CRTC Mulling a Newsroom ‘Code of Conduct’

A federal legal notice says the CRTC may create the code to regulate how newsrooms are to be structured and conduct their business under the Online News Act.

A person navigates to the online social media pages of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) on a cell phone in Ottawa on May 17, 2021. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) may draft a “code of conduct” for newsrooms as part of the Online News Act, cabinet said in a legal notice.

The Department of Canadian Heritage said newsrooms are subject to CRTC guidance on ethics under the Online News Act, which took effect Dec. 19. It will take several months to fully come into force.

“The CRTC may regulate the following areas: Creation of a code of conduct (and) a complaint process pertaining to how groups of eligible news businesses are to be structured and their conduct under the Act,“ the department wrote in a ”Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement,” which was first obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter.

Bill C-18, passed by the Senate in June 2023, mandates that tech companies pay Canadian media outlets for news content linked on their platforms.

Meta began the process last August of ending news availability in Canada on its Facebook and Instagram platforms saying Bill C-18 was “fundamentally flawed legislation.” Google also threatened to remove links to Canadian news from its search, news, and discover products, but did not carry out the threat and later agreed to make annual payments to news companies in the range of $100 million.

One clause in the legislation says newsrooms that apply for payouts from Google money must comply with a “code of ethics.” The exact term was not defined in the legislation.

Scott Shortliffe, executive director of broadcasting policy at the CRTC, acknowledged that the commission would “have to get precise on that,” when he testified in May 2023 at the Senate Transport and Communications Committee. “It puts, frankly, a bit of an onus on us to define that,” he added.

Mr. Shortliffe said the code of ethics should include clear definitions, neutral applications, and should not be written in “such a way they either include or exclude a particular kind of news organization, as long as that news organization can show it is a credible news organization.”

Senator Pamela Wallin, a former TV journalist, has questioned the CRTC’s claims of independence from the government.

“I am told by sources close to the matter there is almost daily contact between the leadership of the CRTC and the Minister’s office,” Ms. Wallin told the committee last year.

Sen. Paula Simons, a former columnist for the Edmonton Journal, also raised concerns with the CRTC defining a newsroom code of conduct. She said the concept was “anathema to a lot of print journalists who do not believe the government, the state, the Crown should in any way be regulating the ethics of newspapers.”