Nuanced. - 179. Holly Doan: Are Government Subsidies Destroying Trust in Media?

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

Aaron Pete sits down with Holly Doan, publisher of Blacklock's Reporter, to explore media bias, government subsidies, True North Media, defunding the CBC, Joe Rogan's Trump interview, and the critical role of independent journalism in Canada.Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger Than Me podcast. Here is your host, Aaron P. What is the role of journalists? My personal belief is that they are there to hold power accountable. But many don't feel that legacy media does this anymore, and there are more and more calls to defund the CBC. Are they right? Or is independent media going to help balance the scales?

I'm speaking with the publisher of Blacklock's reporter. We discuss media bias, the CBC, True North Media, government accountability and the future of news. My guest today is Holly Dome. Holly, thank you so much for coming on. It was an honor to speak with you on the Lean Out podcast with Tara Henley. And I was super excited to sit down with you to dive more deeply into some of these topics. But first, would you mind introducing yourself to people who might not be acquainted with your work? My name is Holly Dohn. I am a 42-year career journalist for the background in mainstream media, and in 2012, we launched Blacklock's reporter, an online news agency on Parliament

Hill that covers government affairs, and I am the publisher, and it's great to see you again. Fantastic. Would we be able to start with what is state-funded media from your perspective? You know that word state-funded media drives some people over the cliff. You know that, right? I did not know that. Well, I heard a debate about defunding the CBC recently, where one of the people who objected to CBC called them state-funded media. And I think we're rightfully corrected that they are and their mission was to be publicly funded media. State-funded media suggests that you are a mouthpiece for the state. Now, you're going to talk to lots of people who say that's what CBC has become.

But what is the function for publicly funded media? I think it's changed. When R.B. Bennett, a very conservative prime minister, established the CBC in 1935, first as a radio network, the idea was to stitch together, this disparate country with all its regions, and to give us a voice that was distinctly not the Americans. And for many years, it really did serve that purpose. I would say right through the era of my childhood and up even through the time that I worked there.

which was for five years in 1998 to 93. I think the CBC has lost its way, and it really needs to have its mandate and tell Parliament, tell it again what its mandate should be. That is, if it can manage that before it is defunded by any future administration, which is doubtful. How do these government subsidies actually work? well there's there's a pallet of subsidies there's the ones that have been around forever that maybe you've heard of like the periodical fund which was always set up to assist magazines periodicals like say mclean's magazine has received around a million and a half from the periodical fund for as long as i can remember but in 2018 the government introduced in order after a call from the news media publishers of the main legacy press to introduce uh income supports to publishers

That's what people generally think of when they hear media subsidies or media bailout is a derogatory term. And what it does is it subsidizes newsrooms per head. So if you have 30 newsroom employees, you are subsidized up to a maximum of $29,000, depending on how much they earn, of course. And so what that has done for many news organizations, it has, it is now the staple, the lifeblood, The mainstream of its funding for many, not all, but I think we're headed in this way, comes from media subsidies. There have been others, of course. There was a fund for local journalism still exists, which is only for, fully covers a reporter doing local journalism in smaller local newsrooms. There has also been emergency support to publishers during the pandemic when their advertising, which was already crashing, was decimated.

that has now run out. And the publishers themselves have now renewed their call for subsidies to be extended or made permanent. Interesting. And do you think that these subsidies are helpful? Do you think we should review this process? What are your perspectives on them? I think, which is something we thought in 2018, when we had Black Lox decided we would never take the subsidies. I don't think they've been helpful.

I'm going to express a controversial view here, but welfare never really makes you retool, rethink, or become better because you are not working under necessity. And so if you look at the newspapers now compared to what they promised in 2018, there's not much difference in the product. So, for instance, in 2019, the chair of News Media Canada, then a fellow by the name of Bob Cox

went to the finance committee. I was there and promised that this was not a bailout, that this was not permanent, that this was temporary. He said, quote, media has, we have to save ourselves. And so the government of the day

accepted that, accepted that message. They got from the lobbyists that this was temporary until they could sort out the problem. Your paper hasn't changed. It's probably laid off. off people. It's gotten worse. The business model is exactly the same, only now they are more reliant on subsidies, and they no longer accept that they have to adapt to the new medium. They

have instead suggested that subsidies should be permanent, and that Google and Facebook, etc., are to blame, and that they must pay journalists to carry their content. Should we defund the CBC from your perspective? Oh, gosh, I hate this question. You know, I mean, if you'd asked me, say, last week, I might have said, well, wow, that's 10,000 employee. I started at the CBC. They, I'm CBC trained. They taught me in those days, the basics of how to cover a hotel fire.

Without those opportunities, I might never have become a national reporter for CTV. I might never have become a bureau chief. I might never have learned how to do access to information. I've relied on all those things that really started with the CBC, but there were other local news outlets doing the same thing. The problem is that they have drifted so far from their mandate that they're not really training people like me anymore. In fact, people like me that focus on government accountability

and edgy content are not particularly welcome at the CBC anymore. So while I have pangs of discomfort over, say, the Conservatives, hashtag defund the CBC campaign, I then see the president of CBC, Catherine Tate, come to testify at Commons or Senate Committee. And by the way, Blacklux covers CBC annual reports, advertising revenues, staff, bonuses, all that. And I see the president not really accepting that they have to change, that their mandate has to be different, that any of the blame lies with CBC. She blames everybody else. She'll blame misinformation. She'll blame bad political actors. She'll blame Google and Facebook. I think that this argument now is a little tired.

Yes, the internet disrupted our business model in a way that has disrupted almost no other business, maybe book publishing. But it's not going to change. We can't really put the genie back in the bottle. So the CBC, one of its proposals, which I I guarantee you're going to see when the Heritage Ministers Committee reports back very soon on the future of the CBC, what to do with the CBC, one of the things they're going to recommend is that the CBC get out of advertising, which private broadcasters have called for for many years. Problem, there's no money in advertising now. So CBC is being a little bit disingenuous when it says, hey, we'll get out of advertising, we'll leave that to the private broadcasters when they can't sell any ads anyway. And the quid pro quo with that is going to be, see, we've got out of advertising, we'll leave it to you, but you have to up our annual fund to compensate for advertising. In other words, we'll get, be completely funded.

