(FPJQ/IFEX) – Please note that Peter Stockland is editor-in-chief of “The Montreal Gazette”. He was incorrectly identified as the newspaper’s publisher in the FPJQ Canada alert issued on 13 December 2001. The FPJQ regrets the error. The corrected alert follows: For the second week in a row, fourteen newspapers in Canada’s major cities, including “The […]
(FPJQ/IFEX) – Please note that Peter Stockland is editor-in-chief of “The Montreal Gazette”. He was incorrectly identified as the newspaper’s publisher in the FPJQ Canada alert issued on 13 December 2001. The FPJQ regrets the error. The corrected alert follows:
For the second week in a row, fourteen newspapers in Canada’s major cities, including “The Montreal Gazette”, will be obliged to publish the same national editorial. The newspapers belong to media giant CanWest Global. For the moment, the company plans to run the same national editorial once a week in all of its fourteen newspapers. Yet according to Paul Cauchon, the media columnist at the independent Montreal daily newspaper “Le Devoir”, within a year the media giant plans to publish national editorials three times a week.
CanWest says it wants to encourage national debate. The first editorial dealt with Canada’s federal budget. It asked the Finance Minister to ease the tax burden on Canada’s private charities. What it didn’t mention was that the Asper family runs one of those charities.
The decision is alarming for journalists at “The Gazette”, who feel both their independence and the diversity of media opinion across the country have been attacked. Two editorial cartoons poking fun at the Asper media empire have been pulled from the paper. A column criticising the national editorials was also pulled. In addition, when the paper’s television and radio critic wrote about a documentary that demonstrates how Israeli soldiers target media working on the Palestinian side of the conflict, her story was pulled until she agreed to reword it. Peggy Curran says in the past she was allowed to write what she wanted. She can’t think of any other time this has happened.
More than fifty journalists have signed an open letter that was published in newspapers and that denounces the national editorials. They say they want Canadians to know that a very powerful family that controls a part of the news media is abusing its power.
The newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Peter Stockland, says there is a lot of room for dissenting voices at the paper. “The Gazette”‘s former publisher resigned citing differences with head office. The editorial page editor has asked to be reassigned.
Some of the journalists at “The Gazette” have protested by refusing to sign their articles. They say this is the first striking example of what can happen when media ownership is too tightly controlled by too few people.
Founded by Canadian businessman Izzy Asper, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, CanWest became a huge media empire last year when it bought all of the Southam publications from media giant Conrad Black. Worth more than three billion Canadian dollars (approx. US$1.9 billion), the transaction included 13 daily newspapers in Canada’s main cities, 130 diverse publications (including dailies, weeklies, and community newspapers), some 80 magazines and Internet sites.
At the same time, CanWest also became fifty percent owner of one of Canada’s national newspapers, the “National Post”. When it bought the other fifty percent of the daily this past autumn, it gained total control of the newspaper. CanWest also owns the national television chain Global.
A much-publicised debate on media concentration at the Southam newspapers took place in March 2001 when Asper’s son, David, asked journalists working for his father to be careful about attacking Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. Asper’s ties to Chrétien’s Liberal Party are well-known.
The FPJQ gives its full support to the journalists at “The Gazette”. It believes that CanWest’s policies clearly demonstrate the harmful impact of excessive media concentration in Canada. These new policies can only serve to reduce the diversity of the very viewpoints the media is obliged to reflect.
The FPJQ’s Committee on Media Concentration will meet later this week to discuss this issue; in particular, it will develop strategies to counter a recent and disappointing Quebec government report on media concentration. The report came in the wake of a parliamentary commission on media concentration that was held last winter at the FPJQ’s request. The current example involving CanWest only serves to emphasise the urgency of this matter.
