The Ottawa Declaration on Canadian Journalism
Taxi News, Road Warrior News will never accept government subsidies
On May 30, 2024, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) unveiled The Ottawa Declaration, a public call by some of Canada’s leading independent news and current affairs outlets for the media industry to reject the federal government’s payroll subsidies for journalism.
The Ottawa Declaration came out of MLI’s recent conference on the future of news and journalism. The daylong event explored the impact of recent government policy and legislation on the media industry. Participants included a diverse group of journalists and digital news and current affairs media outlets, both long standing publishers and startups.
Since the 2019 federal budget, the government has established multiple programs for digital news outlets to subsidize their journalism. The majority of this support has taken the form of payroll subsidies totalling some $489 million in budgeted funds. Currently, most private digital news outlets can claim up to $30,000 in payroll subsidies for every journalist they employ. With the implementation of The Online News Act (C-18) payroll support could conceivably double and see half or more of the salaries of most journalists working in Canada for private digital news outlets paid for by government coordinated subsidies.
The signatories of The Ottawa Declaration believe the current subsidy regime represents a challenge to our democratic process insofar as it raises legitimate questions in the public’s mind about the independence of the press, thereby undermining the perceived veracity of reported news.
The declaration also calls attention to how the subsidy regime creates an uneven playing field, whereby some news outlets – primarily legacy media companies – are able to qualify for generous government support and others are not, stifling innovation and deterring private investment.
The key contention of the declaration is that to ensure Canadians have access to news free from the appearance of government influence, and therefore more likely to garner public trust, private media owners and the journalists they employ should reject payroll-based subsidies for their industry (either funded directly by government or through Bill C-18).
Signatories include: Political journalist Paul Wells, columnist Andrew Coyne, publisher/co-founder of The Hub Rudyard Griffiths, and Holly Doan, publisher/owner of Blacklock’s Reporter.
*****
The Ottawa Declaration on Canadian Journalism
A free and independent press able to hold the powerful, including government, to account is an essential feature of Canadian democracy.
Recent federal legislation and regulation could soon see up to half or more of the salaries of full-time journalists and editors working for digital news outlets funded by government coordinated subsidies.
These large-scale subsidies, totalling hundreds of millions of dollars to date, are in addition to the federal government’s direct funding of the CBC/Radio-Canada, which currently employs one in ten journalists in Canada in its news divisions.
The widespread subsidization of news journalism is happening against a backdrop of plummeting confidence in the news media, with 37 percent of Canadians indicating they “trust” the press and less than one in five supporting government funding of newsrooms.
The broadly unpopular subsidy regime represents a challenge to our democratic process insofar as it raises questions in the public’s mind about the independence of the press, thereby undermining the perceived veracity of reported news.
The subsidy regime also creates an uneven playing field whereby some news outlets, primarily legacy media companies, are able to qualify for government support and others are not, stifling much needed innovation and private investment in the sector.
To ensure Canadians have access to news free from the appearance of government influence, and therefore more likely to garner public trust, our media companies will not accept the per employee subsidies currently on offer from government and industry.
We acknowledge that outlets serving some minority communities may need to avail themselves of the subsidies to provide their audiences high quality news in absence of a viable commercial market for their journalism. We pass no judgement on these groups.
We encourage other digital news media outlets to sign this declaration and reject the payroll subsidies. In trying to “save” journalism, these subsidies damage the independence of the press, stifle much needed innovation and private investment, and fail to rebuild readers, listeners, and viewers’ trust in our industry.
Signed:
Andrew Coyne, Columnist, The Globe and Mail
Andrew Lawton, editor-in-chief, True North
Candice Malcolm, founder and editor-in-chief, True North
David Clinton, publisher, The Audit
Derek Fildebrandt, publisher/president/CEO, The Western Standard
Holly Doan, publisher/owner, Blacklock’s Reporter
Jonathan Kay, editor, Quillette
Paul Wells, political journalist
Rudyard Griffiths, publisher/co-founder, The Hub
Sam Cooper, founder, The Bureau
Sean Speer, editor-at-large/co-founder, The Hub
Tara Henley, writer and podcaster, Lean Out
Tom Korski, managing editor, Blacklock’s Reporter
