In early February, Bell Media decided to clear out 4,800 employees along with selling 45 regional radio stations. This originated just two months after the CBC publicized its plans to reduce nearly 10% of its workforce over the next year, commencing in December 2023.
These mass layoffs are a crisis moment for journalists in Canada, representing the upsetting deterioration of the news industry. Everyone should be concerned.
The condition at Parliament Hill
With the company’s former round of dismissals in June 2023, Bell has sent off more than 6,000 employees in the last nine months. In a press attendance, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau termed this a “garbage choice,” criticizing the process where “small communal newspapers are swallowed up by big business entities who then lay off journalists and change the worth of their offering.
On another occasion, Minister of Canadian Heritage Pascale St-Onge said that the government could support the news industry once Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act — which controls streaming platforms and necessitates them to contribute to the formation and advancement of Canadian content — is fully executed. The bill became law in April 2023. But Bell administrators say they need instant relief from the government.
Google touched a contract with the government in November 2023 where Google must pay $100 million yearly to publishers and permit access to Canadian news content on its platform. Still, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunication Directive, an organizational tribunal that controls Canadian broadcasting, is yet to complete the particulars of this application in the negotiating process with Google. Meta, however, replied to the Act by obstructing links or eliminating the visibility of accounts that showcase Canadian news on its social media platforms. Critics have subsequently argued that the bill causes further harm than good for Canadian journalism, as it is constraining Canadians’ access to news.
Journalists are tired, too
But the upsetting state of Canadian news goes more than that: we should be worried about the journalists themselves.
The Reuters Institute for the Learning of Journalism issued an informative article last year about burned-out journalists electing to quit the industry. Their reasons for burnout extended from job variability to issues with restrictions to lowball salaries.
The pandemic only exaggerated pre-existing challenges for journalists. A study by the International Centre for Journalists found that job uncertainty, challenging increased propaganda, online aggravation, growing attacks from nominated officials, continuous witnessing of human grief, and workers’ sense that their morals have been compromised while covering COVID-19 have all led to media workers being unprotected to sensitive mental health complications.
Keeping our heads up
While we’re trapped in this ill-fated impasse, the best we can do is unlearn our dependence on consuming news through Meta’s platforms. Go straight to news establishments’ websites, download their apps, and sign up for their newsletters. Show journalists you care and are still enthusiastic to stick out these hard periods for them. And who knows, perhaps Meta will ultimately follow suit from Google.
These rough periods seem to principally rock the boat for journalists — not just in Canada, but universally,
