Media Beat: Local Canadian News Outlets Feel Meta's News Ban The Most [Opinion Column]

"Local Canadian news has lost 58 percent of online engagement, national news 24 percent, and all thanks to the Online News Act and Meta’s news ban."

That’s the headline in a recent edition of The Hub and the online publication backs up its frightening assertions with a number of voices arguing that the Liberals’ online news act has done more harm than good in supporting Canadian news media.

As reported by Reuters, the Canadian news ban had almost no effect on Meta’s Canadian user traffic or time on the app. More galling, 51% of Canadians on Facebook and Instagram say they are unaware of Meta’s ban on Canadian news. It’s been a huge blow to Canadian news outlets but barely caused Meta, which owns both, to blink.

Digital Content Next digs further into the frustrations Canadian media executives face with the Meta ban and suggests that there are grave consequences from this face-off between the government’s failure to find a practical solution and Meta’s ban that could become an appealing route for Google to follow.

In a Globe and Mail editorial this week, the level-headed voice of the nation wrote “Ottawa’s Online News Act was intended to assist the news industry, but it backfired, with Facebook eliminating news from Canadians’ feeds. The disappearance of Facebook as a channel for reaching readers hurt all newsrooms, but local outlets with limited marketing budgets felt a disproportionate impact.”

The insightful narrative focuses on what has happened in Kamloops recently. The city’s Radio NL moved from a news and information service, with a staff of seven in the newsroom, to an all-music format.

It’s a tragedy that has already inflicted itself on countless towns, smaller cities, and rural communities. This sad commentary about the appearance of the death of real news in Canada’s smaller markets includes some positive ideas, and it can be read here.