Meet the newspaper lobby behind the propaganda push for media bailout money

Since 2017, Canada’s newspaper industry has pushed relentlessly for bailout after bailout, first from government and more recently by asking Ottawa to force Google and Facebook to pay them for supposedly “stealing” their news stories by posting links to them online. These efforts paid off first in a five-year, $50-million Local Journalism Initiative announced in early 2018, which it criticized as a “Band-Aid solution.” The newspaper lobby then stepped up its propaganda campaign, running countless columns and articles calling for government to subsidize the press, which paid off later that year in a five-year, $595-million bailout. That runs out this year, so the lobby has more recently been calling for passage of Bill C-18 The Online News Act, which would entitle them to payments from Google and Facebook.

1. Paul Godfrey.  The former CEO of Postmedia Network, which is Canada's largest newspaper chain but is 98-percent owned by U.S. hedge funds, he founded the newspaper lobby after reading a 2016 article in the Globe and Mail about a paper that proposed tax credits to subsidize all Canadian media, including newspapers. He invited Richard Stursberg, a former head of CBC English who wrote the paper for Rogers, to dinner with his board of directors. Thus began a campaign that brought not only the $595-million bailout in 2018, but also millions of dollars in bonuses for Godfrey, as it raised his pay packet above $5 million that year. With his most important work done, he soon stepped down as Postmedia CEO.

2. Richard Stursberg.  He turned his paper into the 2019 book TheTangled Garden. “The board members were enthusiastic,” he recalled of meeting Postmedia’s directors.  “After the dinner, Godfrey agreed to round up the other newspapers and see if they were prepared to finance a study on how tax credits might work for them.” The press barons liked Stursberg’s idea so much that they even agreed to open their books so he could better craft his study. Stursberg wrote the playbook for bailout propaganda, using the Big Lie technique to claim falsely that big media companies in Canada had suffered “losses as far as the eye can see” due to declining ad sales. “If the federal government does not wake from its torpor," he warned, "the major Canadian media companies are likely to collapse.”

3. Edward Greenspon.  Head of the Public Policy Forum think tank and a former editor of the Globe and Mail, he has written many reports, columns and articles supporting media bailouts. He authored an influential report in February 2017 titled The Shattered Mirror that was adopted by media as the dominant narrative on the news business in Canada but was criticized by academics for exaggerating the plight of newspapers and ignoring problems like foreign ownership and sky-high concentration of ownership. The Shattered Mirror proposed a government fund to which newspapers could apply for aid, and according to Stursberg, Greenspon advised the newspaper lobby that “the mandarins in Ottawa did not like the idea of tax credits.” A meeting with top bureaucrats in Ottawa that April thus proposed that they choose either tax credits or a fund.

4. Bob Cox.  The former Winnipeg Free Press publisher, and chair of the newspaper industry group News Media Canada, he had been night editor at the Globe and Mail under Greenspon. He wrote numerous columns and opinion articles as part of the bailout campaign. The day after a Heritage committee report called for government aid to news media in June 2017, NMC proposed a five-year, $1.375-billion bailout that was soon rejected by Ottawa. Cox then chaired an industry panel that doled out money under the $50-million Local Journalism Initiative announced in early 2018, including to his own newspaper. He also chaired the so-called Journalism and Written Media Independent Panel of Experts which wrote the rules for the $595-million bailout in 2019. Cox retired in 2021.

5. Isabel Metcalfe.  A Liberal insider once named the second-most powerful lobbyist in Ottawa, she was hired by NMC to make its case in Ottawa after its $1.375-billion bailout proposal was rejected. Blacklock’s Reporter obtained documents which showed that Metcalfe held 79 meetings with senior officials, including in the Prime Minister’s Office. “Metcalfe met then-Minister Joly and her successor, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez,” it reported. “Metcalfe also lobbied thirteen deputy and assistant deputy ministers; had five meetings with the Prime Minister’s Office; and lobbied the Department of Finance eight times.” The government’s $595-million news media bailout was soon announced.

6. John Honderich.  The long-time head of Torstar, publisher of the Toronto Star, several other dallies, and a major chain of Ontario community newspapers, wrote numerous columns reprinted in Torstar papers urging Ottawa to bail out news media. His October 2018 column “Where is Ottawa’s help for Canada’s newspapers?” demanded to know where the money was that Ottawa had promised to assist Canadian journalism. “One or two exploratory talks have been held but there has yet to be even a request for proposals,” he groused. “Maybe next year, we are told.” The bailout was announced the next month, but Torstar was taken over by a private equity firm in 2020 and Honderich died in 2022.

7. Jerry Dias. The former president of Unifor was a founding member of the newspaper lobby, having attended the meeting publishers held with Stursberg. Unifor represents many Canadian media workers, and Dias authored numerous columns urging that their jobs be saved with subsidies first from government and then from Big Tech. A May 2020 National Post column Dias wrote appeared in 40 Canadian newspapers, including such non-Postmedia dailies as the Winnipeg Free Press and the Saint John Telegraph-Journal. Dias retired in March 2022 after a union investigation alleged that he had taken a $50,000 bribe from a supplier of COVID-19 test kits.

8. Howard Law.  As media director for Unifor, Law regularly promoted media bailouts on the MediaPolicy.ca blog he started in 2017, and he seemed to step up his campaign on behalf of Bill C-18 after he retired in 2021. “The very big and very right-wing Postmedia is a favourite piñata for mainstream media haters,” Law wrote after Canadaland revealed yet another $10-million in bailout funding late that year. “I suppose the implication is that Postmedia is lining its profitable pockets with federal cash.” In one blog post, he called opposition to the bailout by then-National Post columnist Andrew Coyne an “acquiescence to ignorance and the destruction of liberty.” Law is also active on Twitter, where he promotes his blog and anything else favourable to media bailouts.

9. Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.  Founded in 1985 to defend the CBC from budget cuts, it had 40,000 members within a decade. After re-branding itself simply as Friends, it campaigned during the 2019 federal election for politicians to “Unfriend Facebook” in order to combat so-called fake news online. Its “news thief” campaign in mid-2020 plastered downtown Toronto with wanted posters picturing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for the crime of “Theft of news content.” Friends has been an ardent proponent of Bill C-18 The Online News Act.

10. Jamie Irving.  Vice-president of Brunswick News, the family chain which monopolized New Brunswick media for decades, Irving was deposed as publisher of its flagship Saint John Telegraph-Journal after a series of controversies in 2009, but he was named vice-chair of News Media Canada in late 2020. He soon began promoting Bill C-18 in columns reprinted in dozens of Postmedia newspapers across the country. Postmedia bought Brunswick News for $16.1 million in early 2022, but less than half the purchase price was paid in cash, with the rest in Postmedia shares, making it more of a merger. Irving was named to replace Godfrey as executive chair of Postmedia’s board at the end of that year. 

The 83-year-old Godfrey wasn’t going anywhere, however. A major Canadian shareholder in Postmedia from all of the stock options he had received while CEO, he remained a special adviser to the board, which included doing advocacy work with government. “I’m going to be there doing a lot of the same things that I’ve done in the past,” Godfrey told the Globe and Mail. “I realize a lot of people are going to think this is a retirement. I’m not retiring.” Godfrey is thus still working behind the scenes to bring to completion the bailout work he started when he invited Stursberg to dinner in 2016 and then founded the newspaper lobby.