A union that represents journalists at several British Columbia media outlets says the provincial government needs to do more to prevent the spreading of news deserts as publications are closed.
Lana Payne, the national president of Unifor, and its western regional director, Gavin McGarrigle, said in a letter to B.C. Premier David Eby that great swaths of the country are being left without a local news source, hurting democracy.
They’re urging Eby to help reverse that trend by committing a portion of the provincial government’s advertising budget to support local news.
Last summer, Ontario Premier Doug Ford directed crown corporations like the Liquor Control Board of Ontario and the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation to spend at least 25 per cent of their advertising budgets at news outlets based in that province.
Since 2021, New York City has required its agencies to direct 50 per cent of their advertising budgets to community and multicultural media outlets, including print, digital, radio and television.
Losing ‘scarce’ ad dollars
In their letter, Payne and McGarrigle said a similar directive by the provincial government “would immediately get badly needed revenue to news businesses who are losing scarce ad dollars to American and Chinese Big Tech firms” without spending additional taxpayer dollars.
In February, 2024, Eby called out “corporate vampires” for overseeing “the crapification of local news by laying off journalists” during an announcement in Coquitlam hours after Bell Media announced job cuts and the cancellation of several local newscasts.
Eby said media companies have a “corporate responsibility” to “ensure people get accurate, reliable information in this age of social media craziness.”
On April 17, Glacier Media — now called Lodestar Media — closed the Tri-City News, Burnaby Now and New Westminster Record, leaving more than 600,000 people without a robust, trustworthy source of local news.
Publisher Lara Graham said the publications, that had informed their communities for more than 40 years, were no longer sustainable due to “the industry’s ongoing financial challenges.”
The closures came 20 months after all three publications ceased their weekly print editions to exist only online.
Two days earlier, Port Moody council approved an expenditure of $50,000 this year and an $85,000 budget item next year to bolster its communications resources to help fill the growing “information gap” in the community and counter disinformation spread on social media channels.
Cross-Canada closures
According to the Public Policy Forum, more than 340 communities across Canada have lost local news providers since 2008.
An annual injection of $100 million for each of the next five years from online search engine Google as a result of Canada’s Online News Act that was passed in June, 2023, by the federal Liberal government with support from the NDP hasn’t done much to prevent closures either.
Two weeks after Glacier Media’s closed its three publications, the Canadian Journalism Collective that is responsible for disbursing the funds announced the company had received an instalment of almost $400,000 based upon the number of staff dedicated to the production of news it had on its payroll in 2023. Metroland Media Group in Ontario received more than $1.9 million despite filing for bankruptcy protection in Sept., 2023, and ceasing production of all 70 of its weekly community newspapers to move them exclusively online; 605 employees lost their jobs.
During a visit to Port Moody campaigning for April’s federal election, former NDP leader Jagmeet Singh conceded the Online News Act could use further refinement.
The legislation “did not have the teeth” to prevent more media closures, said Singh. “I want to see more protections in place against web giants that are taking up all the space.”
Unifor, which represents workers at Glacier’s recently shuttered publications, said B.C.’s Extended Producer Responsibility fees that make producers of plastics and packaging pay for their recycling also stacks the deck against local news outlets.
“The only catch is that newspapers are not packaging,” said Payne and McGarrigle in their letter to Eby. “They are the product — an important product that is already the most widely and most successful recycling material.”
The union said B.C. should follow the lead of Ontario, which exempted newspapers from the fee in 2022.
“The extra burden of this program on newspaper publishers will only create costs that cannot be afforded by an industry already stretched and facing so many obstacles,” said Payne and McGarrigle.
MARIO BARTEL 