Meta blocking CHCH and other independent Canadian news stations

At a time when misinformation, deep-fakes and artificially-generated content designed to look like real news is flooding Facebook and Instagram, their parent company Meta continues to block original, trusted Canadian journalism.

Canada’s local independent television stations, including CHCH News, have formally asked the Canadian Radio-Television And Telecommunications Commission to force Meta to come to the bargaining table, as required under the Online News Act.

“Google and Meta profit directly off of the news content that we do every day across the country. And while Google has come to an agreement of $100 million a year over five years that each of the legitimate news organizations in Canada can get access to, Meta has avoided that,” said CHCH News Director Greg O’Brien.

Local broadcasters from coast to coast, including CHCH, Victoria, B.C.’s Chek News and NTV in St. John’s, among others, say Meta’s so-called news-ban has removed legitimate, trusted news sources.

That’s leaving space for copycat content, disinformation and AI generated material pretending to be news.

This afternoon, CHCH noticed that our non-news page was taken down by Meta. We reached out to Meta, but have yet to hear back.

WATCH MORE: Meta releases Q1 earnings, adds significant investment in superintelligence