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I’ve made the domination of Canada’s right-wing media the centrepiece of this blog. Sometimes I wonder why. Those posts are the least travelled, the least linked of any on this blog. I guess the blogging community has other things to talk about. As for the media, it certainly doesn’t want to spoil its own party.
However, it is heartening that the 10% of the media not in the pocket of the Conservative party is doing its job pointing out the shameful dominance of the right wing in our media. Operation Maple recently profiled the ’Gang of Seven’, the most prominent and powerful of the Conservative media monopolies. The Vancouver Observer picks up the Gang of Seven angle and amplifies the signal. Too bad it’s against the best interests of the major players to share in the exposition.
The Canadian news media landscape has changed dramatically since the Senate Committee on Transport and Communications released its underwhelming report on the state of Canadian media in 2006.
Three major players — CanWest Global Communications, CHUM Ltd. and Alliance Atlantis Communications — are gone, while others scrambled to pick up the spoils and adjust to life in the wireless-online world, some more successfully than others.
Those changes, however, did not translate into a more diverse and balanced media system. If anything, Canadian news coverage and commentary is more conservative than it was five years ago, and just as concentrated, as the Harper government ignored every recommendation the committee made. True, alternative media have made great strides to provide more balanced coverage of major issues in the intervening years, but a great gap still persists between advertising-financed journalism and everything else.
In the meantime, LFR will keep beating the drum, exposing the Conservative media, hoping other bloggers join in the mocking and writing about this scandal. Canada’s media shouldn’t be dominated by pundits auditioning for a place at Harper’s Senate table. US rightbloggers made ‘liberal media’ a popular catchphrase and protest movement in the States; we need to do the same. Unlike the rightbloggers, we have reason to complain.
X-posted at Let Freedom Rain.
I feel for you, kid. Ever since those heady days in the 90s when the Action Canada Network did their weekly bulletin and faxed it out across the country, I have understood the critical importance of establishing an alternative media that can present viewpoints that people need and want to hear. It’s a shame it would cost so much money to accomplish. It’s a damn good thing we have the internet and blogs and all that good stuff now to spread the word, but we still need more. I dream of a national paper like the Globe and Mail but NOT, something everyone reads that makes sense for average people. Please forgive me, as a pre-senior whose dad tried to start a small local newspaper and ended up with a commercial printing company so his kids wouldn’t starve, I still have a great fondness for newsprint and the smell of ink, as wasteful and polluting as it all is.
But keep up the good work, there are many of us reading, if not commenting. It’s worthwhile, critically important work you are doing and I commend you.
I looked into the state of media concentration on both sides of the Canada-US border in 1999 and it was shocking. The situation was taken more seriously by media critics in the US than our watchdog counterparts in Canada who were concerned but not alarmed (since the holdings were predominantly in Canadian owners hands). This study was for the feds so you couldn’t use terms like conservative or right wing concentration of view points. But I did say it was a serious threat to diversity of opinion in that study. My paper was treated like a curiosity and probably mothballed after I left shortly thereafter.
I was listening to Radio Australia very early this morning and the following story caught my attention:
AUSTRALIA’S richest person, mining billionaire Gina Rinehart, wants to buy a huge swathe in Fairfax Media that would make her the media group’s biggest shareholder.
Fairfax Media says a stockbroker acting for Mrs Rinehart approached fund managers in a $192 million attempt to acquire 10 per cent of the company, which publishes newspapers including The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review and owns radio stations.
Mrs Rinehart already holds four per cent of the company and if she is successful in her latest purchase she will hold 14 per cent of the group with a possible seat on the board.
http://www.news.com.au/business/gina-rinehart-makes-bid-for-more-fairfax-media-shares/story-e6frfm1i-1226258850356
The reporter covering the story said that she might be inclined to influence editorial content to take a more active pro-resource development stance, with particular positive reporting on mining.
Made me wonder who are the largest shareholders of our media giants. Given all the positive attention to Harper and his oil sands and other resource development pushes, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some cross-pollination between both investment groups.
You no longer have reporters, you have repeaters.
http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2010/12/28/NewNewJournalism/
The new game began in Canada on Aug. 27, 1980. “Black Wednesday”, as it became known, was the day newspaper corporations across the country colluded to swap properties and kill competition. The Ottawa Journal and the Winnipeg Tribune folded, and Vancouver Province’s owner, Southam, bought the Vancouver Sun. The two had been in bed together since 1950s via a press-and-profit-sharing agreement at Pacific Press that killed the third paper and defended against upstarts.
Suddenly competition for readers was no longer necessary; these publicly traded corporations now focused on advertiser-pleasing copy as the technique for pulling more ads.
At least Postmedia has an understandable reason for changing standards: they’re legally obligated to maximize profits. But the fact that the commercial-free public broadcaster also ignores the public good suggests that there is a new definition of journalism.
…………
Between 1990 and 2005 there were a number of media corporate mergers and takeovers in Canada. For example, in 1990, 17.3% of daily newspapers were independently owned; whereas in 2005, 1% were. These changes, among others, caused the Senate Standing Committee on Transport and Communications to launch a study of Canadian news media in March 2003. (This topic had been examined twice in the past, by the Davey Commission (1970) and the Kent Commission (1981), both of which produced recommendations that were never implemented in any meaningful way.)
The Senate Committee’s final report, released in June 2006, expressed concern about the effects of the current levels of news media ownership in Canada. Specifically, the Committee discussed their concerns regarding the following trends: the potential of media ownership concentration to limit news diversity and reduce news quality. (2)
http://pushedleft.blogspot.com/2010/11/cold-case-solved-murder-of-canadas.html
With fewer journalists on staff, news editors increasingly turn to the copy provided by organizations like the Fraser Institute to fill the “news holes” between advertisements in their papers.
This is why we get so many reports from bogus groups like the Fraser, the Frontier Centre, The Canadian Taxpayers Federation and the Manning Centre for Destroying Democracy. Not enough staff so we allow them to fill in the blanks.
http://pushedleft.blogspot.com/2010/11/cold-case-solved-murder-of-canadas.html