Concentration of ownership in world and Canada - Who owns what?

- Private ministry of information: when small # of firms with similar interests dominate media industry, in effect functions similar to state information system (Ben Bagdikian)

- Corporate voice generalized to be "people’s voice", even though it is only one voice, a special interest, e.g. success of country framework is that of corporate success

- Ownership restricted to those who have access to financial resources

- Influence on policy substantial

- Won’t find consistent or blatant promotion of a single political agenda

- Inclusion/exclusion of info: owners can disseminate specific position in news or entertainment

- Consider focus on stories making gov’t look bad, business look good

EXCELLENT ARTICLE ON CANADA

It's the issue the other parties dare not talk about! It's the media, silly - the growing concentration of mass-media ownership in just a few hands, almost all of the same narrow political stripe.

Conrad Black's gobbling up of newspapers in Canada, and moulding them to his own ideological bias, was bad enough - more extreme concentration than anywhere else in the western world. Now Black has sold most of his major dailies here to Izzy Asper and his company CanWest, the owner of BCTV, CHEK and the Global television network. This takes concentration to an even more destructive level: massive "cross-ownership." BCE, meanwhile, has bought the CTV television network and the Globe and Mail.

In the end it's these media owners who have the power, not the Liberals or any other political party. The media "set the frame" - the perspective through which issues are examined and the news is filtered - and this influences in turn how people vote and what political parties say, or don't say, as they try to be elected.

In other words, we don't live in a full-fledged democracy any longer. We live in a "managed democracy" - a kind of new feudalism in which a few media conglomerates manage what news we receive and how we look at it. And the Liberals have done nothing as this concentration of ownership has grown worse, very much worse. The Alliance won't talk about the issue, either. They don't want the media concentration to be questioned, because most media owners are right-wing just like themselves. But what about the Canadian public and their right to know, and especially their right to hear diverse points of view?

No issue is as important as this one for Canadians, not health care, education, jobs, or the economy, for the media determine how we all see those issues and everything else that affects us. Media ownership determines what kind of democracy we have, or whether we have a genuine democracy at all.

For the Liberals and the Alliance, it's a big taboo. Thou shalt not talk about it. We, for our part, are indeed going to talk about it.

When Southam Inc. and Thomson many years ago began accumulating newspapers in a big way in Canada, it marked a disturbing trend. There was a Senate inquiry and then a Royal Commission, both of which rang alarm bells and recommended something be done. The Liberals did nothing. Concentration of media power - the power in particular to intimidate - was too much for shilly-shallying Liberal governments which preferred to sit on their hands rather than do anything so bold as protect the public interest.

Broadcasting companies also began merging television and radio stations in Canada. The airwaves, at least according to the Canadian Broadcasting Act, belonged to the public, and in the licensing of stations to use those public airwaves, local ownership was a democratic keystone. The mergers, and then accelerating concentration, destroyed this democratic premise. Liberal governments did nothing.

Then Conrad Black, with properties in Britain and the United States, and who also owned the Sterling newspapers, a chain of smaller papers in British Columbia, began targetting Canada in a big way, through his company Hollinger Inc. He ended up swallowing both the Financial Post and the inflated Southam chain itself (including many so-called "community" newspapers), plus the Sifton papers in Saskatchewan. Then he used the resources he could squeeze out of those properties to establish yet another paper, this one blanketing the country, The National Post. Through these acquisitions, Black would control roughly 60 per cent of all daily newspapers in the country and 45 per cent of its newspaper circulation. Liberal governments did nothing.

There was no doubt, either, that Black would manhandle his newspapers so that they would speak Black's party line, from editorial writers to news coverage to columnists. David Radler, Black's right hand man, put it bluntly: "I am ultimately the publisher of all these papers, and if editors disagree with us, they should disagree with us when they're no longer in our employ." In British Columbia, where Black owned all the daily newspaper province-wide, including the two major Vancouver dailies, this meant control of coverage and opinion in spades. The Liberal government didn't care, and neither did Preston Manning and the Reform Party, who loudly pretended to be defenders of democracy, but in practice were quite willing to see it subverted.

