The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben talks to the Director of the #1 Documentary on Netflix - Who Killed Jon Benet Ramsey

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

Guests and Topics on Today's Show -New Documentary exploring Who killed Jon Benet Ramsey and why her family are innocent with Guest: Joe Berlinger, Director of the new Jon Benet Ramsey Documentary on Netflix -Details about Justin Trudeau's meeting with Donald Trump with Guest: Steven Chase, Globe and Mail Senior parliamentary reporter -Should Tech Titans Pay to Save Canada’s Newsrooms? with Guest: Marc Edge, Business journalist and author and academic If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy

Hey, everybody, it's Ben Mulroney and welcome to the podcast. We had a packed show today, including what were the details of Justin Trudeau's dinner with Donald Trump? Should tech giants save the news industry? Plus, the director of the number one documentary on Netflix, Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey? Enjoy. Welcome back to the show. And if you're down in the States and you're watching football, you may see a new commercial

touting Ontario as a reliable trading partner to the United States. And joining us to discuss this is Colin DeMello, Global News Queen's Park Bureau Chief. He's also the host of Focus Ontario, which airs 5.30 p.m. on Saturdays on Global TV. Welcome to the show, Colin. Hey, good morning. Thanks for having me. So this is, it's a part of a larger charm offensive trying to, I guess, well, let me ask you, what is the purpose of this commercial? Well, the purpose is to try to protect the $500 billion in two-way trade that Ontario currently does with a variety of states in the U.S., right? Michigan is a major one of them as an example. I mean, there are a lot of vehicle exports that go to the United States, steel, aluminum. You know, basically,

a lot of what we produce is exported to the United States. They are our number one trading partner. And so, you know, well ahead of the American election, there was a lot of talk of American protectionism, right? I mean, the Biden administration had obviously brought in the Inflation Reduction Act, which, you know, had a host of incentives for automakers to kind of try to build their EV factories there. So that's kind of where a lot of this started. And when they saw the tea leaves maybe trying to break towards Donald Trump, they started a charm offensive. So for the last, let's, let's, let's take a, let's take a listen

to that charm offensive. Yep. For generations, this ally to the North has been by your side, Ontario, Canada, a partner connected by shared history, shared values, and a shared vision for what we can achieve together. Stable and secure when the world around us isn't. You can rely on Ontario for energy to power your growing economy. Our long-standing economic partnership keeps millions of Americans working. In a changing world, it's time to bring jobs back home and build together. For generations, this ally to the north has been here. And for generations more, we'll still be here, right by your side. I mean, listen, it's a

good commercial, Colin. But Greg and I were going back and forth on the Greg Brady show. And his contention was, who's it aimed at? And let's assume that whoever sees it likes it. What can they do about it? Well, yeah, I mean, this is not aimed at the politicians, right? The goal of this is to start in Washington, D.C., and then eventually, you know, in the first quarter of the new year, they'll start targeting all of the other states that Ontario does a lot of trading business with. And this is not intended to hit the politicians because they've been doing that

nonstop on the ground anyway, right? Ontario's representative in Washington has been meeting with lawmakers. The premier has been inviting various state governors up to Ontario to kind of meet with them and sign memorandums of understanding in terms of two-way trade. This is meant to target about 100 million Americans to kind of remind them, hey, look, right in the wake of September 11th, Canada was there with you. We went to Afghanistan with you, right? We have had a long and steady, stable relationship with one another, and now is not the time to give up on that. So what they're hoping is that, you know, if the lawmakers won't listen to Canadian politicians, that perhaps that groundswell of support will come from Americans themselves who are now being reminded by Ontario,

we have this longstanding relationship. It's been a positive one. Don't give up on us because we haven't given up on you. Yeah. And the visuals of it, Colin, seem to me to want to really remind people that that we are not the issues at the southern border are not the issues that you have at your northern border. Yeah, that's correct. And there are two particular visuals that they want to remind them of. Right. Number one is that military relationship. There's a lot of visuals from kind of old military visuals connecting to newer military visuals to kind of show the bridging of the gap. There's literally a shot of a bridge half completed, but starting on the American side and starting on the Canadian side and kind of meeting in the middle. So they are really trying to give people a visual reminder of what that relationship actually means using a lot of metaphors.

