Geoffrey Stevens - Straight Goods VIA theFilter.ca July 21, 2006
Media ownership is more concentrated in Canada than in any other Western country — and our laws to protect the public interest from excessive media power are the weakest anywhere.
The reasons are not hard to fathom. Politicians are afraid of media owners, most of whom are richer and more powerful than they are. Every politician is familiar with the old adage: never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel or newsprint by the ton (or who commands fistfuls of broadcasting licences).
Politicians will normally respond to pressure from the press or the public. In the situation we are discussing, however, there is no effective pressure. The media have no interest in enlightening the public about the perils of entrusting too much power to too few media owners. And media owners are not beating a path to Parliament to demand that MPs order them to divest some of their holdings. Obviously.
Advertisers pushed columnist Vivian Smith out of the Times-Colonist for suggesting the best tourist attractions are free.
Three times in the past 37 years, Ottawa has conducted inquiries into ownership concentration and cross-ownership (print owning broadcast and vice versa). But nothing has been done. In 1972, the federal government did go to court in a bid to break up the Irving newspaper monopoly in New Brunswick. The government lost that case because the law had no teeth. Rather than fix the law, the politicians gave up.
I'm not arguing that all chain ownership is bad. There have been cases where chain ownership has saved marginal newspapers and broadcast outlets. But there have been far more cases where owners, obsessed with the bottom line, have slashed costs, fired perfectly competent journalists, closed news bureaus and turned pretty good operations into shoddy but profitable ones.
One example. When the London Free Press was independently owned (by the Blackburn family), it was one of the best mid-sized newspapers in Canada. It has passed through the hands of various chains. The current owner, Sun Media (Toronto Sun, etc) has completed the process of turning the once proud "Freep" into, in my view, the worst daily in the country.
Another example. The Southam newspapers (Ottawa Citizen, Edmonton Journal, etc) used to be known for quality coverage, especially in international news. Then they fell into the hands of Conrad Black. After Black had done all the damage he could do, he enriched himself by selling the papers to the Asper family, of Global TV. The former Southam papers had 11 foreign bureaus when the Aspers acquired them. Only two remain today.
What's worse, the Aspers have served notice that they intend to pull CanWest Global, their print and broadcast behemoth, out of Canadian Press, the 89-year-old national newsgathering collective. The departure may cripple CP, and it will leave CanWest readers and viewers with even less news of Canada and the world. But it will save struggling CanWest $4.6 million a year. Profit is clearly more important than the public trust.
There was more bad news last week when it was announced that BellGlobe Media, owner of CTV and the Globe and Mail, will pay $1.4 billion to acquire CHUM Ltd. With its 33 radio stations, 12 TV stations and 21 specialty channels. Overnight BGM/CTV/CHUM becomes the dominant force in Canadian broadcasting — powerful enough to push smaller players (perhaps even Global) out of the game.
The takeover would never be allowed in the United States where laws against excessive concentration and cross-ownership are enforced. But not in Canada.
Another bit of bad news. Vivian Smith was fired the other day as a columnist for the Victoria Times Colonist. (I should declare that Smith is a friend of mine; we worked together at the Globe and Mail. She is an excellent journalist, and the TC was fortunate to have her.)
Smith's sin? She wrote a column suggesting that some of the best summer attractions in Victoria are free ones, and that some of the traditional tourist attractions are overpriced (which is true). But tourism operators are advertisers, and something unmentionable hit the proverbial fan. The TC published a letter from a tourism official refuting Smith's column. The paper ran a front page correction. And the publisher met with a representative of Butchart Gardens, one of the advertisers. Next day, Smith's contract was cancelled.
Although the bloggers are having a field day, none of this was reported in the TC or the Vancouver Sun or Vancouver Province. All three are owned by bottom-feeding CanWest Global. As they say, freedom of the press is reserved to those who own it.
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens, an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail, teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph. He welcomes comments at the email address below.
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Media ownership is more concentrated in Canada than in any other Western country — and our laws to protect the public interest from excessive media power are the weakest anywhere.
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