Today on NOW and NEXTDid Australia's legislation aimed at saving that country's media and journalism from a slow painful demise really work? Did the "pay for links" law really force Google and Facebook to bend the knee?NEWS FLASH!! No. No it didn't.Yet, Canada's legacy media, (including the CBC), and the federal government see Bill C-18 as the only path to survival for the journalism ecosystem in this country. The federal law not only misunderstands the state of media in Canada, it thinks the CRTC, the broadcast and telecom regulator, should now decided which organizations meet its definition of journalism.C-18 is a mess. It's going more to hurt and already damaged sector than to help it.Scott White, CEO and Editor in Chief of The Conversation Canada and the former Editor in Chief at Canadian Press joins us to discuss the real challenges facing Canadian journalism. He says the heart of any short term fix or long term solution has to be a renewed and reinvigorated trust in media and journalism. He points to the latest Reuters Institute research that suggests trust in Canadian media has dropped from 55% in 2016 to 40% in 2023.https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2023/canadaIt's fair to say, the lack of transparency and misguided thinking behind C-18 does nothing to boost that trust, let alone boost the bottom line for the news organizations that need it most.