I asked the Minister of Economic Development and Trade, though, you know, Americans, especially in their political climate, really seem to respond to negative advertising. So why do they go with positive advertising versus negative advertising? And he said, well, like, look, this is the, this is a strategy they're going with for now. But if things start to really get heated between the two countries on trade and tariffs go up and Ontario, uh, and our economy starts to suffer, they may have to go with maybe a little bit more of a stern approach. Do we have any sense of how much the Ontario government has spent on this ad buy? Well, as of right now, they're saying tens of millions of dollars, right?

Remember, this is a pretty huge buy. They want to target Fox. They want to target CNN. They want to target the Super Bowl, both on TV, but also on the Fox Sports app, which more people might be tuning into. So they, and on that Fox Sports app, they're saying they want prime placement. So none of that comes cheap. Of course, a Super Bowl ad doesn't come cheap.

So they're spending a lot of money towards this. And that money can increase, right? Tens of millions of dollars might only be a start. And as the situation develops, they might have to refocus, retweet those ads, and re-buy ad time, which means we could be looking at a potential, you know, tens of millions of dollars can range from anything from 10 million to 100 million. Exactly. We'll see later on in the year how much money this ad campaign accumulates.

And Colin, off the top, you talked about this is being done to shore up and ensure that the 500 billion dollars in in trade goes uninterrupted. To me, that value proposition makes a lot of sense. Spend tens of millions to protect hundreds of billions. But I am sure that you are hearing from opponents and critics of this government that that this this this spend is irresponsible? Well, yes. I mean, there are some on the progressive side who say, okay, look, this money could be better spent here in Ontario on things that people might need. Like, remember, there was about a million people or so who are going to food banks in this province, right, at this current time.

There's people who are looking for healthcare options, whether it comes to a family doctor or whatnot, or just affordability measures in general. So this obviously will rub some people the wrong way because they're saying that Canadian dollars, Ontario taxpayer dollars are being spent in the U.S. as opposed to in Canada to actually help us. But I think, you know, you make a sound point, like what is the cost of one in five jobs that depends on trade, right? How much money do you put on that? Because if these tariffs take hold and they start to really, you know, depress our economy, our exports, you know, that could mean job losses

in Canada. That could mean our EV strategy that, you know, both governments federally and provincially, have poured a lot of money into could be jeopardized. And so I think the province is thinking a small amount now will pay off huge dividends in the future, or at least protect the dividends that we have currently. And the fact that they had this commercial locked and loaded speaks to this provincial government seeing the, seeing what was on the horizon that maybe was missed by their federal analogs.

You know, it does look like Justin Trudeau and his team were caught flat footed and it does. And whether you like them or you don't, it does feel like there's a narrative building around Doug Ford being a little bit ahead of the curve and taking on a leadership position on this file. This probably wasn't his to take, but he had to take it because there was a vacuum at the top. Well, I think the province, because the premier is such a businessman, I think that business relationship is kind of always top of mind, right? And protecting what's coming in the future, protecting what they have now.

So they've been engaged in a month-long strategy, right? By inviting governors from these various states, they've been inviting them here specifically to, you know, bolster that trading relationship with them and make sure that when push comes to shove, that they can give them a call and say, hey, you know, could you put a little bit of pressure on the White House? The other thing they're also putting a lot of emphasis on is Congress, because they say that, you know, any kind of future trade agreement, another version of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico free trade agreement will have to be ratified by Congress. So one would think that they're going to, you know, naturally put all their eggs in the president's basket

and try to have a charm offensive related to the White House. But no, in fact, Ontario has focused on the other things, right? Focused on the individual states that Ontario trades with and focused on U.S. Congress because that's where they feel like they can actually have a lot more sway. So maybe it is a bit of a two-pronged approach, right? Because the prime minister over the weekend went down to Mar-a-Lago to dine with the incoming president. But it certainly seems like Ontario has been preparing for this moment for quite some time.

Colin DeMello, Queen's Park Bureau Chief, as well as the host of Focus Ontario. It airs at 5.30 p.m. on Saturdays on Global. Colin, thanks so much for the insights. Thanks so much for the time. Thanks for having me, Ben. Welcome to Kidsplain, where kids explain how underfunded our schools are. Let's take a call from a listener.