That's not innovative. That isn't responding to what the public is asking for. That isn't even preparing yourself to an existential threat, which is a guy named Pierre Pahliav, who, by the way, I, we're never sure what a new government's going to do, are we? I mean, I've seen promises broken before all the time. That's what they do. But I, we are all told now that there is a plan in place for the CBCD funding and it will, the new government would act within the first 100 days.

The severity and the extent of that, we don't know, but I think they've blown it. They blew their good 10 years after they lost hockey, which is why this has happened. They blew the opportunity to do something different. What do you think the impact of these subsidies are on independent journalists, independent media, willing to create innovative solutions? I've spoken to Farhan Muhammad, who's one of the leaders of the Overstory Media Group. They've created e-newsletters that kind of collate and put together newsletters that summarize basically the news of the day from across different news organizations, including their own, and then they do more in-depth reporting on local journalism. But they're relying highly on subscriptions, and it feels like they're being, their business

model is being discouraged because CBC is free, like these other news organizations are offering a free product. So when you're asking for a higher quality product that actually costs money or that you can do a subscription service for, it seems like they're fighting up against something that's free, even though it's being paid for the taxpayers themselves. So what are your thoughts on the impact of these subsidies on independent journalists? Well, if we're talking about the business model, and it sounds like you are, the organization you cite, I assume when you say they're providing news from other outlets that these are other free products that they're aggregating or distributing?

Yes, like black press and stuff. And they just put like a link to that news article so you can go forward. Okay. And those links are generally to articles. that are not paywalled? Correct. Right. Okay.

So they are able to, in some ways, profit off somebody else's content. That's what aggregators have always done, which aggregators were the enemy because they were like middlemen. They were the ones that were scooping up the labor, labor intensive, expensive journalism and then repurposing it. However, if they're also producing some content themselves, it sounds like they're trying to figure out what the model is to provide as much content to people at as low a cost as possible. Because this is something we hear that, oh, your product is great at Black Locks Reporter,

but it's so expensive. I'll say, well, we don't take subsidies and, you know, investigative or document journalism is expensive. So I guess we're only targeting people who want to pay that money. Sounds elitist, but if you're a small business, we're not going to give it away for free just so that we can go out of business. That's not doable. But what you're seeing in the organization you cite or ours or others, and this is the difference in the actions of legacy media and small independent upstarts is that like any small business, independents are fighting for their lives all the time. They have to be innovative. They have to modify what they're doing.

They have to make corrections all the time. You know, for instance, ours, we focus on, on content, our business model, a hard paywall with an allegedly expensive subscription at $300 a year, has never changed in 12 years. What has changed is what any small business would do. Oh, the stories about this subject aren't as interesting to people who are going to put up money as the stories about these other subjects. Now, it doesn't mean we drop the dogs. It just means that we might cover them in a different way. So Blacklock's focus is it's all about your money. So if we're going to do, for instance, an indigenous story, we're not going to compete with all of the reconciliation stories that you see on CBC and elsewhere. We're going to talk about the dual department of Canada indigenous services and crown indigenous, and how much bureaucracy they've created and whether they've changed the definition of boil water, of safe drinking water, so that they can meet their targets.

That's how Blacklocks would cover the indigenous story. So why are we doing this? Isn't journalism supposed to be about profound things and just helping to shape society that matter? No, no. That's the problem with many journalists now is they somehow see it a mission to make a better Canada. I'm not here to make a better Canada. I am just here to tell you things that the government is doing that the government would rather you don't know. And then if that affects your family's pocketbook,

that's maybe useful to you, if it affects your organization's members, if you're a union or an industry association, and you really need to know about that, then that's valuable to you. But, you know, we don't, we don't pretend to try to remake Canada in the image of progressives or right-wing or anything. That's never going to be possible to do. Unfortunately, a lot of journalists in the last generation or so, as the industry has become more. or, shall I say, professionalized that journalists now don't graduate with a hunger to find information, they graduate with an idea of a better Canada. And so they want to be, as they are professionalized with associations and awards and all these sojourns in other countries to

study journalism, they become like other professions and they wish to join. the country's elite in offering advice for how government should operate. What they failed to recognize is that your public doesn't want that because if you're busy making a better Canada, who's telling me about what happened at Fisheries Committee or who's telling me about public accounts and the line item in public accounts, which was not what they promised in the budget speech? Who's telling you about that if journalism has taken on some other kind of mission. You know, we always like to say that in the first half of the 20th century, journalists were

not very well paid. They were ink-stained scribes that ran around calling in their tidbits, you know, the old cliche of the fat little man with a press card in his hat. And as they became professional, but they hustled. And as they became professionalized, they changed into people who go to seminars and give speeches at universities. So what we have now is we have a profession that used to be the brightest of the working class is now the dullest of the upper class. And they are failing Canadians. Just learn how to read a budget.

That's all you have to do. This is really interesting. One of my favorite shows is the newsroom. I watch it almost every year to refresh myself in what makes a good interview, but sort of the important pieces of the philosophy that a journalist should have if you're going to trust them. What do you learn there? So the newsroom, I think it's one of the best shows because they didn't try and go seven seasons and a movie.

They didn't try and go big. They just tried to deliver to you that the great goal of people in media is to deliver the information, not dumb down the content for their viewers, try and educate them, embrace the complexity of topics, expect higher of their audience, and push them to understand things in a deeper way. And it's those philosophies I try and pull into this. I don't think the working class or people in poverty are stupid and need to have them spoon-fed information. I believe that when you explain things and walk through a process or a system to people, they understand it and they want to see changes.

And I believe that's how most people feel. I think that's why podcasts are taking off is because people can sit down and listen to three hours of a neuroscientist named Andrew Huberman, break down how your body functions. And I don't think a lot of the media understands that. It's still four minute segments on a topic, got to move on, got to switch it to commercial or something like that. And we're ready for a more complex dialogue than that. And I think we underestimate the Canadian populists or people in general at our own detriment. And that's one of the biggest lessons that I love about independent journalists, is they kind of embrace their niche or their area and expect higher of their audience to start to follow along their journey with them. Is this, are we on the same wavelength in regards to this?

