The Minister of Culture and Communications, Mathieu Lacombe, is turning to the federal government to intensify the fight against the media crisis and finally stop “buying”. Pavement while we wait for profitability to return.
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“We need to find a global solution to journalism in Quebec, and we won’t be able to do that if the two levels of government work in silos, each on their own,” the CAQ MP said Saturday.
“We have to work together. “The future of our media is too important not to take the time to do things well,” he added, addressing his federal colleague Pascale St-Onge directly.
The minister spoke to a large number of information experts during the annual congress of the Quebec Professional Association of Journalists (FPJQ) in Saint-Sauveur.
Difficult decisions
Mr Lacombe, himself a former journalist, reflected on the difficult decisions the media had made over the past year, including the recent elimination of 547 jobs within TVA Group.
One of the key factors: international giants like Facebook and Google, which still “skip 75, 80% of advertising revenue from the digital universe.”
“They are coming to completely shake up, if not slowly destroy, our media ecosystem,” he concluded.
Public trust
At the same time, a significant part of the population doubts the reliability of journalists.
For example, according to a recent survey by Léger, six out of ten Quebecers between the ages of 18 and 35 believe that traditional media manipulates the information they broadcast.
“It is more than worrying,” complained Minister Lacombe during his twenty-minute speech.
According to him, better education of the population about the role of journalists could, among other things, curb this unfortunate trend, especially at a time when disinformation on the Internet is “on the rise”.
As for the measures that the media itself could take, the minister pointed out that the Press Council, the honorary court of the media in Quebec, would be given more powers.
“How could we raise the ethical standards of the profession even further, since they obviously already exist, without affecting the content?” He added.