This article originally appeared in The Hub.
By Dave Snow, March 21, 2025
Amid closing newsrooms, corporate layoffs, and declining engagement, Canada’s traditional news media has turned to governments for support. The Trudeau government responded with a dizzying array of laws, regulations, subsidies, tax breaks, and incentives for journalism. Many of these initially temporary policies have since become permanent, sometimes with increased funding. A recent report concluded that Ottawa will spend over $325 million in 2024-25 alone between the Canada Periodical Fund ($86.5 million), Canada Media Fund ($154.1 million), Local Journalism Initiative ($19.6 million), and Canadian Journalism Labour Tax Credit ($65 million).
Yet the most prominent federal policy for the news media is the 2023 Online News Act, which forces “major digital platforms” (Google and Meta) which publish news links to distribute money to Canadian news organizations in order to ensure “news media and journalists receive fair compensation for their work.” In response to the law, Meta (which runs Facebook and Instagram) opted out of news sharing altogether, but Google ultimately agreed to distribute $100 million annually to newsrooms.
Many were concerned the law would further entrench a relationship of dependency between the federal government and news outlets. The public shares this concern: polling from 2024 showed that although few Canadians were aware of the Online News Act, 76 percent agreed that government funding could undermine journalistic objectivity and 67 percent did not trust the government to decide which media qualifies as journalism.
My analysis of news coverage of Google’s $100 million deal shows concerns about media coverage have been borne out. In particular, the Toronto Star and (especially) the National Post have strongly promoted the Online News Act, vilified “tech giants,” and published opinion pieces and editorials advocating for an ever-increasing share of direct and indirect subsidies. Such coverage does not bode well for the upcoming federal election, where government-funded news outlets will be tasked with providing objective news coverage on the party whose policies help pay their salaries.
The Online News Act: Changing the relationship between government and journalism
The Online News Act was introduced in April 2022 and passed in June 2023. After Meta opted out of news sharing, Google inked a deal with the federal government in November 2023 to pay $100 million annually (indexed to inflation) to Canadian news organizations via a single “collective” that will then distribute the money on its behalf. Regulations published in 2023 specified the maximum amount of the $100 million to be distributed to the CBC and private outlets.
In June 2024, Google surprised observers by selecting the Canadian Journalism Collective (CJC), composed primarily of independent news outlets, to distribute the $100 million, rather than News Media Canada, a consortium of large media organizations. Google officially transferred the $100 million in January 2025 and the CJC began distributing the money in March.
For those concerned about the effect of such policies on journalistic objectivity, two incidents in 2024 were especially notable. First, the editor-in-chief of Niagara Now, a small outlet funded by the Local Journalism Initiative, wrote an article that critiqued Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s position on media subsidies and called the Online News Act “simple, fair, and in the best interest of Canadian journalism organizations.” That article—emblazoned with a Government of Canada watermark and the text “The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada”—was subsequently praised by then PMO chief of staff Katie Telford and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland.
Second, there was a bizarre spectacle wherein the parliamentary secretary for Canadian Heritage Taleb Noormohamed responded on X to National Post senior editor Terry Newman’s criticism of the Liberal government.
“Your paper wouldn’t be in business were it not for the subsidies that the government that you hate put in place,” Noormohamed wrote. Newman’s sardonic response—”Okay. You win. You pay my salary. I’ll stop criticizing your government now. Please don’t fire me”—may have been pitch-perfect. But the incident demonstrated the inherent conflict of interest that arises when governments fund newsrooms.
Empirically evaluating coverage of Google’s $100 million deal
Law professor Michael Geist has shown that newspaper op-eds and editorials were uniformly supportive of the Online News Act when it was introduced in 2022, although news coverage was even-handed. My research sought to determine whether a similar skew occurred when potential beneficiaries of the Online News Act covered Google’s $100 million deal with the federal government.
To find out, I conducted a content analysis of coverage at three major Canadian newspapers (the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and the Toronto Star) and the CBC over two time periods: from November 29 to December 31, 2023, the period following the federal government’s announcement of the $100 million deal with Google; and from June 7 to July 31, 2024, the period following Google’s decision about how it would distribute its $100 million.
