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).
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.
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.