Rosebud. The rise and fall of CanWest.

If you are an old movie buff, think of the film Citizen Kane.
Loosely based on the life of William Randolph Hearst, the creator of yellow journalism, "sensationalized stories of dubious veracity".

William Randolph Hearst controlled 30 papers in the US, at that time it was the first media conglomerate in the world. Magazines and papers, all geared to deliver racy headlines and political messages dictated by the man in charge.

Media conglomerates became our future, worldwide. Canada has followed along....

In 2000, Asper and his son Leonard expanded his empire by buying a half interest in Conrad Black's flagship newspaper, the National Post, and taking over the rest of the Black empire – 13 major daily newspapers and 136 smaller ones – in a $3.5-billion deal. A year later, the Aspers bought up the remaining 50 per cent of the National Post.

But unlike Hearst, who would hire massive amounts of writers, reporters and cartoonists, this new mega model took a more centralized, McDonald's approach. Just like the Golden arches where you will find the same big mac at any of the thousands of restaurants with the same pickles and onions, on a homogenized bun; with the CanWest chain, you will get the exact same indigestible content in any of their publications across Canada.

McMedia.

One of my own theories? Besides being inherently dangerous to any country that needs an informed citizenry....Fast food McMedia is also not a winning business model. If every single city has the same articles as the flagship national version? Why would anyone buy a local paper and a National? The only reason that people would purchase a National paper like.....the National post is to gather information from a National perspective. 

The ensuing assault on journalism resulted in not one but two federal media inquiries. As usual, however, nothing came from either. CanWest's owning Asper family of Winnipeg proved ardent political activists in their stewardship of the Southam dailies. In late 2001, CanWest ordered them to run unprecedented "national" editorials written at company headquarters, undermining local editorial independence.

That brought protest from Southam journalists across Canada, many of whom withdrew their bylines or quit.
In mid-2002, Ottawa Citizen publisher Russell Mills was fired after his newspaper called for the resignation of Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien, an Asper family friend. Later that year the Southam chain, which dated to the 19th century, was renamed CanWest Publications. While the national editorials were quietly dropped, news gathering became increasingly centralized.

At one time the Asper's supported the Liberals, (party in power, hint hint) but in the last few years they have become great defenders of the Harper Conservatives. They have officially endorsed the Harper Conservatives in the last couple elections. 

Supporting a political party like that, ANY party is rather against the actual purpose of media, but it is usually more profitable in other ways.

There are what appears to be some other rather glaring problems with the way that CanWest uses information.

In 2004, the Reuters news agency protested after Canwest altered newswire stories about the Iraq war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such that Reuters felt it had inserted Canwest's own bias under Reuters bylines. The changes were apparently made in accordance with a Canwest policy to label certain groups as terrorists.

A couple years ago, the "Iran eyes badges for Jews" story, manufactured out of whole cloth and then repeated by the National post with absolutely no attempt at verification, eroded any credibility the National Post may have had. When snopes.com has a page up devoted to debunking a "news" story, you know there is a serious problem.

One could go on and on all day with what are to many of us, issues of credibilty and the National Post.  Including the connections to Ultra Conservative think tanks, and a few of their editorial staff.

The SLAPP's.... ( strategic lawsuit against public participation).....I'll refer you to Dawg's Blawg for this excellent rundown and history on this one. This story has been largely ignored by all the other media outlets, so it is difficult to find a corporate media version of events. But the people fighting this Lawsuit have been providing the hard evidence to back up thier story.

Despite all of this opinion and influence, the really interesting parts that not too many seem to mention? 

Canadians haven't shifted right at all.

As for Canada, Harris-Decima recently concluded an end-of-decade telephone poll on political values of more than 1,000 Canadians and came to a firm conclusion. "Canadians are, on balance, small-l liberals," says Gregg. Respondents, asked to self-identify their position on the ideological spectrum, hewed dominantly centre left.

Only 17 per cent of respondents identified themselves with the most extreme left-and right-wing options on the questionnaire - which Harris-Decima benignly offered up as "fairly left" or "fairly right" of centre.

Just as an aside, despite all the news coming from the US, it is only the Government there that appears to have shifted to the right. The mighty Wurlitzer that we see coming over the airwaves and in print media? 

A large U.S. research paper published in October 2007, using data over a 32-year period from 46,000 Americans, found that "the direction of change is most often toward increased tolerance rather than increased conservatism."

Squeaky wheels, fuelled by large amounts of money.

Polls are interesting sometimes to look at, Governments and media spend millions to commission these polls, they usually live and breathe by them. Harper says that his Government would never rule by public  polls, despite the amazing increase we have seen using tax payer dollars since the Harper Conservatives got their minority government. 

Under Stephen Harper's Conservatives, the federal government spent more money on polling and focus groups last year than in any other since it began tracking the total costs of public opinion surveys.
More than $31 million was spent sampling opinions in 2006-07, the first full fiscal year under a Tory government, according to a Public Works and Government Services Canada report.

They have been quietly running tax payer funded polls, even on matters that were settled many many years ago.  

So, despite the media love affair with conservatism, despite a consolidation to fast food journalism, despite a "decade of efforts by the Asper family to make many of Canada's leading newspapers a key part of their drive to turn what was once a small, Winnipeg-based company into a national powerhouse, influencing opinion across the country and beyond."

They are failing both financially, and ideologically.

Lots of big media chains are. Let's be honest about it. Some blame the new INTERNET media atmosphere, but this decline started well before the Internet really took off. The "new media" only added to the decline.

With the global economic collapse precipitated by wholesale deregulation and free markets run amok? The decline just went a lot faster.

Before anyone says I sound gleeful? I am not.
I am actually depressed and worried about the slow death of the media.

McMedia would be a welcome demise, if we could save the good parts. But that would take some strong action, and some re-regulation. 

It will be a cold -45 day in a tropical place when that happens. And that looks more and more unlikely every day even in parts of the North. Maybe in part because some of our media keeps the "debate" about climate change alive...?

Ain't going to need a sled named Rosebud.

I am blogger. I have no political party that I belong to, but am most decidedly not a conservative except in the sense that I don't like Governments spending on useless crap....Like endless polls on settled law and MILLIONS spent advertising the "action plan". Some of that has even been paid to US companies?  Thousands of taxpayer dollars spent hiring a US Republican spokesperson to "improve" The PM's image in the US?  TALK about adscam! I am a Canadian, and I vote.