The distortion and bias this concentrated ownership has brought to journalism, and especially to the Vancouver Sun and The Province, is legend.

Rogers Communications Inc., the cable giant, and also owner of several broadcasting properties, at the same time acquired Maclean-Hunter and with it Maclean's magazine. Liberal governments did nothing.

Then, as recounted here in The Big Taboo!, Black sold out the best part of his newspaper holdings in Canada to Izzy Asper and CanWest. Asper, who already owned the Global Television network, had recently also acquired BCTV and CHEK. For the Greater Vancouver area, this means particularly extreme concentration, with the two dailies (the Vancouver Sun and The Province), several other papers (like Burnaby Now and the Vancouver Courier) and the dominant television outlet, BCTV, all under the same roof. The Liberal government did nothing.

To rub salt in the wound, none of this ownership is British Columbian. We used to have local ownership, and our papers reflected the liveliness and diversity of society and politics here. All that is gone now. No other major city in Canada, either, suffers from the extent of media concentration in single hands that we do here, but this is Vancouver so the Liberals don't even care about that. Nor do Stockwell Day and the Alliance, the Reform Party's successor. They just don't care and they don't want to talk about it, despite its crucial importance.

We do care. We know that without representative and diverse media ownership, the public is shortchanged and manipulated, with a devastating effect on the choices we make and how we govern ourselves.

It's true, mind you, that standing up to this media concentration and the corporations behind it takes a bit of courage, not least because the media are the gatekeepers and have the ability to crucify any political party that might put a democratic society first. It's also true that the Liberals and the Alliance don't have that courage. Some things, however, need to be done. Restoring genuinely democrat media is the first task we should set for ourselves, collectively as Canadians, because without that, the democratic game is over.

Framing the issues

Remember the big deficit debate? Preston Manning and Paul Martin, like two dummies operated by the same ventriloquist, insisted we had to cut back on health care and education in order to eliminate the deficit. They pretended to be tough-minded and this was the only choice we had. Okay, it's the kind of game we might expect them to play, but where were the media? They took Manning's and Martin's perspective for granted, and almost all their coverage of political debate about the deficit issue was in those terms.

There was, however, another way of eliminating the deficit: tightening up tax loopholes; implementing an estate tax for the very wealthy; taxing financial speculation like currency trading; cutting back the money supply of the big chartered banks to allow more room for social programs in our economy, through the Bank of Canada; and perhaps most important of all, cutting back interest rates (which had been high) to help the economy grow. Doing it that way, on the revenue side, would have required real toughness on Manning's and Martin's part: disciplining their political friends rather than taking a big strip off the back of Canadians at large. You might not agree with this option, but it was a choice. The media screened it out.

It was also a fairer option. The cause of the large public debt was not public spending but high interest rates and tax leakage. This was well-documented. People with large assets (who fed on those interest rates) and corporations and high-income earners (who could take advantage of the tax loopholes) were the ones who profited. They didn't earn the pay-off. It was a windfall for them. It was only fair, then, that they should accept the burden of eliminating the debt, as in the second option. The media, however, screened this out, too. Their coverage was based on the assumption, which they repeated ad nauseam - although it was a false one - that program spending was responsible for the debt.

The distorting impact of all this on the deficit debate, and on voting patterns, was enormous. The odds are overwhelming that you, yourself - you personally - assumed from this coverage that (a) the debt was caused by overspending, and (b) the only way to eliminate the deficit was by cutting back on program spending, and this helped shape your political views accordingly.

The joke was on us all.

Or take the way the media deal with the economy, with foofaraw about stock markets and the need to indulge investors, even if that tears up our society. But the world is awash in capital. What counts in economies is people, moreso today than ever. To put it in a phrase: "The economy is us." We don't have to let outsiders intimidate us.

The key for people in a modern economy is education. The media, however, in their perspective on the economy, don't make that linkage, or they make it only in passing. Again, the impact on politics and on how we vote is enormous. And again the joke is on us all.

