[LINK] NOW Toronto on the need for Canada to protect its news media

[rfmcdonald]

Writing in NOW Toronto, Ross Howard argues for the protection of Canada's mass media as cultural assets.

[A]s the Toronto Star’s David Olive presciently pointed out a year ago, most of the money drained by Postmedia from its newspapers – some of which were actually breaking even or better – went back to the offshore debt-holders (the company is 35 per cent owned by Manhattan-based hedge fund GoldenTree Asset Management) instead of into better content that could actually attract readers and advertisers. Advertisers won’t pay for expensive print ads when they can reach more eyeballs on TV and online.

Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey claims that convergence, extreme economizing and digitalized “news products” will soon pay off for Postmedia, but not, as Olive argued, the escalating payouts continue to go to its American owners who keep the newspaper chain alive only to pick it clean beyond the bone.

If Canadians want a diversity of independent and reliable sources of professionally-curated essential information to get through their day – and at election times – the time has come to think about alternatives to machine-made journalism.

That may require more philanthropists funding truly independent media, encouraged by federal tax credits. But Canada could also emulate Europe where governments grant media outlets across the political spectrum annual subsidies, no strings attached, to keep alive diverse approaches to news and opinion.

The news media can be declared another national strategic industry and tighter controls imposed against monopoly ownership.