Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Transport and Communications
Issue 11 - Evidence for February 16, 2005
OTTAWA, Wednesday, February 16, 2005
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 6:16 p.m. to examine the current state of Canadian media industries; emerging trends and developments in these industries; the media's role, rights and responsibilities in Canadian society; and current and appropriate future policies relating thereto.
Senator Joan Fraser (Chairman) in the Chair.
[Translation]
The Chairman: Honourable Senators, welcome to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications. We are pursuing our study of the Canadian news media and the appropriate role of public policy helping to ensure that they remain healthy, independent and diverse, in light of the tremendous changes that have occurred in recent years.
[English]
Today, we have the very great pleasure of welcoming an impressive delegation of representatives from Torstar, one of the country's major media companies. In the interests of transparency, I should note that Mr. Goldbloom and I worked together for several years, and that professional relationship ended nine years ago. Mr. Collins and I had some working contact back in the 1980s, but the contact was minimal. Maybe he did not think it was minimal; he was counting numbers and I was trying to spend numbers at the time.
Mr. Prichard, the floor is yours. Please proceed.
Mr. Robert Prichard, President and Chief Executive Officer, Torstar Corporation: Honourable senators, I have the honour of representing Torstar Corporation this evening. We have prepared an extensive written brief. I hope there are copies of it in front of you. I will present only an abbreviated version of that brief as our opening statement, but I hope you will have the opportunity to study the whole document at your leisure.
Torstar is one of Canada's leading media companies. We publish newspapers and we publish books. Torstar began as the Toronto Daily Star, and was first published in 1892. The scope of Torstar's activities has grown through the acquisition of interests in book publishing, the expansion of our newspaper holdings through acquisitions, and start- ups.
The majority of Torstar's voting shares, representing about 31 per cent of the equity of the company, are held in a voting trust, which combines the interests of the five families who originally purchased The Toronto Star in 1958.
Torstar is a public company. We make comprehensive public disclosure annually about all aspects of our operations. Torstar is governed by a board of directors and is led by a non-executive chairman, Dr. John Evans, Companion of the Order of Canada.
We publish both daily and community newspapers. By revenue we rank second to CanWest among Canada's newspaper companies. Our flagship daily newspaper is The Toronto Star, which is Canada's largest, as measured by both readership and circulation. Our other dailies include The Hamilton Spectator, the The Record, and the Guelph Mercury. Our community newspaper business is led by Metroland, which publishes 67 community newspapers throughout Southern Ontario which together reach about 3.5 million people each week. Torstar also owns a 20 per cent interest in Black Press, which is a leading newspaper publisher in British Columbia and Alberta. Our book publishing company, Harlequin Enterprises is the world's leading publisher of women's romance and fiction but I will not dwell on it tonight.
With respect to our newspapers, Torstar's goals are: First, to be the finest newspaper company in Canada; second, to publish our newspapers in accordance with the highest standards of journalism; and third, to ensure our newspapers serve their readers and their communities in an exemplary manner.
All of our newspapers are guided by eight simple but important principles. We are committed to editorial excellence. We believe that we will best serve our readers, our communities, our advertisers, and our shareholders by producing high quality publications. Second, we are committed to the independence of each of our publishers; each publisher is fully responsible for the content of his or her newspaper. Third, we are committed to the Atkinson Principles at The Toronto Star. We have a special legal and historical commitment to observing and promoting the principles that our long-time publisher Joseph Atkinson pursued in his lifetime. Fourth, we are committed to the advancement of journalism and journalists. We believe at the heart of great newspapers are great journalists and that to advance our commitment to quality we must also advance the profession of journalism. Fifth, we are committed to ensuring that all of our newspapers pursue quality journalism free of fear of improper influence by any source, be it public or private, and we do everything in our power to ensure that all our newspapers are able to remain fiercely independent. Sixth, we are committed to the communities we serve, we reflect them, we inform them and we serve them. Seventh, we are committed to our newspapers being both good newspapers and good businesses. We believe that a good newspaper makes a good business. We also believe that to be a good newspaper, a newspaper must be a good business. Eighth, we are committed to our people, the 6,000 women and men, who design, create, report, write, print, and sell advertising in our newspapers.
Torstar's newspaper businesses have a legacy of success and commitment to quality journalism. I could spend the remainder of my presentation citing all of the examples of that. Let me cite but two. The Toronto Star has won more national newspaper awards than any other newspaper, receiving 101 awards during the national newspaper award's 55- year history. To turn to Metroland, in 2004, Metroland's newspapers won 160 awards for editorial excellence from our provincial, national and North America newspaper associations. Metroland consistently ranks as Canada's leading community newspaper company.
Let me turn to this committee's work. Madam Chair, we are here this evening out of respect for you and your colleagues on the committee and all of your colleagues in the Parliament of Canada. You told us that it is important to the work of your committee that we appear and, therefore, we have. You are aware, however Madam Chair, that we appear before you today with some considerable concern. We believe strongly that the state should not interfere in any way, directly or indirectly in the newsrooms of Canadian newspapers. To paraphrase our late Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, the state has no business in the newsrooms of the nation. We resist unequivocally any notion that the Parliament of Canada has any role in legislating or regulating the work of Canadian newspapers, and we insist that laws bearing on newspapers must be limited to laws of general application.
Furthermore, in our view, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in enshrining freedom of expression and freedom of the press, has created a constitutional prohibition on interference in our work. We fear that your committee's origins may appear to violate this important separation of government and newspapers. Our review of the parliamentary and public debate prior to the appointment of this committee suggests that these hearings could be understood as being concerned, in part, with certain editorial and personnel decisions taken by CanWest in 2001-02 and, in particular, with CanWest's dismissal of Russell Mills as publisher of The Ottawa Citizen and CanWest's development of national editorial policy for its newspapers. These were no doubt controversial decisions, widely criticized both within the industry and beyond. However, to the extent these hearings are a response to those events and an attempt to discourage CanWest or others from behaving in the same way, we believe this is not a matter properly addressed or remedied by Parliament. Rather, out of respect for the essential and fundamental separation of the state and newspapers, Parliament must not tread in this area and by appearing before you we do not condone any such effort. Furthermore, we will decline to comment on these specific controversies, not because we do not have views on them, but because we do not judge it appropriate to offer them in this forum.
Our concern in this respect is magnified by the fact that on earlier occasions, albeit prior to the Charter, when our industry has been studied by the Senate with the Davy report or by the Royal Commission with the Kent commission, those studies, while professing a commitment to the freedom of the press, in fact advanced policy subscriptions which, if adopted, would have violated it. They included proposals for highly interventionist and restrictive rules on newspaper ownership, direct intervention into the management structure of the newsrooms, extension of the jurisdiction of the Human Rights Commission to the regulation of newspapers, and the creation of the so-called press rights council. In our view, all of these proposals were unwise and almost certainly constitutionally suspect, particularly since the Charter was adopted. All of them, directly or indirectly, would have blurred the separation of newspapers and government, and all of them would have restricted the freedom of the press. We opposed them when they were first made and we oppose them again today.
Newspapers are a public trust and a fundamental part of the democratic state, but they are a public trust that must be discharged through private means. Newspapers must be completely independent of government in every respect. It is fundamental to our conception of newspapers that as the fourth estate they are a separate, independent and crucially important part of our democratic society. There can be no compromise on this and no half-way house. Our newsrooms cannot be subject to interference directly or indirectly by our governments. We cannot be funded, owned, regulated, directed, licensed or otherwise influenced by government.
My colleagues and I who appear before you today have the privilege of leading one of Canada's premiere newspaper companies. As such, we have had a fiduciary and moral duty to forcefully resist any attempts at intervention in our affairs. As your interim report states, Canada is among the world's leaders in press freedoms. Our best newspapers rank among the best anywhere. We must maintain this enviable position and help to extend it submitting that legislative intervention would work against it, in our view.
We urge you to view any and all proposals that might bear on newspapers through the lens of the freedom of the press. When in doubt, err on the side of freedom. History has consistently vindicated those who have and equally consistently judged wanting those who have not.
Your interim report juxtaposes two conceptions of freedom of the press. One approach contemplates regulation of the press to ensure balance in reporting and commentary as well as access to diverse points of view — an approach put forward by Professor Trudel. A second, and in our view far preferable view, recognizes that the press cannot serve as watchdog over government institutions unless it is unequivocally free from interference and unconditionally independent. As Professor Jamie Cameron testified, and I quote:
Either the state can hold a press accountable to the government, or the press can hold the government accountable to the public.
We endorse Professor Cameron's view of the freedom of the press and urge the committee to do the same. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Supreme Court of Canada have already done so.
We have argued why, as a matter of both policy and law, we believe government should not regulate newspapers. The question consequently arises if government must not regulate newspapers, who or what should regulate them? First, by far the most significant force regulating newspapers is the public. The work that newspapers do is judged by the public every day and is subject to constant scrutiny by all Canadians. Our readers know when we err and are not hesitant to let us know. Virtually all newspapers publish letters from their readers. The Toronto Star receives about 40,000 letters from its readers every year. We have opinion pages on which they publish a wide diversity of views. Some newspapers, including The Toronto Star, have community editorial boards and The Toronto Star has a public editor, as well.
Second, newspapers have a long tradition of keeping each other honest and the competitive nature of the media in Canada ensures that newspapers are constantly scrutinizing and frequently criticizing each other's coverage. The proliferation of the media, particularly on the Internet, has increased the number of critical voices and the ease with which they can make their views known as blogs have increased the speed, visibility and volume of reviews of our reporting.
Third, journalists are a major force within newspapers. They and their editors are often the most informed, articulate and vocal critics of the newspapers they serve. Their ethical and professional standards shape how newspapers do their work and dictate the importance of editorial integrity.
Fourth, journalism schools throughout the country analyze and comment, often critically, on the conduct of newspapers.
Fifth, newspapers have established a self-regulatory process of independent press councils in most provinces, which provide forums for the public where complaints can be registered, considered and adjudicated.
In 1972, Torstar was the moving force behind the creation of the Ontario Press Council. Newspapers fund the press councils and publish the reports of the opinions that are rendered concerning them.
Let me turn to the central challenge of quality newspapers and quality journalism, which I know is your concern as well. We and you are concerned about how to maintain the quality of Canadian newspapers, and we are joined in this concern by many who have appeared before your committee. However, the basis for our concern is quite different from that of some others who have appeared before you. As recorded in your interim report, some who have appeared have claimed the quality of Canadian newspapers has declined and trace this decline to a variety of alleged evils associated with ownership. Corporate ownership, allegedly increased concentration of ownership, the development of chain ownership of newspapers, the decline of independently owned newspapers, media convergence and the absence of public regulation, and oversight of newspapers in the newspaper industry.
We agree that quality is the relevant issue, but we judge all of these alleged causes to be the wrong ones. Contrary to the allegations, the following can be said: Corporate ownership has brought financial strength and capacity to the industry generally unavailable to individual proprietors, except the wealthiest, leading to investment and innovation not otherwise possible. Virtually all the great newspapers of the world are corporately owned, and they, not independent operators, have been the principal modern force in advancing high quality newspapers.