Or take media hype over the last several years about the demand for tax cuts and even about a "tax revolt." This is a key element in what is happening in the federal election today. The Reform-Alliance, with its tax-cut mantra, has depended on it - in a certain sense is a creation of this tax-cut media hype. The Liberals' squandering of $100 billion in tax cuts in their recent mini-budget, mostly for people who don't need it, is another product, indirectly, of this heated media slant.

Polls, however, show that Canadians give social programs, debt reduction, and other issues priority, with tax cuts well down the list. And as for "tax revolt," there isn't one, except in the overworked imagination of some newspaper editors pushing their owners' views. Story after story nevertheless appears about tax rates, with the premise of the coverage that taxes need to be cut.

This is called, in media parlance, "framing the issue." It makes no difference whether the reporting within that frame is accurate or not. The frame decides, and if you come at the subject from a different direction, tough luck. You receive little or no media coverage because your analysis falls outside the frame. It isn't seen as newsworthy. It doesn't fit. It's not what's happening, is it?

This is how media bias works, insidiously and powerfully, and how it affects the very election in which we are now involved.

The bias produced by concentration of ownership not only distorts the framing of issues but also can play havoc with journalism inside this framing, up to and including the passing off of sheer fiction as reality.

Here's an example, taken from the provincial scene, but a most telling one.

Remember the 1995 B.C. Hydro scandal? Charges against the chair of B.C. Hydro for offering a special investment deal to NDP friends and Hydro insiders, and also, indirectly, feathering his own nest? Headlines blared and television cameras impaled the scheme's oily and immoral perpetrators. "Hydrogate," it was called.

It was a great story, except for one problem. The alleged wrongdoing was all fiction. Five years later, June 10, 2000, long after the political and economic damage of the story had been done, the Vancouver Sun, which led the journalistic pack, was forced to admit as much, in a freelancer's exposé of what happened, "Hydrogate: The scandal that never was."

It was a revealing account. The provincial Liberals had drummed up a false scandal, knowing that it was false. The media, instead of getting after the Liberals, eagerly hopped on the Liberals' bandwagon, when a simple check of the facts would have found the charges had no basis. The Vancouver Sun's editorial writers even contradicted themselves in their rush to pump up the scandal.

The revelations of this media bias and journalistic betrayal shouldn't surprise anyone. Such journalistic malpractice is endemic, especially in Vancouver. The bias isn't surprising because all of the private major media owners in British Columbia are themselves anti-NDP - indeed have contributed financially to the provincial Liberal party. Similarly, the Vancouver Sun and The Province are published by Pacific Press, which is owned by Southam Inc., which was owned by Hollinger Inc., controlled by Conrad Black, whose doctrinaire right-wing views are legend.

The spiking of stories, the management of coverage, the "framing," the way assignments are handed out, the newsroom ambiance in which, directly and indirectly, it becomes clear what is expected, editorial tricks, the marginalization of reporters who don't play the game - all this contributes.

Even the most outrageous distortion would not make too much difference if there were diverse media ownership. The bias of one newspaper or television station could be checked and offset by others. In Canada, though, and especially in British Columbia, ownership is largely concentrated in the hands of people who all share the same views.

Who are the victims here? The NDP, both provincially and federally, is mistreated, but that's not the most important consideration by far. The real victim of this concentrated media ownership is us, the Canadian public. We are the ones being abused by this journalistic malpractice. Whatever our individual political views - left, right, or all over the field - it's impossible for us to really know what's going on and to make good governance decisions without diverse media ownership and journalistic honesty.

The joke, once more, is on us all.

Arguments about bias go around in circles. Media owners refuse to concede bias even when the documentary evidence is presented to them. And if they did admit to bias, it would not basically change their behaviour. Some arguments about bias, too, defy resolution. Is the extraordinary sweetheart coverage given Stockwell Day by the Vancouver Sun and especially the National Post bias, especially given that Hollinger's owner is a Day backer? Supporters of Day would argue back that he deserves the coverage. The only way really to deal with media bias is to make media ownership itself diverse and representative, and to break up concentration - in short, to establish media democracy.

