Brampton Guardian Bills City $1.1M

The Brampton Guardian is at the top of the list when it comes to media groups that receives funds from the City of Brampton. In a report requested by Councillor Elaine Moore to be presented on Wednesday at the Committee of Council meeting, the city is reported to have spent $2.1M since the beginning of this term of council on notices, promotions and advertisements. Over 50% ($1.1M) has gone to the Brampton Guardian with ethnic media groups receiving only about 10% of the total. (Complete List Below)

Media funding overall has declined from $875k in 2015 to $475k in 2017. No information was provided on how funding to individual media groups was allocated year by year, or the reason behind the decline in media spending.

Brampton Guardian is owned by Metroland Media, a division of Torstar Corp. Like most large newspapers, Torstar has struggled to keep pace with digital media and has seen its stock plummet over 80% in the past 5 years. The Brampton Guardian has been criticized for lackluster coverage of local events, high advertisement and insert content, incomplete delivery coverage, and news reporting that has become increasingly regional and cursory. It recently also cutback to a single weekly print edition.

A number of media groups including Brampton Focus Community Media started after the 2014 municipal elections to address the lack of city engagement with residents, and preferential coverage of candidates by the city supported newspaper during the election.  The city has been slow to adopt new forms of communication and has on occasion clearly demonstrated favoritism and bias in how it engages with media groups. Combined with the loss of Rogers TV Cable 10 in 2017, many residents are in the dark when it comes to city matters and rely solely on limited Toronto news media coverage for their information. The city continues to broadcast CP24 on the big screen in Garden Square even though Brampton is often only mentioned in the context of negative and crime related news.

For the 2015 Budget, Mayor Linda Jeffrey proposed more engagement with newcomer and ethnic groups with an additional $409,000 in annual spending that was eventually watered down by councillors to include translation of the city’s media releases into French, Punjabi, Urdu and Portuguese and new social media staff. Translation to Gujarati is also now included.

As recently as the 2017 Budget, “continued funding for community engagement and ethnic media programs” was listed as one of the city’s top strategic priorities. However, the media release for the most recent 2018 budget includes no reference to community engagement or ethnic media programs as a priority.

Read the Discussion on Facebook

To be fair, isn't the city required by law to publish certain things in local print media, i.e. the newspaper, which the Brampton Guardian is the only one?

— Sylvia Menezes (@syl_menezes) June 19, 2018

The complete list of External Media vendors and amounts paid to them as reported by the city includes: