Media columnist for Canadian Dimension and author of eight books, including The Postmedia Effect (2023) and Tomorrow's News (2024).
Articles by Marc Edge
Lament for a Literature
Lament for a Literature: The Collapse of Canadian Book Publishing by Richard Stursberg Sutherland Press 2026/$19.95/100 PP. The demise of print culture has long been forecast due to the rise of digital media, but Canada perhaps leads the world in hastening its decline. Unlike the strict regulation of radio and television by the CRTC, which requires both Canadian ownership and content, Ottawa has done little to enforce its competition laws or foreign ownership limits in print media.
Ottawa hastens its retreat from online regulation
Photo by Greg Bulla/Unsplash The ongoing shift from the Trudeau Liberals’ attempts to regulate the Internet to the Carney government’s willingness to retreat from them became even more apparent last week, as Ottawa continued backing away from policies designed to tax some of the world’s largest technology companies.
Radio workers hope to resurrect stations axed by Big Media
Photo by Erik Drost/Flickr When it finally came time to push back against Big Media’s closures and layoffs in Canada, there’s no surprise that it wasn’t the government belatedly wielding a stiff-arm. Our quisling politicians in Ottawa are scared to death of an uber-concentrated news media that has so much power over their hopes for re-election. Instead of reining them in, they have thrown money at Big Media in the vain hope that it might stem the cuts.
Media academics to blame in part for our news mess
Postmedia headquarters, Bloor Street, Toronto. Photo by Harrison Samphir. How on earth our press could fall into the clutches of private equity players and US hedge funds while our broadcasters were captured by our country’s largest telecom companies should be the subject of intense study by journalism and communications scholars at universities across Canada.
Senate report makes case to expand newspaper subsidies to Big Telecom
A media subsidy introduced as part of the massive 2019 newspaper industry bailout could soon be extended to broadcasters, despite them being mostly owned by our highly-profitable telecom companies, and the cost to taxpayers could be billions. A recently released Senate report that seemingly argues for the move, however, turns out on close inspection to be deeply flawed and obviously biased.
Public subsidies essential to boosting media ecosystem, new study finds
The La Presse headquarters on Saint-Jacques Street in Montréal. Photo by Chicoutimi/Wikimedia Commons. The contrast could not have been starker between opposing sides of an important media debate this past week. Just as House of Commons committees in Ottawa were being double-teamed by anti-subsidies witnesses testifying to the perils of public funding for news media, a new international study has found subsidies to be an important determinant of news quality.
Canada’s media meltdown is hiding in plain sight
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.
Canadian democracy in ‘advanced disrepair,’ claims Coyne
Andrew Coyne Sutherland House, 2025 A long-standing maxim in the newspaper business holds that the longer you spend as a journalist, the more jaded and cynical you become. You get to peek inside the corridors of power and can’t help but notice the wide difference between appearance and reality. Soon your jaded view of reality comes to colour your perceptions.
Con media grasping at straws to claim Liberal bias in news coverage
Fresh off what must have been a crushing election loss by their favoured Conservatives, right-wing media are getting desperate in their quest for any evidence that it might have been a result of large-L Liberal mainstream media bias.
Canada’s corporate subsidies mostly enrich shareholders of multinationals
Laurent Carbonneau Sutherland House, 2025 Like most subjects, Canada’s ongoing trade dispute with the United States is best understood with the benefit of historical insight, which Laurent Carbonneau provides in abundance in his new book At The Trough: The Rise and Rise of Canada’s Corporate Welfare Bums.
How the Online News Act came back to haunt the federal election
As Canadians endure one of the most divisive federal election campaigns in memory, the dominant media narrative from the right has been that most journalists are unable to cover it fairly because of the hundreds of millions in federal subsidies they have received from the ruling Liberals over the past seven years, which the Conservatives have threatened to cancel.
Rebel News again proves that it’s not doing journalism
Until last week’s federal leaders’ debates, Rebel News and its gadfly founder, Ezra Levant, were little more than minor irritants in Canada’s media landscape, like a pesky patch of poison ivy. The spectacle of David Menzies, the Rebel’s so-called “mission specialist,” and his trademark Panama hat being repeatedly splattered against a wall by plain clothes cops for stalking politicians with his microphone thrust like a sabre even provided the odd moment of comic relief.
