Journalists should not be paid by the government

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That's the headline of the latest op-ed from the Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Kris Sims.

ICYMI "It’s time to set out a fundamental truth: having the government sign the paycheques of journalists who are supposed to impartially cover that very same government is a massive conflict of interest" @kris_sims https://t.co/urJkHfqmCv

— cbcwatcher (@cbcwatcher) July 26, 2023

In it, Kris makes the case that for every penny sent the way of the mainstream media by the government, trust in the media bleeds in contrast. Contaminating and colonizing media with taxpayer money erodes credibility and leads to the perception of bias.

The $650 million dollar media bailout breaks down to a $13,000 federal handout to each newsroom job in the subsidized media. How could that not taint ones reporting of the one who holds the purse strings?

And the polling data supports Kris Sim's arguments. As she wrote in her op-ed:

More than 59 per cent of Canadians surveyed said the government should not fund newsrooms “because it compromises journalistic independence.”

That “journalistic independence” is an endangered species.

According to the CTF, the overall media bailout is far greater than 650 million and another 1.2 billion annually to the CBC:

Taxpayers have poured about $5.3 billion into the CBC and private-sector newsrooms over the last four years.

That kind of money would buy a year’s worth of groceries for about 350,000 families. It could cover the annual income tax bill of more than 380,000 people – about the population of London, Ontario. It could buy about 7,400 homes.

And yet, despite all that money, newsrooms continue to shrink and fail. Government interventions are killing local news, not protecting it.

Joining me tonight to discuss the crisis in media, and how the summer driving season is getting more expensive thanks to Trudeau's carbon tax grabs is Kris Sims.