Kelly, are you there? Hi, I was wondering why I get less one-on-one time with my teachers. Great question, Kelly. It might have something to do with the fact that we have 3,500 fewer teachers under Doug Ford. Ugh, that sounds about right. Want to help support students and teachers? Visit nomore.ca.

That's K-N-O-W-M-O-R-E dot C-A. A message from the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association. Welcome back to the show, and if you are of a certain age, then the name JonBenet Ramsey means something to you. That young, six-year-old girl who was murdered during the Christmas

holiday season and whose killer was never found haunts a lot of people still to this day. And it is back in the news in a big way because of the brilliant

documentary series Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey on Netflix. Let's take a listen to the trailer. We have a kidnap. There's a note left in our dominant source. It received national news attention right away.

JonBenet Ramsey was in jail due to pageants. When you dress your child up, you might innocently attract a predator. Was there an intruder or was the family involved? The press was going wild at Berks the Killer. We thought, this is crazy. He didn't write that note. The amount was $118,000, which is really bizarre.

The tabloids were crucial in pushing the narrative. They were untrue, unfounded, but that didn't matter. It was a good story. People hated the real thing. It's like, oh my God, how low can you go? And bam. I did not kill my God, how low can you go? And bam. I did not kill my daughter, JonBenet. Wow, I watched it in one sitting.

It was compelling. It was powerful. It brought back some really interesting memories. And I'm very pleased to have the director with us right now, Joe Berlinger. Joe, thank you. Welcome to the show and congratulations. Thank you. Good to be with you. I'll tell you what I found really now, Joe Berlinger. Joe, thank you. Welcome to the show and congratulations. Thank you. Good to be with you.

I'll tell you what I found really interesting, Joe, is that I remembered the case, didn't remember the ins and outs, didn't remember the particulars, but I remember the feeling, the residual feeling I was left with. Because when I turned it on, I was like, oh, right, this is the one with the weird family

and the girl and the parents who put the kid in the pageants. That was the lasting effect of what I remembered. And then so for you to have put us back in that world allowed me to re-examine all the things that I thought I knew to be true. Why did you want to make this, this show? What was, what was important to you about revisiting it? Well, one of the, one of the key reasons is I was presented with some new investigative information from the work of a guy named

Lou Smith. I mean, he did the work a decade ago, but the, and passed away, but his family has been keeping this alive. And I took a look at the case and became convinced, actually, that if we do some new DNA testing, which the Boulder Police Department on steps that need to be taken. Despite all this new DNA testing, it seems because we don't know since they haven't told us, has not been done yet. And I think the case can be solved. The crime scene was massively mishandled at the time. The investigation, I think, was mishandled at the time. The investigation, I think, was mishandled. And there's some DNA evidence that I think can point to a killer if they only do the testing that is required. Yeah, to me, the investigation got off on the wrong foot from the jump because of a couple of assumptions that were that case to happen today, I don't believe those assumptions would have been made.

The assumption that the family had to behave in a particular way. They were suspicious of the family because of, they said, they were behaving as if their daughter was dead, not as if their daughter had been abducted and kidnapped. You would never suggest something like that today. Well, I would hope not, but there was all sorts of speculation that had no place. I mean, certainly police having hunches, even if they're wrong, observing things that were strange, certainly is part of an investigation,

but ultimately you have to look at the hard evidence. And if you, and if you, and if you look at the autopsy, you know, anyone out there who still thinks the parents did it, you know, and there's so much speculation and so many rabbit holes that people go down,

you just have to look at the autopsy report. Nobody disputes the autopsy, which is that this poor little girl died while being tortured, while being assaulted. You know, a garrotte was put around her neck. And that's a fancy word for, you know, a choking device that allows you to increase and decrease the pressure around the neck at will. And she died with what's called petechial hemorrhaging, which is, you know, hemorrhaging in the eyes and the heart, which is classic strangulation.