Remember I was saying earlier about independent media has to be really attached to their listeners or readers to know what they want, to know if we're doing the giving the right product or not. I'll tell you one little fun fact I've noticed about our readers is that. the people least likely to pay for a $300 just a subscription of all the professions, take a guess. Can I guess truckers? Ah, academics. Wow. They get it all free through the university and they're not opening their wallet with their

tenured income to pay for media. And those people, this is generalizing, but it has been 12 years. the subscribers, I notice who's subscribing. I talk to them. The group most likely to subscribe to a $300 product is who, take a guess. I thought, sorry, the first question I thought it was who's like least likely that you wouldn't expect? That does? I would have guessed truckers. That does. Oh, okay. Yeah. So the least likely to subscribe, in other words, they don't, is academics. The most likely to subscribe is small business. Wow. They don't have the highest incomes. They're often overlooked in government policymaking. They work 12 hours a day. Who think they

have an extra 300 bucks to spend on media? That sounds like a luxury. But what they need is information. Information has value to them. And that's a clue. That's a real clue to rebuilding the business model. So, you know, in terms of extracting government information, I also like to say to people, look, we don't cover what government, what politicians say. We don't go to news conferences or watch question period, really. We don't cover what politicians say. We keep an eye on what they're saying. We cover what government does.

What government does, you know, if you don't know about it, it's like the dog that didn't bark. That's the dog that can hurt you if you don't know what he did. Yes, of course, then we'll cover what politicians say, but only after we know what government did, will we ask them. so I mean this this kind of information that you talk about in podcasts yeah I agree with you but there are a lot of you have you must admit there are a lot of podcasts too which are really just hot takes on today's news cycle which is which is the worst because the public's already not too happy with a news cycle and a lot of the podcasters grasp around and say okay this happened this week we're just going to have some hot takes on this I don't I mean you might

make enough subscribers to make a living and then all the power to you. But I don't really think that's the future of journalism. I would agree. I think the discussions can get more complex and nuanced in spaces like this. But it'll be interesting to see because the medium is so new, I wanted to get your perspective on this. Like, the impact that I think the interview between Joe Rogan and Donald Trump has, to me, really reflects the changing landscape that we're seeing. gives a lot of hope to independent creators because it was the same opportunity that I got here in British Columbia when I got to interview all three political leaders of different parties and they actually saw it worth their time to come on a podcast and sit down for an hour and have

a conversation that's very different than what I would have expected in like a 2013 election when podcasts really weren't a thing and so the movement that I'm seeing is that these are becoming spaces we can have more complicated conversations than the traditional legacy media where you get seven minutes and the questions are really, really quick and you don't get a chance to kind of fully flush out your thoughts. Well, there's two ways of looking at that. I mean, I didn't watch the Joe Rogan interview, but I know what you're talking about. And the point is Donald Trump did that because he could talk for an hour and a half instead of going to do an interview with NBC and he would say, I know where that's going. Right. But so, I mean, there's a power or possibility to

manipulate, too. But if a podcaster or interviewer is fair, I think that they will attract, they'll attract great guests. And you're proof of that. Obviously, they think you're fair and you trust them. And you can get away with all sorts of questions, quite frankly, if you back it up with some facts and say it with a pleasant smile on your face. So there's that way of looking at it. But I also think that there's a danger in podcasts becoming, I have trouble listening to all the ones I want to listen to. We are saturated right now. We are.

And people always tell us, Blacklock should do a podcast. It'd be like so popular. And we say, yeah, but like if we stopped to do that, you wouldn't have a Blacklock's. You wouldn't have,

like we all have our own role. But our Canadian example of Trump talking to Rogan in our little, our little mousy Canadian way, is after the prime minister faced his so-called caucus revolt in Ottawa two or three weeks back, He went to the Sioux-Marie and did a podcast with a local podcaster about whatever they want to talk about and reaffirmed his intention to run there. So that's interesting.

That never would have happened back when I was covering, I was a scrum monkey in Ottawa in 1993. I mean, they always got right out of the House of Commons and walked straight onto the CBC's set or CTV or somebody. But they're now looking at those places and seeing that they don't have the reach that they used to. And even if they have the reach, they don't have audience trust because a number of reasons. And also they maybe don't target the people they want to speak to. Mr. Pollyov, for example, has been very successful with his TikTok and Twitter and social media bites, talking about drugs on our streets or about the housing crisis. And coincidentally, the number of young people under the age of 25 who are going to vote

conservative has increased. What a shocker when I was that age, like all young people would have voted NDP. There wasn't any question about that. How in hell? How would the hell did that switch? It's a fascinating phenomenon. He's reaching them in different ways. And I can tell you, I don't know how old you are, but I have two sons, age 20 and

23, they're smart kids, they're in a business program and law school. They don't, I don't think they've ever watched a CBC newscast or bought a national post. Yet they don't seem totally clueless when they come home from school. They seem to notice what's going on. I mean, they sure know about the crisis in student housing because isn't it true with young people when it hits them, then they suddenly take everything more seriously and look for sources of information. So those young people who are skeptical that government has not served them, it has let them down, that they're facing this housing crisis and competition for expensive schools, they see they're not left wing anymore, but maybe they're not right wing. But they say the system has failed us.

And so we're looking to a different way. And so they're being reached a different way too. Maybe they're watching up your podcast. I don't know. I'm wondering if you can describe to us and walk us through starting Blacklocks and like how that process worked and what some of your philosophical perspectives were when you started this. Well, both the editor and I are, as I mentioned, career mainstream journalists. My background, I used to start it off as a local reporter and an anchor at local stations in Brandon, Saskatoon, Edmund. And then I worked for CBC for a while in Alberta.

And then I was a CTV national reporter in Ottawa. And then China, I was a bureau chief. And then I did, together, the editor and I did historical documentaries, which we sold to CPAC, political history, which are now in the archives. So we kind of had this broad sweep. We were very fortunate. We really, my era of journalists really were like the last flight out of Saigon. We had the industry when it had money and it was good. and we had viewers or readers, and I know it's much harder now.

