Maggie Macintosh reports on education for the Winnipeg Free Press. Funding for the Free Press education reporter comes from the Government of Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative.
These two sentences were at the end of an August 19 news report on, among other things, a controversial education bill in Manitoba.
I had heard that the federal government in Canada was subsidizing newspapers, but somehow had forgotten.
This is a very bad sign for press freedom. Government can’t subsidize newspapers without putting its thumb on the scale.
Here’s more on the subsidy program.
READER COMMENTS
Alan Goldhammer
Aug 25 2021 at 7:44am
Newspapers in the US as well as local news coverage in other media are shrinking. IMO, it’s up to the citizens to support alternative news outlets. We have a local magazine that publishes daily news via the Internet. The magazine is a monthly and has significant advertising but I suspect the revenue makes it a little more than break even proposition. The daily news program is supported by fundraising which is fine by me (I do contribute yearly). Our ‘Amazon newspaper’, aka the Washington Post does not cover local news to the same degree that they did 10 years ago.
I agree with David, it’s risky to have the government supporting news outlets.
David Henderson
Aug 25 2021 at 9:48am
Thanks, Alan. Finally we agree on something very important.
Our best local newspaper by far is the Carmel Pine Cone, a weekly that exists solely on advertising. Its reporters do a first-rate job, and have been great on covering Covid. Its main competitor is not the daily Monterey Herald, which is now a very thin daily that mainly recycles AP and Reuters stories. No, its main competitor is the left-wing Monterey Coast Weekly, which has much less reporting, and most of it not as good.
Were the Carmel Pine Cone to do a fund raiser, I would contribute $100 without even thinking twice.
Mark Brophy
Aug 27 2021 at 10:39am
Newspapers are covering less local news because the federal government is usurping state and local government power. Readers care about national rather than local news.
Henri Hein
Aug 25 2021 at 1:09pm
I’m not that disturbed about the disappearance of newspapers. Having the field convert to modern-style media is better than putting them on government life-support.
Tiago
Aug 31 2021 at 5:06pm
Rare disagreement here. I don’t follow why governmental subsidies of press vehicles mean less press freedom. If a billionaire buys a press vehicle and starts pushing an agenda favorable to his business, does that hurt press freedom? I don’t think so. But it sures puts a thumb on the scale. Press freedom is about not being limited in what you are allowed to say, not about government being neutral on everything. In fact, government isn’t neutral in all sorts of things, and often is involved in evaluating what is true or not and what is just or not. What is a court system for if not to decide such things?
If reliable information is a public good (non-rival, non-excludable), which it is more than ever now that it can and will be copied free of charge, there is a prima facie case for the government to be involved in it. One could make an argument that the governmental failures involved in this type of endeavor are larger than the market failures it is trying to address, but this seems far from obvious to me. Is the existence of the BBC a net negative for the British, and the world? I don’t think so.
For an initiative such as the Canadian to be seen as an a priori a limitation on press freedom, it seems to me that one would have to adopt an anarcho-capitalist framework. But then why choose this specific action by government if all governmental actions are assumed illegitimate?
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