So people who believe, for example, that in a fit of rage over a bedwetting incident, that Patsy, which is one of the prevailing theories, you know, accidentally in a fit of rage killed the daughter. And then they staged this elaborate crime scene to cover it up. It just, it doesn't pass the sniff test. Do we really think the mother went down and fashioned a garotte around her daughter's neck and released the pressure and then increased the pressure around her neck. This is how the girl died. And Joe, when you add the layer that I was not aware of at the time that, you know, Patsy, Patsy had had ovarian cancer. She'd had a significant battle with the disease. She'd come out the other side. It was in remission. And to hear John Ramsey say

so clearly, you know, she, she, she was in a place where she was so appreciative to be alive and to be surrounded by these, her children, whom she loved. Do you honestly think she would have cared if her six-year-old daughter had wet the bed? That, that to me as a, as a parent, I said to myself, absolutely, of course he's right. Yeah, exactly. And, and then some people still speculate that the nine-year-old brother did it because there was an undigested piece of pineapple in her system. And, you know, the Ramsey story about that didn't quite line up. Well, you know, when you're retracing your events of that day, not everything anyone says is going to be completely accurate. And it is something to take a look at. I'm not saying people should not take a look at

any and all weirdness that is associated with the case. But again, if you look at the autopsy, you know, the theory that he took a flashlight and whacked her over the head because she does have a massive skull fracture. Again, she died with a torture device around her neck in which a very sophisticated person who understands knots and how to create a choking torture device that was applied to her neck. Do we really think a nine-year-old, you know, is capable of doing that? And the family covered up this, you know, this boy's bad, bad behavior. It just doesn't it just doesn't pass logic. You know, part of the problem in this whole case, which you alluded to at the beginning, is that the police were so convinced of their tunnel vision about the family because they didn't act right, that they started feeding false stories to the press in an era where crime reporting was just all the rage, where we now had 24-hour news cycle. That was a recent phenomenon. We had the explosion of cable networks in the

United States, and that was the main, you know, the internet and social media weren't, didn't call, you know, there was no social media and the internet was just beginning. So it was the world of tabloid journalism and 500 cable stations and everyone trying to feed the monster of the nightly news, you know, now that the OJ case was over and, and, and in step this case and in step to an inexperienced police force that fed a false false stories to the press because they wanted to smoke out the parents so i gotta ask you as somebody who who went deep into this uh case and followed a number of leads that i don't even remember do you in your mind have somebody that you think is the culprit is the murderer well we don't want to do to the to some person out there what was done to the ramses and overly speculate i do know it wasn't the ramses i do think it was

a predator i do think it was likely a predator who was uh had you know was a visitor to these beauty pageants which have been very controversial in this case. Somehow people have made the equation that if you put your daughter in child beauty pageants, that you're a sexual abuser, which is just a leap you can't make. You know, and I think all of the suspects in this case that have been dismissed, and we, in the third episode, we go through quite a few suspects that a better case could have been made against them than the Ramseys, in my opinion, doesn't mean we think they're guilty, but they've all been dismissed because of a bad DNA sample. Joe, we are demanding the police retest the DNA. I love that we're going to leave it there because that to me is the crux of, if they want to conclude this case,

they got to do exactly what you just said. Joe Berlinger is the director of the new JonBenet Ramsey documentary on Netflix. It is worth a watch. Thank you so much for joining us. You're listening to the new Ben Mulroney Show. Welcome back to the show, Canada. We are broadcasting on the Chorus Radio Network.

I'm Ben Maloney. Thank you so much for spending a little bit of your Monday with us. We appreciate it. The biggest story in the country has been and will remain the looming threat that Donald Trump will impose 25% tariffs on all goods crossing the border from Canada into the United States, unless he secures a better deal from us on a number of files, not the least of which is our border security and human smuggling and the military. And of course, over the weekend,

we all saw the video and the photos coming out of Mar-a-Lago where, um, I don't know if, uh, Justin Trudeau and his team were summoned or were invited or uh asked to come down but conversations were had uh a truth social was posted by the president saying that it was a positive uh meeting and to dig in about what that means is the author of a really great piece in the Globe and Mail entitled Canada promised helicopters, more border security and a bid to get Trump to walk back tariff plan.

