2025: The Year Journalism Failed
Time for a grim year in review
It's difficult to look back at 2025 in Canadian news media without your gaze drifting southward. After his first calendar year as US president, the news media ecosystem has largely bent the knee to Donald Trump. Through a long, drawn-out and sycophantic process, Paramount and Skydance media merged, bringing CBS News under the the thumb of David Ellison, son of right-wing billionaire Larry Ellison. As a likely result, CBS News bought The Free Press and brought the right-wing Bari Weiss to run the outlet. The federal government's press pool is now filled with simpering cowards like Benny Johnson, and Matt Gaetz. The Washington Post decided to shift openly to the right in its opinion pages. It's been bad.
All of this is looming in the background of Canadian news media. In a trade spat with a country openly discussing use of economic force to annex the country, a spineless and compliant media is a crucial part of that far-right turn.
So in a year where Canadian news has been expressly attacked by the electoral right-wing and targeted for cuts by the Carney Liberals (i.e. still the electoral right-wing), there is little reason for hope. Considering their current state and trajectory, these legacy outlets will follow a similar path.
Let's begin with a look back at the debacle surrounding CBC's Cross-Country Checkup early in the year. When proposing a show focused entirely on people's feelings whether or not Canada should officially become part of the US, international law took a back seat to presenting both sides as equally valid. Voices like David Frum and Kevin O'Leary are platformed, while the response to criticism was an insistence that the audience did not understand how journalism worked.
In the summer, the first payments from Google's deal with the federal government to bypass the Online News Act were doled out. Big outlets like The Globe and Mail Inc. and Postmedia raked in millions of dollars, while outlets like Indiginews didn't receive payments, due to a decision to spin-off from their parent company. Other journalists, like Davide Mastracci, were investigated by the RCMP for their reporting. AI slopaganda has flooded our internet ecosystems. Not only has this made the work of journalists harder, it has also affected newsrooms directly. Nicholas Hune-Brown at The Local investigated someone pitching them with likely fake and AI-generated comments.
All the while, the critical faculties of legacy journalism have continued to deteriorate. One scandal evolved from the news media (and by extension, the general public's) was rooted in indignation that the police be criticized. Meanwhile, reports of Israel violating the ceasefire are obscured. No work is done to frame the prime minister's comments on Israel in context. In the realm of rising militarism, Canadian news has played a vital role.
Scott Martin
As always, the failure of Canadian news media is a burden carried by the larger outlets. Small, independent outlets are still doing important work. The Maple, The Breach, Ricochet, The Independent, PressProgress and The Rover are some of these outlets. Many of them are also newsrooms in need of financial contributions. Please, if you have the means, consider a paid membership to some of them.
As written in The Catch in 2022, journalism's relationship with fascism is much darker than those who run the publications would like you to think. In 2025, we saw that realization come true south of the border. In Canada, there is no indication there will be any difference. In Carney's rightward shift, Poilievre and the Conservative approach to journalists and the destruction of any left-wing electoral opinion, news media has continued business as usual.
Though it's officially been three years since The Catch has begun its mission to document the problems with the Canadian news media industry, there's little reason to believe in the inherent goodness of the industry. Despite this, journalism undeniably has the power to make massive impact. Look no further than The Independent's investigation into a Deloitte report that likely used AI to generate false evidence. It resulted in government officials reviewing AI policies. Little moments like this provide hope.
But all is most certainly not well. A good explanation comes from Nieman Labs. They gather a list of predictions by journalists and industry voices for the next year on their website. The most valuable, in my opinion, was one written by Sipho Kings, co-founder of Africa focused magazine The Continent. Put bluntly, Kings wrote "We guarantee the death of most remaining newsrooms." Mainly regarding the use of AI, he writes that newsrooms are repeating a problem of the past in regards to social media platforms. "These are corporations. They do not have a public interest incentive. They expect to profit in a burning world. And they will do what corporations do. We will lose. The public will lose."
To further drive Kings point home... a lot of the other predictions, though not all, are heavily pro-AI.
One final, valuable prediction, comes in the article by Carrie Brown, associate professor of journalism at Montclair State University: Journalists should fight back."What we’re doing is not working, and it hasn’t for a long time," writes Brown. In an age of decaying trust, Brown concludes, "There is only one way to win any of this audience back... and that is to fight back."
If Canadian journalists don't follow this lead, it's increasingly likely that 2026 will continue to be a widespread failure. Three years into The Catch, one thing I've learned is that nothing in this industry is inevitable. All that I've written about is only the logical result of the system that's been created. That system can be changed. We only have to organize to try and change it.
Here's to 2026.
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