The closer the media gets to the government, the less Canadians will trust it. The less Canadians trust it, the closer the media gets to the government.
Years ago, as the legacy press started to lose market share amid the rise of social media and competitors like Yours Truly, they faced a choice.
They could have been introspective and looked at what they were doing to cause the loss of trust and demand for alternatives among the public.
Or they could run to the government, demand state intervention, demand access to taxpayer dollars, and demand restrictions on social media and their competitors.
We know which one they picked.
And yet, for all their efforts to make the state their patron, the legacy media continues to get weaker and weaker.
According to the Reuters 2023 Digital News Report, just 40% of Canadians say the trust the news. That’s down from 45% in 2021 and 42% in 2022. And it’s way down from 55% in 2016.
The trend is undeniable.
Yet, no introspection by the media has taken place.
The more they struggle, the more they demand government intervention. The more Canadians freely choose not to consume their content, the more the legacy press demands the government force us to pay them anyway.
And now, they are in a death spiral.
Government-funded media can never be truly independent. It can never be fully trusted, because it relies on the government for funding and thus has a powerful incentive not to antagonize the government.
Canadians are increasingly catching on to this. Thus, the more Canadians perceive the legacy press as an extension of the state propaganda apparatus, the less trust they will have in the press, and the more money the press will lose. The more money the legacy press loses, the more state intervention they demand, and the more Canadians then lose trust in them.
They are demolishing an essential part of our democratic institutions, they are robbing Canadians of our hard-earned money, and they are seeking to cripple the independent media and content creators who are actually succeeding on their own merits in the free market.
And so, as their death spiral deepens and Canadians increasingly turn against them, both the Liberal government – for seeking to bribe the press – and the legacy press itself – for taking the money – have nobody to blame but themselves.
Spencer Fernando