Modern media, driven by technological innovation, has been marked principally by increased fragmentation and competition, not increased concentration. Dire predictions that one or perhaps two companies would control the Canadian newspaper industry have been proved clearly wrong. Instead, new growing companies have emerged as owners, with the result that there are now 15 major newspaper owners in Canada as opposed to only 10 a decade ago.
Furthermore, the Internet has presented vastly more choices for readers, as The New York Times alone has more Canadians registered on its website than The Toronto Star has subscribers. There has also been an explosion of ethnic newspapers reflecting the rich cultural linguistic mosaic of Canada and presenting readers with even greater choices.
The challenge for many Canadian newspapers is not too little competition but too much. Despite repeated allegations made most prominently by the Kent commission that the chain ownership of newspapers is a negative force, no serious causal evidence of this proposition has ever been advanced. Some of Canada's newspaper chains have in fact been the principal sources of advancement in innovation among Canadian newspapers. Perhaps immodestly we would site Torstar and Southam Newspapers as good examples.
Media convergence that aggregates audiences for a single owner is a natural and understandable response to the fragmentation of audiences brought on by technological advances, new media, and niche products. Convergence is an important source of potential innovation and only experimentation will demonstrate whether or not it is central to the long-term health of newspapers. Fortunately, both hypotheses are being tested at present by Canadian media companies and this testing and experimentation should, in our view, continue.
No persuasive case has ever been made for increased regulatory oversight of Canadian newspapers. Instead of the face of the unwise recommendations from both the Davey Report and the Kent Commission Canada has properly and consistently rejected such an approach.
The basis of our concern for the long-term quality of newspapers is quite different. First, we do not accept the premise that the qualities of at least our newspapers has declined. We are very proud of them and would argue that they compare favourably with their predecessors, which were also fine papers in their time.
Second, we are concerned that the forces we face, fragmentation of audiences, the growing significance of the Internet, the ubiquity of competitive media, the relentless pace of technological advance, the reduced penetration of daily newspaper readership, and the growing costs of producing quality newspapers, may increasingly conspire against the financial viability of the major investments we must make in gathering the news, evaluating and editing the facts, and publishing high quality newspapers.
This, the threat to quality, should be the real cause for concern and the focus of your search for solutions. Our core challenge is that quality is expensive. It depends on having highly skilled journalists in sufficient numbers to produce excellent news coverage and commentary. As our subscriber base becomes fragmented by many new products and competing media, and as our advertisers are offered ever more alternatives for spending their advertising dollars, it is an increasing challenge to maintain our investment in quality.
We support a variety of industry wide initiatives that would increase our potential revenues and reduce our costs and allow us to do our jobs better. We associate ourselves with these initiatives that are being led by the Canadian Newspaper Association, which we strongly support, and which Ms. Pike leads.
Many of these measures involve removing impediments that government has placed in the way of the media. The specific measures we support are seven in number. First, we support urgent and meaningful reform of the Access to Information Act. Second, we support the ability of journalists to protect their sources of information, free from the threat of forced disclosure. Third, we support repeal of section 4 of the Security of Information Act, which in essence makes it a crime for a journalist to come into possession of a government secret. Fourth, we support effective whistle- blower protection of public employees to facilitate the exposure of wrongdoing in government. Fifth, we support government allocation of its advertising dollars based on efficacy alone and free as a matter of principle from any consideration of a newspaper's scrutiny of government. Sixth, we support modernizing Canadian rules on health advertising to remove patently unreasonable restrictions on what information citizens may receive about their health, and seventh, we oppose amendments to the Copyright Act that would hamper our news gathering and raise our costs.
We also support industry cooperation and in particular we support the Canadian Press, which since 1917 has made a unique contribution to the quality of Canadian newspapers. Torstar is fully committed to supporting and maintaining the CP wire service, which holds enormous importance for virtually every daily newspaper and media outlet in Canada. It plays a fundamental role in helping them to provide access to a comprehensive news report that informs millions of Canadians.
We also urge the committee to take a leadership role in advocating that increased public investment be made in the teaching and study of journalism. The most important ingredients in creating good newspapers are good journalists, led by good editors and good publishers. A stronger and more vibrant profession of journalism is the single most important way to ensure that we have high quality newspapers informed by sound ethics and outstanding work. This demands that our universities and colleges develop stronger programs for preparing future generations of journalists to assume their centrally important roles.
Similarly, we urge the committee to call for increased public investment in research on journalism and research on media. We believe this would over time make a profound difference to our understanding, which in turn would increase transparency and trust about journalism in media by stimulating informed debate.
Better education and more research will take increased investment and in particular increased public investment. As a newspaper company we seek no subsidies, no loans and no other financial handouts from government. Instead, we urge the government to devote its financial resources to developing the human capital a strong media depends upon, and to supporting the research that Canadians need to better understand media's role in our society.
Madam Chair, we conclude by restating our central theme. Newspapers are a public trust discharged by private means. They are fundamentally important to our democracy and to our citizens. Given their importance they often attract calls for public regulation. However, the constitutional principle and policy of freedom of the press dictates that the state should not and may not interfere in our industry, other than by enforcing laws of general application. Instead newspapers must be self-regulated, relying on the scrutiny of our readers, the professionalism of our journalists, the wisdom of our boards of directors, the marketplace of ideas, the forces of competition, the probing of scholars and the jurisdiction of industry created bodies to create and promote high quality newspapers free of important influence. It is not perfect but it is better than all the alternatives.
Governments' proper role is to respect our constitutional freedoms, eliminate unnecessary constraints on our capacity to do or work, provide legal protection to journalists, and invest in journalism education and research.
We urge the committee to reject calls for limitations on newspaper ownership, apart from the application of the Competition Act. We also urge the committee to reject outright any notion of expanding the jurisdiction of the CRTC, the Human Rights Commission, the Auditor General or any other regulatory body to encompass newspapers. We urge the committee to reject any other artificial barriers that would constrain innovation and experimentation in the newspaper industry and its relationship to other forms of media. We urge the committee to focus on the real issues and support the steps that can be taken to strengthen our capacity to invest in quality, to do our work more efficiently and more effectively, and to cooperate more fully.
We at Torstar are proud of our newspapers and the people who create them. We are proud of our record of achievement as a newspaper company. We believe we have been a force for good among Canadian newspapers for over a century. We are committed to extending and enriching this record in the decades ahead and we are determined to defend and vindicate the fundamental freedoms that are an essential condition for our work. We thank you for listening to us and we look forward to your questions.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Prichard. Great deal of food for thought there. We begin with Senator Carney.
Senator Carney: I hope there will be a second round.
The Chairman: Of course.
Senator Carney: First, we all would thank you for your very substantial brief, which is very clear, and also for the fact that you have made some concrete suggestions. We know where you sit on many of these issues and that is very helpful to us.
I have three areas that I would like to talk about in the initial round. You make it very clear that you totally reject government intervention except for specific areas already under legislation, one is the Copyright Act and one is the Competition Act. You mention in the Copyright Act that you dislike proposed changes affecting photographers that would make the archival use of photography difficult for you.
In our committee we have heard from journalists who are very uncomfortable with some of the contracts, and in this case I believe it is CanWest, where they have to sign away their rights in perpetuity, in order to be employed by this newspaper chain. As you know, freelancers live off recycling the material for several markets.
Could you give us your views on your comfort level within perpetuity type of contracts covering journalists?
Mr. Prichard: We believe employment matters between newspapers and their employees should be determined in the way that normal employment relations are determined, whether through individual employment contracts or more frequently in the newspaper industry, through collective bargaining. We believe that is the appropriate way to set the terms and conditions of employment for our employees and that we should not have an override introduced over that.
Senator Carney: That does not answer my question.
The Chairman: Mr. Goldbloom, do you happen to know what your freelance contracts require?
Mr. Michael Goldbloom, Publisher, The Toronto Star: We can have Ms. Pike discuss it.
Senator Carney: It deals with intellectual property issues and the rights of the creator of the material.
Mr. Jagoda Pike, President, CityMedia and Publisher, Hamilton Spectator, Torstar Corporation: This is, I think, to the point of publisher autonomy. You will see even across Torstar the daily papers are not consistent in the agreements signed with freelancers. We, as an example at the The Hamilton Spectator, and I believe The Record, but again another publisher oversees that for me, do sign contracts with freelancers, but we pay for each piece and each insertion. If the freelancer were to contract with the The Hamilton Spectator, we pay for that insertion. The Toronto Star, if they use that copy that pays additionally, if the record uses that copy, they pay additionally. I suspect it is different from what the CanWest contracts look like.
Senator Carney: I am sure you will be inundated with contract requests for freelancers.
The second issue deals with the Competition Act that you referred to in passing. In these areas you agree that government intervention is necessary or acceptable. You accept the application of the Competition Act with an appreciation that cross media competition expands the proper definition of the relevant market.
We know that while you operate newspapers, you did make a request to the CRTC for a television licence in the Toronto area, and while the CRTC said that was very attractive, it was rejected on the grounds that the business plan was not realistic because you could not meet your 85 per cent Canadian content on the plan as tabled.
You are competing in a market where the National Post and The Globe and Mail do have broadcasting arms. Could you expand on your comment about your acceptance of the application of the Competition Act? Is there anything you would suggest that we propose in our report that narrows, defines, or expands the Competition Act coverage of your industry?
Mr. Prichard: First, the set of laws that you have properly identified, the Copyright Act and Competition Act are part of a category, laws of general application, which apply to all businesses. We of course accept that those laws apply to us as well. Our proposition is we do not believe there should be any laws that apply only to us. That is the distinction we make.
We believe the Competition Act should apply as developed through the legislation and its jurisprudence and we seek no special treatment of any kind under that statute. The words we put in parentheses in our brief in that respect are simply to indicate that in applying the Competition Act, the question is always: What is the relevant market? In a world of media where radio is competing against community newspapers or television is competing against radio, with all the different forms of media competing for the same advertising dollars, we believe it is a matter of the proper application of the Competition Act. The market should be defined broadly in the competition for the advertising dollar rather than being limited to just daily newspapers or community newspapers or radio or any particular medium. That is the point we were trying to make.
Senator Carney: I am sure we will be want to expand that in further questioning, but my third question for this round deals with convergence. I know are you very interested in convergence and your application for broadcast licences indicate that interest. I know that the testimony we have heard in these committees is that our youth is getting its media information from the Internet, rather than reading daily newspapers.
You mentioned that you do not want the CRTC powers expanded, but if the CRTC's jurisdiction covers broadcasting, but not newspaper media, I would suggest that it is not even-handed. You may want to comment on that. Have you figured out how to make money on convergence? Everyone would love to know if you have.
Mr. Prichard: My colleagues will comment on how they will make us some money from the Internet. Let me comment on the general proposition first.