Media research in Canada leaves much to be desired
The recent revelation that data offered up by a Toronto Metropolitan University research centre had for years systematically inflated the number of newspaper closures in Canada points up the weakness in Canadian media research. It’s a problem that academics have noted for decades and something I have been harping on for more than 20 years.
news | The Walrus
It’s time to take seriously the idea of using digital taxes to rebuild journalism
The Hub is getting increasingly desperate to boost the flagging Cons
Pity the poor Hub. Mere weeks ago, it appeared that the Conservative Party it cheers on so ardently would cruise to victory in the coming federal election. Canadians had tired of Justin Trudeau after nine years as prime minister and new Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre had rocketed up the polls by promising to defund the CBC and cancel the subsidies our news media have been collecting for the past five years.
New report shows ‘news deprivation’ rampant across Canada
It may take decades to dig ourselves out from under the mountain of misinformation, disinformation and plain old BS offered up by Canada’s newspaper industry and its enablers in pursuit of the hundreds of millions in federal bailout money, tax credits and forced subsidies it has pocketed in the past few years. If we can ever spot the truth through so much propaganda, that is.
Think tank pushes more bad ideas to help ‘fix’ Canada’s news media
Any report published by a so-called “think tank” should be taken with not just a grain of salt but a pound of the stuff since these captured organizations are inevitably only acting out the ulterior motives of their funders. The Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, for example, has pumped out a steady stream of reports for the past 50 years extolling the privatization, tax cuts and deregulation favoured by its libertarian donors.
It’s Time To Treat America As The Menace It Has Always Been
We are dealing with a gangster state. This week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that after chatting with United States President Donald Trump, Canada will be spared from crippling 25 per cent tariffs. For now.
Here’s one easy trick to combat foreign political interference in our media
The recent national panic over alleged foreign influence on our elected officials has seen politicians and journalists alike issue calls to name the suspected “traitors,” but it turns out that the worst traitors of all may actually be in our own news media.
Gaza Death Revisionists Are The New Holocaust Deniers
In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) released an order effectively stating that some of Israel’s actions in Gaza may amount to genocide. Many others, including Amnesty International, The Lemkin Institute and a United Nations Special Committee, have already concluded that Israel has committed genocide. These findings have not been accepted by Israel or its supporters. Instead, they’ve engaged in genocide denial.
Meta’s move to stop fact checking will make truth more elusive
We may all become Americans soon if recurring nightmare Donald Trump has his way, but in the meantime, Meta’s move to stop fact checking user posts in the US may make us even less alike (fact checking of Facebook and Instagram posts in Canada will continue, according to the CBC).
Canadian Journalism Is Dying, But Poilievre May Kill It
Where We Are Journalism in Canada is at its lowest ebb in decades, as evidenced by the cancellation or pausing of several post-secondary programs in the subject due to the dismal job market. Postmedia Network, Canada’s largest newspaper chain by far, is 98 per cent owned by U.S. hedge funds and has had to sell assets and lay off workers to make payments on the hundreds of millions in company debt the vulture capitalists also hold.
The Hub trades increasingly in sponsored content
Peter Menzies minces few words in voicing his disdain for Ottawa’s recent wealth redistribution efforts on behalf of Canada’s news media.
Tech Titans Should Pay to Save Canada’s Newsrooms
National Archives and Records Administration/Wikicommons The evolution of journalism in the twentieth century was away from hard news aimed at citizens and toward what media critic Ben Bagdikian called “fluff” aimed at consumers and designed to attract ads.
Canada’s news media must be refashioned for the future
Writing about all of the problems with the ownership of Canada’s news media, as I have done for the past quarter century, has become frustrating. From sky-high concentration of corporate ownership to our hare-brained millennium experiment with the “convergence” of newspaper and television ownership to massive foreign ownership by faceless hedge funds, the problems only keep getting worse.
Trudeau’s one-word answer shows his devotion to legacy
I met Justin Trudeau once 30 years ago in the smoky old booze can that was the Vancouver Press Club. I was a reporter back then for the Vancouver Province, which was housed just across Granville Street in the Pacific Press building it shared with the Vancouver Sun.
Postmedia’s cuts to newspapers in Atlantic Canada begin to hurt
Postmedia Network’s takeover of the SaltWire Network newspapers in Atlantic Canada this summer has brought the inevitable cutbacks to editions, journalists and content. In Newfoundland, the 145-year-old St. John’s Telegram now appears only once a week instead of daily, while 30 percent of its editorial employees have been laid off. Even worse is what the all-devouring chain has replaced the once-local content of its newspapers with after making more than 60 layoffs.
