One year after news ban, Canadian journalism is suffering — but Meta isn't budging

Losing the ability to share news on Facebook has hurt Theresa Blackburn's bottom line and her newspaper's ability to serve her community — and as she works around the clock to keep her business afloat, she's pleading with lawmakers to make a deal with Meta so publishers can once again share their content.

Blackburn's free newspaper, the River Valley Sun, covers "ultra-local" news in New Brunswick's Western Valley, a rural stretch of the western part of the province serving about 35,000 to 40,000 people. 

Her business, Black Tartan Media, lost the ability to share its content on Meta platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, last August — along with all other news media in Canada — following the passage of C-18, known as the Online News Act.

A year later, Blackburn says she's struggling to keep her two publications, the River Valley Sun and the agelessNB magazine, running.

"I'm tired of feeling like we've been forgotten about," she said. "We're hanging on with one finger now on the edge of the cliff."

Before C-18, the River Valley Sun — which distributes 6,000 free newspapers monthly — relied on Facebook to share content, instead of having its own website.

Blackburn said the paper saw between 400,000 to 500,000 engagements in a typical month before the news ban saw that audience abruptly cut off.

She's since created a website that gets about 40,000 hits per month, a drop in engagement of about 90 per cent. 

The ban is also causing financial pain.

Blackburn's newspaper used to go live on Facebook at some local events, with the businesses paying for that coverage. Losing that ability has cost them the equivalent of two months of printing newspapers, she said, or the cost of hiring a summer student. 

No Meta deal in sight

The Online News Act sought to force web giants like Meta to compensate media outlets for the journalism shared on their platforms. 

The bill was pitched as a way to keep news outlets solvent after advertising moved en masse to digital platforms, virtually wiping out a major revenue stream for journalism.

Though Google and the federal government ultimately reached a $100-million deal, Meta has resisted, saying that its platforms don't benefit unfairly from people sharing links to news content.

It argues the reverse is true: publishers share their content on their platforms because they're the ones benefiting.

On Aug. 1, 2023, Meta said it would block the sharing of news content on its platforms in response to the new law. That ban went into effect eight days later.

Local news outlets hit hardest, says study

Outlets that cover local news are bearing the brunt of the ban, according to a new study by the Media Ecosystem Observatory (MEO), a collaboration between McGill University and University of Toronto.

The study analyzed the Facebook pages of Canadian outlets, political commentators and advocacy groups, and political and local community groups.

It found that Canadians are consuming less news — estimating that Canadian news online saw a reduction of 11 million views per day — and that users are figuring out ways to get around the ban, like by posting screenshots of news stories. 

According to the study, almost a third of local news outlets are now inactive on social media. 

"This represents a continual decline in the starving of local populations of news about their cities, about their communities, about important events happening that matter to them. And so that's part of a larger trend," said Aengus Bridgman, MEO's director and project lead on the Meta news ban. 

It does not appear Meta and the federal government are on the cusp of reaching an agreement, however.

Internationally, Meta has doubled down, saying it will no longer pay for news in Australia, which introduced a law forcing Internet giants to strike licensing deals in 2021. 

'Hurting out here'

In a statement, Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge's office claimed the company "has chosen not to engage constructively."

''Facebook and Instagram's irresponsible, reckless choice has been — in Canada and around the world — to devalue trusted news sources. It's wrong, and they should care about the people they profit immensely off — their users across Canada," said St-Onge in a statement.

Neither MEO nor the Canadian Association of Journalists has tracked how many outlets have shut down following the Meta news ban.

But Blackburn said if she doesn't get a slice of the $100-million Google media fund, she will have to re-evaluate whether she can continue owning the paper.

Blackburn said small, local outlets like hers that do the unglamorous work of covering local courts, town council meetings and events like parades are "hurting out here."

"All I want is a fair shake," she said.