Stephen Chase joins us on the Ben Mulroney show. How are you doing there, Steve? I'm great. Glad to be here. So what do we know today that we didn't know at the beginning of the meeting? Well, we got the sense during the meeting that from talking to people who were there, that Mr. Trump is particularly focused on the border, particularly focused on fentanyl, which again is just part of the picture. As you know, he's concerned about legal migration from Canada into the U. the US and from Mexico into the US. Obviously, the magnitude of migration from each of these countries is far different. We're talking about 23,000 people intercepted trying to cross illegally from Canada and 1.5 million trying to cross illegally from Mexico. Again, similarly, the drugs are a different level of magnitude. We're talking about

43 pounds of fentanyl versus thousands and thousands of pounds from Mexico. So Mr. Trump loves tariffs. He's not dissuaded by what that chaos that might cause. And at least we got off to a good start with that meeting on Saturday, on Friday. Yeah. This is, this is one of those, this is one of those stories where,

you know, doesn't matter what your thoughts are on, on Justin Trudeau and his team. You want them absolutely to succeed. Uh, and, and so I think, you know,

everybody is probably cheering them on in one way or another. Um, although I suspect Pierre Poliev is probably not doing so vocally, but, but Steven, um, the, in one way or another. Although I suspect Pierre Poliev is probably not doing so vocally. But Stephen, these differences in order of magnitude, is that nuance lost on this president? Or is he aware that it's really not,

they are not the same issues. His issues at the southern border are not the same as at the, say, the Ontario border crossing. I am not sure if the issues are the the differences in magnitude are lost they did not come away with it from the meeting and mr trudeau or his team did not come away from the meeting with any assurances that they would escape these tariffs but they did agree to keep talking uh dominic leblanc the public safety minister who was there, said that he got a text afterwards from Howard Lutnick,

the nominee for Commerce Secretary, who wants to keep talking with them the next few days. In some ways, I really think what this is about was Mr. Trump signaling to the world that he believes as of the presidential election, the rest of the world should be dealing with him, not Mr. Biden. I don't think he wants to wait until January 20th. As you can tell, he's very focused on rolling things out.

He's already got his cabinet picks. He's already got a lot more plans in place, of course, than back in 2016 when it was almost a surprise to him that he won. Yeah, well, he also only has one term at his disposal. He's's one and done so whatever he wants to accomplish he has to do in four years um do we have any sense of look it seems like we're putting a plan together we should have had a plan a long time ago but it seems like we're putting a plan together is donald trump going to want that plan implemented uh before he he he lifts the threat? Or is he going to want to implement it?

Or is he just going to want to know that it is in the process of being implemented? I think the latter. I think that the Canadian government has obviously swung into action and has been talking louder and louder about new investments to the border. I have no doubt they're going to announce these in the next few days. They're not waiting until January 20th to announce them. They want to impress upon them right now that steps are being taken. So more helicopters, more drones. There's also other conversations that really we're not sure if they're resulting in anything like more infrastructure at the border.

Government's also talking about redeploying staff, maybe when necessary or in general. So, no, they're not waiting until January 20th. They're going to get it done, our swing into action with purchases and announcements, I expect, before Christmas. So you think that when they say they're going to buy drones and helicopters, that we're actually going to have purchase orders signed and contracts being executed relatively quickly? Because if there's one thing that I know from following Canadian politics, especially as it relates to, say, military procurement, is it can take forever for any government to action anything. And you're right to mention that because it's still a problem. For instance, the governments are not,

are loathe to do what we call ACANs or advanced contract notice notifications where they've sort of given it to one person, one company without a competition. So let's hope that doesn't hold things up. But that's a very valid concern. Stephen, you know, the border is a two-way street. And could this be an opportunity? Could Justin Trudeau have an opportunity here to raise concerns that we have with the border, specifically with illegal guns coming across the border? hasn't necessarily stopped the violence on the streets of big Canadian cities

because a lot of those, I think 85% of the guns that are used in gun violence, say in Ontario, come from illegal guns that come from the United States. Yes, and Dominic LeBlanc, who was down there with him, Mr. Trudeau incidentally hasn't talked about this publicly himself in much detail, but Mr. LeBlanc said that they raised that, they raised a concern about drugs and guns coming into Canada. Hopefully that can be addressed as well. It's a bit, one of the unusual situations here is that, you know, you're talking about controlling things leaving your country and entering another country. And normally the job of the border services is to make sure

things don't come into our country. So exit controls are not something that either government works on as assiduously as they do sort of entry controls, right? So is Canada responsible for people slipping across the border? Well, Mr. Trump thinks they are. So we're going to have a new aspect of this. That is, we're looking, we're now going to be more concerned about exit controls. As you know, some countries, when you travel, actually, there are exit controls. But when you leave an airport in a foreign country, you have to check out of the country.