Marc Edge: How the government got involved and the bottom fell out of Canada’s news media
Commentary 16 October 2024 A display of some publications, owned by Saltwire are shown on August 22, 2024. Paul Daly/The Canadian Press. The Hub is pleased to present an exclusive sneak preview of business journalist Marc Edge’s forthcoming book, Tomorrow’s News: How to Fix Canada’s Media, published by New Star Books. The book is set to be released on November 21, 2024. The bottom abruptly fell out of Canada’s news media in 2023 after decades of federal neglect, and it kept falling in 2024.
Reports of beheaded Israeli babies were bound to be propaganda
Sensationalized stories during wartime should always be doubted, if not disregarded Media War Zones Anyone who has studied the history of propaganda must have rolled their eyes as I did upon hearing reports of babies being beheaded by Hamas militants after their incursion into Israel a year ago.
News pollution is more dangerous than news poverty in this small BC town
Write what you know best, aspiring writers are often told. For Lauren Watson, that was once a road tale worthy of Kerouac that she penned as a freelancer for the National Post in 2013 about her rock climbing adventures while living out of her old Volvo station wagon. Writing was something Watson aspired to after graduating from the University of Guelph in 2009 with a degree in geography, and she even studied journalism briefly at Ryerson University in Toronto.
BC Conservatives adopt election strategy of attacking the media
Before our next federal election comes in the next year or so, and even before November’s pivotal US presidential vote, British Columbians will go to the polls next month, and if the ugliness already being seen out here on the so-called Left Coast is any indication, reporters could be in for a bumpy ride. Those at one media outlet are already under vicious attack from Conservative party operatives online.
Why the Russian disinfo scandal could hurt Cons at the polls
I used to enjoy watching RT America, which began its short cable life in 2010, as its high production values and intriguing content made it refreshing for stretches, and it boasted such stars as Dennis Miller, Larry King and Jesse Ventura. Then I would remember it was propaganda, and the first rule of propaganda is that it only works if you don’t realize it’s propaganda. Once you know it’s propaganda, you see right through it.
Could I go to prison for writing this column? Under Bill C-63, I just might
You know what I hate? I hate politicians who try to tell me what I can and cannot say. I hate governments that threaten to lock me up for something I haven’t even said yet but might just be thinking of saying. I hate lawmakers who want to throw me in prison for life as a result of something I wrote. There, is that enough hate for you? Could it be enough to run me afoul of Ottawa’s latest scheme to regulate the Internet and get me arrested under Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act?
Conservatives find that proposing media reform is a dangerous minefield
It isn’t even Labour Day yet and federal Conservatives are already hot on the campaign trail like they’ve been shot out of a cannon for an election that might not come for more than a year. At the rate they’re going, the race could end up like the fabled contest of Tortoise v. Hare.
Uproar over CBC bonuses ignores industry realities, international comparisons
Context is something journalists are supposed to provide in reporting on matters of national importance, but it has been sadly lacking so far in coverage of the bonuses paid to CBC employees. The $18.4 million in bonuses, which included an average of $73,000 paid to Mother Corp. executives last year, actually pales in comparison to the amounts paid to media executives in the private sector.
What doesn’t qualify as journalism in Canada seems a bit arbitrary
One of these things, as they sang on Sesame Street, is not like the other ones. Rebel News runs wild conspiracy theories while its “personalities” accost federal ministers in public, sometimes getting themselves arrested. Its content is mostly alt-right political propaganda. Narcity publishes blogs in major cities across North America that tell you about interesting places to visit, things to do and restaurants to try. It is classic clickbait.
Marc Edge: Federal handouts are getting out of hand
Commentary 31 July 2024 PM Justin Trudeau and Honda executive Toshihiro Mibe announcing plans for a Honda electric vehicle battery plant in Alliston, Ont., April 25, 2024. Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press. Pierre Poilievre, by all indications, is poised to be the next prime minister of Canada. He has not, in the long lead-up to the next election, been shy about his intentions to get federal spending under control.
Saltwire takeover would give Postmedia a coast-to-coast monopoly
Here’s how bad things have gotten in Canada’s troubled newspaper industry: one bankrupt chain is now being taken over by a chain that is effectively bankrupt. Believe it or not, there is a high-finance method to this madness, but it takes a vulture capitalist mindset to wrap your brain around it. Postmedia Network’s purchase of Saltwire Network will extend its grip from coast to coast, as it already dominates Western Canada with eight of the nine largest dailies in the three westernmost provinces.
