Regulatory, Telecom & Media News – Aldo Di Felice among Canadian Ethnic Media Association honourees

Aldo Di Felice, President of TLN Media Group, is among those recognized by the Canadian Ethnic Media Association (CEMA) at the organization’s 44th Annual Awards for Journalistic Excellence. Di Felice is the recipient of this year’s Sierhey Khmara Ziniak Award, named for CEMA’s founder and executive director, “for unswerving dedication to multiculturalism and its affirmative expression through media.” Other winners included Franklin Rodriguez, host of CHIN Radio Ottawa’s The Spanglish Hour and Fairchild Television Executive Producer Ada Luk. Read more here. The CEMA awards webcast will stream Thursday, Nov. 17 at 7 p.m. ET,  co-hosted by Karen Johnson and Pauline Chan.

RTDNA Canada has opened nominations for its 2023 Lifetime Achievement Awards. The awards recognize individuals who have distinguished themselves through outstanding service and continued excellence during the course of their career in audio, digital and/or video journalism. The award is for lifetime achievement rather than for a single contribution. View past honourees here.

The Sidney Hillman Foundation is now accepting nominations for the 2023 Canadian Hillman Prize honouring excellence in investigative journalism in service of the common good. The Hillman Prize celebrates print, digital and broadcast reporting that exposes social and economic injustice and leads to meaningful public policy change. Entries must have been published or broadcast in 2022 and made widely available to a Canadian audience. Nominated material can be submitted here until Jan. 15. There is no fee to enter. The Canadian Hillman Prize winner(s) will be awarded a $5,000 honorarium and certificate at a March 30 celebration in Toronto as well as travel to New York City to be a guest at the U.S Hillman Prize ceremony. Previous winners include The Walrus, Globe and Mail, Crackdown podcast, CBC’s fifth estate, and TVO. This year’s Canadian judges are documentary filmmaker Neil Docherty, arts journalist and broadcaster Garvia Bailey, and documentary and news producer Bonnie Brown.

The Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) and the Fédération des télévisions communautaires autonomes du Québec (the Fédération) have expressed concern that Bill C-18, the Online News Act, does not include small, not-for-profit news organizations like community broadcasters. The two associations say based on the implementation of similar legislation in Australia, community media will likely be left out of the news compensation scheme unless amendments are made, noting a brief submitted to the Heritage committee by the National Community and Campus Radio Association (NCRA) and the Community Radio Fund of Canada (CRFC) that indicates of 452 community radio stations in Australia, fewer than a dozen have been able to negotiate any compensation for their online news from Google or Facebook. Read more here.