Bill C-18 Bailout: Government Announces Plans to Pay For 35% of Journalist Costs for News Outlets as It More Than Doubles Tax Credit Per Employee - Michael Geist
www.michaelgeist.ca
The government has taken the first step to creating a bailout for its disastrous Bill C-18 by agreeing to News Media Canada demands to increase the support under the Labour Journalism Tax Credit. While the current system covers 25% of the journalist costs up to $55,000 per employee (or $13,750), the government’s fall economic statement increases both the percentage covered and cap per employee. Under the new system, which is retroactive to the start of this year, Qualified Canadian Journalism Organizations (which covers print and digital but not broadcasters) can now claim 35% of the costs of journalist expenditures up to $85,000 per employee. The increases the support to up to $29,750 per employee or an increase of 116%. This new support will run for four years at a cost of $129 million ($60 million this year alone).

Of course they would, what a crapshoot.

  • blindsight@beehaw.org
    17·
    1 year ago

    Bill C-18 is remarkably bad legislation. Figuring out this was the inevitable outcome of the legislation wasn’t 4D chess. I don’t care enough to track down the discussions on Reddit, but people were saying this right from the beginning: social media won’t pay for links it doesn’t need, so they’ll block them; news media revenues will decline; this will lead to government bailouts for journalists.

    I’m not sure I agree the government bailouts are a problem, though… We need journalists for a stable democracy, but citizens aren’t willing to pay for news in large enough numbers to fund it. Like all things with public benefit that can’t be funded privately, it then should be paid for by government spending.

    • Nik282000
      31·
      1 year ago

      but citizens aren’t willing to pay for news in large enough numbers to fund it

      Because there hasn’t been a domestic high quality news source for decades, it’s all clickbait and opinions. Even the CBC’s homepage is at least 1/3 clickbait titles and misleading thumbnails, CTV’s homepage is worse, why would anyone want to pay to be so blatantly manipulated?

      For Canadian news I will frequently use foreign news sources like the BBC, they have crappy clickbait articles as well but they have less skin in the game here and seem to put less of a bias on their Canadian reporting.

    • Victor Villas
      1·
      1 year ago

      Bill C-18 is remarkably bad legislation. Figuring out this was the inevitable outcome of the legislation wasn’t 4D chess.

      I don’t follow. The bill worked in a sense, that it motivated a payout deal.

      people were saying this right from the beginning: social media won’t pay for links it doesn’t need

      Here we are, Google is paying $100MM for them, no? The difference is that they’re doing lump sum instead?

    • settinmoon@lemmy.ml
      27·
      1 year ago

      Government funded news are not inherently unbiased. But hypothetically let’s say it is unbiased. The whole reason why a bailout is needed in the first place is because not enough people voluntarily watches these news. Is the next step to ban all other sources of news and make government news the only source of information? That doesn’t sound like a great path to venture down to.

      • Kichae
        9·
        1 year ago

        No, that’s not a great path, but that’s also not what’s happening here.

        The other side of that equation, given that the consumers of news aren’t willing or able to fund it, is advertiser supported news, which is also not unbiased, and which has turned out to be an unmitigated disaster.

        The public funding a public good, and private, international media companies not benefiting from it, is exactly where this needs to go.

        • settinmoon@lemmy.ml
          11·
          1 year ago

          Well you still haven’t addressed the most important problem that I’ve mentioned which is the fact currently no one seems to want to watch these news and that’s why they are asking for government funding in the first place. Consumers clearly wants corporate news for whatever reason. What’s the point in funding something that no one wants? This is a chicken and egg problem, if most people in the country actually wants unbiased source of news then they will seek for such sources over the biased ones. As a result advertisers would change their behaviour to favour news that’s more unbiased. Unfortunately people has voted with their viewership that they don’t actually want unbiased news, but ones that are scary, outrageous, or tells them exactly what they want to hear. I can’t see how adding more government funding to the equation is gonna change people’s behaviour.

  • Mongostein
    7·
    1 year ago

    Can someone link an article that tells me what’s going on without telling me how to feel about it?

    Fuck I hate this shit.

    • ryperEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/news-publishing-fall-economic-update

      The government’s fall economic statement announced an increase to the Canadian Journalism Tax Credit, a refundable tax credit allowing qualifying news outlets to claim up to 35 per cent of up to $85,000 in salary for a qualified employee.

      That’s an increase from the credit’s initial allowance of 25 per cent of up to $55,000 in salary per employee.

      Of course, as a news article from a news organization, it has quotes from someone in the business saying the change is good.

      • Mongostein
        1·
        1 year ago

        A quote from someone saying it’s good doesn’t bother me as much as the writer thinking I’m too dumb to decide what my opinion is.

        So thanks!