Saving a Pillar of our Democracy

By Dr. Keith Martin, M.D., June 11th, 2009

At the beating heart of any democracy is a free and open press. In Canada, the media is under siege. Many news outlets are on the verge of financial collapse due to a number of factors. These threats are not new, but they have come together to form a perfect storm and the crisis we have today.

These challenges include the following:

The economic tsunami that has wrecked havoc around the globe has inevitably resulted in a dramatic decline in advertising revenues. The Internet has produced a decline in the readership in newspapers and magazines, as people download articles for free.

Canadian cable companies pay U.S. broadcasters to use their programs. However, the CRTC allows them to use programs from Canadian broadcasters for free.

The CRTC has also made a grave mistake by allowing the traditional media to be concentrated in only a few hands. This has decreased the space professionally trained journalists have to ply their craft. It has also shrunk the size of the traditional arena of public opinion. Canadians have therefore been exposed to a much, much narrower range of the ideas, solutions, opinions and initiatives that actually exist in our country and around the world.

The CRTC’s rules that oblige Canadian channels to show a certain percentage of “Canadian content” is well meaning, but archaic. It hampers the ability of our broadcasters to be competitive by forcing them to air shows that people and advertisers may not want.

To be sure, private broadcasters have made a number of unwise business moves. But this collision of events could well drive a number of our broadcasters and newspapers to extinction. The outcome of this will severely limit the exposure our citizens will have of events taking place in their communities, in Canada, and around the world. Local programming, which is the lifeblood of community groups and their ability to engage in the philanthropic work they do will be devastated. This must not be allowed to happen.

The following solutions will help to remove the obstacles that will enable the media to be financially viable:

1)       Newspapers must be able to monetize their product. Journalistic endeavours are intellectual property and must be treated as such. Currently, articles are removed from the web for free. These articles and reports must be monetized, for the failure to do this will see an increasing number of newspapers disappear. There is a parallel with the music industry. People used to be able to download their music for free (and to a certain extent they still can), which was killing the industry. Monetizing the downloading of music in a user-friendly way has enabled the industry to recoup some of its costs and keep our musicians in business. The same structure can apply for our journalists

2)       Fee for carriage. Cable companies pay more than $2 billion a year to US stations for the right to carry their programs, but they don’t do this for Canadian stations. Thus, cable companies should pay Canadian broadcasters for the programs they use in the same way they pay American broadcasters.

3)       Remove the obligation Canadian broadcasters have to air Canadian content. Canadian programs will be purchased based on the interests of the viewers (us) and advertisers. What stations show should be driven by the needs of the market and not artificially created by the CRTC.

4)       There are more than $50 million in licensing fees that are charged by the federal government to Canadian broadcasters. These should be eliminated.

5)       Eliminate the CRTC’s requirement that HD transmitters be put up by broadcasters. This will cost companies millions of dollars and will overwhelm the broadcasters’ ability to pay for this, thereby driving them into bankruptcy.

The current crisis in the viability of our media has received too little attention, despite the fact that it goes to the heart of our freedoms and our ability to innovate. The failure to address this problem now will result in the extinction of many broadcasters and newspapers across Canada. This will eliminate an enormous piece of the arena in which public debate occurs. The blogosphere is an important arena for debate, but it is no substitute for professional journalism. In defence of the freedoms we cherish, we must remove the obstacles that prevent Canadians from enjoying a free and open press.