Senator Carney: I have asked you two questions. I have asked you about the CRTC and I have asked you how to make money on the convergence.
Mr. Prichard: Despite the questions posed by the committee about the CRTC, as you noticed we take no position on any of those, but rather simply state that we believe the CRTC should have no jurisdiction over us. We resist any proposals for expanding its jurisdiction directly or indirectly to affect us. If we had a television licence, we of course would accept the jurisdiction of the CRTC as it bears upon that television licence and we have no complaint about that. Our perspective on the CRTC is it should not bear upon us so long as we are in the newspaper business and not in the licensed television or licensed radio business.
With respect to the Internet, and the convergence of the Internet and our print products, that is a central part of our business already, with the extraordinary use of our websites. Thestar.com is our most used website, so maybe Mr. Goldbloom could speak on it.
Mr. Goldbloom: I thought I would start with a comment that was in a recent column by our media columnist, Antonia Zerbesias. We are here talking about freedom of information and young people are talking about free information. That is of course the challenge we face, and our website, thestar.com has literally millions of page views a year. We have not yet found a way to make it a fully profitable enterprise. There is income being generated from thestar.com but we are not charging readers for the content. We are, as with other newspapers, finding our way through how to generate sufficient revenue to justify the investment. We are getting some advertising dollars so that it is now pretty much a break-even operation for us. It is on a positive path. If the trends of the last two years continue we hope we can make a good profit on the Internet. That is from the perspective of readers.
We have another initiative in that we are partners with The Globe and Mail and La Presse in something called Workopolis, which is an Internet job site. People who advertise in one of our newspapers for an additional fee can have their ads on the Workopolis job site. Workopolis is turning into a very profitable enterprise. It is early days yet and quite frankly, we were making a lot more money with the employment ads in our newspapers than we are making through Workopolis, but nonetheless, it is a new source of revenue and profit for us.
Senator Carney: With reluctance, I give up the floor. I look forward to a second round.
Senator Phalen: I have several questions in respect to the Atkinson's Principles. I was pleased and comforted to read them.
In Torstar, who do the Atkinson principles apply to?
Mr. Prichard: The Toronto Star only.
Senator Phalen: Is there any inconsistency in running The Toronto Star according to the principles and trying to increase profitability in the newspaper?
Mr. Prichard: None at all.
Senator Phalen: You said in your brief, and I quote:
We resist unequivocally any notion that the Parliament of Canada has any role in legislating or regulating the work of Canadian newspapers and we insist that laws bearing on newspapers must be limited to laws of general application.
In the Atkinson Principles, number six, and I will read it:
When Atkinson believed the public need was not met by the private sector and market forces alone, he argued strongly for government intervention.
Would you care to comment on that?
Mr. Prichard: We believe Mr. Atkinson would have cited principle three in response in the same document you are reading from. Atkinson believed in and always pressed for equal treatment for all citizens under the law, particularly minorities, and was dedicated to the fundamental freedoms of belief, thought, opinion and expression, and the freedom of the press. He was one of the earliest and most articulate spokespersons for the complete independence and fierce independence of newspapers. I believe he would find in this circumstance that he would support and be rather pleased by the position we have advanced in our brief.
Senator Phalen: In your brief, you state:
Newspapers have long recognized that with their unique roles come unique responsibilities and a heightened need for accountability.
When Peter Kohl appeared before this committee he said:
I would suggest that we require all media groups and individuals owning media to publish statements of principles dealing with freedom of information quarterly and prominently. Take one-half page twice per year, or three or four times a year, for a statement of the principles and their obligations to the public.
Would Torstar find this suggestion acceptable?
Mr. Prichard: We act in that way, in the case of The Toronto Star. We publish our principles on the website so they are available 365 days a year. We refer to them in the newspaper. We believe it is an appropriate thing to do. We would resist any requirement being imposed, because to have that requirement imposed would violate the very freedoms of which we speak. For you to find it is a practice that you find attractive and to urge others consider following it, is inoffensive. We try to lead by example, but we would never suggest that any rule be specifically applied to our competitors. Indeed, we do not apply it necessarily to each of our publishers. Each of our publishers makes a choice in this respect. Mr. Goldbloom has chosen one. Ms. Pike at this point has not chosen to emulate the same. We think diversity is the appropriate way forward.
The Chairman: Apart from The Toronto Star and the Atkinson Principles, does any other paper that you own have any codified principles of this general nature at all? I do not mean handed down from the founding father necessarily, but any kind of code of commitment to the public that it makes public or even circulates in the newsroom?
Mr. Prichard: I will turn to Mr. Skinner and his approach to community newspapers and the emphasis there as a matter of principle that is put on quality and how you go about it with your editors.
Mr. Murray Skinner, President, Metroland, Printing, Publishing and Distributing, Torstar Corporation: There were listed eight general principles that we generally apply across the companies. Every one of our newspaper publishers would agree that this is a series of principles with which they all work. We do not dictate to each publisher of each of our newspapers. We do not say that they must follow a certain policy or follow a policy in supporting a particular segment of the population, a particular government body, or anything like that. It is up to the publisher to try to deem what is in the best interest of the community it serves and to provide those services individually in each community.
Senator Munson: Mr. Pritchard, I do not think you will find any greater defenders of freedom of the press than in this room in this committee. I think in a democracy dialogue is a good thing.
In your statement on page 10 you say:
We fear that your committee's origins and hearings may appear to violate the important separation of government and newspapers.
What are you trying to get at? Are you stating that what we are trying to do in terms of seeking information across the country from newspapers, radio, television, small town, big town, whomever, that we are not going about doing the right thing and coming up with perhaps something new in recommendations and not necessarily arguing for more regulation from government or interference in newspapers? You seem to be questioning the existence of this committee.
Mr. Prichard: You read the brief correctly. Let me try to explain our position, because I certainly do not wish to cause offence. I certainly do not wish to cast aspersions on the commitment of any of you to freedom of the press. We think it is completely appropriate for the Senate of Canada to inquire into the state of media in Canada and to hold hearings and to expose these issues to public debate. We believe in public debate and transparency in our work and we try to be good contributors to that. We are here out of respect for that principle.
Let me be precise as to what the concern is that is reflected in that paragraph. We do not think a Parliamentary process should be used to try to change the behaviour of a particular newspaper company with respect to its news policies. We think that is inappropriate interference of government into a newsroom. As we read the public record and the Parliamentary record of the debates leading up to the creation of this committee, the prominence of concern about CanWest's behaviour with national editorials and the prominence of concern of CanWest's termination of Mr. Mills, loomed large in our reading. We noted when Mr. Clark Davey appeared he said the same; when Mr. Murdoch Davis appeared, he said the same in his testimony before you. So I do not think it is an idiosyncratic reading that a major causal factor in bringing this committee to life was particular newsroom behaviour. To the extent that is the proximate cause of this committee's creation, we are very uncomfortable with it.
We have also noted in reading the transcripts that many who have come before you have wanted to talk about those same incidents, which we absolutely decline to do, not because we do not have views on them but we believe to implicate the Government of Canada represented by yourselves in those discussions is the wrong place to be.
Senator Munson: We are not here to pick on anyone but when it comes to cross-ownership, media ownership, I would like to get your views and feelings of what is happening in Vancouver, when one owner owns two newspapers and all the television stations.
We were out there. We did not get any coverage from any of those organizations, although we were not looking for coverage. We did appear in the Westender in Vancouver. In a democracy there is great value in having divergent voices. Do you believe that the people of Vancouver are getting that value with this kind of cross-ownership?
Mr. Prichard: I will put it this way. We believe in the application of the Competition Act and we believe it should have been applied and should continue to be applied to our industry and all other industry in Canada. We believe competition is a good thing. We believe a diversity of voices is better than the absence of a diversity of voices. On both of those items we are with you. On the particular situation of Vancouver, we are not the experts on the matter, but I would say that it is the case that competition is likely to emerge in Vancouver. Vancouver is an attractive market that will attract entry from others. If I were at the CRTC I would be interested in creating other vehicles to introduce more competition at market. Market forces will in due course lead to more competition in the Vancouver newspaper market. There is a vigorous competitor in Black Press coming at CanWest. There is the Georgia Strait, which is a wonderful newspaper becoming ever more competitive and larger as a paper. I have read reports from our competitor's that Torstar may appear in the Vancouver market. The market forces will, in due course, give rise to a greater diversity of opinion and a diversity of voices in that market.
As we said in our opening position, the application of the Competition Act is totally appropriate in our industry as it is in all other Canadian industries.
Senator Munson: I sometimes worry, though. We receive many newspapers in the morning. When I worked for the former Prime Minister, he asked me one day what was in the National Post. I told him the reports that appeared in the National Post. The former Prime Minister then asked me, what was in t he Ottawa Citizen, and I told him that the same report was in the National Post. He asked what was in the Montreal Gazette, and I told him that the same report was in the Gazette that had been in the Ottawa Citizen. As a former journalist, I worry that there are not the individual voices that happen at some of these newspapers.
You did say that the government has no place in the newsrooms of the nation and I agree with that. Does government have any role in the relaxing of foreign ownership rules? If foreign ownership rules were relaxed, what would Torstar's position be?
Mr. Prichard: On the issue of foreign ownership, we purposely did not take a position. Our newspaper editorialists have taken various positions on this matter. We have not taken a position as a corporation. We were purposely silent on the matter.
At the level of principle, our view is that this should be conceived of as not a newspaper industry-specific question for the same reasons as before about avoiding rules of unique application to the newspaper industry, but rather as a matter of Canadian cultural policy in a broader sense about how we think of ownership across a range of industries in which there are restrictions in the broadly stated Canadian cultural sector.
Some of our newspapers have been strong supporters of those policies and others have found them more restrictive than they should be. We think it is a legitimate matter for the government and Parliament to debate. We would expect newspapers to be caught within that broader framing of the issue rather than by a law specifically exempting newspapers, in either direction, from the current Income Tax Act regulations that bear upon our ownership.
Senator Munson: I am curious about your major competitors, the National Post and The Globe and Mail and following up on comments. Do you believe that their broadcasting arms provide them with a competitive advantage?
Mr. Prichard: There is competitive advantage in being able to bring to bear a broader range of media in some circumstances. To date, the economic value of that competitive advantage has been modest and has not been supported by the premium costs of assembling the assets in the way they were assembled. Only time will tell the extent to which ownership of both will be necessary to achieve those advantages or whether they can be achieved by contract and other forms of relations as well. As an example, it is a clear advantage to The Toronto Star that our distinguished columnist Chantal Hebert is not only in The Toronto Star on a regular basis as a columnist but also appears on CBC television regularly. That is good for CBC and for Torstar. It does not require a merger of the two to accomplish that. There is clear advantage in terms of bringing her voice to more Canadians in that she appears in more than one medium when she is so skilled as a communicator, both on television and in the written word.
Senator Johnson: I am a devoted newspaper reader and I do not disagree with your comment about government staying out of the newsrooms of the nation. I want to talk about the young people and how to get them reading newspapers more often. Is this an issue for newspapers to deal with? Are there other forces that we will not be able to overcome?
