Trudeau’s media bailout will accomplish nothing other than wasting your money

Earlier this week, the eight representatives tasked with guiding the Trudeau government in deciding who receives funds from the $600 million media bailout were locked in by their respective organizations.

The Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) notably announced the nomination of its candidate after Canadian Heritage agreed to waive the requirement that panel members sign confidentiality agreements.

This means that the process to decide who received government injections was almost kept private.

While the potential opening of the panel discussions are essential, they, in reality, do little to help save us from the immensely flawed bailout put forward by the Trudeau government from creating an anemic press mistrusted by the public, and continuously hungry for government handouts.

Forgoing the immense problems of bias raised by having Unifor, a decidedly anti-Conservative union on the panel, the bailout will fail because nothing has killed the media more than itself.

Over the last twenty years, the media has attempted to play in the digital space without the tools to compete. If we take it back just forty years, it would be like opening a newspaper or magazine, without investing in the proper paper or distribution or advertising team to ensure success.

For years, local papers functioned as mini-monopolies ignoring very real trends, and for the most part, they continued to abuse their position.

When the world moved to digital, it seemed like many were unwilling to accept that monopolies on content that was readily available everywhere would fail to attract viewers. Interestingly, many did so while staring directly at the data pointing towards the oncoming shift.

The Trudeau government worryingly appears not just to aim to prop up these businesses which have spectacularly failed to adapt, but it actually has put people who were a part of the failing industry in charge of guiding the decision making.

That’s like putting the kid in charge of guarding the cookie jar.

What do you think will occur when business managers who have been unable to produce proper enterprises to receive more aid?

Likely more of the same. That being more Canadians choosing to consume content produced elsewhere like The New York Times, or without subsidies such as us at The Post Millennial.

At the end of the day, we produce content that people want to read without government intervention in a country where there is nearly no other option or else we face complete extinction. Just look at the CBC to see what happens when an organization is given large amounts of money without an actual connection to content they produce, a mechanism to distribute it, or an understanding of their base.

You end up with a behemoth that, with government aid and advertising, still cannot produce content which Canadians actually view.

The weird thing about all of this is that the government is the group I blame second for bringing us to this nightmare scenario.

I fundamentally blame the owners of the media establishment which appears to have thrown in the towel.

Instead of changing or innovating to meet real-world circumstances, the media (which many consider one of the most powerful lobbying tools in the country) appears to have set its sights on taking other peoples money.

And with that, the media potentially lost the trust of every independent reader in the country.

With so much at risk, it astounds me that the Prime Minister, alongside virtually every other party, and the media establishment, are excitedly jumping towards the end of their own credibility.

What do you think about the media bailout? Should the government be giving money to desperate media organizations?

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