What the CTV incident says about the Conservatives, the news industry and the emerging politics of Canadian business
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre accused CTV of being “extremely dishonest” and “fraudulent” after a statement he made was altered in a news story.
It was a major transgression of journalistic standards.
In my three decades as a journalist, I’ve seen plenty of gaffes and lapses in judgment—even from myself. But it doesn’t get much worse than what we saw last Sunday from CTV News, a storied organization that still employs some of the best journalists in the business, like Vassy Kapelos and Mike Le Couteur.
By its own admission, CTV aired a report that misrepresented why Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives are trying to defeat the Liberal government, by editing out Poilievre’s core argument — his opposition to the carbon tax — and instead creating the impression he was focused solely on the Liberal dental care plan.
Even worse, the spliced quote altered Poilievre’s words to convey something he never actually said. It was enough to spark accusations of manufacturing a narrative — and the Conservatives pounced.
Not only did the opposition party reject CTV’s initial explanation that it was the result of a “misunderstanding” — a strange way for the news organization to characterize a serious error in judgment — but the Tories went further, accusing CTV’s corporate owner, BCE, and even its CEO of being part of a broader plan to help the governing Liberal Party. (CTV News late yesterday issued a statement acknowledging that two members of its news team were fired for “manipulating” the news clip, after an investigation into the matter.)
The incident provides some interesting insights into the emerging politics of business in Canada, the future of the news industry and some emerging risks to the economy. Here are some observations:
1. The Conservative narrative
The events this week put the Conservative Party’s core narrative about media and corporations on full display. That narrative effectively boils down to this: mainstream media outlets and corporate elites are joined at the hip to the government through regulations, subsidies and spending. Further, they all conspire to protect their power, privilege and wealth by suppressing and distorting the voices of Conservatives and others who advocate for less government.
In other words, corporate cronies and the media are part of an elite establishment that stands in the way of meaningful reform. No one who has been paying attention to Poilievre will be surprised by this.
To Conservatives, the CTV incident was evidence of a deeper bias they have long complained about - the unfair framing of stories, the often one-sided fact checking and the lack of representation of their ideas and communities. When coverage leans, it tends to lean left. And now, outright fabrication.
They may even have a point - to some degree. Certainly, media organizations aren’t doing themselves any favours by cozying up to the Liberal government’s efforts to fund news through subsidies and Internet regulation.
But individually, the vast majority of professional political reporters in Ottawa work hard to report things as fairly and accurately as possible. This is my experience.
2. Business in the crosshairs
It’s not just the Conservatives criticizing big business. Across the political spectrum, there is growing interest in vilifying and scapegoating the country’s largest firms. For corporate Canada, this political climate represents a significant risk at a time when the investment environment is already challenging.
I’m not going to critique the Conservative thesis that less government intervention is the best way forward for the nation’s economy — something I broadly agree with — but I want to flag some challenges and considerations about how they talk about things.
Should Poilievre spend long enough in power, he’ll find one of the biggest challenges that major economies will face over the next decade will be the increasingly intense competition for capital.
In a world where western economies no longer have access to cheap Chinese credit (as they did for the first two decades of this century) and with monetary policy likely to remain neutral at best (no more cheap money), governments will use every tool available — tariffs, protectionism, regulatory frameworks — to keep investment at home and attract new foreign capital. For any Canadian government, potentially including a future Conservative one, managing this competition will be a critical economic challenge.
This is where the Liberals have struggled. Their thesis has been premised on the idea that juicing the economy through spending (and immigration) will drive investment levels higher, and that companies will invest more if demand and subsidies are there. Given the country’s lagging investment record, it’s tough to call it a successful policy.
The Conservatives believe removing government overreach and unshackling the economy from overregulation will unleash investment. It seems like a reasonable first-order principle. But it’s unlikely to be sufficient, in part because it fails to reflect the changing determinants of global investment flows in the future.
Low taxes and less regulation help, high taxes and more regulation hurt. But the answer is probably somewhere in the messy middle. If regulation was antithetical to investment, for example, then why is heavily regulated Bell Canada one of the country’s biggest spenders on capital and infrastructure — with $20 billion worth of investments since the start of 2020. That’s spending on a par with the largest oil companies.
And future investors — no matter how much they like the investment landscape — will take note that being one of the country’s largest investors doesn’t inoculate you from political attacks.
3. The future of the news business
The third layer of this story is the future of the news business itself. Why would any major corporation, with a responsibility to shareholders, want to own a media company given the scrutiny and backlash it brings?
As I’ve written before, telecom companies like to own media assets because they see opportunities to integrate content with distribution. But to own a license to broadcast and operate conventional TV networks, companies are obliged to provide news. It’s a condition of the license. News is not core to their business model.
For Bell, CTV News has been nothing but a headache.
The news division lost $40 million last year. News managers are resistant to change and BCE faces a backlash every time it tries to restructure or fire someone. On the flip side, every time CTV makes an error in reporting, or judgment, the Conservatives hold the network, and its corporate owner, responsible.
Policy makers are facing a trilemma. They want cheap telecom services, minimal regulation of the Internet and robust news ecosystems financed by telecoms. In the real world, they can only have two of these.
The longer telecom companies are forced to operate loss-making news businesses in an increasingly challenging regulatory and economic environment, the fewer resources they will be allocating toward great (or even good) journalism.