Mr. Prichard: Ms. Pike and Mr. Goldbloom are doing a great deal in that area now. I would ask them to comment.
Senator Johnson: It would be good for our study to know the readership levels of young people. In my community on the Prairies, 70 per cent of people read the weeklies but not any of the national newspapers. Any information from major newspapers is derived from online services. Increasingly I see young people in Gimli, Manitoba, reading the Interlake Spectator to learn about their local news. I would like people to read more of the national news as well because of the foreign context. You remarked that there are more subscribers to the New York Times and to the New York Book Review in Canada than there are to Saturday Night.
Mr. Prichard: I would ask Ms. Pike, Mr. Goldbloom and then Mr. Skinner to comment on that. We do not view it as a bad thing when people read community newspapers so I will make sure Mr. Skinner speaks to that.
Senator Johnson: It is simply that kids are not reading about national and foreign news.
Ms. Pike: It is a great challenge for us. Certainly, when I watch my 16 year-old son, I see all of the patterns but I see that he is reading. He is not necessarily reading my newspaper in the morning that I have on the kitchen table but he picks his spots. That is being exemplified across the younger demographic. They are reading free dailies, like Metro in which we have a one-half, or so, ownership stake. They are reading community papers and dailies to some extent. Perhaps it is not the content that we would like to direct them to but certainly the sections that they are interested in.
At The Hamilton Spectator over the last year we have made some dramatic changes in the paper's sections and content. That seems to have met with some early success in driving a younger readership. When I say younger, and this is emblematic of dailies, I am talking about an age of late 20s to early 30s. The younger teenaged demographic group is another challenge.
Readership will not be what it was 10 or even 20 years ago, and literacy is an issue that we have to deal with as a nation.
Senator Johnson: That is a good point.
Ms. Pike: Education, journalism programs and research is critically important. It is a continuous and virtuous loop such that if we get some of this right increasingly into the future, then we will build readership more so than we are right now.
It is fair to say that we are all trying extremely hard and meeting with some success. Do we know what the solution is? No, we do not know. Part of the solution will be the Internet, which certainly drives much of the readership activity in my house. As we migrate somewhere in that realm between words on paper and words on a screen, you can see that readership. However, it is not the kind of behaviour that we have experienced in our lifetimes.
Mr. Goldbloom: I would echo all that Ms. Pike has said.
If I can talk about what The Toronto Star has done, we are very conscious that we have to grow new generations of readers. We have programs at virtually every age level of readers. We have a publication called Brand New Planet that we distribute free, which is targeted at 8 to 12 year-olds. We will deliver Brand New Plant free to any subscriber of The Toronto Star and it is also available in schools.
We have a second program that other newspapers in Canada are part of, newspapers in education, where we are delivering literally thousands of newspapers to high schools and elementary schools around the Toronto area, and create actual academic programs around those newspapers that they can be used within the classroom.
We are distributing approximately 15,000 to 20,000 papers a day on college campuses and university campuses throughout Toronto. Again, we do this in the hopes that we will grow a generation of new readers who will be connected to newspapers.
As a publisher of a daily newspaper that we ask people to pay for, generally, the arrival of the free distribution transit dailies is something I am somewhat schizophrenic about, in part because now Torstar actually owns one-half of Metro, one of the free Toronto dailies. The truth is they are growing new generations of readers. People who were not reading newspapers are now picking it up when they get on the subway. We hope that they will eventually decide that they would like the greater depth, context and content that a broad-sheet had newspaper like the The Toronto Star can provide.
Although it is true that each generation has read newspapers less than the previous one, we are absolutely committed to making sure that we will attract new readers as we go forward. We are making a significant investment in order to try and accomplish that.
Mr. Skinner: I can only add a little to what my colleagues have said. They covered it quite well. The Internet is one of the areas we have to make sure our content is available to the younger kids on the Internet because it is where they are getting much more of their news. Both my colleagues talked about Metro, which is 18 to 34, and it is really attracting the younger readers, as Mr. Goldbloom said.
We have done a couple of other things. Local community news is most of the business that I am involved in and we try to really appeal to the children in the community with our community newspapers. The kids are carriers. We have thousands of carriers, actually youth carriers we use to deliver the papers. We try to appeal to them with the content. We put out a product, much like Mr. Goldbloom's product, called News for Kids. It is written by kids for kids. It is a very successful product as well.
There is not a single answer to this dilemma. There are many initiatives that we have to continue to take.
Senator Johnson: That is very encouraging. The important thing is that they read and that they learn how to write. As a result of the computer these days I find when I hire researchers the first thing I ask them to do is write me a story without their computer.
I am fascinated and really impressed with the whole idea of journalism schools and research and how important it is. I totally agree that journalism schools have been given a bit of a rap when it comes to being elevated to the level they should be, given that these are the people who are telling the stories and giving any information in this world, which is what we live on. I am really impressed with the fact that you are promoting that kind of thing. Perhaps you could tell us the status of the programs in the country? Are they coming together? Are things being elevated somewhat? How many students are getting into these programs? There was a big wave in the 1960s and 1970s and then there was a drop in the journalism schools if I remember correctly.
Mr. Prichard: The best thing I could say about journalism schools is there are four wonderful students from Carleton University sitting behind me who are all in the journalism program, which began with 240 students in first year and they cut out 160 and only 80 get on to second year, and these are four of the 80 who all made it. I hope, Madam Chair, that you welcome them.
I would urge upon you that you think of inviting the deans of journalism to come and appear before you as a group. I say that because that would get them all in the room at one time, and they do not normally act as a group. The deans of medicine in Canada are together all the time. The deans of law are together all the time. The deans of engineering are out lobbying for research money and better provincial support. They act as a group and they have created schools of medicine, law, and engineering that are competitive with the best anywhere. We have not had that same community of interest emerge among journalism schools.
I am not an expert on the subject of journalism schools. I do not think any of us would hold ourselves out as experts on it, but as an educator, on which I spent a piece of my career on, I am stunned by the paucity of resources made available to journalism schools in Canada. The university where I worked, the University of Toronto, does not have a journalism school. When I look at the journalism schools and how thinly resourced they are, it is amazing to me, compared to the other professions. If you visit the University of British Columbia as an example, where I have been both to law school and the journalism school, they both have nice buildings and the Faculty of Law has about 40 full- time faculty members. The Faculty of Journalism has two and one-half faculty members.
Therefore it is difficult to imagine how, with two and one-half faculty members, which, great news, it will be announced is going to be increased to three and one-half, is an adequate dedication of resources to the only graduate school of journalism west of Ontario.
There is a huge need to be filled. If you, through your work, could give visibility to that cause and bring the deans and the educators who are the experts on this subject in front of you, I think there are all sorts of territory where your committee could be important.
At the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, there are early representations going there from a few journalism professors, one of whom appeared before you when you were in British Columbia. If you go to the website of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, a wonderful organization, you cannot find the word ``journalism.'' You can dig but you will not find it. They support some research in journalism but it is very difficult to find, whereas, if you look at other disciplines there will be the special initiative in law or the special initiative in something else. Why not a special 10-year initiative in journalism and media research to give visibility to these issues?
Your committee report, by bearing down on that, which is absolutely proper subject for public investment, is a place where you could really make a difference.
Senator Carney: Quite simply, I thought, when I read that part of your brief, about the situation where a cattleman who wants to upgrade his investment puts his own money into livestock. A musician, if she wants to upgrade her quality of instrument she puts her own money into her instrument. We have been told over and over again, and have identified that employment in newsrooms is dropping drastically, that newsrooms are empty. You say that the growing cost of producing quality newspapers is one of the real problems you face, and in most newsrooms the way they deal with growing costs is to cut journalists.
Why would the industry not invest its own money in journalism schools rather than ask the taxpayers to do it? Why would you do that at a time when the employment in the mainstream urban media is being cut and cut and cut?
Mr. Prichard: First, The Toronto Star, which is the largest philanthropic arm of Torstar Corporation, has three priorities for its philanthropy and one of the three is journalism education. Our most recent gift was a $1-million gift to the journalism education program at Ryerson University, so at least at Torstar we can be proud of our record of supporting journalism education and we will continue to put our own money there in terms of supporting journalism education.
Second, I reject the proposition that our employment of journalists at Torstar is dropping. I do not know it to be a true fact. I believe it is unlikely to be true as a fact at Torstar. The newsroom at The Toronto Star, I believe, Mr. Goldbloom, has been stable for at least a decade in terms of overall levels of employment in The Toronto Star. Therefore the allegation, at least as it bears upon us, is simply not true.
If you think about how many people are involved in journalism in Canada, in the broad sense of journalism, as Mr. Davis said in his evidence before you when you were in Winnipeg, we believe the number of people is growing. They may not be employed in traditional daily newspapers in the same numbers, but the breadth of people engaged in news gathering and news commentary with all of the ways in which the Internet is affecting that, the number of people doing it, I think, is growing, not shrinking.
Finally, on the issue of why should government invest in this, again, one can have differences of view on this, but let us put our view. We believe investing in the development of the next generation in each of the professions of Canada is a completely appropriate act for government, both provincially and federally, and that these create public goods, improve the quality of our democracy, improve the quality of our lives. I think, journalism should be very high on the list, particularly because historically it has been at the bottom of the list in the resources it receives.
Of course, industry must make commitments to the training of its own people, and creating jobs with its philanthropy. At Torstar we do a lot, but we can do more. I do not think it is reasonable to say that journalism, unlike the other professions of Canada, should not receive adequate public support for the training of future generations and of raising the standards of the profession. I make no apology for asking for that investment in this profession to put it on the same basis as the other professions in Canada.
The Chairman: I was going to save my little requests here until we were bidding you a fond farewell. Usually, I say to people it has been lovely to have you, now would you mind sending us the following information. Here is some information I was going to ask for since it follows so directly on what we have just been discussing.
What money does the foundation, the newspapers, everybody, spend on supporting journalism education, and journalism training? This would include things like the Atkinson fellowships that I believe are still going. How many journalists do you have at The Toronto Star and elsewhere? Do you have any data on how that compares in both cases with the levels that were employed five years ago, 10 years ago, whatever you might have available? I am interested in the break down because there is a recognizable pattern where many corporations will have a flagship paper and then others, and maybe the same requirements do not apply to both.
Senator Carney: On your list with respect you might want to put in salary ranges. The going rate for the Internet correspondents is something like $25,000 a year.
The Chairman: If they get it.
Senator Carney: Yes. Also, perhaps, you could give us some idea of what the salary ranges are for your journalist employees in the community newspapers or your weekly newspapers vis-à-vis the salary ranges for The Toronto Star itself. It is not just jobs, it is the income that is being earned by journalists. The information we have tabled before us is that income levels for some of these job opportunities are at much lower levels than in the past. It is not just jobs, it is the ranges.
The Chairman: We are not asking you to break confidentiality of specific employees. However, any indication you can give us, your collective agreements, for example, the worker who is signing them knows what they say, would be very helpful.