Media bias isn't simply a matter of framing stories in a certain way or slanting coverage of a story or, for that matter, killing individual stories. There's another kind of bias, what might be called "structural bias," where whole areas of life and work aren't covered while others are journalistically pampered. This distorts how people see the world and, of course, how they think politically. Pick up your daily newspaper, for example. You'll notice a fat business section, grown much fatter in recent times to fit the ideological predilection of its owners. It even has pages and pages of stock-market listings - copy which represents a silly waste of newsprint and trees, since stock-market listings are now available electronically. Besides, real investment has a longer timespan than 24 hours. The daily listings have no productive economic function.

Radio and television are the same way, with their stock market and business reports. CBC television also has a feature business program, Venture. CBC Newsworld has so-called business news at multiple times in its schedule, although such "news" has to do more with investment games than the real business of making things and providing services. In both newspapers and broadcasting, this is "service" journalism, or what passes for journalism. It is coverage for that particular community. Often such coverage will have opinion pieces, in most cases reflecting that group's ideological point of view. It doesn't attempt balance. It's for them. "Okay," you say, "what's wrong with that?" In itself, there's nothing wrong with it. It deals, however, with just one element of the economy. Where is the similar dedicated coverage to the other elements of the economy, like education, public-sector work, the workplace, labour unions, and applied science and technology?

You can watch a documentary about a man who makes a living walking dogs in dog shows (Venture did do just such a item) but, say, a primary school teacher or a nurse working in the operating room are blacked out. What does that say, in media terms, about how economic resources should be allocated? For that matter, employees in general are blacked out. Most people who work in the Canadian economy are blacked out. The resulting picture about what counts in the economy and in society, from this "structural media bias" is hopelessly distorted. Equally important, people involved in those different fields and in the workplace don't get reporting, information and analysis that would be useful to them personally and, indirectly through them, useful to the economy.

This isn't the only way that structural bias works. Low-income people are discriminated against. Because they're not a good advertising market, coverage and information which may be particularly useful to them is largely absent from the mass media. Media conglomerates, to pay for their acquisitions, may also cut back reporting staff and coverage in general. Canada is littered with newsrooms that have been decimated for this purpose. Their television properties will skimp on Canadian programming, although Canadian programming was the reason the television licences were awarded in the first place. If coverage interferes with advertising revenue you're not likely to see it, either. The Vancouver Sun, for example, for years neglected the leaky condo story; condominium developers are heavy advertisers in the paper's New Homes section. Nor, on television, will you see critical coverage of commercials - how such pervasive propaganda distorts values and also raises prices for consumers - and you certainly won't see counter-commercials. It's structural bias with a vengeance. For any kind of media democracy, we have to do better than that.

Read all about it:

This election will come and go, and we'll still be stuck in propaganda land - propaganda that has a far greater influence on our lives than political parties and governments.

We're referring to brand-name advertising: rule by Coca-Cola, Nike, General Motors, McDonald's, Labatt's, and the rest of the powerful and entrenched brand-name marketing bureaucracy. Most of all we're referring to their grip on television, the ultimate in propaganda media. We're referring to television commercials, a propaganda system par excellence.

One has to remember what television commercials are. They constitute a classic propaganda system - expensively produced, highly manipulative, pervasive, repetitive, one-way propaganda, with right of response excluded. The manipulative intent is admitted in advertising circles; it's the whole point of the propaganda. And the propaganda is everywhere and insistent: 12 minutes per hour, hour after hour, day after day on television, and everywhere else where it can intrude itself as well, even in some cases beamed onto clouds or in the bottom of the cup on golf holes. You can't escape it. It will get you wherever you try to run.

Remember Stalin's propaganda in the old Soviet Union? "Socialist realism," it was called. The propaganda system here might, in turn, be called "materialist realism" - the pushing of the idea of the consumption of things as if it were the be all and end all of life. The parallel between this propaganda and Stalinist propaganda has in fact been made by sociologists. It's an obvious one, except that brand-name propaganda is more omnipresent, insidious and professionally manipulative.

The marketing bureaucracy behind it, too, knows far more about us than anyone else, with huge data files and computer tracking - information at a level of detail that would make a police state blush. Big brother Nike and Coca-Cola are watching you!