In total, I found 31 unique stories across the four outlets during the first period (25 “hard news” and six opinion pieces) and 17 during the second period (nine news and seven opinion pieces) in which the Online News Act and/or Google’s $100 million decision was featured in some substantive way. While CBC’s coverage was minimal, the three newspapers each gave the deal considerable attention. The breakdown by venue is shown below.
During the first period, the Online News Act was a central topic in six opinion pieces (two from the Globe, three from the Star, and one editorial from the National Post). Five of the six were positive about the concept of Google and Meta being forced to pay to share news links. The lone holdout was the Globe’s Andrew Coyne, who wrote that journalists had engaged in “transparent lies” and had been “been exposed as not only extortionists, but frauds.”
However, of the five opinion pieces supportive of government funding journalism, only two were positive about the announcement. Jonah Prousky at the Globe said “On balance, the deal is good for Canada,” while the National Post editorial board called the deal “good news for readers and the public.”
The other three—all at the Toronto Star—were critical of the deal for not giving newsrooms enough. Heather Mallick wrote that “The Liberal government is bravely fighting back against online behemoths” but called the $100 million sum “measly.” Althia Raj said, “The Online News Act has the laudable goal of supporting local journalism in Canada” but claimed the law “allows the tech giants to opt-out, leaving us all worse off.” Edward Keenan wrote that the money was “not nearly enough to solve the financial problem that Canada’s news industry faces—a problem that ultimately threatens the functioning of Canadian democracy.”
By contrast, the 25 hard news stories during this period were largely written objectively, with no obvious favouritism. The one notable exception was the Toronto Star piece entitled “Torstar critical of Liberal online news compensation deal with Google,” which quoted Torstar owner Jordan Bitove calling the deal “disappointing.”
However, one interesting aspect stood out: 22 of the 25 hard news stories (88 percent) used the term “tech giant” to refer to Google and Meta, with one other story using “online giant” and “internet search giant.” The news industry—and the federal government—has clearly settled on describing Google and Meta as “tech giants.”
Distributing the loot: How the media framed Google’s decision
In June 2024, Google shocked many when it chose the Canadian Journalism Collective, a group of independent media outlets representing smaller organizations such as Pivot, IndigiNews, and Village Media, to distribute the funds. In so doing, Google rejected the Online News Media Collective, which represents 95 percent of news outlets in Canada and includes the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB), News Media Canada (which represents larger legacy newspaper companies), and the CBC. As Peter Menzies wrote in The Hub, “both winners and losers still qualify for the Google loot,” but “those who drove the Online News Act bus will now be sitting much further toward the back of it than they may have expected.”
In the six weeks following the announcement, there were 17 unique stories that discussed the Online News Act. My analysis focuses on the 12 of those stories where Google’s $100 million distribution decision was the main topic. Of these 12 stories—eight hard news and four opinion pieces—what stood out most was the ferocity with which the National Post attacked Google’s choice of the CJC over the Online News Media Collective, of which Postmedia is a member. In what followed, the Post appeared to turn its op-ed page into a platform for its own advocacy.
The Post published seven articles about the Google deal during this period: four hard news and three opinion pieces. Each of the four hard news stories contained headlines raising concerns about how Google chose to distribute the $100 million, such as “Google’s choice of organization to distribute $100 million raises conflict-of-interest concerns.” While all four stories were careful to mention that Postmedia was a member of News Media Canada, they primarily quoted from people—including News Media Canada’s CEO and the president of Unifor—who were critical of both Google’s decision and the CJC as an entity.
Of the Post’s four hard news stories focusing on the Online News Act, two raised a potential conflict of interest between CJC board members and Indiegraf, a startup platform with a prior connection to Google. Another quoted the Toronto Star’s vice president of public and government relations, who described Google’s decision to choose the CJC as “frankly fairly perplexing” insofar as the CJC “has relatively little experience in this area” (presumably, the “area” of distributing funds to journalists). The fourth story focused on anti-Israel tweets from CJC board director Sadia Zaman, and included a quote from the president of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs that questioned “the objectivity and balanced perspectives of some members of the newly formed Canadian Journalism Collective Steering Committee.”
