Photo by Michael Kwan/Flickr

Almost drowned out by the intense media coverage last week of star witness Travis Dhanraj testifying before MPs on the first day of new Department of Canadian Heritage hearings into the State of the Journalism and Media Sectors was the previously unreported fact that the feds are indeed once again convening an inquiry in an attempt to figure out exactly what has gone so horribly wrong with our news media. One possible answer, which the politicians are unlikely to put their fingers on, is that many of the problems are the result of their own blundering. The issues constitute nothing less than a crisis, according to a report the ministry’s standing committee issued in late 2024 that called for a national forum on the media. They include the dominance of foreign digital companies, the loss of hundreds of newsroom positions across Canada, the resulting “news deserts” with no journalists reporting on them, and of course the perennial hot-button issue of the CBC. Then there is the threat of disinformation as identified by Madame Justice Marie-Josée Hogue in her report issued last year on foreign interference in our politics, which will only be aided by the widespread introduction of artificial intelligence.

One direction in which the Heritage committee is unlikely to look, as the topic seems to be off-limits for politicians aspiring to re-election, is the stratospheric level of corporate concentration of news media ownership here, which is among the world’s highest, and the overwhelming foreign ownership of our largest newspaper chain. Postmedia Network, which owns most of the major dailies in Canada, including eight of the nine largest west of Winnipeg, is 98 percent owned by US hedge funds, and the founder of the largest by far is an ardent Trump supporter. The hedge funds have milked our newspapers of more than $500 million in debt payments over the past 15 years. To make those payments, hundreds of journalists have been laid off. To increase its revenues and thus spin out its press diminishment strategy for a few more years and keep the debt payments flowing, Postmedia bought up rival chains Sun Media in 2014, Brunswick News in 2022, and Saltwire Network in 2024, with the latter two giving Postmedia a stranglehold in Atlantic Canada.

In a bid to treat the symptoms rather than the underlying cause of the problem, the ruling Liberals first gave in to a massive industry........

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