Government Politicians Should Keep Quiet About the Media

The government funds many Canadian media outlets. They shouldn't remind us.

The net annual profit for most Canadian media companies, before federal subsidies. Image source: PiggyBank on Unsplash.

The nature of democracy is such that politicians and the media have a relationship that is equal parts symbiotic and parasitic. Without a free press, politicians are left with too much latitude to engage in all kinds of unscrupulous behaviours and without rebuke when their scrupulous undertakings go pear shaped.

Those outside the press — civvies, or normal people, if you will — can’t do the legwork of attending meetings and press conferences, poring over announcements, tracking down sources, digging up dirt, and so forth. People have other things to do, so they rely on the press to carry out these functions. People can do some of these things, but expecting they can do it all is like equating a capacity to brush one’s teeth with the skill it takes to fill a cavity. You can easily do the former, but for the latter, you’re going to want a dentist.

The press need politicians because the press is a business. Let’s dispense with the soaring rhetoric and principles for a moment and just say something true: journalists are people who want to get and keep jobs, make money, and secure attention for their work. Their outlets want to make a profit or, if not directly driven by a profit motive, secure eyeballs for their coverage, typically at the expense of rival outlets. We don’t have to be so naive as to pretend every scribbler is an ink-stained Cincinnatus, shunning all the but the purest motives as they practice their craft.

When politicians, particularly those in government, politicize the press through attacks or threats, they shift the balance of power in the relationship, risking a backlash of distrust in either politicians, the media, or both. The government is ultimately the more powerful of the two in this relationship given that they can make laws and policies governing the press and its related concerns (for instance, speech laws, libel and slander laws, funding programs) and can even go so far, in the case of the federal government, as to pursue charges and imprison journalists.

On Saturday, Liberal member of Parliament and parliamentary secretary to the minister of Canadian heritage Taleeb Noormohamed responded on Twitter to National Post writer Terry Newman, who had criticized a federal minister.

“Your paper wouldn't be in business were it not for the subsidies that the government that you hate put in place - the same subsidies your Trump - adjacent foreign hedge fund owners gladly take to pay your salary.”

The federal government funds many newspapers in Canada directly or indirectly, including the National Post, and much of that funding is run through the Department of Canadian Heritage. Federal support for media comes by way of tax credits, direct funding programs like the Local Journalism Initiative, ad buys, and a law that induced large tech companies — thus far just Alphabet — to arrange payments to outlets for hosting links to their work.

Noormohamed was pointing out a fact, and in that effort he was utterly correct. Postmedia gladly takes whatever cash its failing-self can scrounge up and the “quality” of its work makes one wonder whether we should indeed let such outlets fail. But that’s beside the point.

The Post typically stands in (breathless) opposition to the government and has every right to do so. It sometimes even does a good job of it. And if the outlet should cease to exist, we should hope that something (better) would replace it. Without a critical and pluralist media, politicians will enjoy far more unfettered space to carry out their functions than is healthy in a democracy.

Given the position Noormohamed fills, it’s entirely reasonable to read his message as intimating that the media ought to be thankful and deferential to its federal benefactor — or else. (‘That’s a nice newspaper you’ve got there; it would be a shame if something happened to it.’)

I didn’t read Noormohamed’s post as a threat. I don’t believe it is. But you can bet those opposed to media subsidies will not be so charitable in their readings of his comment. The mere appearance of this comment as a potential threat is inappropriate and dangerous; the government ought to ensure none of its members says anything that could be interpreted this way.

When a government politician violates this rule, every outlet that receives direct or indirect funding from Ottawa — and that’s most of them — is put on notice and the mere idea of state media funding is compromised. So is the government’s own sated agenda, which is to preserve what’s left of the press.

If the federal government is going to fund media — and the Liberal government has chosen to — then its members ought to forget it’s done so and keep quiet when that media inevitably turns around the criticizes it (that is, when it does its job, the job for which the government has provided funding).

If the government or its members want to defend themselves against criticism in the press or elsewhere, they may do so with reference to their policy record or the state of the country in whatever relevant metric they see it. But they ought to shut all the way up about media subsidies and keep from levelling what might be reasonably read as a threat against a journalist or their outlet.