1. “It's not the government's job to control the dissemination of news in a democracy. This is generally frowned upon in the western world and conjures up pictures of totalitarian regimes in Asia.”
In a democracy it’s a very good idea to have robust publicly funded news media that isn’t purely incentivized by profit for its survival. The BBC in the UK is a good example, and France’s news media is very socialized. The alternative is to let billionaire industrialists like Bezos and Murdoch write our news for us, which is far more reminiscent of those totalitarian regimes in Asia.
2. Nor is it the government's job to prop up failing business models in a capitalist society.
That depends on what we call a failing business model. Is the Police a failing business model? What about health care? Or the military? There are some areas of society where profit motives don’t provide the best outcomes. News media is such an essential pillar of democracy that it falls under that category to some extent. It’s also up to us what we do or don’t bail out. If an industry faces collapse, sometimes it’s better to bail it out than to let the market do its thing and cause even more damage. It’s usually the government’s fault for not regulating sufficiently to prevent the collapse in the first place.
Publicly funded broadcasting is one thing. Controlling the dissemination and distribution of news is entirely another. Part of the mandate of news organizations (at least historically) is the government to account. In that sense, any funding from government is a huge conflict of interest. But that's even what I'm talking about. I'm talking about deciding for Canadians which news we should hear and which news we shouldn't.
As far as failing business models go: police, healthcare, and military are not "business models" and are aguably not even businesses (although they use business principals in their operation). That actually IS the government's job - to make sure those things work. Another job they're failing at miserably, by the way, so thanks for pointing that out. Which makes an excellent point:
If these guys could just concentrate on what they're supposed to doing, they might actually be able to make something work, but they can't because they're far too busy putting their long skinny fingers in all these other things they have no business in.
Somebody’s going to control the dissemination and distribution of news. In a democracy, I’d rather the people (government) have a good amount of control. Obviously this only works in a democracy though. The alternative is that wealthy individuals control it, and we can see what kind of problems that causes.
As for the public services vs. for-profit business models, I think the news media does a far worse job when it’s run purely for profit than when it’s not. There’s a strong argument for it being an essential public service just like police or healthcare. Is there a conflict of interest? Again, I’m happier if the ‘interest’ is from the people rather than some billionaires. The government also appoints courts in the justice system which are supposed to hold the government to account. That works well in a robust democracy.
In Canada, we've seen firsthand the results of government-funded media, and they're not great. What the CBC use to be, it no longer is. This may well depend upon the current government, but that in itself is precisely the problem.
The answer to the news issue is the same as the speech issue - MORE NEWS. Not less. That means more options and more competition. To imply that people are not intelligent enough to decide for themselves what's true is a slap in the face and I don't accept that.
I definitely agree with more news is better, but the issue here is monetization. Journalism is a lot more expensive than just making stuff up, typing it out, and posting it online. Great journalism can require a reporter to work on a single story for years on end. The internet, for better or worse, democratized information and made it so real journalism and disinformation written by a robot are presented side-by-side as if they’re equivalent in value. The government is simply telling these monopolies to bargain with news organizations in exchange for the traffic they provide. I don’t see how could lead to less news; one would expect the opposite, actually. Without government regulation, there would be no net neutrality, no internet as we know it, and certainly no way for content creators like yourself to reach an audience.
You're right about great journalism - it's not cheap. That's why these companies sell advertising. The better job they do, the more ads they sell. This is how capitalism works. If the people don't appreciate your journalism, they're not going to buy your paper and advertisers will leave with them.
I don't know much about "net neutrality", but it seems to me what our government is attempting to do here is the exact opposite of that.
From Wikipedia:
"Net neutrality is the principle that an ISP has to provide access to all sites, content, and applications at the same speed, under the same conditions, without blocking or giving preference to any content. Under net neutrality, whether a user connects to Netflix, Internet Archive, or a blog, their ISP has to treat them all the same.[19] Without net neutrality, an ISP can decide what information users are exposed to."
