It's a Canadian media power play unlike any other: Alphabet and Meta are fighting back against the Canadian government's Bill C-18. And caught in the middle is the news media. 

The Online News Act – was supposed to make tech giants pay for posting news stories to their platforms. 

Now Google and Meta say they aren't going to pay. Instead — they'll remove Canadian news from their sites and apps. It's a move that will make it more difficult for Canadians to access news. And may very well plummet news companies further into the red.

This all comes as news companies are cutting back, looking at mergers, trying to get out of obligations of providing local news to Canadians. Chris Waddell joins Tamara Khandaker to sort through this. He's a former professor at  the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University. He's also the publisher at J-Source, a website dedicated to the Canadian media industry.

For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts