{"id":49326,"date":"2019-10-31T18:12:39","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T23:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49326"},"modified":"2019-10-31T18:12:44","modified_gmt":"2019-10-31T23:12:44","slug":"postmedia-torstar-take-taxpayer-cash-fight-to-keep-public-in-dark-about-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49326","title":{"rendered":"Postmedia, Torstar Take Taxpayer Cash, Fight to Keep Public in Dark about Cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Postmedia, Torstar Take Taxpayer Cash, Fight to Keep Public in Dark about Cuts<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Media giants continue to fight disclosure of evidence about 2017 deal that shuttered 36 newspapers.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Torstar claimed $4.5 million in subsidies under government plan; Postmedia $7 million. The two are being criminally investigated by the Competition Bureau.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Newspaper giants Torstar and Postmedia have both just claimed millions in taxpayer subsidies from the federal government\u2019s controversial news media fund<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But at the same time they\u2019re counting the cash, they\u2019re continuing to fight in court to keep the public from learning about their 2017 deal that resulted in 36 newspapers closing across Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Postmedia\u2019s latest financial report<\/a> included $7 million from the fund in its revenues \u2014 and that\u2019s just for nine months. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Torstar claimed $4.5 million in subsidies from the fund, also just for nine months, when it released its quarterly financial report<\/a> Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critics feared the fund, which promises almost $600 million over five years, would enrich shareholders or hedge funds while media corporations continue to slash staff and close newspapers.The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s what Postmedia and Torstar did in 2017. The two corporations swapped 43 newspapers, and on the same day the deal was announced closed 36 of them. Almost 300 people lost their jobs and 36 communities lost a news source. In many of them, competition was replaced with a monopoly controlled by one of the two corporations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That situation sparked a continuing Competition Bureau investigation<\/a>into \u201calleged anti-competitive conduct.\u201d The bureau later announced it was pursuing the investigation under the criminal conspiracy provisions of the Competition Act. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And while Torstar and Postmedia are taking taxpayers\u2019 money, the two companies have been fighting to keep the public or prosecutors from seeing documents seized in searches of their offices or used to obtain search warrants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Postmedia, Torstar Take Taxpayer Cash, Fight to Keep Public in Dark about Cuts Media giants continue to fight disclosure of evidence about 2017 deal that shuttered 36 newspapers. Newspaper giants Torstar and Postmedia have both just claimed millions in taxpayer subsidies from the federal government\u2019s controversial news media fund. But at the same time they\u2019re counting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[24021,512,27479,783,23884,27480],"class_list":["post-49326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-bryan-carney","tag-media","tag-postmedia","tag-taxes","tag-thetyee-ca","tag-torstar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49327,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49326\/revisions\/49327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}