Journalism Support Manitoba 2025

It seems ironic that the Manitoba government would advertise meetings on journalism in the province by buying advertising on social media owned outside of Canada. Not surprisingly, the first meeting had no one attending because they didn't hear. None of the social media is based in Manitoba nor does the ad money spent there stay in Canada. That isn't to say that all aspects of social media are bad but it is often a dumpster fire.  The artificial intelligence is now allowing for racist and abusive material that even freedom if speech supporters must feel queasy about. The outright propaganda from outside the country is very alarming.

Governments have legitimate reasons to advertise. For example, the changes to Winnipeg Transit are being advertised on social media. It is unclear whether this is just a general information release or paid advertising. Certainly the Recycle Everywhere ads are paid advertising when they appear on social media. In fairness though, Recycle Everywhere ads appear to spread out among local media.

Ontario has several initiatives in place to support local journalism and media. It is usually redirecting money from social media that is now owned in Canada to media that actually is owned and covers regional content. It is the money the government already spends but now being spent in Canada. It is not a subsidy.

Freedom of speech has never been to allow crying fire in a crowded movie theatre. In recent weeks the content on TikTok on politics has been awful. I long deleted my Twitter account even before Elon Musk bought it. Even then it was becoming a bit repetitive and less reliable. And sometimes fairly reactionary. I'll admit to sometimes getting into it online but I don't recall ever being outright cruel or piling on someone. I continue to blog and generally the response time for people can be months and years later. I'm okay with that.

It used to be newspapers had a lifespan of a day or two, a week tops before they went in the bottom of the birdcage or out with recycling. However, digitally, a story could be read weeks, months and years later. One doesn't have to wait for it to be available at the public library. But what happens when you local newspaper, radio station, TV station, magazine or other media shuts down with nothing to replace it? Even the archived material on websites aside from the waybackmachine disappear. 

Communities, like Brandon, that continue to grow in Manitoba have lost their TV station, weekly newspaper and lack talk radio. They still have a daily newspaper that has Manitoba ownership. Sadly, many Manitoba communities have lost their only local sources of news, weather and sports. And the only archive of it might be in the local museum if it is in print. 

There is a local news initiative funded by the federal government to assist in salaries for specific regional coverage. Both the Winnipeg Sun and Free Press get this funding.  There is also funding coming from social media giants for content they use from local media. The government has had to push for this because these large companies have been using content without paying for it. 

There are some that are opposed to any government involvement but government has posted ads and notifications in media for decades with no editorial interference. Those have dried up as has private advertising. Large foreign social media hoovers up all that revenue. 

There is a lot the Manitoba government can do to help and much of it is what they did before social media and that is advertise in local radio, TV, newspapers and podcasters. Fortunately, for Manitoba there is a lot of Manitoba-owned media to support. This isn't true all over Canada. The national Post Media group which includes newspapers all over the country is American-owned. Our Winnipeg Sun is Manitoba owned but still gets a lot of content from the American-owned National Post. Something to keep in mind when the Sun asks for CBC to be defunded just so private media owned by Americans can be more profitable and send those profits south of the border.

The ties to the Republican party in the ownership group that has majority shares in the Postmedia group pushes for ever more conservative reporting. And this is the group that pushes for the end of the CBC and is generally closing their own newsrooms each year.

Thankfully, Manitoba still has a locally owned media that the province of Manitoba can support.

Here are the main ways it can support local:

1. Set a fixed amount of government and Crown corporation advertising money that is already being spent on Manitoba-based media. Makes that list of approved media available to to municipalities and private interests.

2. Create a tax credit for those approved media for anyone buying advertising on various platforms. Not sure what sort of cap should be on that spending if any.

3. Supports for changing media to a non-profit where the absence of support may result in the closure of that media. In fact, make it possible to create different types of ownership for media.

The failure to do anything could see more closures. Thompson, for example, has lot both its print papers. Any of the above supports might have helped those paper survive.

Politicians might have a love hate relationship with media but if the local media completely disappears, it can result no local coverage of what is important to the area that supports local business, news, weather and sports. The fact that an all party committee is looking for answers shows that this isn't just a business decision anymore. It is a matter of concern when an area just gets abandoned in favour of companies that are not even Canadian.