This bring us to the politics of it. This propaganda glorifies the buying of things and downgrades everything else. It distorts values and the allocation of resources by society as a result. It dehumanizes people. It is anti-community and anti-environment. It is highly dangerous because it fixes us in what is quickly becoming, environmentally, a backward and destructive culture. Its long-term effect on politics and the economy are just enormous....which is to be expected from a powerful and protected propaganda system that cannot be challenged.

Let's take just a small example from this election and from right here in Greater Vancouver. Public transit is an issue. Vancouver, Burnaby and other municipalities are clogged by cars. People nevertheless resist paying an extra stipend for public transit. The federal government resists helping out in Vancouver. The propaganda system, of course, glorifies cars with powerful and well-calculated images, reinforcing an outdated car culture, while saying nothing about the value of people doings things together as members of a community.

Now imagine that for every automobile commercial on television there was another one debunking automobiles and advocating public transit instead. It wouldn't be long before, in one way or another, we would be effortlessly allocating all the resources we needed for public transit.

Indeed, one only has to imagine balance over all - a counter-commercial for every commercial, with no political holds barred - to visualize how we might be liberated from this commercialization of society. We would open up in Canada a post-propaganda age.

Now here's another irony to swallow. We're told we have to allow ourselves to be brainwashed in this way to have television, since commercials finance television. There are other ways of financing television, however. Doing it through commercials, moreover, is highly uneconomical.

Such financing, for example, has extraordinarily wasteful overheads. The production of the commercials, the advertising agency commission, the sales commission and other expenses, all cost a great deal of money. For every dollars that actually goes into television production and distribution, another 50 cents or more is swallowed up in overheads, in this method. That's grossly inefficient. Raising money for television publicly through the tax system, on the other hand, costs only 1.6 cents for every dollar remaining. It makes far more sense, financially, to underwrite television through non-commercial mechanisms.

The overhead waste in the commercial financing of television alone now amounts to $1 billion a year in Canada. You ultimately pay for this waste as a consumer, as well as paying for the inflated profits of advertisers. Brand-name advertising raises the average price of goods 5-10 per cent. It's like a private GST. The whole purpose of brand-name advertising is to allow companies to charge higher than the market would bear.

You get brainwashed, your hockey games are incessantly interrupted, and it costs you at the same time!

Read all about it:

Break up extreme concentration of media ownership

If one believes in a genuinely democratic society, there is only one thing to do with concentration of media ownership: break it up. It isn't after all a natural phenomenon. Media concentration happened only because Liberal governments over the years did not have enough backbone to stop it. Breaking up concentrated media holdings should be as commonplace a matter as the mergers and consolidations that produced it.

There is precedent for it, too, especially in the United States. AT&T, the powerful telecommunications company, was broken up by court order. Microsoft faces similar action today. The United States has a history of trust-busting, going back to the dissolution of the Standard Oil Company in 1911.

The need to act on Canadian media concentration is even clearer. Mass media play a key role in portraying events and establishing perspective. One cannot have a truly liberal democracy with so much media ownership in a few hands.

Here is a possible scenario to consider: (1) eliminate "cross-ownership" of broadcast and newspaper holdings (where one company owns both radio or television stations and newspapers); (2) return the broadcast side to more diverse ownership; (3) break up concentrated ownership of newspapers itself.

How many newspapers should any one company own? Let's hew to democratic principle. The cardinal premise of liberal democracy is that citizens have equal political rights - we each have one vote. The ownership of the mass media, which inform the public and influence public opinion, should reflect that same working principle: equality of political expression. At the most, then, no one person or company should own more than one paper.

Some newspapers, however, are quite large. It wouldn't be fair, for example, to allow one company to own the Toronto Star, with its huge circulation, and limit someone else to only a small paper. So we adjust the maximum ownership accordingly: total circulation up to that of the largest newspaper in the country. There's the benchmark. The democratization involved would resonate across the country.

That isn't a misprint. We meant to say $2 billion, and might have even proposed a higher figure. The CBC's budget is currently $1.4 billion a year, of which $500 million comes from commercials and $900 million from public appropriation. The extra public financing would allow the CBC to remove commercials on its television services, gain independence from the McDonald's, Coca Colas and Nikes of this world, and become the great public-broadcasting service it should be.

