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Alberta Premier Rachel Notley’s blacklist of journalists she doesn’t like has been suspended when confronted with national condemnation. However it may return: Notley has asked a retired newspaper editor to create recommendations about “the government’s media policies.”
In Canada though, governments don’t have media policies. The only real accreditation necessary is found in the Charter of Rights with its guarantee of a free press. Notley’s desire to regulate journalists – whether through sheriffs and Department of Justice letters, as she did a week ago, or through high-priced advisers, as she’s trying in a few days – smacks of banana republic socialism.
But even when Alberta’s NDP government backs down from attacking journalists it does not like, there’s a larger condition in Canadian media: governments sponsoring journalists they do like.
The CBC may be the obvious example. Within the recent federal election, the NDP and Liberals battled for that hearts and minds of the CBC’s journalists. Thomas Mulcair started the bidding having a commitment of a $115 million annual CBC bonus if he were elected. To not be outdone, Trudeau upped the ante to a whopping $150 million. The politicians were brazen: these were providing the journalists who cover them successful fee if they were elected. It’s only human instinct that the countless CBC journalists who have been focusing on the election would think about what that cash would mean. Not really a week passes without news of deep cuts in Canadian media and $150 million a year would save a lot of jobs. Overlook the natural ideological affinity between your left-leaning CBC and Trudeau. This was about bread and butter.
We don’t have to speculate whether journalists were affected by this legal bribe. The Canadian Media Guild, the journalists’ union that dominates the CBC as well as The Canadian Press newswire, formally registered as a “third-party” campaign group with Elections Canada, similar to U.S. SuperPACs. Every unionized journalist covering the election was contributing part of their own salary for an anti-Harper election effort. Of course, CBC election reports didn’t disclose this conflict of interest.
It’s a soft form of corruption, when politicians pay the journalists who cover them
It’s not just CBC journalists who are corrupted when you are politicians’ pets. Journalists at private media are, too. Because they nervously polish up their LinkedIn resumes, they cannot help but notice that the only real major, national news organization still hiring is the CBC – just this week it posted a want ad for a newspaper-style editor for “features and columns.” The number of private sector journalists are tailoring their very own work now to mirror the editorial type of the CBC where they hope to maintain 6 months?
And then there are hundreds of private sector journalists who top-up their income with appearances as freelance guests on CBC radio or TV. It is a soft type of corruption, when politicians pay the journalists who cover them. It’s the carrot, when compared with Rachel Notley’s stick. But the CBC hasn’t just editorially compromised itself. In the age of the Internet, its expereince of living undermines its private competitors.
In the past, private TV and radio stations overcame the CBC’s government-funded advantage with government gifts of their own, granted through the CRTC. For example, in 1997, the federal government ordered every cable company in English Canada to carry CTV Newsnet, and each cable subscriber to cover it, whether or not they wanted it or otherwise. CTV is on the dole, too. All TV and radio information mill. In return for protection.