Well, we're living it now, too. But by 2012, when all those other things had run their course, we look at each other and said, well, we're too young to retire. What should we do? Oh, well, news is going online. I mean, it was really that simplistic. I guess we could do that. Look, we don't need to buy a printing press.

We don't need to hire a ton of staff. We have the reporting experience. We don't have to go canvassing at Carlton. We can do this. And so we started a website with the idea of doing government accountability, because we saw that media didn't cover committees, that they didn't read public accounts. And so we thought maybe there'd be a niche for that of people who wanted information. But with, you know, with all small businesses, you know, what's the statistic? Something like 83% fail in the first year.

And if you survive five years, it's like surviving cancer, then you might make it. So that's our story. We didn't earn a lot of money in the beginning. We never lost money, but we just kept going. And then something happened. While we were in business, the rest of the media seemed to collapse around us. Audience trust collapsed. Subsidies didn't help.

We decided we weren't going to take those. That sounded frightening. You know, we were trying to hang on to readers, not lose them. Then the pandemic happened. It was the election of 2019, and then the pandemic. And suddenly, everybody needed information. What was the public health agency doing? What did health minister Patty Haidu know about Wuhan and when?

And so your small business, your family, all your things are, all those things are depending on information. And the media at that time seemed to buckle down even harder with government messages. So we went the opposite way. We focused on documents and tests. and what happened, and subscriptions took off. The more we got away from government messages and the more we tried to find real information about the public health agency throwing out masks and closing a warehouse, the more people

seem to want a product. And I would say that since the pandemic is over, let's say 2022, subscriptions have remained steady and we keep on the same path. there's always a new scandal. There's always going to be green slush fund or there's going to be you know, Minister Boasano and the Pretendians.

Like there's always something. So to some people who are skeptical and think we should have positive reports on the things that government tries to do, they will say that's gotcha journalism. And I will say the government of Canada has six or seven thousand media spokesmen. We don't need any more people

shaping the government message or engaging in the term the government loves, which when media uses, I hate, storytelling, we just need facts. And so since that time, since the end of pandemic to now, 2024, the greatest value, once you establish yourself, and I'm not saying it's easy, it's bloody hard. Once you establish yourself, the greatest value are the resubscriptions. So we are to the point now, we have about a 73, 75% resubscription rate. So it's kind of like a, in a way, it's like a pyramid, right? If you can hang on to a larger and slightly larger and slightly larger base, then if you have a bad year, like people are really struggling with their finances right now.

We've noticed new subscriptions are down a little bit. And also, we also noticed, by the way, that new subscriptions don't happen during tax time. Forget March. March is death. It might as well shudder the outfit and go, because it's about people. money. Imagine them trying to find the money to spend on you at a time when they're just trying to make ends meet. So we can sustain the business now. We don't actually need their subsidies. We would like to expand, but maybe we've had enough trouble coming through this

wormhole that has been media since 2012. We're quite happy where we are. And what's wrong with that? Why can't we just have a niche that makes a good living and hold government to account. I have to ask, just because it continues to be on my mind, if you had to have a pie chart on when did the industry change in this regard? Like, it used to be journalists were fighting for the people. They were holding government to account, making sure that they answered the questions. And I know that's maybe like picturesque of like the actual circumstances day to day. But like, that's what people think of is that like journalists were there to act for the people and ask the tough questions and it was not always a popular job politicians weren't always happy

with the coverage they were getting and like that was the reality now it feels like so much of what we see is the the story being retold to us reshaped and and reiterated and recycled rather than having individuals like yourself who go i'm not listening to any of this like of course you're going to tell me that the sky is blue and beautiful like the reality is people have these tough circumstances and i think that's why people are gravitating towards Pierre is because they're like, this guy's saying what I'm seeing on the road right now. Like, things are not getting better from what I'm experientially seeing. Except I would caution you, like what politicians say is not really what you want to think

about. It's what they do. So we don't really cover any of Mr. Polio's statement announcements either, any more than we would cover one from the Treasury Board president. So you don't really know. But having said that, you don't really know. You don't really know what kind of government you're going to get. He could be the worst.

He could be the best. We don't know until we see. Because if people are human, how is he going to govern? What circumstances are going to face him? So all I can say is that media has to stick to the same guns. So what was your question again? I'm sorry, interrupt. So if you had a pie chart, is media subsidies the main piece of that that's contributing to, like, the journalists moving in this direction?

Is it just like political narrative? or people wanting to fit in and universities then going into these elite places? Like, what is causing this dramatic shift away from holding politicians accountable and questioning them every chance we get? Part of it is what I was referring to earlier is that journalism has become professionalized.

And journalists want to become part of the ruling elite and help shape society. And they've forgotten what the job is. Now, where do they get that idea? Well, making more money and wearing a nice suit, I guess, is more pleasant than being that ink-stained scrub. shuffling around, you know, in dark alleys. But also I think that this is not popular and perhaps some of my friends aren't going to like this,

but the journalism programs at the universities aren't really helping. They have seminars where they talk about, for instance, political journalism, reimagining political journalism, which was one that was held recently at Carlton. Who needs to reimagine political journalism? What does that mean? Political journalism means holding somebody to account. That's what it's always meant. You don't need to reimagine it.

And if you're reimagining it, what the heck are you imagining it is? That you don't have to read public accounts, that you can talk about what's true and what's right, you know, even in covering climate change. And this is not climate change denial. This is covering, you know, whether the carbon tax has lowered emissions. This is covering how many executives. executives profited in their personal companies in awarding contracts to green tech funds. Like, that's what we're supposed to be doing. We don't need to reimagine that.

That's as old as Methuselah. That's what people expect. So, you know, my editor always says who's somewhat more crusty than I am, but humorous, if any of your listeners have heard him on the radio podcasts, he always says if he had to hire another journalist right tomorrow, he'd hire an image. immigrant with fast food experience and skipped the university grads. Another friend who's now retired was known as the king of access to information in Ottawa for many years. He told me once that he was invited to Carlton, our premier program, one afternoon a week, once.

