News Ban

OTTAWA - The time, money and effort Iain Burns put into growing an audience on Facebook for several local news outlets in British Columbia felt like it disappeared in a

Funding journalism with cash from big tech has become a fiasco

Retaliatory move against Online News Act is ‘epic miscalculation’ that will promote spread of misinformation, analysts say

The timing of Google’s deals raises questions, coming just as the News Media Bargaining Code is set to be introduced into federal parliament.

“It really surprises me that Google has decided that they would rather prevent Canadians from accessing news than actually paying journalists for the work they do. I think that’s a terrible mistake and I know that Canadians expect journalists to be well paid for the work they do.” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau waded into Bill C-18 and Google removing links to Canadian news articles in search results as part of a test for a small percentage of users yesterday with the quote cited above. At a press conference in Toronto, Trudeau went out of his way to volunteer that he is surprised by Google’s actions, which he thinks is a “terrible mistake.” If Trudeau was surprised, then he has not been paying attention, as the possibility of removing links to news articles in search results or social media has been an obvious consequence of a bill that mandates payments for links. But his surprise isn’t what is important or requires comment. What does is that Trudeau's comments mislead on several critical issues with Bill C-18.

Facebook backed Canada into a corner.