Finally, I would like some data on your bureaus, both foreign and domestic. How many people work there? Have you been opening bureaus or closing bureaus over the past five or 10 years? This is all very interesting information for us.
Do not worry Mr. Prichard, we are not about to say that there should a law saying that you have to add more bureaus than you have now.
Mr. Prichard: We will provide each of the things you ask for. The worry is the interpretation of what it means. Let me take an example. You might find that the number of people in a news room has gone down in a particular case. That may well be because we have found a more efficient way of producing the newspaper and reducing the number of people required to paginate the paper. That is different from reducing the number of journalists. Similarly, with the question of foreign bureaus, there is a very good debate, and I turn to Mr. Goldbloom, about whether we should have a foreign bureau in the sense of a person out by herself in a particular part of the world or whether we should think of bureaus of groups of people who regularly go there as an alternative image of the best way for us to relate to the communities.
The Chairman: The scope and the interview of the barman to cover a war. Mr. Goldbloom, I am sorry that was a snide remark.
Mr. Goldbloom: What Mr. Prichard is referring to is our coverage of south Asia. It is a very important part of the world and a very important part of the world for the readers of The Toronto Star in view of the size of the south Asian population in Toronto. Traditionally, what we have done is we have had one person stationed in New Delhi. The question we are asking ourselves is that the nature of the immigrant experience, as we view it in Canada has changed over the decades. An immigrant to Canada, from India, for example, has, in all likelihood, a much stronger connection to their country of origin in terms of immediacy, because of the Internet, because of inexpensive telephone charges, and because of the relatively inexpensive cost of travel.
One of the issues we are addressing is, we need to ensure that we are covering the Indian community in Toronto in a way that they really live their lives. Part of that is the interrelationship between their lives in Canada and their connections back in India. We are not intending to spend less resources on how we cover India, but we may decide that we are better to have a group of people who are covering the Indian community in Toronto as they live in Toronto and as they connect back to India.
It is a notion of not diminishing that investment, but a different way of approaching foreign correspondents.
If I could suggest one other thing that you might want to ask us for in terms of information.
The Chairman: Absolutely.
Mr. Goldbloom: Mr. Prichard may not be happy with my suggestion that you should ask us for more, but, I think, one of the significant investments we make as a newspaper is in the training of journalists. In the course of a year at The Toronto Star, there are more than 30 young people studying journalism who come and spend some portion of the year working at The Toronto Star. We do not have an expectation that we will be able to hire all of them, but we do see it is an opportunity for us to identify the best talent, but it is also our sense of responsibility to journalism in general to give young people in journalism programs the opportunity to have some experience in the workplace.
The Chairman: As we heard in Vancouver, at unionized papers they get paid something and at some others they do not.
Senator Merchant: I do wish to welcome you all and thank you very much for a very informative and very well presented presentation.
Some of my questions have been answered. I was going to ask about how the paper attracts the ethnic minorities and the very changing face of Toronto, especially.
First, anything that I know about your newspapers is anecdotal. I live in Regina. I do not read your papers. Now, you said initially that The Toronto Star is Canada's largest newspaper. Do you think that in the near future that we might be able to get The Toronto Star in Regina? We get The Globe and Mail, the National Post and I think they are both good papers. I enjoy reading both of them. You get different view points. Why have you not extended yourselves to the rest of Canada?
Mr. Goldbloom: We would love for The Toronto Star to be available across the country. We are exploring ways to use the Internet to make at least some of our content more readily accessible to people.
The reality of our business, as I am sure you have learned through these processes, is that about 80 per cent of our revenue or so comes from advertisers. In the case of The Toronto Star, our advertisers are focused principally on the greater Toronto area. Therefore, although I would be pleased if the people across the country were reading the paper, for our advertisers, quite frankly, the people they are most interested in reaching are the people in Toronto and it is simply too expensive for us to make the newspaper available across the country.
As you probably know, the cover price of a newspaper in some cases does not cover the cost of the paper and the distribution costs. It is a very expensive undertaking for us to make the physical copy of the paper available across the country.
We are trying to explore ways to give a little more profile and access to some of our more interesting columnists through the Internet.
Mr. Prichard: I do assure you that the quality of your life will improve if you do what I do which is get out of bed in the morning, boot up your computer and go to thestar.com. I assure you the rest of the day will be better.
Senator Merchant: Thank you very much, but I usually like to get the newspaper because I am running out and I can take it with me. I like the actual feel of the newspaper.
How is that different from the other two national papers? You call yourself a national paper.
Mr. Goldbloom: No, we do not. We call ourselves a metropolitan newspaper.
Senator Merchant: The Globe and Mail.
Mr. Goldbloom: Their perspective is a national audience. They do not focus pn local retailers but focus on national advertising. Not to say The Toronto Star does not get national advertising but that is the business dynamics of those newspapers.
Mr. Prichard: It is fair to say that the content of our paper also gives a great deal of coverage to Toronto, to be Toronto's newspaper, the way the Winnipeg Free Press covers Winnipeg but would only have a relatively limited number of stories that would be of great interest to someone not interested in Winnipeg. The Toronto Star has disproportionate coverage of Toronto because that is the community we are serving whereas The Globe and Mail and National Post have more national coverage and less local coverage of our community.
Senator Merchant: We have had people appear before us not about your newspaper but about other newspapers, people from the Muslim community, for example, who feel that their portrayal in newspapers is not fair. What you are doing to attract readers in your community because it is a varied community right now.
As you stated previously, someone from New Delhi has a connection to events there but also an outlook on life and an understanding of events that may be different from the Canadian norm, so they have to be attracted to your newspaper.
Does your newsroom show the face of Canada? You have this kind of an audience; you say you are a Toronto newspaper. How do you service that element?
Mr. Goldbloom: We try to cover those communities as well as we possibly can. We are very aware that they are critical to the future of our newspaper. There is a self-interest that we have in making sure that we are producing a newspaper that is of interest to a majority of Torontonians. The majority of Torontonians were not born in Toronto. We have that as an imperative.
In terms of the diversity of our newsroom, it is improving. It is a better reflection of the face of Toronto than it was several years ago. If we go back to 2000, the last figures I have seen about visible minorities within our newsroom indicate that they have increased by about 25 per cent in that time. It is still a relatively small number. It is an objective that I have, to make sure that positive trend continues. I would like to see the numbers increase significantly. If I can gauge by the group of interns who have joined us, there is great talent with enormous diversity coming forward. It will not happen as quickly as I would like but it will continue to happen.
One of the other things that we do now is that we have a community editorial board. One of the ways we have tried to bring in different voices into our newspaper is to create a board of 12 people, we actually had 600 applicants this year to participate in it, and they, as a group, give us guidance about the paper. They are also given the opportunity to write in the paper. It is another way we try to bring different communities into The Toronto Star.
Senator Merchant: You said you get letters to the editor; I forget the number.
Mr. Prichard: Forty thousand.
Senator Merchant: Do they complaining about one specific thing about your newspaper? What is their most common complaint?
Mr. Prichard: Just the publisher.
Mr. Goldbloom: They cover a very broad cross-section of issues. We are more inclined to publish letters critical of what we have done rather than those praising what we have done. We try to provide as broad a cross-section of opinions to our letters page as possible. It is a wonderful source of indication of engagement with the paper that so many people write to us. It is one of the advantages of the Internet, which has made it easier for people to communicate with their papers and for us to publish our letters.
Mr. Skinner: Could I add one thing to your previous question? One of the initiatives that Torstar Corporation took was a partnership with Sing Tao. The Chinese community is very large in Toronto. We did a partnership with the majority owner of Sing Tao, the Chinese daily newspaper in Toronto. Sing Tao gets a large news feed from Hong Kong as well as The Toronto Star's news feed. It is all in Chinese but the paper is delivered to the Chinese community that gives Toronto news and Chinese news as well. It is another initiative by the corporation.
[Translation]
Senator Chaput: I wish to thank you for your presentation, which was most interesting.
My first question relates to the newspapers that you publish. You have three newspaper companies. You must certainly have a business plan and I suppose that you also have a code of ethics or a code of conduct.
Does this code apply to all three newspaper businesses or just to one?
[English]
Mr. Prichard: The principles we stated in our brief apply to all of our newspapers. Beyond that, we also have codes of conduct and ethics for the officers and leaders of Torstar Corporation including our colleagues who run our newspapers. Beyond that it is the responsibility of the publisher of each paper to articulate an appropriate code of conduct for that newspaper so that The Toronto Star has its own codes of conduct and practice and rules on conflict of interest and all of that, and the Hamilton Spectator has its own, and are independently articulated under the responsibility of that publisher. On the central principle for Torstar, beyond our ambitions and our general principles, is each publisher is responsible for everything in that newspaper. We hold the publisher accountable for the newspaper and conduct within it.
[Translation]
Senator Chaput: In your presentation, you mentioned that one of the greatest challenges is that there is too much rather than too little competition. Would you elaborate a little on that please?
[English]
Mr. Prichard: The Toronto newspaper market, which is the centre of where Torstar works, is generally described as the most competitive newspaper market in North America. That might be a slight exaggeration. It is conceivable that New York is as competitive as Toronto but those would be the most competitive newspaper markets in North America.
My colleague, Mr. Goldbloom, and my colleague, Mr. Skinner, who is responsible for Metro, our commuter newspaper, — we see on the street every day four daily newspapers, The Globe and Mail, the National Post, The Toronto Star, The Toronto Sun. We then see two free daily newspapers on the street also every day, Metro, which is Mr. Skinner's paper, and 24 hours, which is another paper produced by Quebecor, or Sun Media. We have six daily newspapers fighting for the audience every day.
On top of that, we have the daily newspaper, Sing Tao, referred to earlier in our conversation, competing for readers. There are something over 40 ethnic newspapers which are competing for the Toronto reader. Then we have a variety of other publications, quite apart from the Internet competing for our readers. The Sunday New York Times is delivered in Toronto in large numbers. The New York Times website, where you must register to use it, has more Canadians registered than there are subscribers to The Toronto Star, even though The Toronto Star is the largest circulation newspaper in Canada.
We find it extraordinarily intense just among the newspapers, quite apart from the number of radio stations that compete with all-news radio stations, which compete directly with us. There are three all-news channels, CBC, CTV and CHUM, and all-news TV channels coming at us, apart from CNN. The competition in the news field and the competition for advertising dollars is extraordinary. It makes it extremely difficult to sustain the investments in quality that are required to produce the newspapers that we produce.
Senator Munson: I have a brief supplementary. Sing Tao has been mentioned. How does its ownership work? What is the editorial content of that paper in terms of the breakdown between the Hong Kong ownership, letters to the editor and a separate editorial board?
Mr. Prichard: I will answer the ownership question and Mr. Skinner will answer the editorial question. In terms of ownership, we have shared ownership with our colleagues in Sing Tao, which is structured so that we comply with section 19 of the Income Tax Act and so that we meet the requirements of that for it to be contained and controlled. That is how Torstar came to own a share of Sing Tao. We have organized our affairs to comply with the requirements of the Canada Revenue Agency.