One, not a week, once, to talk about how to do accessed information. So, all right, so if you don't want to, now, I know that I'm looking at all this through the lens. of government, covering government, but you had me on. You didn't choose an environmental beat or climate change beat reporter. So I think that not only one journalist, to sum up, journalists have wanted to join the elite class and join their government masters, I would say tormentors in shaping society. And they've also no longer been taught what journalism is, that diversity is more important than knowing how to file an access to information request.

And they would say, no, no, no, that's right. It's not right. It's both. But I don't see Carlton or Toronto Metropolitan University holding weekend think tanks on how to demand more government accountability. And I'm telling you, it doesn't come from holding the guy to account at the microphone while he's eating an apple and then feeling hurt because he doesn't like you. That's not how you hold government to account.

you have to get into the documents you have to um you know if they won't talk to you it shouldn't really matter not really and but if you're fair they might talk to you anyway so how do we get here what piece of the pie is journalism have and then of course underpinning that is subsidies we've just asked we've just begged the public not to trust us because nobody thinks that sancy lavalin get subsidies and doesn't and doesn't do favors for the government. Who thinks that? Bombardier. Nobody thinks that.

Why would anybody be expected to believe that media subsidies haven't influenced coverage? And again, it's not even what media reports, which you may object to, it's what they're not telling you. And why are they not telling you? Because some of it's too controversial and you want to keep your subsidies. And also, you don't know how to get that information because you've been busy, you know, remaking Canada. So those things have contributed. How have subsidies influenced that? Publishers used to be these fearsome people. And managing editors were like, if you ever remember

the old Mary Tyler Moore Show, they were like Lou Grant, like grumpy, armpit sweaty guys in a corner office who told you your story was crap. Holly, that lead sucks. We did that. We did that story six months ago. Go back and get something else. That's who. that's what they use to demand of their staff. Now they have diversity to worry about an inclusive hiring, and they're in their office filling out a grant application. How can it not affect subsidies? At the very least, it's made us tired and dull and unreadable. I'm interested in the dynamic between the two worlds, legacy media and independent media. How has your work been impacted or viewed by your peers?

hard to say very few of them subscribe um you know in media when somebody else breaks a story and then your boss makes you go and do what we call a matcher that's a bad day at work like you never want to match somebody else's story so i think you know blacklocks is a conveyor belt of information i'm not going to call it all scoops i'm not going to be so presumptuous i hate that word by the way um we're just a conveyor belt of information and and the reaction to that sometimes is from the public, why doesn't mainstream media do this? And I don't want to go there. But so that doesn't make us popular. And neither does our position on subsidies. We have said that they are not being honest with readers. We have said that it influences coverage. We have said

that the press gallery, which is the parliamentary press gallery that represents reporters in Ottawa, in excluding others from membership because they won't tell us who's funding them, that they themselves should declare how much money they get, their organizations get from the government. Why is a subsidy from Imperial Oil any different from a subsidy from the Canada Revenue Agency and the employment department? What's the difference? I don't see the difference. So, I mean, those things don't make you popular because they're afraid. People are, essentially people are afraid. And they want to have a scoop, but you don't want to rock the boat because there's layoffs every day and you could be one of them.

That, you know, that's not a great environment to work under either. Do you feel like the information that you provide is utilized by any of these other news organizations? Are you able to help form the public narrative or people afraid to touch your stories to go against the public? Like, what is the response that you see? Well, one of the things that we were warned about when we started that old crusty types of the business say, Yeah, you watch, like, others will try to steal your stories and they won't give you credit and they'll just pretend you don't exist. So the remedy for that, for us, was to sell licenses.

So the minute we see in other news organization or any kind of website that's using our content because they purchased a single subscription, we tell them you're getting a license or you're never reading blacklocks again. And you have to be prepared to walk away from money. And that's worked. So we have a number of licenses with other organizations like The Sun has one. Epic Times has one. Western Standard has one. But none of these, by the way, are huge. It's not huge money. No single license that we have represents more than 1% of our total

revenues. These are just a way of forcing others to recognize the work of other media. And upstart media themselves, respect that. Now, those I just named to you sound like all right-wing outlets. Okay, so that, well, she must be a right-wing. No, we ask. Stephen Harper, he would not have called us a right-wing friendly outfit. Remember, we started up in 2012. We do government accountability. So when the government happens to be liberal, the people who are going to, this is one of the problems with the world now, Aaron, is that political partisanship, they can't tell the difference anymore. Like if you do a bad story about Mr. Trudeau's government, well, then you're a right-wing hack. If you don't do enough

critical stories of his government well then you're then you're liberal that's too bad anyway we we just you know la la la we just sort of block that out so you know other media following our stories yeah so there's those i mentioned and those are mostly not paywalled so what happens is they rock it all around that's not a bad thing i call that free advertising right and also what it does with when the stories resonate in that way, it holds the government to account. In fact, you might find this interesting. They know that Blacklocks is going to do what we're going to do, and we don't write media lines, media lines for your audiences, the things that communications people write to make the government look good, lines, like a news release. So they don't bother

trying to give us a hard time, but they give all our licensees a hard time. Government departments phone up all our licensees and try to bully them to drop the stories. What do you think of that? That's shocking information. Yeah, every single one of them, you know, the postmedia and Rebel are, yeah, Rebel subscribes too, but they don't bother them much because they're in another place. But Western Standard has had the same problem. So, you know, in other words, the government is trying to shut down this kind of journalism.

And so they're going to make it really hard for you. They're not only are they, well, you're not taking their subsidies. So they already think that you're in trouble. And now they're going to try to bully your licensees into dropping the copy. And when they can, they'll steal your copy. So the government, the ministers of heritage who have professed to want to save democracy by saving media, they don't ring very true to me when they give some independent media such a hard time. And I understand that not all new media is how the government wants to be or looks like the legacy media.

There's some that are partisan and there's some whose journalism I'm not too sure about either. But you know what? This is called internet disruption. This is what it looks like. And it's all free speech. And anyway, you're never going to be able to censor them all anyhow. I mean, they've been trying for 10 years. to censor us, and it hasn't worked. We've just gotten stronger. The more the government

bullies, and the more we say we don't take subsidies, the more likely people are to give us a go and shell out some money to subscribe. The government's word for something. The government say so that this is a good thing is a very antiquated idea. The disrespect for public institutions, and I'm not making any comment on all that, just that it exists. The government testimony that this is a good paper, we should supplement their, you know, staff, that doesn't work anymore. People aren't like, they're likely to think that government subsidies are a bad thing. And it's really, now the government never really has understood media, not really.