We don't have that in the same way in Canada. But the idea that we're building a responsibility for who leaves our country, even surreptitiously, that's something I think we're still wrapping our head around, but the Americans are going to have to as well. Stephen, personality plays such a key role in U.S.-Canada relations, and we know that the incoming president did not have the best working relationship, at least near the end, with Justin Trudeau, calling him two-faced. I think he was caught on a hot mic insulting the president. Is that playing a role right now, or is that water under the bridge?

I actually believe it's not that important. I think Mr. Trump wants action. He wants to be able to demonstrate to his supporters and to his country Mr. Trump wants action. He wants to be able to demonstrate to his supporters and to his country that he's getting action. So if you go some way to making sure and demonstrating that you're taking his concerns and you're trying to solve his problems, I don't think it matters. The mood right now at Mar-a-Lago, as we're told, is very festive. I mean, this is a prime, this is a president at the height of its powers, right? He'll never be more powerful than he is right now. It's only going to get more difficult ahead for him.

So he's in a good mood. Mr. Trump, Mr. Trudeau made sure, I hear, to keep it very convivial, very jovial, you know, with a very friendly atmosphere. I don't think that matters. I think what matters is Mr. Trump being able to demonstrate to supporters. He's getting action. Stephen Chase. I really appreciate the reporting and really appreciate you coming on the

Ben Mulroney show to talk about it. Glad to be here. Yeah, this is a, I'll say it again. Like I'm, I, you know where my opinions are on this government,

but on this file, I want nothing more than for them to hit a home run. 100%. That is what I think every Canadian should be rooting for this government, but on this file, I want nothing more than for them to hit a home run. 100%. That is what I think every Canadian should be rooting for this government to get a deal as quickly as possible. For almost a quarter century, my career could be defined as newsroom adjacent. I've never been a journalist.

I have not schooled in being a journalist, but I worked hand in hand with journalists. A lot of the workflows that we had were modeled on the workflows of a newsroom. I worked alongside journalists on television, and now I work alongside journalists in radio. But I'm a communicator. I'm a storyteller. I'm an communicator. I'm a storyteller. I'm an opinion guy. So I had a really interesting perspective on the value and the need and the purpose of news and

of journalism. And we are living in a time of crisis for journalism in that it's never been more vital. It is something we absolutely need from the local level all the way up to international affairs. And yet we have we seemingly have an inability to find a way to make the economics of journalism work. How do you pay for it in the world that we live in? We're joined now by Mark Edge. He's a business journalist and author and academic. And he wrote a piece for The Walrus called Tech Titans Should Pay to Save Canada's Newsrooms. Mark, welcome to The Ben Mulroney Show.

Thank you. Your piece is fascinating, especially the early history of journalism, where you said we entered an age of access journalism. That's sort of, I guess, where we are now. Talk to me about what access journalism is. Well, it's a triumph of public relations over journalism, really, with all the unemployed journalists nowadays. Many of them have gone into public relations, and some studies show the number of PR operatives out there,

outnumber the number of journalists now about 14 to 1. And you said, Mark, that actually journalism took a bad turn in about the 1930s. That was the first sign that the Titanic was careening towards an iceberg. What happened in the 1930s? Well, the problem was that advertising became so lucrative that, you know, newspapers were making so much money from it, they became, you know, became kind of co-opted by it. And starting in the 1930s, you know, studies began to show that smoking was very bad for your health and caused cancer. But do you think you'd read about that in your local newspaper? Of course not, because they were chock full of ads for cigarettes. So you got, so you have these problems that are already bubbling to the surface in the 1930s.

