Canadians deserve a diversity of quality local news and information sources that they value and know they can trust.
Over the past decade, unregulated platforms have moved aggressively to corner the markets in search and advertising. Using their dominant positions, they have dramatically impacted the advertising market through the algorithmic exploitation of user data.
The value of news and information to the search and social platforms is clear. Unfortunately, the content that search and social platforms share to their own financial benefit is in large part not appropriately compensated. The result is the breaking of a critical link in the Canadian broadcasting value chain. As advertising dollars and data are offshored to entities with little connection to Canadians’ values or public interest, the ability of news and information publishers to continue to support and maintain a robust professional news gathering infrastructure is profoundly undermined.
To support reputable broadcasters and news publishers to maintain the resources necessary to continue to inform Canadians, it is critical that a policy framework be developed to help recognize the value of news and information organizations’ contributions to the public good, and the value extracted from them by these digital platforms.
Key Recommendations:
- Supporting our essential local news and information programming by ensuring that broadcast newsrooms are appropriately compensated by digital giants for their content, and that labour supports for Canada’s print and digital media newsrooms are available for local broadcasters as well.