Capitalism doesn’t reward quality, it rewards profitability. Those two things are very often at odds with each other. Yeah I think net neutrality regulations basically force the private sector to keep the internet as a public utility. Like a sidewalk. Private businesses can open stores along the sidewalk if they want, but they can’t control the sidewalk. (I came up with that analogy all by myself and I’m very proud). Google’s just a private business, they don’t control the ISPs at all. They profit off the work of news journalism, I think it;s fair to make them pay a little. Capitalism is great, so long as it’s well regulated and I was using net neutrality regulation as an example of that.
You say several times that you don’t understand the government’s motivations / logic - “It's hard to understand the mental processes that went into the crafting of this bill”. But we know the Australian government did this exact same thing several years ago with great success. Google and Meta are basically monopolies, they’re powerful beyond comprehension, and they will thump their chest and make threats, but at the end of the day, their business model prevents them from following through on them. Australia showed how this works and I believe the UK and EU have drafted similar laws to Canada’s. I’m not sure why you didn’t mention that.
Australia didn't do "the exact same thing". In fact, Google's suggestions for Canada were in line with how they were operating in countries like Australia, but our government wanted nothing to do with it, I guess because they figured they're smarter than the Aussies. I didn't get into it because I don't really understand either it well enough and this piece was plenty long enough without that.
If I remember correctly, other countries in Europe tried something similar several years back, wanting to get their news orgs paid by Google for driving traffic to their sites.
Maybe you know more details, but the whole thing seems like a farce. I've seen notices on web sites that say something to the effect of "you can't link to here without our permission" as if they live in upside down world where other people promoting their site with a link is somehow a bad thing.
I honestly can't get my head around that. As someone who creates digital content myself, I'm quite sure that I would have no way of getting my stuff to anyone without the effort that's gone into building platforms like Google, Facebook, Reddit, and whatever else you'd like to use. I don't presume to speak for anyone else, but I'd sure like to hear from someone who is consistently creating digital content of any sort who doesn't think that.
I agree with you. I'll take a link if people want. Every little bit helps. I also admit that I'm not coming from the perspective of a giant organization. Part of their objection could be that Facebook quotes so much of an article that you don't need to follow the link if you're okay with the gist of it. I don't know for sure that's the case because I haven't been on FB for about 6 years now, but I seem to recall news posts that contained a good chunk of the article.
1. “It's not the government's job to control the dissemination of news in a democracy. This is generally frowned upon in the western world and conjures up pictures of totalitarian regimes in Asia.”
In a democracy it’s a very good idea to have robust publicly funded news media that isn’t purely incentivized by profit for its survival. The BBC in the UK is a good example, and France’s news media is very socialized. The alternative is to let billionaire industrialists like Bezos and Murdoch write our news for us, which is far more reminiscent of those totalitarian regimes in Asia.
2. Nor is it the government's job to prop up failing business models in a capitalist society.
That depends on what we call a failing business model. Is the Police a failing business model? What about health care? Or the military? There are some areas of society where profit motives don’t provide the best outcomes. News media is such an essential pillar of democracy that it falls under that category to some extent. It’s also up to us what we do or don’t bail out. If an industry faces collapse, sometimes it’s better to bail it out than to let the market do its thing and cause even more damage. It’s usually the government’s fault for not regulating sufficiently to prevent the collapse in the first place.
Publicly funded broadcasting is one thing. Controlling the dissemination and distribution of news is entirely another. Part of the mandate of news organizations (at least historically) is the government to account. In that sense, any funding from government is a huge conflict of interest. But that's even what I'm talking about. I'm talking about deciding for Canadians which news we should hear and which news we shouldn't.
As far as failing business models go: police, healthcare, and military are not "business models" and are aguably not even businesses (although they use business principals in their operation). That actually IS the government's job - to make sure those things work. Another job they're failing at miserably, by the way, so thanks for pointing that out. Which makes an excellent point:
If these guys could just concentrate on what they're supposed to doing, they might actually be able to make something work, but they can't because they're far too busy putting their long skinny fingers in all these other things they have no business in.
Somebody’s going to control the dissemination and distribution of news. In a democracy, I’d rather the people (government) have a good amount of control. Obviously this only works in a democracy though. The alternative is that wealthy individuals control it, and we can see what kind of problems that causes.