We move into a PR-driven form of journalism. And you say the solution is what? Accountability journalism? Well, the accountability journalism is what we had about the turn of the 20th century with the famous muckraking investigative reporters, you know, blowing the whistle on corruption and health hazards and all sorts of things like that. You don't see that much anymore because journalism has been co-opted by access journalism, which is more public relations. So I think we need to go back to more of the accountability journalism by feeding the watchdog. Now, the headline is quite an attention grabber. Tech titans should pay to save Canada's newsrooms. When I heard that, I immediately thought Jeff Bezos owning the Washington Post. Is that what we're talking about here?

Not so much. You know, there are some rich people out of tech who will buy the occasional newspaper. But the problem is that the advertising bubble burst for newspapers and the rest of media a few years ago, and now, of course, most of the advertising dollars are going to Google and Facebook, which have just simply built a better mousetrap for ads by targeting ads to our computer screens. So they're making so much money now

that if we want to save journalism, we need to tax that income and divert a small portion of it to journalism. If we diverted only 10% of some of the riches being made by the large tech companies to a journalism fund in Canada, it could top a billion dollars and result in a new golden age of journalism in Canada. And by the way, this includes our own telecom companies

like Rogers and Bell that are making money hand over fist by charging us outrageous rates to hook us up to the internet. There's something like $15 billion a year being made according to a Carlton study. So if only 5% of that went to funding journalism, it would be three quarters of a billion dollars. So Mark, what are some of the barriers to making that a reality? Well, of course, the telecoms don't want to buck up their annual dividends are outrageous

what they're paying to their shareholders. And, of course, the tech titans, they are actually foreign companies doing business in cyberspace. So as we've found, it's difficult to get them to pay up. Google has agreed to pay $100 million a year under the Online News Act, but Meta, of course, blocked news in Canada on its Facebook and Instagram platforms. I think it's essential to get them back on board. But, you know, we have the new Online Screaming Act, which is already bringing in tax revenue,

the new digital services tax. So I think a portion of those, just a small portion, should go towards funding journalism. And like I say, could that bring a new golden age of watchdog journalism in Canada? You know, I pay for access to newspapers through Apple Media or whatever it's called, the news app. And when it's geogated, I pay for it. My Toronto Star, my Globe and Mail, all of these I pay for. What's wrong with telling people if it's a value to you, you need to pay for it? Well, the problem is you're going to have information haves and information have nots.

People with lots of money will be able to get good information. Everybody else will be drinking out of the sewer of the Internet. But wasn't that, I mean, that was the case when you had to pay for newspapers physically. You had to pay your five cents to buy a newspaper. Exactly. But the problem with the Internet is it's trained people to believe that the information should be free. And, you know, you get what you pay pay for let's just put it that way yeah that was i that was always uh fascinating to me you know back in the day when for example again like i said i was a newsroom adjacent so i

followed these things um from a slight distance and i always thought i thought it was interesting or in the early days when on-demand viewing became a thing. I believe Rogers started giving away access to on-demand viewing for free and Bell was holding off saying, no, why would you give it away for free? Because one day you're going to want to charge for it and you're not going to be able to because the expectation will be, well, you gave it to me for free. Why am I paying for it now? Yes. Well, there are different sales strategies and of course one is that of the the heroin dealer the first fix is free after that you have to come to me uh what i find interesting and i very much appreciate about your article is you know it's it's all about saving

journalism but i i i like that it's not about saving one type it's not about saving the um the vehicle for journalism it's not about saving newspapers it's not about saving radio stations but it's it's it's the people behind it uh and it's the you know the it's the craft of journalism which may take any number of forms exactly we need to preserve journalism as a as a craft and as a profession uh newspapers are going the way of the dodo bird, although I believe they will still survive in some form. And television, who knows what's going to happen with television in the age of streaming. But we need to make sure that journalism survives, even if newspapers and television don't. Yeah, well, listen, I'm very glad and appreciative that you wrote this article because you're absolutely right. The information that is out there is a lot of times

it's divisive or it's misinformed. And to have a professional group of people who are trained to fairly dispense the information that we depend on is more important now than ever. And the fact that we're living in a world where we can't figure out a way to pay for it means that we need to bring some solutions to bear on this problem immediately. So thank you very much for the work that you did. Thanks for listening to the podcast.

Hope you enjoyed it. And I hope you'll join us tomorrow with another loaded edition of The Ben Mulroney Show.