In preparing its report The Shattered Mirror, the Public Policy Forum partnered with the Canadian Journalism Foundation and engaged the Earnscliffe Strategy Group to conduct research that would provide a consumer perspective on the subject in question: news, trust and democracy in the digital age. We conducted six focus groups, two each in Montreal, Toronto and Regina in August and September 2016, and followed these up with a nationwide Internet survey of 1,509 adult Canadians between September 22 and October 2, drawn from a Leger panel. We looked at changing patterns of news consumption, trust in various delivery platforms for news, the linkage between democracy and both the presence and the consumption of news, awareness of financial difficulties facing news-gathering organizations and public reaction to various public policy options that might be considered to remedy these difficulties. Here is what we found.
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