Declare urgent need for survival of strong local journalism, Mayor John Tory tells Toronto city council

Thestar.com
March 10, 2021
David Rider

Mayor John Tory is urging Toronto council colleagues to officially recognize the urgent need for strong local journalism and for federal action to ensure the industry’s survival.

Tory’s motion to Wednesday’s council meeting calls on Toronto to “advocate to the provincial and federal governments the importance of local journalism and the need to ensure an ecosystem for a healthy news media to serve all Canadians.”

If adopted, council will declare that “a healthy and professional news media is essential to the proper functioning of democracy in our city,” urge other councils to do likewise, and “encourage all residents to support local journalism.”

The motion was sought by ink-stainedwretches.org, a network of volunteers pressing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to take action to support local journalism in all forms in an industry plagued by closures and layoffs.

Job losses continued Tuesday with BuzzFeed shutting down Huffington Post Canada and Huffington Post Quebec, sacking all the journalists.

Mirko Petricevic, a former Waterloo Region Record reporter who co-founded ink-stainedwretches.org, said: “We hope Toronto’s motion encourages the feds to use all their levers of power, whether it’s regulation or legislation, to help build an ecosystem for robust local journalism to survive and thrive.

“We are not advocating for any specific platform -- print, digital and broadcast -- or any specific legislation or recommendation. We just need the feds to get on with it.”

Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault is expected this spring to propose legislation to force global online giants to pay Canadian news agencies for the local journalism that appears on their platforms and helps earn them money.

Canada has consulted other countries looking at the issue, including Australia where Facebook and Google struck deals with major publishers after resisting the country’s new News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code.

Petricevic said 15 municipal councils across Ontario, plus Tofino, B.C., have passed similar motions since Waterloo Region became the first last June. Toronto would be by far the biggest city to join the effort.

Misinformation and disinformation shared about COVID-19, as well as U.S. election conspiracies that spread before the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol, show the urgent need for citizens to have reliable, trustworthy news sources, he added.

“We expect to see more of those kinds of things happen if we don’t have a robust ecosystem for local journalism,” Petricevic said. “Democracy can’t exist without robust journalism.”

Tory, a former Rogers chief executive and Newstalk 1010 radio host, told the Star he was approached about the ink-stainedwretches.org campaign by retired Star reporter Richard Brennan.

“COVID-19 has brought to light how important local journalism is,” Tory said in an email. “Without journalists covering the news and information that the city puts out, many residents wouldn’t be aware of a lot of information that impacts them.”

Journalists, he added, shine a light on what’s happening in diverse communities “and hold those of us in government accountable. I have always supported local journalism and I think it’s important for city council to show its support as well.”