(Quebec) The closure of Metro Media is attributable to “a crisis within” the company rather than “the media crisis”, believes the Minister of Culture and Communications, Mathieu Lacombe, recalling that the owner paid himself a generous dividend.
“It’s a crisis inside the media rather than a crisis of the media in this context, in this specific case, I think it is important to make allowances”, underlined Mr. Lacombe when he arrives at the Council of Ministers on Wednesday. The Minister of Culture and Communications rejected in the same breath the request of the Liberals, who are calling for emergency aid of one million to save the newspaper Métro.
“In the sequence, I think that this request from the Liberal Party [of Quebec] probably came before the broadcast […] of the situation at Metro, that is to say that there is a shareholder, you know who decided to pay themselves a dividend…a lot of money, two million dollars if my memory serves me right, then that means that indeed there are financial problems today,” he said. explain.
A few days after the company’s closure – which caused shock waves in the media – Le Journal de Montréal revealed that the owner, Michael Raffoul, had paid himself a dividend of $2.57 million in August 2021. The Mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante, also deplored that Mr. Raffoul had paid himself a dividend from “taxpayer money”.
Minister Lacombe also indicated that he was currently looking into the crisis affecting the news media. “I’m looking at this to see how we can better support the media, because they’re important,” Lacombe said. “Then also, what can we do to […] combat the plummeting confidence that citizens have because these figures are worrying,” he added.
