Sharing, Not Caring
Friday, October 23rd, 2009 by Emily Landau | 3 Comments »
On October 2, the CBC and National Post announced a surprising new content-sharing agreement. The deal, effective immediately, grants the public broadcaster access to the Post’s financial stories for its website, while the CanWest-owned Post will publish the public broadcaster’s sports coverage online and occasionally in print. (Although unable to disclose the terms of the deal, CBC head of media relations Jeff Keay made clear in a telephone conversation that the agreement was modeled on revenue-sharing rather than licensing.) Although such story-swapping seems like a fairly innocuous announcement, it reflects an overwhelming trend in news media towards homogeneous journalism and the monopolization of the press.
“They make strange bedfellows ideologically,” observes Andrew Coyne, national editor at Maclean’s and former National Post columnist. He has a point—the CBC has long been accused of left-leaning bias, while the Post is known for its conservative editorial stance. Their divergent politics have led them to publicly lock horns on more than one occasion. From 2003–2004, the Post ran “CBC Watch,” a recurring op-ed feature that provided a forum for readers to lambaste the Ceeb’s supposedly liberal agenda, while numerous articles in the Post and other CanWest-owned dailies have called for the CBC’s privatization, a sentiment echoed by CanWest founder Israel Asper in 2002.
The CBC hasn’t kept silent, either. In a 2004 letter to the Post’s editor, then editor-in-chief of CBC News Tony Burman wrote, “The CBC does not need the Post to assure its journalistic accountability to Canadians. Unlike the Post, the CBC has a comprehensive and publicly available set of journalistic standards and practices which are unmatched in their rigour.”
Now, after years of animosity, it seems the former adversaries have banded together in the hopes that content-sharing might generate profit-sharing. Both news giants are struggling financially—last week, CanWest filed for bankruptcy protection, and in 2009, the CBC was forced to cut around 800 jobs to make up for a $171 million budget shortfall. In this unyielding economy, the CBC and the Post have gone from enemies to frenemies.
“We approached each other,” explains Jonathan Harris, vice president of digital media for the National Post. “We both saw a good synergy there.” When asked about the one-time animosity between the Post and the CBC, both Harris and Jeff Keay seem unconcerned. “We draw a distinction between news content and opinion content,” Keay says. Harris dismisses the tension as ancient history. “It was quite a few years ago,” he remarks. “We’re in an age of partnership.”
We certainly are. Although the unexpected announcement raised a lot of issues—the nature of privately versus publicly funded news sources, the dwarfing of print by web-based media, and the internet as a grey area between regulated broadcasting and unregulated press, to name a few—what is most compelling are the implications of what Harris calls the “age of partnership.” The growth of concentrated media ownership, also known as corporate journalism, describes the control of the news media by only a handful of conglomerate chains—in short, a monopoly of ideas.
Not a new development by any means, the corporatization of Canadian journalism gained speed in the 1950s and ’60s, and was first seriously identified as a point of concern in 1970 by the Special Senate Committee on Mass Media, spearheaded by senator Keith Davey. The Committee’s report succinctly summarized the argument against corporate media ownership, stating, “This country should no longer tolerate a situation where the public interest in so vital a field as information [is] dependent on the greed or goodwill of an extremely privileged group of businessmen.” The report recommended the development of a review board to approve all mergers and acquisitions of print media, a proposal that was largely ignored by the provincial and federal governments.
Throughout the ’70s, the media continued to funnel into fewer and fewer hands. In 1981, former journalist Tom Kent was assigned to lead a new commission into the state of Canadian newspapers. He and his commissioners saw the situation as dire and advocated legislation to limit the number of newspapers any one chain could own. The Kent Commission’s findings provoked livid reactions from both the public and the journalistic community. Both groups feared that empowering the government to pull the strings of the Fourth Estate would be even more catastrophic than allowing it to remaining under corporate control. As a result, the proposal was tabled.
