Not being able to share news on Facebook has hurt Theresa Blackburn’s revenue and her newspaper’s ability to serve her community. As she works day and night to keep her business afloat, she’s pleading with lawmakers to strike a deal with Meta to allow publishers to share content again.
Blackburn’s free newspaper, the River Valley Sun, covers “hyper-local” news in the Western Valley region, a rural area in western New Brunswick with a population of approximately 35,000 to 40,000.
Her company, Black Tartan Media, along with all other news publishers in Canada, was prevented from sharing content on Meta platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, last August after the passage of C-18, known as the Online News Act.
A year later, Blackburn says he’s struggling to keep his two publications, River Valley Sun and AgelessNB magazine, running.
“I’m tired of feeling forgotten,” she said. “We’re just hanging on by one finger right now.”
Before C-18, the River Valley Sun, which distributes 6,000 free newspapers each month, relied on Facebook to share content instead of having its own website.
Blackburn said the paper typically got between 400,000 and 500,000 engagements a month before the news ban caused its readership to suddenly dry up.
Since then, she has a website that gets about 40,000 monthly hits and engagement has dropped by about 90 percent.
The ban is also causing economic pain.
Blackburn’s newspaper used to live-stream local events on Facebook, a service the company paid for, and losing that ability has cost the newspaper the equivalent of two months’ printing costs, or the cost of hiring a summer instructor, she said.
No Meta Trading Visible
The Online News Act aimed to force web giants like Meta to compensate media outlets for journalism shared on their platforms.
The bill was proposed as a way to keep news organizations afloat after advertising shifted en masse to digital platforms, effectively eliminating a major source of revenue for journalism.
Google and the federal government ultimately Signed a $100 million contract Meta has fought back, arguing that its platform does not unfairly benefit from sharing links to news content.
They argue that the opposite is true: publishers share content on their platforms because it benefits them.
On August 1, 2023, Meta announced that it would block the sharing of news content on its platform in response to the new law. The ban went into effect eight days later.
Survey finds local media hit hardest
Local news outlets are bearing the brunt of the ban, according to a new study by the Media Ecosystem Observatory (MEO), a joint research institute at McGill University and the University of Toronto.
The study analyzed Facebook pages from Canadian media outlets, political commentators and advocacy groups, political organizations and local community groups.
The study found that Canadians are consuming less news, with an estimated 11 million fewer daily online news views in Canada, and that users are finding ways around the ban, such as by posting screenshots of news articles.
The survey found that nearly a third of local news outlets are not currently active on social media.
“This marks a continuing decline in local people’s hunger for news about their cities, communities and the events that matter to them – it’s part of a larger trend,” said Angus Bridgeman, director of MEO and project lead for the Meta news ban.
But Mehta and the federal government do not appear to be on the verge of reaching an agreement.
Internationally, the meta has doubled down. In Australia we no longer pay for news. The company has introduced legislation that would require major internet companies to enter into licensing agreements in 2021.
“It hurts here.”
In a statement, the office of Culture Minister Pascal Saintonge said the company had “chosen not to engage constructively.”
“Facebook and Instagram’s irresponsible and reckless choice is to devalue trusted news sources in Canada and around the world. This is wrong. They should be concerned about the people from whom they are profiting so dramatically: users across Canada,” Saint-Onge said in a statement.
Neither MEO nor the Canadian Association of Journalists tracks how many news outlets have been shut down in response to the Meta News ban.
But Blackburn said he would have to reevaluate whether he could continue to own the paper if he was unable to secure a share of Google’s $100 million media fund.
Blackburn said small local media outlets like hers, which do the unglamorous work of covering local courts, city council meetings, parades and other events, “are taking a hit here.”
“All I want is fair treatment,” she said.
