5 Easy Ways to Keep Canadian News In Your Day
5 Easy Ways to Keep Canadian News In Your Day
written by Theresa Aqui, OFSHEEA 2023 president, and Diana Maliszewski, AML 2023 co-vice-president
Have you noticed a difference in your social media feed? In response to recent federal legislation (Bill C-17, the Online News Act), Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has decided to “end access to news on its social media sites for all Canadian users“. This is a direct link to the act from the government website. The stated goal with this bill is “to enhance fairness in the economic relationship between news businesses and online platforms by enhancing the bargaining position of news businesses relative to that of large and dominant digital news intermediaries”.
The issue, however, is that many people rely on their social media accounts to keep them abreast of current events. Fewer and fewer people watch the evening news on television or maintain personal subscriptions to print newspapers. It’s important to be aware of news at the local, provincial, and national level, especially from a Canadian perspective. Here are five easy ways you can continue to keep Canadian news in your day.
- Listen to a Canadian news podcast or radio station that specializes in news. Theresa likes CBC’s Frontburner.
- Check out local newspapers at your public library. This includes print and online copies. Chat with your friendly local librarian for specifics on how to accomplish this.
- Create a What’s App, Slack, Signal, Discord or other instant messaging platform where you and your friends, colleagues, or various affinity subgroups can share news articles without restrictions.
- Look for organizations or groups that have been finding ways to circumvent the news ban creatively and ethically. An example comes from Librarianship.ca
In response to the decision by Meta, the parent company for Facebook and Instagram, to end news availability on its platforms in Canada, Librarianship.ca will be linking to articles on topics and issues of interest to the Canadian librarianship community from this page on our website:
- Download a news app for your mobile device and follow Canadian sources. A quick trip to the app store on Diana’s iPhone revealed apps for Epoch Times, CTV News, CBC News, Canada Breaking News, Global News, The Globe and Mail, Canada Press, CP24, and Canadian News – newsstand.ca
If you have other ideas on how to find and consume Canadian news, please let us know in the comments. Together, we can achieve great things.
Speaking of collaboration and accomplishing things together, the Association for Media Literacy would like to thank the Ontario Family Studies and Home Economics Educators’ Association. You can find them online at https://ofsheea.education/ This article began as a conversation between Diana and Theresa as they represented AML and OFSHEEA at the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association’s Beginning Teachers Conference. Subject associations are important to supporting educators and are often run on shoestring budgets with passionate volunteers. We salute all the subject associations working hard; together we can achieve great things.