The flatlined efforts of these two endeavours effectively gave corporations a free pass to continue merging without regulation. Over the past few decades, companies like CanWest, Torstar, CTVglobemedia, and Quebecor have been steadily gaining control over the majority of independent Canadian news sources. The results are alarming; since 1990, the number of independently owned newspapers reportedly plummeted from 17.3 percent to less than 1 percent, and by 2007, over 70 percent of daily newspaper circulation in Canada was under the thumb of four corporations.
In the short term, the appeal of corporate journalism is irresistible to executives. When a company like CanWest or Torstar controls a website, broadcasting network, and several daily newspapers, content can be generously shared among all levels of that corporation’s holdings. A story that runs in the National Post can be reproduced in the Vancouver Sun or Ottawa Citizen on the cheap, while also being broadcast on Global TV and/or streamed on Canada.com. Like magic, the corporation is able to reach an enormous audience and collect more revenues with fewer expenditures.
But the monopolization of Canadian news by corporate chains sounds a death knell for the industry on an ideological level. Ideally, news reportage is a discourse. Audiences benefit from a wide spectrum of editorial positions and journalistic voices unfettered by the commercial interests of a larger conglomerate. The current state of affairs is silencing these independent voices in favour of homogeneous content, leaving many journalists and editors out of work and thinning the industry’s talent pool.
Many of those remaining feel that their work must conform to the political and ideological persuasions of the controlling conglomerates. As a result, fewer divergent perspectives are voiced. For example, after resigning, former Post staffer (and recent Walrus contributor) Patricia Pearson wrote openly about having to censor her own liberal sympathies under the oppressive control of the Asper family. Although wire services such as The Canadian Press and Reuters also disperse homogeneous content, they are slightly less problematic. Like most news agencies, which supply news services rather than publish to a readership, both tend to be fact-based with little editorializing. In addition, Reuters enforces a strict objectivity policy, while CP is a not-for-profit cooperative, which nullifies the corporate influence held over most other media outlets.
In concentrating the media under a few corporate umbrellas, journalistic democracy is compromised, and the disconnect between the needs of the public and the word of the news product grows wider with every new acquisition. Content-sharing between the CBC and National Post is symptomatic of this trend, and draws the publicly funded CBC into the privatized media machine.
The New Yorker’s A.J. Leibling once famously quipped, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” Fewer owners, then, translates to a greatly diminished free press. But let’s not drum up the funeral march just yet. For one, CanWest’s recent announcement that it will be restructuring under credit protection signals the prospect of one of the biggest media sales in Canadian history. Although rumours persist that National Post CEO Paul Godfrey has secured backers for a buyout of the chain, there is still a chance that the sale could eventually lead to the purchase of the papers by a variety of owners, increasing the number of controlling parties.
According to Andrew Coyne, another possible saving grace could be the government relaxing restrictions on foreign ownership of media. Canadian law currently prohibits foreign control of our cultural industries. Dismantling this legislation might encourage competition and a broader range of influence. “I think we’ve artificially encouraged monopoly in this country because of the ban on foreign ownership,” said Coyne. “We’re content with cozy duopolies and monopolies when we should be opening up the market and making [the corporations] compete.”
Intriguing, yes, but Coyne’s suggestion could be dangerous—rather than diversifying our media voices, opening up Canadian journalism to foreign ownership could very well throw the industry to the proverbial wolves. In theory, foreign ownership might be a step towards opening up the system, but the possibility of the Rupert Murdochs and Sam Zells of the world grasping Canadian media properties in their clutches seems too frightening to risk.
It’s difficult to predict whether the de-corporatization of journalism is possible, or whether the current ebb in independent news voices will become permanent. In the meantime, the death of journalism has been greatly exaggerated. Sure, the industry is changeable, controversial, and constantly in flux. But news itself hasn’t gone anywhere, and if it ever does, you can bet someone will be there to write about it. While deals such as the CBC/Post alliance may seem like harbingers of doom, hope still springs eternal in the human press.
(Photo by Thomas S. Denison)
