content getting blocked on all major platforms, fewer Canadians will find the time or opportunity to access official news media content, and instead end up getting taken in by fake news websites (something that is already happening now at alarming rates).
People tend to be quite lazy for the most part, which is why social media have taken off the way they have, providing easy and accessible news feeds in one spot. And all that content is there in one spot not because the platform itself has stolen that content, but because the makers of that content have put it there themselves. But this makes it very convenient for people, because they get to have a one-stop shopping experience, Instead of having to hop from one newspaper website or app to another. Remove news content from social media, and people will simply stay on the social media platform, lazy as they are, and will not bother to look up individual newspaper websites or apps, so that content will get no more eyeballs.
I was brought up from when I was a small child on the idea that reading newspapers was important, and reading newspapers thus became part of my daily routine early on. I love the structure that a newspaper provides, I can read it from cover to cover, starting on page one and going all the way to the last page. And as I make my way through the pages, they don’t keep changing on me and shifting, as new content is constantly being uploaded and updated. This is why, for example, I cannot really stand Apple News, because you start with the “electronic newspaper” it curates for you, but after you have started reading the first two or three articles, suddenly everything is updated again and changed, and you have to start from the top again. I hate that. For that same reason, newspaper websites were never my thing, because I would always encounter that same kind of problem, of constant updates and changes while I was reading, and no clear structure like in a newspaper So, I read all of my newspapers, from all over the world, using PressReader, an app developed in Canada several years ago, which provides electronic versions of the print editions of thousands of newspapers and magazines, and also gives you the option of reading the content like an e-book if you simply want to read the articles without having to skip from column to column and things like that. And that app does not steal content either; the newspapers have deals in place with PressReader. You simply take out a subscription with PressReader, and the newspapers are compensated based on the share of readership and use.
Finally, the real reason why Canadian newspapers are in such dire straits has very little to do with the amount of sharing on social media or indexing on search engines, but has everything to do with the fact that most Canadian news media have now become nothing more than partisan mouthpieces for the government, spreading the same lies, misinformation and disinformation. During the so-called Covid pandemic, in particular, Canadian news media lost virtually all credibility with Canadians.
To survive, they must go back to real journalism, which means holding the government to account instead of sleeping in the same bed with them.