Media is kind of like this weird magic voodoo and they hire communication staff to tell us the world of media and how it works, right? You and I both know it's really doesn't, it's not that much magic and it's mostly chaos. But I think the government efforts, the government has. a control fetish. At least this administration does and a bureaucracy. And so they have been trying their best through subsidies to control media. And what's happened? What has happened? I think they've caused independent media that is agitating to succeed. At least I would say with us, that's the case. Agreed. Sorry, I just want to linger just for another second on your comments about the fact that the government doesn't want these stories.

told and that they actively discourage this like I like to me that's a huge revelation that just deserves a minute of time to digest and process because because I think we are all skeptical of government at some level when you hear new taxes coming in you're kind of like but when you hear that it's just so strange because it feels like and and I try and be as middle grounded as I can be it feels like there's a moral superiority today to the liberal government or the NDP government like it's almost like automatic that when they say something that people go like well they're the good people you know they're the they're the good guys and and so when you hear something like that it's just it's a lot to digest that there's stories they

don't want out there and that there's not like correct me if I'm wrong there's not many out there looking for the stories that they don't want told right there's not many anyway so why would you worry about the ones that are it's the control fetish but you know this is government communication's job is to tell government stories in the best light or my my the minister's office might hear about this like what if what if the minister's office gets a question in question period from you know somebody on the other side of the house and it embarrasses him well it's my job to control that story shut it down get a correction and they measure their successes by the way government communication staff and whether they got media to change the copy that's how they measure

it now they would say well it was wrong but most often it's not wrong It's just they didn't like, they didn't like the lead you chose. It wasn't what they would have put in the press conference, in the press release. You know, there's an old thing in the CP style guide, Canadian press style guide. I don't know if it still is in there, but it says, this is for editors, don't rewrite the story just because it's not the way you would write it. Right? And so government is for government's mission is to rewrite the story the way they would write it. And if you're a small news agency that doesn't have much clout, you know, they're.

might sort of look, it said, well, not many people. And we've seen these internal emails. Well, not many people saw it. So who cares? But if they think it's resonating, if the stories are getting out there and they have legs, then they're terrified. They're terrified of what their masters will do. And they must correct or have that kind of copy pulled. In our case, it was even worse. They had to read the copy. So they bought single subscriptions online. And then shotguned, the passwords and the content to hundreds and hundreds of readers across the public service without payment or permission. A little bit like if you got Microsoft and you office and you copied it like 20 times and gave it out. That's what, that is the way that government

chose to try to limit blacklocks was to make sure that we didn't get paid by government, that we didn't get any government contracts. Because by the way, government contracts are a huge part of media funding. So, for instance, the Toronto Star gets $1.7 million for research by a program called media copyright clearance. That's so all the government public servants can read the content. Another smaller organizations, like say, Indies, like the logic, gets about a quarter million. The Hill Times, it's a weekly paper here in Ottawa, gets $800,000 over a multi-year

year term contract. So these contracts, too. Yes, of course, public servants should pay. But these contracts traditionally have been used, not just because public servants should read, but as a way of controlling media. If we didn't like your content too much, well, maybe you won't get your subscription renewed this year. That's how, are you shocked? That's how Ottawa works. I think I am. I think I'm a little naive. I'm all the way in British Columbia. So when I hear about these things are the rumors that go on in Ottawa. It's always surprising. I should send you some more carrier pigeons over the mountains to let you know what's happening. That would be fantastic. There's an old adage that like great journalists are able to hold power accountable and then

governments don't do bad things because they're afraid to get caught, not really because they're afraid of doing bad things. Is that old adage true? And when you're doing this work, Is it somewhat lonely to be the people kind of doing the actual digging that needs to take place? Once you can ignore all of the people who would see you done harm, once you can ignore those. And, you know, you get to a certain age, you don't really give a damn. Your kids are happy and you enjoy your work. You don't really care what people say about you anymore. You're not building a career.

You're just here because you're doing what you love. But I think that old adage, I to myself, even after, say, 35 years, would never have believed the extent. to what it's true, that it's true, that when media does a story that shames or embarrasses them, say you're covering something to do with waste or mediocrity or cronyism or, God forbid, corruption, you would not believe how many corrective measures are taken. And I, you know, I can't go story by story, but, you know, for instance, we did a story a few years back about how the public health agency was working with telecom. companies to monitor the movement of cell phone so they could tell whether people who had

been vaccinated were traveling or staying home, this sort of thing, which a lot of people thought was kind of shifty. So we did a few stories on it. And then I think the New York Post did a story about Canada's monitoring people, you know, big state. And I can tell you that'll never happen again. We've done stories, little stories about, oh, our first one, where we're we realized this is the case was several years ago, the government had a budget cover. You know, the cover on the book of the budget, it showed a happy family and it was shot in a park or something. It looked really nice and glossy. So we filed access to information to find out how they produced and what they spent on that budget cover. Turns out they spent over a quarter

million on the budget cover, and it had been produced like a movie. They had hired ad agencies and actors, they hired actors to pose in the budget cover. And we've filed access every single year since 2017. They never did that again. That's a small example. But they do respond. Let's look at Parks Canada changing Johnny McDonald's home in Bellevue into a kind of a struggle session to examine.

his legacy as opposed to, say, this is his house. This is where he lived. There was a lot of talk about that. There was a lot of stories. A son picked it up. I don't think you're going to see many Johnny McDonald rewrites from here on in. I think that, you know, I think that's kind of passed. The Human Rights Commission drafted a report on how Christmas was racist because it had colonial origins. And that story ricocheted around and to this day, they won't even tell us who wrote that report, just that it was signed off on by 30, 40 people. And in fact, you may find this amusing.

In filing and access to information to find the name of the person who wrote the report, the exemption that the Human Rights Commission used to say why they didn't have to release it was safety. Personal safety. They were afraid of the public response. they knew the name of the person who dissed Christmas. Well, it seems kind of goofy, I know. But what you asked me, like, how did they respond? Government, correction in government, you don't see.