Mr. Skinner: I do not know if you have seen Sing Tao. It is a seven-day-per-week broadsheet newspaper. It contains over 100 pages per day. It is a large and successful newspaper. We have about 40 broad-sheet pages per day of news from Hong Kong. We have a Toronto Star news feed and we have editors at Sing Tao that compile the information to suit the needs of the Chinese community. They select the stories, a combination of local news and international news to put together a package seven days per week.
Mr. Prichard: We follow the same principle with a publisher who is responsible for the content of that paper. That publisher is accountable to a board of directors, which is comprised of representatives at Torstar and representatives from Sing Tao.
Senator Munson: What is the editorial view of Torstar.
Mr. Prichard: Torstar does not have an editorial view, to be clear.
Senator Munson: Is there an editorial view in that newspaper?
Mr. Prichard: Yes. It is the responsibility of the publisher of Sing Tao following the same principle that each publisher is responsible for the editorial view taken. It is taken by the publisher and the publisher has to continue to enjoy the confidence of the board of directors, which is made up equally of representatives of Torstar and representatives of Sing Tao.
Senator Munson: Is that editorial view from Hong Kong?
Mr. Skinner: It is the Toronto publisher's view. We have a Sing Tao in Toronto and a Sing Tao in Vancouver. It is the publisher's view in each of those two cities but it is not necessarily the view of The Toronto Star. They certainly have access to that information but it is not The Toronto Star's view that runs in Sing Tao.
The Chairman: Can I pursue this?
Senator Carney: I have some cleanup questions to ask later.
The Chairman: On content in the Sing Tao, 40 pages are from Hong Kong if you are running 100 pages per day, with a 60/40 advertisement ratio. How much do they actually use of non-Hong Kong source news?
Mr. Skinner: They use quite a bit. There are 40 pages per day of content that comes from Hong Kong and the editors select from that and choose content to publish in the paper that day. Not all the content runs.
The Chairman: I am interested in the ownership rules because I am having a little trouble wrapping my mind around how it works. You have structured your affairs to qualify under the Income Tax Act. Does that mean you have 50 per cent plus one?
Mr. Prichard: It is more complicated than that. There are in fact two entities. If I have it right, and my counsel will correct me if I do not, we own 75 per cent of one of the entities and less than that of the other entity. The CRA regulations apply to the entity to qualify under section 19 and so we have to have 75 per cent ownership. We have arranged our affairs to do so. The other entity that we own less of does some of the backroom work, which does not affect that 75 per cent ownership position. We have had this reviewed by the Canada Revenue Agency and it has been approved.
The Chairman: Would you be able to send us a description of how it works?
Mr. Prichard: I am not sure we will respond to that. I want to take advice from counsel as to whether we should do that because it is a competitive advantage to us to have organized our affairs in this way. We will either send it to you or we will say why we would prefer not to disclose it.
The Chairman: To the extent that you can explain to us how one goes about satisfying these rules, that would be extremely useful.
Mr. Prichard: That we will do.
The Chairman: I am absolutely serious about this.
Mr. Prichard: We hope that you will urge others to be required to comply.
The Chairman: Indeed. That leads directly to what I want to know. What is the enforcement mechanism? Do you have to file annual notarised reports? Do you receive the stamp of approval once and that is it for the next 100 years? Who checks and how often?
Mr. Prichard: I will answer that question in writing because we are not experts on the subject. I know only that the enforcement comes from the CRA. We file income tax returns annually that are reviewed. I believe it is in the course of those reviews that these issues are adjudicated. However, we will give you a written answer on that question.
The Chairman: I have not filed returns myself that required that kind of information
Ms. Pike, as publisher of The Hamilton Spectator and in your capacity for the CNA, I have a question concerning the shield laws and the compellability of journalists as witnesses. When I was a young journalist, the fundamental philosophy was that you could not have that kind of protection because freedom of expression was a right applied to every citizen and you did not have special privileges just because you were a journalist. If you ever held that view, I think you have changed it, Ms. Pike.
Ms. Pike: In came to me fairly recently through the Ken Peters case.
The Chairman: Can you talk about that?
Ms. Pike: Absolutely. Up front, we certainly are in favour of some clarification in this area, whether it is judicial or law. Potentially, law may be necessary but time will tell. We are not saying that there has to be an absolute protection of journalists. There is a fine balance between administration of justice and freedom of expression. The interesting point around the Ken Peters case, without the details of how it arose, is that at the end of the day Justice Crane ruled in contempt, which is very notable for the newspaper industry and the media in Canada. These rulings are rare. The second reason it is notable is that he issued a penalty of $32,000. That is the largest, by far, contempt penalty ever issued in Canada. That is a significant problem because if you are a small news organization you will think more than twice before you head down a road that may incur that kind of cost. The Spectator is paying that penalty on behalf of Mr. Peters should we be unsuccessful at appeal.
The most prominent issue is that this case unfortunately set Canadian case law back many decades in the sense that courts have traditionally balanced the administration of justice and freedom of expression. Generally, they have done a fairly good job of having neither one trump the other, in fact. What Justice Crane did was rule that this sense of qualified privilege for journalists was essentially no more, in that he did not follow the prior case law. I would say he generally ignored the Charter and at the end of the day essentially said that once you walk into the courtroom, the administration of justice is absolute, and there is absolutely no protection at all.
I think that is a very unfortunate situation. Before this case, the situation in Canada was much healthier in terms of being able to balance the two priorities. This is a very hot issue in the United States. There is a bill before both the Senate and the House that is looking at a federal shield law. About 31 states already have one and it is because the balance has been lost in the court system, where about a dozen journalists are looking at the potential for contempt. From our point of view, we think it is a terrible message to send to journalists. If we cannot have access to information and be able to give some level of promise of confidentiality our sources simply will not come forward in which case we will all be poorer for it.
Mr. Prichard: I concur with Ms. Pike said and want to make it clear we are appealing the Ken Peters case. We are supporting Mr. Peters completely. We believe the decision is a rogue decision and we are optimistic it will be overturned on appeal, but if there were a persistent string of cases taking a position, like Mr. Justice Crane did, I think the case for some legislative remedy would be strong at that point.
The Chairman: At this point, are you suggesting to us any formula that we should take into consideration?
Ms. Pike: It is difficult to do that. Even in the U.S, if you look at the bill that has been introduced, they are not talking about an absolute shield law. They are talking about a set of rules that will define when a journalist has protection and when the journalist does not. You get to see the detail around what that would look like, but it is not dissimilar to what cases in Canada have said for many years now, including the Supreme Court of Canada.
Mr. Prichard: Our preference would be for the jurisprudential solution following the Charter and the Supreme Court of Canada in this area. The concern we have is really about the smaller news organizations being less able to incur the significant legal costs we have incurred in this case and that we will incur in taking it to appeal. We will stand behind our journalists and indemnify our journalists in a way that a smaller organizations might have more trouble doing. If that became a consistent pattern of chill being created by the threat of litigation costs, then we would be more interested in some sort of legislative solution. We think the best solution is the common-law, court-based solution respecting the central role of journalists and following the Supreme Court of Canada's jurisprudence in this area.
The Chairman: Thank you.
Senator Carney: As usual, Chair, you have asked the question I was going to on the shield law. I thought that we needed to get that on the record, because it is a relatively new concept to us because of the cases that you brought up.
I have two other cleanup questions. We are all imposing great self-discipline on ourselves because your testimony is fascinating. The first is about press councils. You say, no, to government intervention, and yes, to self regulation. Press councils are given as one method of self-regulation. First of all only nine provinces have press councils; secondly, British Columbia's press council is very weak; and thirdly, in Alberta they have a very good press council code of ethics that is signed on to by all the weekly newspapers, but when we asked about enforcement we were told quite bluntly that some of newspapers follow them and some of them do not. Beyond your own experience, it would be helpful for us to know what kind of self-regulation in the absence of government intervention you think might work for your industry.
Mr. Prichard: On the last part of your question, the answer is given in the written material. We think the various forces we set out are the ways in which newspapers should be self-regulating by the force of their public, by their journalists and each of the things we referred to, and we do not believe there should not be anything more.
On the particular question of press councils, I will turn to my colleagues for any further commentary they have. Our experience is all in Ontario with the Ontario Press Council that is a good and effective body that now has 30 plus years of experience. It has done a good job and attracts good people and we have over 500 cases that have gone before it. It is a substantial force. I do not think Ms. Pike or Mr. Goldbloom are expert on other provinces and their experiences.
Do you want to add anything on press councils?
Ms. Pike: No, I think it has been said. I have no experience outside of Ontario, so I cannot comment on the other provinces at all.
Senator Carney: You should know that in terms of press councils that have been put forward, there has not been a lot of supporting evidence that it is an effective way to self-regulation. That is a committee issue.
My second question deals with Canadian Press. You are one of the few people who have kind words to say about Canadian Press. You have made it very clear that you consider it a necessary instrument in Canada for the dissemination of news. Cost is a problem for Canadian Press.
Would you care to tell us how much you pay to support the Canadian Press and what more could the industry do to support the Canadian Press, because it has more enemies than friends in terms of the testimony we have heard?
Mr. Prichard: I will ask Mr. Collins to answer on cost, and I will ask Mr. Goldbloom to comment on the Canadian Press because he is a director and is closest to it.
Mr. Pat Collins, Executive Vice-president, Newspapers, Torstar Corporation: Across Torstar in round numbers, about $1 million dollars a year between the Toronto Star and CityMedia.
Mr. Goldbloom: I am a member of the board, but recently, so I will not claim expertise about it. I can say from my experiences as a publisher of The Gazette in Montreal and now with The Toronto Star that the Canadian Press has been a critical source of news and information for our newspapers. As a board member, one of the things that have particularly impressed me in these early days is that the Canadian Press has done an extraordinary job of controlling its costs. I do not think there has been an increase in fees to any of the newspapers who are members in four or five years.
The management of the Canadian Press is doing, in my view, an extraordinary job at continuing to provide a first class service in an exceptionally cost-effective way. It is not just as a board member of the Canadian Press, but as a beneficiary in terms of The Toronto Star of the service that, I think, it is a critical institution to journalism in Canada.
Ms. Pike: Can I tell that you from a mid-sized newspaper, like The Hamilton Spectator and The Record in my group, it is indispensable. There is no way we could give our communities the Canadian perspective without it.
Senator Carney: It is amazing we have not heard more support for it. Your comments are valuable.
I concede the floor to Senator Munson, but I want to point out that his point that all the editorials of the Torstar newspapers are independently arrived at does not explain why they are all Liberal and not Conservative.
Mr. Prichard: Premier Harris would be surprised by that comment as he was endorsed by The Hamilton Spectator in the last election, in which he ran for Premier of Ontario.
Ms. Pike: Certainly, before I was there.
