Jen Gerson, national commentator and co-founder of the publication *The Line*, will be speaking at Vancouver Island University on Wednesday, Jan. 10 about “Free speech in the digital age.” Photo provided.

Jen Gerson, national commentator and co-founder of The Line, will be speaking at Vancouver Island University tonight, Wednesday, January 10, on “Free speech in the digital age.”

Last month, regulations for the Canadian government’s Online News Act, which seeks to regulate tech giants Meta and Google in Canada, were published outlining how the new law would be implemented.

While Google reached an agreement with the government and will be paying $100 million to news organizations in Canada in exchange for sharing links to news content, Meta has been blocking news on Facebook and Instagram since the law was passed in the summer.

Gerson says that Meta’s decision to block news in response to the law means that Canadains who rely on social media for their information are getting it from less reputable sources.

“One of the big risks I think of the Online News Act is because Facebook made its business decision to pull news off of its platform, what actually is going to happen is that people who are overly reliant on social media to get access to their local community news, are going to get driven away from more credible sources, and into more radical organizations,” she said.

Dr. David Livingstone is the chair of Liberal Studies at Vancouver Island University and is organizing Gerson’s talk. He says there as access to and trust in mainstream media decreases, people turn more to sources that they already agree with.

“A lot of people have talked about this problem where essentially what we do is we find ourselves just seeking out the media that confirms our own bias,” he said. “Truth be told, I can find myself doing that a little bit as well, you tend to go to the media sources, where you're going to find the stories that sort of bolster your own position.”

While Gerson is critical of the Online News Act she says there is a role for government funding of Canada’s public broadcaster.

“It's already a massive intervention by the government into this industry,” she said. “That is the appropriate method by which the government should be addressing questions of disinformation, making sure that its populace is well informed and making sure that there's a shared common Canadian culture and reality that we're all connected to.”

Gerson thinks that the Conservative Party of Canada’s Leader Peirre Polivere is making a mistake when he attacks the CBC’s funding.

“I think the Conservatives are making a very crucial mistake when they threaten to defund the CBC, because my response to this was, is always what are you going to replace it with if the private sector collapses in most of the country? How are you going to govern an informed population? How are you going to do that?” she said. “I don't think that the conservatives have a good answer for that question.”

Students from the the Muslim Women’s Club at VIU will be attending the talk to challenge Gerson over a column she wrote in October about what she calls leftists’ support for Hamas’ pogrom in southern Israel.

Livingstone says that he welcomes people who may disagree with Gerson to attend and ask questions during the discussion period.

“I would absolutely welcome them to come to the talk,” he said. “I think we're going to have a really interesting discussion afterwards. We're going to certainly set aside some time where there's going to be questions and answers.”

While Livingstone said he doesn’t know Gerson personally he thinks she will be an engaging speaker.

“I've invited her because I think she's intriguing, interesting, exciting, and also provocative, and I'm pretty confident that she can hold her own in a discussion,” he said.

The talk will be held on Wednesday January 10, at VIU’s Nanaimo campus in Building 355, Lecture Hall 203 at 6 p.m. It is sponsored by the Alexandro Malaspina Research Centre’s Malaspina Fellowship Program with financial support from The Institute for Liberal Studies.

A longer version of the interview with Jen Gerson aired on Midcoast Morning. You can listen to it here.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.