Google’s $100 million decision also featured heavily in the National Post opinion pages during this period, with all three op-eds critical of Google’s choice of the CJC. (The only other op-ed on Google’s $100 million decision during this period, from the Toronto Star, praised the Online News Act as an example “of how to hold Big Tech accountable and make sure they pay news businesses” but did not criticize the CJC.)
The most scathing Post op-ed was Michael Taube’s piece, “Google partners with lefty collective in attempted end run around Online News.” Normally a staunch advocate for fiscal conservatism, Taube seemed—here and elsewhere—unperturbed by the government funding of journalism. Taube described all but one of the members of the CJC as “involved with relatively obscure left-wing, alternative publications,” claimed the CRTC’s “call for comments” about the $100 million deal raised “numerous red flags,” and concluded that “the tech giant…is not acting in good faith in its dealings with Canadian media.”
The other two opinion pieces from the Post also praised the Online News Act and questioned Google’s choice of distributor. Benoit Chartier, the owner of several Quebec newspapers represented by the Online News Media Collective, said the Online News Act, “will help entrepreneurs like me and countless others in small communities across Canada keep the lights on” and encouraged the CRTC to create regulations “to make certain that [the CJC] plays fair and follows the rules.” The Post also published an op-ed from Dave Adset, the chair of News Media Canada, who echoed concerns about the composition of the CJC’s board and urged the CRTC to enforce its regulations vigorously. There were no opinion pieces praising the CJC.
The Online News Act wasn’t the only government news policy praised in the normally conservative-leaning Post opinion pages during this period. On July 3, the Post also published an op-ed by Paul Deegan, the CEO of News Media Canada, praising the Ontario government’s policy mandating that provincial Crown corporations dedicate 25 percent of their advertising budgets to Ontario news outlets (a number that Deegan had specifically proposed in a Post op-ed nine months earlier). Michael Taube penned an op-ed praising Ontario’s policy less than two weeks later.
From anecdote to data: Takeaways from Google’s $100 million funding coverage
My analysis shows that coverage of Google’s $100 million deal in major newspaper opinion pages reflected those major papers’ self-interest in three ways: supporting the Online News Act in principle; suggesting the $100 million was insufficient; and critiquing Google’s decision to distribute the money via the Canadian Journalism Collective.
However, there was important opinion variation by venue. The Globe and Mail published (and continues to publish) critiques of government-funded journalism from columnist Andrew Coyne as well as Hub contributors Michael Geist and Peter Menzies. By contrast, when the Online News Act was criticized in the opinion pages of the Toronto Star, it was only for not going far enough.
By far the most interesting case is the National Post, which provided the most strident criticism of Google’s choice of the Canadian Journalism Collective (CJC) in both its opinion pages and news coverage. In this case, the Post’s incentives aligned perfectly: by criticizing the CJC as a “lefty collective,” it was able to maintain its conservative editorial dispositions in a manner that coincided with its financial and institutional self-interest. The opinion pages of the left-leaning Toronto Star raised no comparable concerns about the CJC in mid-2024, though a more recent Star op-ed did claim Google made an “odd choice” to select “a ragtag bunch of small, left-wing, and independent local news outlets.”
Although it was refreshing to see Post journalists push back against veiled threats from Liberal MPs on social media—and there is little concern the newspaper will become a bastion of Liberal support—the Post’s all-hands-on-deck campaign for preferential governmental funding treatment has continued in recent months. Its editorial board criticized the CBC for “pilfering” the Google fund by receiving $7 million of the $100 million. It subsequently praised governments for making “an honest effort from Canadian governments to provide support to an industry at risk of implosion” while imploring the federal government to close a tax “loophole” that permits businesses to claim tax deductions for foreign Internet advertising. The paper subsequently ran a one-sided news story on the same topic.
Yet the Post is not alone. From Niagara Now to the Toronto Star, Canadian newspapers have made a Faustian bargain with the federal government. Having framed the decline of traditional journalism as “an existential threat to the very foundation of our democracy,” many could argue they have become convinced of their own righteousness and entitled to their entitlements. The Canadian public’s concerns about the effect of government funding on journalistic independence have been vindicated. News coverage of the upcoming election will only amplify such concerns.