Point of view

Does CanWest know what all the fuss is about?
By Mike Gasher

The Aspers have inadvertently given new life to criticisms of corporate concentration

Thanks to CanWest Global Communications, concerns about the opaque issues of corporate concentration and media convergence are now much more clear and comprehensible. CanWest's decision in early December to run "national" editorials up to three times per week in 13 Southam daily newspapers is only the latest in a series of moves by the country's principal newspaper owner to exert centralized, heavy-handed control over its media properties.

The national editorials, written at CanWest head office in Winnipeg, have been met with unanimous condemnation from journalists, academics, politicians and newspaper readers of all political stripes, including one former Southam publisher and three former editors of Southam's Montreal Gazette. The policy represents a radical departure from Southam's long-standing commitment to editorial independence for each of its member newspapers and a transparent attempt by CanWest to assume control of the editorial voice of its newspapers. This control is not confined to the editorial page, but is evident in the news pages, too.

Nowhere has the reaction been stronger than at the Montreal Gazette, where journalists signed and published a petition criticizing the national editorials, staged a by-line strike — ended by management decree after two days — and established an independent web site to draw attention to an issue that their own newspaper has tried to ignore — a web site that was shut down after one week when management threatened action against disloyal employees. Two editorial cartoons dealing with the national editorials, by the Gazette's renowned cartoonist Aislin (Terry Mosher), were spiked.

Worse even than threatening individual Gazette journalists with the loss of their jobs, CanWest is threatening Southam's journalism with a loss of credibility, something that CanWest managers don't seem to fathom. Southam coverage of at least two specific subject areas — the prime minister and the Middle East — is compromised by CanWest's unbending support for Jean Chrétien and the state of Israel.

Last August, for example, CanWest terminated Southam News national affairs columnist Lawrence Martin, claiming it was an effort to avoid redundancy and cut costs. Maclean's magazine said Martin was fired for his persistent criticism of Chrétien, and this is the version of the story most journalists believe.

Later the same month, Montreal Gazette publisher Michael Goldbloom announced his resignation. His explanation was vague, but he told staffers: "CanWest has a more centralized approach to its management, and there are some aspects of the operations where we have had different perspectives." Sources claim that one of these "different perspectives" is Southam newspapers' coverage of the Middle East.

Last November, Gazette TV columnist Peggy Curran drew readers' attention to a documentary entitled Line of Fire on CBC's Witness, a film which suggests Palestinian journalists in the West Bank have been targeted by Israeli soldiers. Before Curran's column ran, reporters at the Gazette say it was vetted by CanWest head office and changes were made.

Even Gazette editor-in-chief Peter Stockland confessed to readers last November that he couldn't do anything about a decision to reduce the space in his paper devoted to book reviews. Bombarded with e-mails from angry book-lovers, Stockland blamed "corporate accountants" who "keep books of a very different order."

CanWest has inadvertently given new life to criticisms of corporate concentration. Readers can't count on Southam newspapers to cover a protest in which CanWest is implicated. If you want to know what's going on at the Southam papers, you have to read the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, the Winnipeg Free Press, Le Devoir, La Presse, Le Journal de Montréal, watch CTV, CBC, or listen to CBC Radio. Luckily, we still have these alternatives.

Quebec has become the flashpoint for two good reasons. First, the Gazette is the only local, English-language newspaper in Canada's second-largest city, and for that reason has a special bond with Montreal's anglophone community. While not all Montreal anglophones are happy with this, readers nonetheless depend on the Gazette to offer an anglophone perspective on current events. Gazette editorials, columns and op-ed articles have a particularly important role to play in this regard, something Gazette journalists clearly comprehend and which explains their commitment to local editorial independence.

Second, the newspaper industry in Quebec is even more concentrated than it is in the rest of the country. Two companies — Quebecor and Gesca — own all of the province's French-language dailies but one, accounting for 97 per cent of newspaper circulation. Le Devoir is the only independent. While the Canadian government dithers over the questions of concentration and convergence, the Quebec government staged public hearings on newspaper concentration last year and released a report in November. Among other things, the report called for newspaper companies to publish their statement of principles and steps they are taking to ensure diversity.

The report was roundly criticized for its timidity at a meeting of the Quebec Federation of Journalists in Trois-Rivières in November, but in light of CanWest's recent behaviour, Quebec's minister of culture and communication, Diane Lemieux, is threatening to take some of its recommendations seriously. In fact, she plans to introduce legislation to ensure "a plurality of opinion and a plurality of sources of information" in the face of concentrated newspaper ownership.

Such legislation is unlikely, of course, because Canadian law supports the A.J. Liebling quip that freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. Nonetheless, Lemieux summed up the whole issue nicely when she told the Quebec National Assembly a week before Christmas: "I am reminded that newspaper companies are not at all like other companies, since their business concerns information, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, in other words, values … which are shared by the citizens of Quebec and which are entrenched in our constitution."

Rather than dismiss Lemieux as a separatist, CanWest critics as central Canadians and Gazette reporters as "riff raff," the brain trust in Winnipeg would be wise to consider Lemieux's comment. It might help them grasp what the fuss is about.