Digital platforms open to cultural diversity message: Joly

OTTAWA — Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly said she found a receptive audience for her message of cultural diversity on digital platforms among the executives of the digital media giants she met on her recent trip to California. Joly’s week-long visit to Los Angeles and San Francisco ended Tuesday and included meetings with brass from Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and YouTube, Snap Inc. and Twitter Inc. “What I mean by cultural diversity is the presence of national content, national representation — in our case Canadian content — on platforms that reach beyond our borders. I want to make sure that high-quality local information and entertainment, Canadian content, is discoverable and promoted,” Joly told the audience during a keynote address at the Canadian Association of Journalists national conference in Ottawa Friday. “I brought this message with me on my recent trip to Los Angeles and San Francisco where I spoke about how government and global platforms can work together and with society at large to support cultural diversity and national content.” Joly said the discussions with companies focused on five guiding principles: supporting a diversity of voices, having local content, accessing trusted news sources, being fair to creators and countering cyber bullying and hate speech. She said she has “noticed a growing openness on their part to address this issue.” Speaking to a room full of journalists, Joly focused her remarks Friday on the challenges the media industry is facing in an age where traditional business models for journalism are usurped by digital innovation. “And what I’m doing with digital platforms right now, so Google, Facebook and Twitter, especially on the media side, is to actively call on their CSR, their corporate social responsibility, to play a role, to ultimately make sure we have a stronger media sector in Canada, bearing in mind the challenges we all know,” Joly said. She added that a key question “we have been asking ourselves is how can we make sure that we foster a healthier democracy in the contexts of major shifts in journalism. We need to make sure we understand the impact of social media, of the filter bubbles, of digital technologies.” But these aren’t necessarily questions government can answer, Joly noted, telling the audience that journalists are best positioned to make their case to their readers about their value to democracy. When asked, Joly did not say whether the government was leaning towards any specific recommendations that have arisen from either the sweeping review on Canadian content in a digital age, the House of Commons heritage committee’s study of media and local communities or the Public Policy Forum’s Shattered Mirror report, instead restating that they would be examining all scenarios. She did note that though she has not yet received the heritage committee’s final report, she has committed to rolling out policy from the cultural review this year. — With reporting by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

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Digital platforms open to cultural diversity message: Joly

News | April 28, 2017

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