Who pays the price for the news media's essential political role?
CBC
Asked why he robbed banks, William "Slick Willie" Sutton was reported to have answered: "Because that's where the money is."
Like so many apt quotes, it may be that the highly successful 1930s bank robber never actually said those words. But as the government of Canada uses the Online News Act, Bill C-18, to find someone to foot the bill for what political theory tells us is the essential role played by Canadian media in democracy, Sutton's reputed logic may apply.
Tech share prices dipped last autumn, but since then Google and Facebook are back in the money. They and their parent companies, Alphabet and Meta, have prospered by selling carefully targeted online ads to everyone with a computer or mobile phone, while Canadian news media companies are in a spiral of lost readers, advertisers and revenue.
This week Ottawa upped the stakes, announcing it would cut its ad spending with Facebook and Instagram in retaliation for parent company Meta's decision to remove Canadian stories from its platforms. According to the BBC, Canada is "going to war" with the tech companies, and even those in the media industry warn they may not win.
On the face of it, the issue is money. In what has been seen in Canada as a profit-driven industry, the purpose of the act, in concept at least, is to somehow return ad revenue tech companies swiped from Canadian news businesses. But to many who study the purpose and function of news in Canada, that focus is too narrow.
Some say the role of media as a watchdog is so important that it's the responsibility of governments to find the money in taxes and then spend the resulting cash to boost the private sector media industry.
Perhaps most galling for Canadian news outlets, journalists and politicians who make the laws, the algorithms serving up Canadian news to social media platforms have contributed to the big tech cash pile just as Canadian reporters face mass layoffs and journalism is undergoing a new financial crisis.
As long-time journalist Bill Doskoch said in a recent letter to the editor "the smartest thing platforms did, from a business perspective, was to spend nothing on journalistic content."
Natasha Tusikov, who researches internet governance at Toronto's York University, is not surprised tech companies are reluctant to contribute.
"We've seen again and again examples, for a decade or longer, of how these companies do not have the public interest at heart," said Tusikov in a phone interview earlier this year.
The trouble is that in a media industry run for profit, the rules of economics tell us the unwavering duty of any private company, whether Google, Meta or Postmedia, is not to the public interest, but to maximize the income of those who own it. Acting for the public welfare only occurs if it adds value to that first responsibility. As Tusikov explained, too often the two are in conflict.
Postmedia is a case in point. The chain has gobbled up media titles across the country, using complex financing to extract the value of assets. But as it did so, it shrank the number of titles and the number of full time reporters.
Margo Goodhand, ousted as editor of the Edmonton Journal in 2016 during a previous Postmedia shakeup thought it was a move in the wrong direction then.
"How bizarre to relive this scenario yet again," said Goodhand in an email last week, referring to the latest planned merger between the owner of the Toronto Star and Postmedia.