Even a cursory glance at Canada’s media landscape should be enough to tell you that we’re in big trouble when it comes to getting uncompromised reportage. Media concentration has been a reality here for years and it’s a serious problem. Meanwhile our national public broadcaster is facing its own problems, being gutted and mismanaged to the point where it’s hard to know what they’re trying to do anymore.
Ricochet Media is a web-based bilingual news outlet that isn’t up and live yet, but is expected to be by the Fall of this year – if they can raise the funds to get started. According to their website, the idea to form Ricochet was partly borne out of extreme frustration around the way national news outlets covered the 2012 student protests in Quebec – and a longstanding general disgust with how the practice of passing off partisan opinion pieces and advertorial content as “news” has become commonplace in Canada.
Ricochet isn’t the first time we’ve seen crowd funded news projects, but those tend to be on a smaller scale or more one-off project-based (by the way, have you considered supporting Prairie Dog? I’m sure we’d all really appreciate it). A Canadian national crowd funded outlet like this would be a first. And a very exciting development. You can visit Ricochet’s website (and watch their shockingly earnest promo video) here.