Old journalists need to get over their resistance to press subsidies
Some old-time journalists are dead set against public subsidies for journalism despite our news media dying on the vine due to the disappearance of the rich advertising subsidy they enjoyed for decades. “Taking money from the people we cover will place us in a permanent and inescapable conflict of interest,” wrote Andrew Coyne in the National Post after details of the $595 million federal bailout for news media were announced in 2019.
Marc Edge: A media subscription voucher system could help revive the news industry-and restore the public’s trust
There may be a much better way to fund news media than the tax credits Ottawa has been handing out for the past five years, and best of all it would more democratically leave the funding decisions to readers. A voucher system that gave everyone an annual amount to spend on the subscriptions of their choice could help to both speed our news media’s halting transition to sustainable digital publications and restore the plummeting levels of public trust in them.
Canada runs on subsidies. Why shouldn’t news media get them?
The recent Ottawa Declaration on Canadian Journalism signed by right-wing think tanks, publications and journalists calling on news media to stop taking the subsides that our largest newspapers lobbied long and hard for provided a bit of a laugh, but it actually made a few good points. If we are going to subsidize our news media, there are probably better ways to do it.
New Star Books Publisher, Vancouver British Columbia Canada, Newstarbooks, catalogue
About Tomorrow's News Canada’s news is a mess. A self interested, divisive, and profit-fixated news business has bred a corrosive and deepening distrust not just of the media, but of our democratic institutions themselves. Many see this crisis of the fourth estate as an existential threat to a bedrock of democratic decision-making. In Tomorrow’s News, Marc Edge lays out some of the new forms of journalism that are emerging in the post-print, digital-first world.
How Ottawa tried, and failed, to regulate the digital giants
Howard Law Lorimer, 2024 It has long been said that history is written by the victors, and this is a classic example. Canada vs California is a lengthy justification of the Online Streaming Act, which updated the Broadcasting Act to include digital delivery, and it is authored by one of the legislation’s staunchest proponents. Howard Law admits on the very first page that he met with MPs to advocate for Bill C-11 while working as media director for Unifor before his retirement in 2021.
Marc Edge: If the NSICOP report on foreign interference won’t name Canadian media outlets, I will
The irony could not have been more delicious as Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne threw around the T-word—Treason!—recently in connection with the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSCICOP) report on foreign political interference. “What else do you call it when people conspire against their own country?” asked the headline on his column.
Independent media group chosen by Google to distribute news funding
There’s nothing we at Canadian Dimension like more than a good collective. After all, Canada’s original socialist magazine has been produced since 1975 by a collective that includes members from across the country, although a Winnipeg-based group still functions as its hub. That’s why we’re intrigued about Google’s choice of the Canadian Journalism Collective to distribute the $100 million a year it has promised in funding to support news media here under the Online News Act.
Epoch Times on the ropes after money-laundering charges laid
Where Ottawa refused to block unwanted distribution of one of the world’s most notorious far-right propaganda publications here a few years ago, US prosecutors have now stepped in with charges that allege the Epoch Times newspaper has been involved in an epic money-laundering scheme. The New York-based non-profit publication is printed in Toronto and Vancouver and distributed in this country, even sometimes appearing unsolicited in the mailboxes of Canadians.
Ottawa Declaration on Canadian Journalism wants to put subsidy genie back in bottle
In a classic case of “better late than never,” an Ottawa think tank has issued what it calls the Ottawa Declaration on Canadian Journalism urging news media outlets to reject the government subsidies most newspapers have been taking for the past five years now.
Is The Hub the future of journalism in Canada?
There’s a new kind of journalism in Canada of the non-profit variety, and it comes with a wonkish bent. It’s been called think tank journalism by The Economist magazine, which noted that “the divide between having ideas and reporting on them is dissolving.” It is being pioneered in Canada by The Hub, posts from which you may have noticed clogging your X feed and even on Facebook despite Meta’s ban on links to news in Canada.
Could co-op news help save Canada’s media?
When television station CHEK in BC’s picturesque capital of Victoria was threatened with closure in 2009, its workers banded together to form a co-op and buy it, with each contributing $15,000 to an employee stock ownership plan.
Non-profit news is also infected by corporate ‘pink slime’ in US
The explosion of non-profit news in the US seen over the past decade, which a small but growing movement in Canada is slowly catching up to, is made up to an alarming extent of phony “pink slime” operations pushing political candidates or parties, as my last column showed. That’s just part of the problem, however, as corporations have also set up local faux news operations to exert political influence and “greenwash” their environmental records.
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