As for the public services vs. for-profit business models, I think the news media does a far worse job when it’s run purely for profit than when it’s not. There’s a strong argument for it being an essential public service just like police or healthcare. Is there a conflict of interest? Again, I’m happier if the ‘interest’ is from the people rather than some billionaires. The government also appoints courts in the justice system which are supposed to hold the government to account. That works well in a robust democracy.
In Canada, we've seen firsthand the results of government-funded media, and they're not great. What the CBC use to be, it no longer is. This may well depend upon the current government, but that in itself is precisely the problem.
The answer to the news issue is the same as the speech issue - MORE NEWS. Not less. That means more options and more competition. To imply that people are not intelligent enough to decide for themselves what's true is a slap in the face and I don't accept that.
I definitely agree with more news is better, but the issue here is monetization. Journalism is a lot more expensive than just making stuff up, typing it out, and posting it online. Great journalism can require a reporter to work on a single story for years on end. The internet, for better or worse, democratized information and made it so real journalism and disinformation written by a robot are presented side-by-side as if they’re equivalent in value. The government is simply telling these monopolies to bargain with news organizations in exchange for the traffic they provide. I don’t see how could lead to less news; one would expect the opposite, actually. Without government regulation, there would be no net neutrality, no internet as we know it, and certainly no way for content creators like yourself to reach an audience.
You're right about great journalism - it's not cheap. That's why these companies sell advertising. The better job they do, the more ads they sell. This is how capitalism works. If the people don't appreciate your journalism, they're not going to buy your paper and advertisers will leave with them.
I don't know much about "net neutrality", but it seems to me what our government is attempting to do here is the exact opposite of that.
From Wikipedia:
"Net neutrality is the principle that an ISP has to provide access to all sites, content, and applications at the same speed, under the same conditions, without blocking or giving preference to any content. Under net neutrality, whether a user connects to Netflix, Internet Archive, or a blog, their ISP has to treat them all the same.[19] Without net neutrality, an ISP can decide what information users are exposed to."
Capitalism doesn’t reward quality, it rewards profitability. Those two things are very often at odds with each other. Yeah I think net neutrality regulations basically force the private sector to keep the internet as a public utility. Like a sidewalk. Private businesses can open stores along the sidewalk if they want, but they can’t control the sidewalk. (I came up with that analogy all by myself and I’m very proud). Google’s just a private business, they don’t control the ISPs at all. They profit off the work of news journalism, I think it;s fair to make them pay a little. Capitalism is great, so long as it’s well regulated and I was using net neutrality regulation as an example of that.
You say several times that you don’t understand the government’s motivations / logic - “It's hard to understand the mental processes that went into the crafting of this bill”. But we know the Australian government did this exact same thing several years ago with great success. Google and Meta are basically monopolies, they’re powerful beyond comprehension, and they will thump their chest and make threats, but at the end of the day, their business model prevents them from following through on them. Australia showed how this works and I believe the UK and EU have drafted similar laws to Canada’s. I’m not sure why you didn’t mention that.
Australia didn't do "the exact same thing". In fact, Google's suggestions for Canada were in line with how they were operating in countries like Australia, but our government wanted nothing to do with it, I guess because they figured they're smarter than the Aussies. I didn't get into it because I don't really understand either it well enough and this piece was plenty long enough without that.
If I remember correctly, other countries in Europe tried something similar several years back, wanting to get their news orgs paid by Google for driving traffic to their sites.
Maybe you know more details, but the whole thing seems like a farce. I've seen notices on web sites that say something to the effect of "you can't link to here without our permission" as if they live in upside down world where other people promoting their site with a link is somehow a bad thing.
I honestly can't get my head around that. As someone who creates digital content myself, I'm quite sure that I would have no way of getting my stuff to anyone without the effort that's gone into building platforms like Google, Facebook, Reddit, and whatever else you'd like to use. I don't presume to speak for anyone else, but I'd sure like to hear from someone who is consistently creating digital content of any sort who doesn't think that.
I agree with you. I'll take a link if people want. Every little bit helps. I also admit that I'm not coming from the perspective of a giant organization. Part of their objection could be that Facebook quotes so much of an article that you don't need to follow the link if you're okay with the gist of it. I don't know for sure that's the case because I haven't been on FB for about 6 years now, but I seem to recall news posts that contained a good chunk of the article.