Mr. Prichard: That is when Mr. Collins was the publisher.
Senator Munson: I want to put on the record that I strongly support the Canadian Press, and I am glad to hear what you people are doing because some days I do fear for the survival of the Canadian Press because of different forces and the competitive environment in which we live. Not so long ago, the Canadian Press had a lot more journalists on Parliament Hill. It used to be called the second Hansard. It covered every beat individually. I feel that the Canadian Press is stretched thin and I hope that other newspapers across the country do fully support in the future as much as you are.
I would like to talk briefly about advertising. You say in your brief:
We neither seek nor depend upon the government subsidies to publish our newspapers. We operate on business principles, but advertising is an important part of our business.
Then on page 22 you say,
All we ask is for an equal hearing in making our case from governments. We also ask that, as a matter of principle, government not allow our editorial positions and scrutiny of government actions to be a factor in determining the government's allocation of its advertising dollars.
This is an important issue for you and other newspapers. Do you know of any evidence of government interference? You are thinking back and wondering why you are not getting chunks of advertising. Is it because of editorial position, or have you heard of other newspapers? If it is, it is a serious statement you have made.
Mr. Prichard: We are not making an allegation in those comments. We are saying that it is a principle that we think you could embrace and recommend to government that there never should be any such consideration in the allocation of advertising. We do note that our share of advertising has dropped, that is, the newspaper industry's share of total government advertising is short, as we indicate, by a significant amount. That concerns us. We view it as our responsibility, not yours, to reverse that, by doing a better job of selling our case to those that make the decisions for government advertising. We are not asking you to do that for us. We view it as our responsibility to take that on.
It would be a signal of your commitment that the allocation has to be done exclusively on the basis of the efficacy of the government's advertising and information programs, not influenced by any considerations that we are in the business more than our competitive media of criticizing government or scrutinizing government. It would be a reassuring principle for you to adopt, and one that I would think should gather universal support. We are not making an allegation with respect to the past as we try to make our case to get the government to behave more proportionately, like other advertisers. That is, the drop in government advertising is because the government uses newspapers less than others. We need to reverse that, and it is our job to make our case. Our colleagues from the Canadian Community Newspaper Association were here today to try to make that case. It is our job to do that, but we think the principle we offer here is one that should be embraced by people on all sides.
Senator Munson: I would like to return to the subject of foreign ownership. You said you have not made public policy. Can we get into why you are waiting? It would be helpful for us to know from big, small and in-between newspapers what their position is on restricting these foreign ownership rules. Some people have told us they fear an avalanche of Americans walking into Canada and all of a sudden we have a whole great deal of Fox Network kind of politics. I would like to have a stronger explanation of why you are waiting on this.
Mr. Prichard: First, to take a position on this would require a deliberate and thoughtful decision of the board of directors of Torstar Corporation. I have the privilege of being the chief executive, but I think if we were to take a firm position one way or the other, I would want to do that in the closest of deliberations with the board of directors.
It is important that each of our publishers feel free to take whatever position on this issue as it is debated without the corporation pre-emptively and gratuitously taking a position. As I understand it, this issue is not the subject of a legislative initiative of the government. It is not a matter on which the governing party has indicated an intention to potentially take a different view. It would be unnecessarily getting in the way of the freedom of our publishers and their editors to debate this issue free of any concern that it might be contrary to a corporate position we have taken, which we have not taken.
Third, Torstar is a very Canadian company. Whatever the rules may be about ownership, I believe Torstar will stay Canadian owned and Canadian controlled by choice, not because of income tax regulations requiring us to do so.
Senator Munson: Are you are happy with the way the situation is now?
Mr. Prichard: We as a company will choose to be Canadian, whatever the particular rules. Our ownership group, all Canadian, has owned the company since 1958. They are very long-term owners with a very long-term commitment to Canada.
On the public policy question, which is not the question of what Torstar will do, the public policy question you pose, we think that is a legitimate subject.
My final concern is that to think of it as just newspapers is too narrow a way to look at the issue, because it implicates the government so directly and uniquely in our business. The section 19 regulation applies to magazines and newspapers. The government has expressed a public policy across radio, television, magazines, newspapers, and across a wide range of media. We think it is that posture that should be tested and debated rather than the narrow question of newspapers alone. That debate of newspapers alone is too close, in our view, to the state interfering indirectly in the newsrooms of the nation.
Senator Munson: This is not a beef from me, and perhaps it does not happen at The Toronto Star, but it is important to some of the people that have given evidence to this committee. These people want to know why retractions or corrections are buried in a newspaper. Mistakes are made in television, and I guess even in television or radio they would rarely on television, after doing a story, come on the next night, and say they were sorry; that they had made a mistake.
Senator Carney: Lucky for you.
Senator Munson: Yes, lucky for me, for a little while of my life. This is coming from our witnesses; it is not coming from me.
Mr. Collins: Having been a publisher for five years and knowing that anytime you do make a mistake, it is rare that you ever satisfy them. Our policy was always to print our retraction or apology on page 2 and make it as prominent as we could. We would try to explain in as much detail why we made the mistake or how we made the mistake. Certainly, in five years, I heard many people comment that we made a big deal about a story, only for the outcome to be that the person was found not guilty et cetera. Since the beginning of newspapers, it has been a chronic problem that you will never be able to satisfy those people.
Mr. Goldbloom: I will just use the opportunity to say that The Toronto Star today appointed our new public editor, Sharon Burnside, and one of her roles and responsibility is to interact with the public, to discuss with them their complaints, and to ensure that the corrections are fully and properly written and published. Ms. Burnside's column will be critical of the newspaper where she feels that we have not done an effective job in terms of replying to readers' criticisms.
Senator Munson: Perhaps that message should be sent to all newspapers across the country.
Mr. Prichard: Newspapers are quite remarkable in how much they get right. Yes, they make mistakes, and yes, I agree with my colleagues, but the extraordinary accomplishment of journalists is their ability to write on a deadline on subjects that are complicated and often difficult to understand. Journalists perform these duties on short notice and often do this work everyday. Never having been a journalist myself, I can say this with unqualified admiration. They have an extraordinary ability to interpret those things that happen around them and get it right 99 times out of 100.
All of us share the view that when we get it wrong, we should do our best to correct it, and correct it properly and not grudgingly, because it allows us to serve our communities and readers better by making sure that we get it right.
The Chairman: Senators, we are keeping these witnesses very late, and we are not done with them yet.
Mr. Prichard: We are happy being here.
The Chairman: Please tighten questions as much as possible.
Senator Johnson: You have stated clearly that government should keep its hands off of all regulatory aspects of the business. One of our previous witnesses said that the government if not the only threat to the independents in the media. What about advertisers, owners, and perhaps unscrupulous owners, and the impact they can have on what news gets covered or does not get covered and how often, et cetera? How do you protect the media consumers in this respect?
Mr. Prichard: With respect to advertisers, one of the important arguments we advance is that scale of ownership, in fact, creates greater independence vis-à-vis the effect any one advertiser can have on the welfare of our newspapers.
There are repeated instances in the history of our newspapers, and of course all other newspapers, where an advertiser dissatisfied with the coverage of his or her industry or profession or whatever it might be, will threaten to withdraw advertising. That is a legitimate right of a dissatisfied advertiser, but it is essential that our journalists know that threat will never affect their editorial coverage. We believe that our scale as a newspaper company allows us to weather that possible concern better than would be the case if we were small and narrowly focused and more vulnerable in those circumstances.
On the question of the unscrupulous owner, it is probably the case that in every aspect of our lives there are more or less unscrupulous people and our industry probably enjoys no immunity from that reality. We all live with it in all we do, but I believe it is the case that our industry, because of the work we do, attracts a more powerful and more immediate response from those we serve, our readers and our advertisers, than most industries do. We have to earn their confidence every day. We have to produce a new newspaper every day. We have to sell the advertising in a newspaper every day.
As you have seen over and over, when we get things wrong, or we act in a less than appropriate way, we hear about it and everybody else hears about it because the competitive market makes it very attractive for our competitors to call us to account for behaviour that might fall short of their perception of the appropriate standards. We will do the same to our competitors when they make similar mistakes.
When there are issues of immediate controversy about media ownership, the loudest voices on these matters come from the other media companies and the other newspapers because they take competitive advantage from it. On top of that, within our own institutions, if behaviour is taken at the corporate level of Torstar, that it does not enjoy the approval of my colleagues in the newsroom of one or more of our newspapers, they write about it in the newspaper, our newspaper, to describe what they think is a shortfall of Torstar's corporate conduct. That is their right and their privilege. It is one each of our publishers defends. That is as it should be.
Can we have an industry with no unscrupulous people? Of course not, no more than any other industry. Is unscrupulous behaviour in our industry called to account faster and more visibly than any other industry I know? I think it is by virtue of the various forces that we lay out under the title of self-regulation.
My colleagues are free to comment and, indeed, disagree, as they frequently do in other settings.
Senator Johnson: It was a very impassioned response, thank you.
Senator Merchant: I have a short question. I am going back now to the ethnic communities. Sometimes you hear people say that they do not want to open a newspaper because there are no good news stories only bad news stories.
Sometimes in the ethnic communities we find that this affects us because people get a bad impression because of the stories concentrate on a small number of people. Let us say it is someone who has run into some problems or something and that seems to be the focus of news. This casts a pall over the whole community. They feel that the way they are portrayed is unfair.
To serve the readers and the community well, where does the responsibility lie in portraying some positive role models? Newspapers are to inform, to educate, to portray a society. Where do you think the responsibility lies? Does the responsibility to somehow instil a different standard lie within the schools of journalism? Do you think that readers are more impressed by bad news stories? Why do there seem to be more negative stories in the papers rather than positive stories?
Mr. Goldbloom: The first part of my answer would be that news is almost, by definition, what is exceptional. The fact that our plane from Toronto to Ottawa today landed safely is not a news story. Had it not landed safely it would have been a news story. That is not the only definition of news but it is in part a definition of news. It is the exceptional which tends to draw our attention.
We all have a responsibility, the journalism schools as you mentioned, but particularly the editors and journalists in our newspapers, to provide a full and comprehensive perspective on the lives of our fellow citizens, and not simply to focus on the negative but also to focus on the positive about each one of the communities that make up our larger communities.
It is an ongoing challenge. Canadian newspapers are getting better at that, but it is something that we must be mindful of. We have to listen carefully to the criticism of these communities that feel they are not being properly portrayed.
Senator Merchant: Do you think you have a good balance in your paper? As I say I do not read your newspaper so I do not know.
Mr. Goldbloom: I am confident in saying I believe that The Toronto Star does. I will be immodest and say that my guess would be that The Toronto Star would be better viewed within the Toronto community than probably any other newspaper in terms of the diversity of its coverage and its efforts to provide a positive portrait of the different communities that make up our city.
Mr. Skinner: From a community newspaper perspective, I believe our editors would say that they have a responsibility to reflect and mirror the communities that they serve. We end up with both good news and bad news in our newspapers.
