Faced with growing financial difficulties, the Quebec Press Council (CPQ) is making a “major shift” by turning to public donations to ensure its survival and to deal with the growing number of complaints from citizens against the media.
“We no longer have a choice. We must be able to continue to fulfill our role as the media’s court of honor, but we also want to do more to educate the media in order to support the community. For that, we have to diversify our sources of funding,” explained CPQ president Pierre-Paul Noreau in an interview.
The idea is to now allow anyone — organization or private citizen — to make a donation to the CPQ to help it survive and carry out its role. “The journalistic community is not the only one to believe in the need to protect our institutions,” maintains Mr. Noreau. There are many other people, organizations as well, who have an interest in the media being respectable and working primarily for the public interest. »
He asserts that opening the door to donors will in no way jeopardize the independence of the organization. Donors will be perceived as “friends” of the Council, who have its mission at heart, but they will not become members of it and will have no say in how it works.
The CPQ is currently considering how to approach certain organizations and setting up a call for donations in the coming months.
Help needed
This “major shift”, approved by the board of directors, was officially announced in the organization’s latest annual report, published on Friday. Until now, the CPQ was financed essentially by contributions from member media and by an annual subsidy from the Quebec government.
This was increased by the Ministry of Culture and Communications by $100,000 this fall, which now brings the total to $350,000 in assistance per year. This is a long-standing request from the CPQ, since the government grant has never been indexed to the inflation rate in the last decade.
“This is certainly the best news of the last few months,” rejoices Mr. Noreau. This amount allowed the organization to end its 2022 year with a deficit of $108,999 instead of the projected deficit of nearly $200,000. However, the Council could not foresee the loss of more than $73,000 in its investment fund, which today stands at $612,500.
The CPQ’s finances therefore remain fragile and prevent it from improving its operations. The increase in assistance from Quebec has made it possible to add a full-time analyst in 2022, but this is not enough to considerably reduce the processing times for complaints, which stand at 14 months.
We no longer have a choice. We must be able to continue to fulfill our role as the media’s court of honor, but we also want to do more to educate the media in order to support the community. To do this, we must diversify our sources of funding.
It must be said that public demand has been growing in recent years. In 2022, the CPQ once again received a high number of complaints, a total of 470 — compared to 111 in 2010 — and opened no less than 230 files. This is a little less than last year, when 260 files were opened, but much more than in previous years, i.e. 180 in 2020 and 172 in 2019.
Still more members
Of course, the CPQ continues to work on all fronts, particularly seeking to recruit new members from the media. In 2022, the Contex Group (Deals) and The Canadian Press joined the ranks of the organization. More recently, in January, the CPQ sought membership from TV5 Québec Canada.
“We are now thinking of convincing smaller media to join us, since the vast majority of major media are already members,” underlines Mr. Noreau.
Moreover, he took the opportunity to remind that the door of the CPQ remained wide open to Quebecor, despite the events of recent months. Remember that in mid-February, the CPQ won its showdown with the Quebecor media. The Superior Court of Quebec ruled that the organization — which was being sued for $428,888 — did not violate their right of non-association by continuing to process complaints against them, even though they are not no longer members of the CPQ since 2010.
“We are not at war at all. Quebecor is a big player in the industry, we’d rather have it with us than against us,” adds Mr. Noreau.