Public Policy Forum report recommends tax measures, changes to CBC’s business model
by Susan Delacourt
Thursday January 26th, 2016
Days after Canada’s largest newspaper chain announced a fresh round of layoffs, the federal government is being handed a dozen options today to help fix the ailing news media business in Canada — ranging from taking digital ads off the CBC to injecting funds into local, indigenous and investigative journalism.
The recommendations come in a new report from the Public Policy Forum, tasked by the government to look into concrete measures to stem the sharp decline of the journalism industry.
Titled “The Shattered Mirror,” the report makes abundantly clear that journalism’s public function is nearing a crisis point, beset by everything from the digital disruption of its crumbling, 20th-century business model to “fake news.”
“This slide may not produce the kind of crisis point that stops policy-makers in their tracks, as the implosion of the auto industry in 2008-09 did, but the pace is unrelenting and the downward slope ever deeper,” the report states.
Half of the 12 recommendations are aimed at injecting “economic sustainability” into Canadian journalism, mainly through tax or legislative measures and the establishment of a “future of journalism and democracy fund,” with a startup investment of $100 million.
Read More HERE
Are you kidding,no way.
With American mainstream media on a steady decline due to the conscious decision by most such outlets to go increasingly and unapologetically Left and put out fake news (especially news channels like CNN and MSNBC, newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post and online media like the Huffington Post and BuzzFeed), I can’t see Canadian news media doing much better if they also choose to go Left like their American counterparts (particularly the likes of TV networks like CBC and Viceland and radio stations like CKNW locally – and even the National Post, once a conservative news bastion, is now leaning further to the Left as well on account of its Trump-bashing articles during the US election and its Trudeau-praising articles of late). This makes me glad for the existence of One America News, WND, Newsbusters, Black & Right, Rebel Media, Canada Free Press and other conservative media outlets on both sides of the border.
Maybe the gov could spend another 200 million to investigate why typewriters are no longer in use in most news rooms
Once you open the tap, it never gets turned off. The ‘left’, as it’s perceived always wants a government handout, and if the government is ‘left’ as is the Trudeau government, they’re only too pleased to provide that handout. BTW, what’s to save? There are hundreds of News apps—who needs a bunch of dinosaurs like radio, tv or newspaper to be kept alive at taxpayer expense.