If I ever hear a complaint that leans one way or the other, I hear more that we have more good news than bad news in our newspapers, which is sort of counter to what your suggestion. I think we have a good balance. What I think you might hear more as a complaint about our papers is that it reflects what is going on in the community. It is probably biased to be good news as opposed to the bad news.
Senator Merchant: Maybe it is the reader. When they read the stories they bring their own perceptions to it and their interpretations are different. Perhaps from your point of view it is balanced but from the reader's point of view it is not. It is just human nature.
The Chairman: You have made not only a strong but a passionate case that your newspapers, your various newspapers, Mr. Prichard, are editorially independent, that it is up to the local publisher and editor, I assume, to decide what the editorial policy will be. I would like to ask you about other forms of sharing. Do you have other forms of pooled resources, common endeavours, common policy guidelines, indeed, among your newspapers?
Mr. Prichard: We do have the principles we articulated that govern how we conduct ourselves with all of our newspapers.
We have the Torstar newspaper group, which tries to find all of the possible efficiencies among our newspaper businesses, so that we can produce as high quality a newspaper as we possibly can in the most efficient way. Mr. Collins is the head of the Torstar newspaper group.
For example, we have a major printing facility for The Toronto Star in Vaughan. We have a major printing facility in Hamilton under Ms. Pike's responsibility. We have one-half dozen printing facilities under the responsibility of Mr. Skinner. Mr. Collins' job is to try to make sure we use all those printing resources as effectively and efficiently as possible. He looks across the businesses, rather than viewing them all as silos.
The notion of silo is with respect to the editorial independence and responsibility of each publisher. However, as a newspaper company, we try to be efficient across, if you will the back room of the newspaper in every way. We try to make available the resources, the learning, the personnel, the training programs — everything we can do — across the newspapers so that all of them can benefit from it and take full advantage of the scale we have.
When we do leadership training, we do leadership training for people across the businesses. When Metroland does training for editorial staff, it will be done across all the editorial rooms of the Metroland newspapers, and will often bring in people from The Toronto Star to do the teaching and the demonstrations of how to do better, taking advantage of that resource.
All the newspapers have access to The Toronto Star news feed, which comes out of The Toronto Star ; and the Toronto Star will sometimes run a story that The Hamilton Spectator or the Kitchener-Waterloo Record has done. Investigative reporting they have done will run in The Toronto Star as well, so we share news resources too. We try to preserve the independence of each publisher to dictate the content of each newspaper and to chart a course for it; but, at the same time, we try to make available to every publisher the full resources of the newspaper group. Mr. Collins is responsible for trying to make those resources available, while not compromising the independence of each publisher.
If you have a specific area of detail, Mr. Collins or the individual publishers would be happy to respond.
Mr. Goldbloom: As an example of what Mr. Prichard was saying, you asked about foreign bureaus. We have four foreign bureaus; we have five bureaus across Canada. The work of those journalists is available throughout CityMedia in particular, and vice versa.
The Chairman: For example, among the community newspapers or among the next-rung-down dailies from The Toronto Star, do you pool resources to cover events? If so, who makes that decision?
Ms. Pike: Speaking for CityMedia, we have what we call the Torstar news service. That goes across the entire group, including Metroland. As Mr. Prichard said, we can choose what we wish to pick up. Because we know what is on the wire, we will not go and cover certain things.
For example, if the Maple Leafs were playing in Toronto — if they ever play again — more than likely we will not send a reporter to cover the Maple Leafs in Toronto. We will pick that story up from The Toronto Star. That is not necessarily the case; it depends on the game, the environment and so on.
The wire allows us to focus our resources on the local community. At the end of the day, that is the community we serve. For a mid-sized newspaper, it is not within our means; it never has been. The Hamilton Spectator was at one time owned by Southam, and it was a very similar situation. It is not within the means of a mid-sized newspaper to have the bureaus that Mr. Goldbloom talked about, and to have the kinds of resources that we actually are able to get because we are in the group. The group provides for us wonderful GTA coverage, wonderful national and international coverage, but allows us to apply our resource to the local marketplace, which is where our competitive advantage is, and which is what our readers want. That actually elevates our quality immensely.
The Chairman: Do you pool advertisement sales?
Mr. Prichard: We do. We sell multi-market advertisements out of The Toronto Star 's advertising sales, which are on behalf of the various newspapers in the daily group. We will sell for The Toronto Star, but we will also be selling for The Hamilton Spectator.
Ms. Pike: One group at The Toronto Star sells what we call national advertising and the large retail group advertising. Apart from that, the other advertising initiatives are local.
We do, as an example, in CityMedia have joint classified sales, because the markets are closely related, we cross-sell into various markets. Generally, advertising sales forces are separately managed and directed.
Mr. Prichard: In our community newspaper business, where we have 65-odd newspapers, there are both corporate sales of advertising that might go into a large number of the newspapers, and then every one of the newspapers has its own sales force as well that gathers local advertisements in the same way it works among the dailies.
The Chairman: Last fall, in a presentation to investors, it was suggested that one of the strategies is to grow the business and improve margins in all of our daily newspapers, and to deliver double-digit annual growth in Metroland, and the community newspapers.
All businesses always want to make more money, for sure. Is there a limit? How do you get there? The quick and dirty short way is usually to cut costs. Do you have a philosophy about this, and is there a limit?
Mr. Prichard: First, on the question of philosophy, yes, we have a philosophy. It is stated in the eight principles that govern our newspapers, one of which is that a good newspaper is also a good business. If a newspaper wants to be a good newspaper, it better be a good business, because it is by being a good business that we can invest more in doing our jobs better. It is the strength and profitability of our newspapers that allows us to do all the things that we have spoken of tonight. We are proud about how we have been able to invest in our newspapers.
On the question of our objectives as a corporation, we are a publicly traded corporation, with public shareholders. You have described exactly what is on our website as to our goals with respect to our newspapers.
Our goal with respect to our daily newspapers is to grow them over time by selling more advertising, and by reaching into more products where they can serve more advertisers and reach more readers. Through operational efficiencies, we strive to improve what is called the cash margin, the operating margin of our newspapers, so as to deliver a higher level of profitability to our shareholders.
With respect to our community newspapers, Metroland is one of the great businesses we see in Canada. It is a remarkably entrepreneurial and creative and innovative institution, that has now for what is getting up to be a decade, delivered 10 per cent or more growth per year as a newspaper, serving more and more readers in more and more communities.
It is that financial strength and entrepreneurial virtuosity that they have displayed that has allowed us to create new newspapers. We have created new newspapers in Cobourg, Peterborough, Lindsay, Barrie and Orilia, and most recently, we launched another new newspaper in the Niagara region. We launched Niagara This Week as a new newspaper, launched by my colleagues at Metroland, brilliantly executed, beginning on April 15, 2004. It is now the largest community newspaper in Canada; they serve 185,000 households in Niagara with a newspaper that did not exist 12 months ago. It is a wonderful addition to Niagara.
That is made possible by the success Metroland has had, and its focus on growth and profitability. In due course, we will invest in another area and serve that area as well. Strength brings more strength. It is a virtuous circle of increased growth and profitability that allows us to serve more readers, hire more journalists, and do a better job of serving our advertisers. It is the virtuous circle of growth, and we are proud of it.
We think we serve all of our communities well by keeping a clear focus on the goals that you stated so accurately from our website.
The Chairman: Metroland had an operating profit of 20.7 per cent in 2003, according to the numbers I have. Are you looking at just growing the revenue end of that and holding the proportion more or less stable, or is it the operating profit as a percentage that you want to see double digit growth in?
Mr. Prichard: We want to see double digit growth in the growth of operating profit each year of Metroland, which it has done in the two prior years and this year. We do not report our financial results for the end of 2004 until next Wednesday, so it would not be appropriate to comment on whether Metroland reached its goal this year. Its publicly reported progress over the last nine months is very encouraging. The stated goal, which we share with our shareholders, is that we will try to grow operating profit by 10 per cent each year. Metroland has an enviable record of doing so and has done so by creating more newspapers and serving more people with more services each year of its existence, and it is an extraordinary success story.
It is also a company that, through this creative entrepreneurial drive, wins more community newspaper awards in Canada than any newspaper company has ever won. It consistently ranks in the top three community newspaper companies, not just in Canada but in North America, winning gold, silver and bronze medals in the suburban newspaper association competitions that rank Metroland comfortably in the top three. I do not mean third. I mean of the top three companies, we get as many awards as the other two, and we frequently win first place, second place and third place in North America. That is a great newspaper company, and part of the reason it is a great newspaper company is the powerful drive for profit and growth of that business. That is what allows us to keep serving more and more people.
Senator Munson: I have one small observation. You can ask a question by one small observation. I am wondering, after two hours and 15 minutes with the journalist students sitting behind the Torstar executives, what is the lead?
Senator Carney: I can top that because my question is, is The Toronto Star covering the Senate hearing on the media tonight?
Mr. Goldbloom: Yes, it is.
Senator Carney: Then what is the lead?
Mr. Prichard: At the risk of offending the committee, we put out a press release at four o'clock about what we intended to say here, even though we had not yet said it, and we were delighted to see that one of our colleagues from the Ottawa bureau is here. Whether or not he will get his story in the paper is a different question.
Senator Munson, if I recall it correctly, you said that you and your colleagues were properly champions of freedom of the press. I do not mean to cast aspersions on that proposition. I am concerned, however that in your interim report, we read it as equivocal as between the point of view of Professor Trudell and the point of view of Professor Cameron. That may be inherent in an interim report, and that it what was premature for you to choose sides between these competing views, and if that is all it is, I understand you are reserving judgment. However, it seems to us it is clearly not a matter on which equivocation is appropriate. The champions of freedom of the press would embrace the view put forward by Professor Cameron, the latter of the two views you cited, and I hope the committee, at least in its final report, will unanimously and visibly associate itself with that view of freedom of the press. I must say that the Trudell view, with which I was not familiar before reading it in your report and then reading his evidence, I believe would be a betrayal of the freedom of the press as the best of Canadian tradition has upheld it. It was that equivocation in your interim report which caused us part of our concern coming on top of the issue of the origin.
I do not mean to be offensive or rude in saying that. It is simply intending to say how important I think it is for this committee, at the end of your process, to embrace to the fullest the proposition of the freedom of the press.
Thank you, chairman, for allowing me to say that.
The Chairman: The devil is in the details, Mr. Prichard.
Thank you, all, very much indeed. It has been an extremely interesting and instructive session. Since we did not have the appendices before tonight, we have more reading to do than we already had, which will be wonderful. You will send us more material, but, in the meantime we are extremely grateful for your appearance here. If you wish to add anything, please send us letters. We reserve the right to send letters if we would like to, but it seems unlikely because we have covered a great deal of ground.
Mr. Prichard: Thank you for the courtesy of the hearing and the interest you have shown in our material. We are very grateful for the opportunity to be here, and we wish you well with your work.
The Chairman: Thank you so much.
The committee adjourned.