This is not a chronicle on Gilles Proulx and his attacks, which we should all qualify as dangerous, against the elected representatives of Québec solidaire. This is rather a reflection on the economic context that has made careers like that of Gilles Proulx — dangerous passages included — possible.
I received a few weeks ago the veteran of Canadian political journalism Paul Wells on my podcast, Detours. While discussing what he has seen change in his long career, Paul suggested that 2008 should be seen as a pivotal year for the media industry. For what ? Not because of the economic crisis, oddly. But because it was around this time that the iPhones, launched the previous summer, began to invade the Canadian market.
The moment when phone screens became comfortable enough to absorb our attention for hours on end would also be the moment when print media, particularly magazines, began to be seriously threatened in their business model. In the early years, several companies responded by going out of their way to compete with new technology to keep our attention.
For Paul, who worked for many years at the Maclean’s, this financial pressure certainly played a role in the publication of the magazine’s famous cover on corruption in Quebec politics, where we saw the Bonhomme Carnaval holding a briefcase full of money. In short, the media are first and foremost businesses, and businesses worried about their survival will take more risks — even if ethics pays the price.
Since then, the business models of most media companies have changed profoundly. Certain measures, such as government payroll subsidies, have also been put in place to support the sustainability and growth of several traditional media. But technologies continue to evolve, as does the economic climate. The pressure on media companies is changing, therefore, but it is not being eliminated.
The Postmedia network, which owns several newspapers across the country, including The Montreal Gazette, announced major cuts earlier this year. And last month, the TVA Group made the decision to eliminate 240 positions, including 140 directly at TVA. And these are just two recent examples. While some media have succeeded in developing a business model that makes them relatively stable in the current climate, others are struggling to renew their audiences, while new generations have information consumption habits that are profoundly different from those of their elders.
If the competition to hold our attention becomes more fierce, it is foreseeable that some will choose to cultivate anger and popular indignation to get out of the game. If we have the feeling that “controversy” is replacing the real debate of ideas, it is also, at least indirectly, a consequence of the economic and technological transformations of the last fifteen years. And if opinion is taking up more and more space in the journalistic space, it is also because it is faster and less expensive to produce than in-depth reports, for example, in a world where time is running out. scarce and where access to resources is uncertain.
A growing proportion of readers are accessing traditional media content through social media shares, and social media primarily push content that elicits strong emotions. There is also, therefore, a direct incentive for certain media companies to choose to produce more and more opinions of the junk food type: sweet, salty, fatty, ready in a few minutes, and terrible in terms of nutrition for democracy.
This transformation of the media space is already well advanced in the United States, and Fox News probably best represents this business model based on the junk food of information, where “controversy”, to follow the metaphor, becomes empty calories that we stuff the listeners with. The TV channel is, of course, run by Australian-American Rupert Murdoch, whose media influence extends across the English-speaking world.
In France, we have been talking for some time about the “bolloréisation” of information, named after the multimillionaire Vincent Bolloré. He not only built a media empire whose scope poses serious ethical questions in terms of concentration, but he also put forward a way of reporting that exploded the place of public opinion. quickly made, in the mode of controversy, in the French public space. Necessarily, the public debate becomes more violent, and more dangerous for its participants.
Let’s get back to Gilles Proulx. Many have asked in recent days why the man still has the privilege of a microphone, despite all the infamous remarks he has made in his long career. The short answer: because it pays off. And that feeding what pays off, even if it’s unhealthy, is perhaps more than ever becoming an existential obsession for some media companies.
It is absolutely necessary to denounce specific comments and specific individuals who go beyond the limits, when they do so. But if we don’t pay attention to the business models who wear them, the individual who loses his microphone will be replaced by another, then another, who will harbor the same contempt for elected officials and actors – especially actresses, let’s say it — public debate. I come from Quebec, after all, where we have been playing this game with our radio stars for a long time, and where we are tired of faces and voices changing while the system remains in place.