They're not going to run a right of press release saying Christmas is great. Everybody celebrate. All the nominations, great. These changes are incremental, and there's so much waste and mediocrity in government and cronyism that one little bite at a time. But the thing I always say is, like, we love our work and we don't care if they don't love it. But imagine if you had 10 blacklocks in Ottawa, we'd have the best damn government in the G7. Like, government wouldn't move without making sure that they had not repeated any lessons learned from the past.

Because there's no consequences in government when they get it wrong, whether they throw out all the masks in the warehouse. They have a program called Lessons Learned, where they do an internal audit. it and decide you didn't do that right, you didn't do this right. And they call it lessons learned. But no one's fired. Somebody might be transferred. But there's never really any accountability. Accountability happens when it makes its way into media.

And there's very little of that kind of media now. Most of the media is about explainers on government programs or, you know, there might be somebody reporting about it. Let's say, recently we've had the housing program. This is the Liberals Housing Accelerator Fund versus the removal of GST, which is what the opposition wants to do. So media will try to examine that a little bit. But this is reporting only on programs that are still underway or not realized yet. There are lots of programs that happened that rarely we ever hear what happened with that program.

Now, this more recent one, the reason why Parliament is at a stalemate right now is because the opposition is demanding the government release documents in connection with the sustainable economic development Canada, which was a group set up to fund green programs. And there were something like 18 conflicts of interest that the Ethics Commissioner found. In other words, they were funneling money to their own companies. They were handing out government money without much oversight. So that's when you're watching in real time. But because in that case, we did stories on that before the opposition took it up. But now that the opposition has taken it up, people think it's a conservative issue, right? We're so down that partisan rabbit hole.

We can't even tell anymore what's partisan and what's not. You're willing to look the other way on corruption, let's call it what it is, in order to say, I'm a liberal or those conservatives are bad. And the same thing will happen when the conservatives are elected. Maybe. So I think that media can and should hold government to account. It doesn't mean it's easy. But if I could say the thing that I would admire most in any journalist, you asked me about that earlier,

would have to be, of course, research and writing and that's great. It would be fearlessness. Because it's hard, because they will bully you. And mainstream media are frightened. And on the edge of bankruptcy, some of them. And they're not, they don't have the capacity to help, nor do they even want you around. So I think you have to really, any independent journalists you know, not only are they struggling financially, but they have to stare down all that crap.

And boo-hoo, I'm not doing boo-hoo journalists, because I don't like that. I don't like the boo-hoo thing. But I'm just telling you that's the reality. So I admire people who are able to barrel through it without letting it beat them. May I ask, why did you name your publication after Tom Blacklock? Thomas Highland Blacklock was one of the first presidents of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery. His picture was up on the wall with all the other guys with high collars, high wing collars, you know, and we had always seen that photo and wondered about that guy.

And it turns out we used to do political history documentaries. And when we were buried in the library and archives, we were looking at documents, we saw some reference to letters between Thomas Hyland Blacklock, the president of the press gallery. And he had worked for Montreal Gazette, Winnipeg Free Press, one of the Toronto papers. He had one of these been all-around guys. He was a First World War correspondent. And there were letters between him and Borden, who was prime minister during the First World War, and very vigorous letters between Thomas Blacklock and Arthur Mien, arguing about conscription and this sort of thing.

And we thought, okay, here's a guy who was doing old-timey journalism. He was doing journalism the way we imagine in the movies when we're watching spotlight. We imagine how journalists should be pushing back against authority. That was the Catholic Church. This is government. And so our mind being in Canada's history at that moment in our lives, we thought we'd call it Blacklock's reporter. Also, he had no errors, so we weren't stealing anybody's history.

name. We researched that too because you don't want to discredit it. Anyway, he's buried in Campbell, Campbellford, Ontario, I think, which is down south. He was a real guy. And he had a famous quote in one of the letters when he was talking to somebody where he said, well, that ain't the way I heard it. And so this, we thought, okay, yeah, this is it. This is us. So there's that news conference and that story about the Green Fund. But that's not how we heard it. That's not what we saw when we did government. So that's kind of it, our slogan. I love that. A few quick questions for you, just because I'm learning so much from your understanding of the media landscape. Is True North Media a legitimate news outlet?

First, let me say that I believe passionately in free speech. And I think, like, we shouldn't try to censor. Just let have it. Just let them out there. I mean, if they do something that hurts people or they you know there are we have libel and defamation laws and those have worked for generations um i'm old tiny so i kind of think that a journalist is somebody i do believe by the way that journalism is an apprenticeship system that it is not something you learn at an elite university i think that you have to spend years covering uh school board and town council and Red Deer and, I don't know, a car wreck on the highway near Traw Rivier or beyond the fish beat if you're at CBC Halifax. I mean, to me, that's how journalism started and that's how

I came up. You didn't get a crack at Ottawa, the hardest beat in the country. For me, it was 11 years in doing all those other stuff before I came to Ottawa. Now, I know that those jobs don't exist anymore. This is a problem. But we hope independent media will, you know, we are going through this transition time and we hope independent media eventually can, you know, there are local outlets now that are trying to cover Calgary or, you know, Metro Vancouver, right? They're trying. So I hope that will rebuild itself. But the others that people who come into journalism, having never been a journalist, I think they have every right to be there, it makes me uncomfortable. I mean no disrespect, but if you were a party, a political party operative, or you were an activist for an environmental group, or you were a right-wing columnist maybe, and you had never covered school board or city council or legislature anywhere, part of me says, the elite part of me, says, where do you get off trying to cover Ottawa with your opinion pieces?

when you don't even know how a bill becomes a law. And so I would say to people, we are in these silos where, yeah, you like to subscribe to things that support your own view and you like, but even the things that you like, and I do the same thing with the publications I subscribe, I look at them and say, well, you know, why are you saying that? Most of them, unfortunately, are opinion. So they get away with it. But they're getting the moniker journalism. How did they get that?

