Tag: journalism

This article was written by Paul Deegan, the president and CEO of New Media Canada, and was published in the Toronto Star on October 5, 2025.

In a world of harm­ful mis­in­form­a­tion and dis­in­form­a­tion, amp­li­fied by Big Tech plat­forms, we need fact­based, factchecked journ­al­ism. Crowd­sourcing is not journ­al­ism. There are no altern­at­ive facts: there are just facts. And Cana­dians need facts to live their lives and to make informed decisions that empower them to par­ti­cip­ate effect­ively in demo­cratic pro­cesses.

AI com­pan­ies are flag­rantly scrap­ing and sum­mar­iz­ing con­tent dir­ectly from pub­lished news art­icles. This is theft on an indus­trial scale — plain and simple. Pub­lish­ers are being harmed because these arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence over­views are so detailed that the reader often stays within Big Tech’s walled garden, rather than being poin­ted elec­tron­ic­ally to news web­sites via links. No clicks mean no money for pub­lish­ers to rein­vest in fact­based, fact­checked journ­al­ism.

Read­ers are being harmed, too. All too often, these arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence over­views serve up slop: inac­cur­ate, irrel­ev­ant, out­of­date and even harm­ful inform­a­tion. In today’s atten­tion eco­nomy, these com­pan­ies pri­or­it­ize engage­ment. That leaves it up to the user to try to sep­ar­ate fact from fic­tion.

“Buy Cana­dian” is part of the solu­tion. Accord­ing to a recent report from Cana­dian Media Means Busi­ness, 92 per cent of digital ad dol­lars are now going to non­Cana­dian plat­forms, which puts the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of Cana­dian media in jeop­ardy. Gov­ern­ments across Canada should not be spend­ing their advert­ising dol­lars with for­eign search and social­media giants. They should walk the talk and “Buy Cana­dian.” They should fol­low the gov­ern­ment of Ontario’s lead and set aside a min­imum of 25 per cent of their advert­ising budgets for trus­ted news brands.

Advert­ising set­asides work. Five years ago, former New York City mayor Bill de Bla­sio, a Demo­crat, man­dated that city agen­cies alloc­ate at least 50 per cent of their print and digital advert­ising to com­munity and eth­nic media. Accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Com­munity Media at CUNY, “The impact of this policy can­not be over­stated: In its first five years, it injec­ted more than $72 mil­lion (U.S.) into the local com­munity­media sec­tor. This helped crit­ical inform­a­tion reach New York­ers who rely on com­munity media as their primary source of news, and added an import­ant source of rev­enue for these out­lets.”

The not­for­profit Rebuild Local News found that advert­ising set­asides, done right, have the fol­low­ing bene­fits:

■ They can provide sub­stan­tial rev­enue to local news organ­iz­a­tions and help com­munity journ­al­ism thrive.

■ It is money the gov­ern­ment is already spend­ing — not new money — so it does not require enlar­ging state or local budgets or rais­ing taxes.

■ Gov­ern­ment mes­sages can reach a full range of res­id­ents, includ­ing those who may not be using lar­ger media.

Bey­ond ensur­ing fed­eral advert­ising is placed in a safe brand, a fed­eral set­aside would send an import­ant sig­nal to other orders of gov­ern­ment and to the private sec­tor about pro­tect­ing Canada’s digital sov­er­eignty and sus­tain­ing inde­pend­ent, com­mer­cially viable pub­lic­interest journ­al­ism.

More than 85 per cent of adults in Canada turn to news­pa­per con­tent each week, and two­thirds trust that con­tent — ahead of tele­vi­sion, radio, magazines, social media and online search. Let’s keep scarce advert­ising dol­lars in Canada — so they can be rein­ves­ted in local news — rather than send­ing them to Amer­ican tech mono­pol­ies that extract tens of bil­lions a year out of Canada — largely untaxed — at the expense of local journ­al­ism and cul­ture, and whose plat­forms have become har­bours for divi­sion, dis­in­form­a­tion and dis­en­gage­ment from the com­munity.

This National News­pa­per Week, which runs Sunday to Sat­urday, as we face the rise of fake news amp­li­fied by algorithms that pri­or­it­ize engage­ment, it is in every­one’s interest to pro­tect the truth.