The Russell Mills Incident
Over at the CBC, Gary Graves tries to explain why we're talking so much about the sacking of Russell Mills (details here and here). The CBC's panel discussion on the matter this morning featured several national columnists, academics and the now ubiquitous Alexa McDonut (who couldn't buy air time before she announced she was stepping down as NDP leader) talking about how freedom of the press is essential to democracy.
Maybe I should be more worried about media concentration, or the so-called Asper Effect, but I think all the teeth-gnashing over this issue shows that our press (and isn't that a dated word?) is only mildly constrained by an explicit corporate agenda. According to the CanWest spokesman on CBC, their national editorial policy accounts for something like one in 300 editorials appearing in CanWest papers every week. Unfortunately the local papers can't disagree with the basic positions of the national editorials. But other media can disagree, and they will, taking care to mention each and every time that the views expressed in those national editorials belong to Canada's newest media barons.
Most Canadians are unaware of the implicit corporate agenda that influences every paper and newscast. The Aspers are right when they point out that as the proprietors of a newspaper they are entitled to a certain amount of editorial control. Their spokesman said that CanWest papers should reflect every "reasonable" voice on an issue. But it's not very likely that voices that attack capitalism, big media, corporate greed--the sort of stuff that appears in Adbusters--would fit the Aspers' definition of reasonable.
Maybe I should be more worried about media concentration, or the so-called Asper Effect, but I think all the teeth-gnashing over this issue shows that our press (and isn't that a dated word?) is only mildly constrained by an explicit corporate agenda. According to the CanWest spokesman on CBC, their national editorial policy accounts for something like one in 300 editorials appearing in CanWest papers every week. Unfortunately the local papers can't disagree with the basic positions of the national editorials. But other media can disagree, and they will, taking care to mention each and every time that the views expressed in those national editorials belong to Canada's newest media barons.
Most Canadians are unaware of the implicit corporate agenda that influences every paper and newscast. The Aspers are right when they point out that as the proprietors of a newspaper they are entitled to a certain amount of editorial control. Their spokesman said that CanWest papers should reflect every "reasonable" voice on an issue. But it's not very likely that voices that attack capitalism, big media, corporate greed--the sort of stuff that appears in Adbusters--would fit the Aspers' definition of reasonable.
Posted by Gene Smith on Jun 23, 2002