Where do they get off taking that moniker that some of us worked really hard, just. just by coming up through the apprenticeship system to learn how to do, how to do that. So, which doesn't mean they can't, because after all, if I'm going to say that journalism doesn't need an elite degree from Columbia or Carlton, then I have to accept that citizen journalists will come at it from a different way. You have a law degree, right? I always said that if I was going to do journalism over again, I would get a law degree. And not, no, I went to journalism in college, but so I didn't invest too much time. But I think that even those things are useful. So you will always, I'm sure, whether you ever practiced or practiced or not, you will always

look through, look at our laws through the lens of what you learned. So I say, come one, come all. But try a little harder to not just be a zealot for the cause, whether it's climate change or the conservatives. Just try a little harder because that way everyone will love us more. Fantastic. The last one on this note is Keenan Bexta from Counter Signal, went all the way out to Tefino. My understanding is that he took plane all the way over. Justin Trudeau was there spending time with his family. And I thought it was one of the best interviews Justin Trudeau's ever done because it really gets to the heart of some like really interesting questions. His argument was I'm on vacation with my family. Like can we can I just not have a day? with my kid being left alone and then Keenan's counterpoint was like you would never let me interview you you would never give me the opportunity i am not on the press gallery i will never be on the press gallery this is my one shot as an independent journalist to get an interview with you to discuss kind of key issues that you would never accept an interview with me so this is my shot

and i'm taking it and i just thought it spoke to something really profound about the state of independent kind of media or journalism and and how the two aren't reconciled reconciling yet. What are your thoughts on that? Well, there was a lot of debate about that, wasn't there? You know, whether you were bothering the prime minister on holidays or whether, you know, he had a right. I don't know. How would you feel about it if it was, I don't know, Bob Fife from the Globe or Jean-Paul Tasker from CBC who are out on the beach chasing him? So because they are members of the press gallery, so therefore what? They have more of a right to chase him. There must be a reason

to chase him, whatever the subject. was, right? I mean, global news caught him on the beach on the first reconciliation day. Did anybody say they, they shouldn't bother the guy on holidays? No. Why? Because they're part of legacy media. Okay, that's one way to look at it. The other way is Mr. Bext is not one of those journalists that I describe that I respect the most. He did not come up with a desire to cover school board and find information and with any sort of standards applied to what he does. And a lot of it, come on, whether you like it or not, and I watched it too, is voyeurism. People, you know, even if you don't like, even people who don't like the guy.

And he did the same thing with Dominic Leblanc at a cabinet retreat a couple of years back. Don't you watch it because it's kind of voyeuristic? So is that good journalism? No. Well, but what's a big deal? Even if it isn't journalism, why is it so harmful? He's not out to hurt anybody. He's not out to hurt the prime minister.

And so I guess I go back to whether I'm entirely comfortable with it or not. It's what free speech looks like, I guess. Come one, come all. And people need to get off their high horse and accept that the media is in transition. And again, this is what I said before. This is what it's going to look like. is going to be some things you don't like and how are we going to add some things you do and how are we going to manage that we're going to have a code of ethics that we slam down on everybody's desk we're going to

subsidize them so they have to meet our criteria uh the remedy to key and bexed is not more government i guess that's what i would say and and you know what anyway it's up to people viewing it to decide whether this is bad or not. It's not up to me or you, Aaron, or even, maybe even Justin Trudeau. Yeah. How can people keep up with your work? How can they subscribe? What's the best way to connect? Well, we're at www. blacklocks.ca. There's a subscribe page. But if you want to have a look first, you can scroll down and go back and back and back and see the headline and the cut line of all the stories. You see the cut line is like another line or two with a a bit of information that gives you the gist, more of a gist of the story, and then you can subscribe

online. It costs 314 bucks, and I'm, you know, tired of apologizing for that because we have plenty of subscribers and we always say, if it's not for you, you can get lots of free news at the CBC and post media. You don't have to subscribe to Blacklocks, but if you do, I promise you'll be one of the 73% that comes back every year for 10 years. One of my favorite comparisons is always like you care about the quality of food that you put in your body and so you should care about the quality of media that you consume and be very mindful of the information that you're consuming because it impacts your worldview, your hope, your optimism, your understanding of where the world is and I think you do an incredible job of that. I find one of the biggest takeaways for me from being able to speak with you is you bring a maturity to the conversation that I don't often see. To your point, I see a lot of people kind of jump left or jump right whenever a question comes up. Oh, how dumb. Yes, and not taking that nuance of like, okay, we disagree or this is the case,

but it doesn't make me a right-wing person for being able to observe that this is actually what happened. It doesn't make me a left-wing person for saying that, like, I don't agree that Pierre isn't taking- Then they'll say it's the stories you choose make you a right-wing or left. There's no winning that argument, by the way. And anybody who says that about us, we challenge them to read- the copy. Yeah, there's a sexy headline. Go to Fleet Street if you want to talk about sexy headlines. But then if you read the story, it reads like a search warrant. Information, information citation, name of report, name of legislation, clip from opposition, clip from government,

backgrounds, piece, backgrounds information. It reads like that. And so if we're going to call that partisan now, then I think you consider the source. You consider the source of the people who are saying it. And people who call me partisan, I know right away. You just told me you're partisan. Yeah. Yeah, you are an incredibly rare individual and I really appreciate the work you're doing. I hope we can continue to have more discussions because I'm constantly asking guests about like, like, are we becoming a less mature society? Because we hear something and then we just react. We don't want to do a reading of five different articles and kind of see different perspectives. we just kind of want it spoon-fed to us, but I think people like yourself give us the space

to have a more mature conversation, and I really appreciate you for that. The reality is that it's going to be in multiple sources, I guess, to get a very clear picture. You know, we don't have Eaton's department store anymore to buy both our pantyhose and our mixing bowls, and we're just not going to have legacy press to tell us everything either. And so, you know, I congratulate you on your podcast and trying to contribute your little piece. That's all we're doing is we're just trying to continue. contribute our little piece and trying to be fair. And just because you're not a member of the press gallery doesn't mean that you don't have a brain or you don't have experience and you can't

contribute. Like that this is, that's what democracy is. We all just try to contribute. I couldn't agree more. Thank you so much, Holly, for doing this. I find your work absolutely admirable. Thanks for your work. Thank you.