A $2 billion budget for the CBC is modest compared to other major television broadcasting systems. The BBC's budget in Great Britain, from licence fees, is C$4.9 billion and, unlike the CBC, it broadcasts in only one language. CBS's annual revenue is C$11.1 billion and ABC's C$11.4 billion. Canada's defence spending is in the $10 billion range.

"Either we have a country or we don't," someone once said about our broadcasting, and if we are going to have a Canada, a dynamic public-broadcasting system will be a part of it. By contrast, the Liberals, who have cut the CBC's budget, only pretend they're standing up for country. In fact they have been destroying our uniqueness and they don't really care.

A CBC freed from commercials would be the first step in putting broadcast financing on a more efficient basis; financing television by commercials is extraordinarily wasteful. (See the analysis of broadcast financing in Brainwashing Stalin would have admired). Stockwell Day's proposal to privatize the CBC is as wrong-headed and backward as they come.

More important, the new budget would free the CBC from the "propaganda system" which commercials represent (again, see Brainwashing Stalin would have admired ). It would also free it journalistically to debunk that propaganda, not to mention providing consumers with independent market information that would undermine the whole wasteful and inflated objective of brand-name advertising. This new freedom would, at one and the same time, return the CBC to its populist roots and usher Canada into the "post-propaganda age."

The CBC would also have the resources to be a great television broadcasting system, giving American television a run for its money.

We are talking of a paradigm shift here: a breaking up of a retrograde propaganda system, with a powerful liberating, and futuristic, effect on Canadian journalism and society. It would also be a Canada that would leave the Americans behind.

Liberating the CBC would be only the first step in democratizing the media for the 21st century. Once one accepts the idea that there are other, and better, ways of financing broadcasting than by commercials, the door opens to new kinds of ownership - ownership as diverse as Canada itself - like co-operative ownership by radio listeners and cable subscribers, broadcasting operations governed by journalists themselves, provincial public broadcasters creating a federated national network, and so on.

There is an important principle to this, too: that the more that the mass media are governed in diverse ways, the freer all media are. No one kind of ownership, like private corporate ownership, can dominate journalism.

[The Big Taboo and the other articles in this six-part series first appeared on the campaign website of Herschel Hardin, NDP candidate in Vancouver South - Burnaby, in the federal election November 2000.]

In a society increasingly dominated by the "second-hand" experience offered by the media, how we define, interpret, and understand our world and our place in it is largely dependent upon the information and experiences transmitted by the mass media. Citizens depend upon the media to understand and evaluate public policies and social events. Ideally, the news and information we receive should help us learn about the world, debate our responses to it, and reach informed decisions about what courses of action to take.

But today, profound changes are rapidly reshaping the press and broadcasting industries in Canada and abroad -- changes that if left unchecked threaten to undermine the basic democratic right of citizens both to speak and be heard. The increasing concentration of media ownership in fewer and fewer hands, the under-funding of public service broadcasting, the emergence of trade and investment regimes that restrict the ability of nation states to enact progressive media policies, the rising commercialization of news and information, the growth of public relations and advertising, and the commercial exploitation of the new communications technology all threaten to limit the accountability of the media, the diversity of views given public expression, and the ability of citizens to access the news and information we need to participate in and make informed decisions about our social and political affairs.

Just as the media are becoming even more pervasive and powerful in shaping the perceptions of peoples around the world, what we see, hear and read is falling under the control of fewer and fewer corporations.

In fact, the potential reach and power of the leading media corporations is greater now than at any time in the past because of two related movements -- concentration and conglomeration.

In Canada, for instance, the concentration of media ownership in the newspaper industry has progressed at an alarming pace. In 1970, the Special Senate Committee on Mass Media expressed concern that the three biggest newspaper chains had increased their share of daily circulation from 25 per cent in 1958 to 45 per cent. When the Kent Royal Commission on Newspapers was established in 1980, that figure had risen to 57 per cent. Today, the three biggest chains control 72 per cent of daily circulation. All the daily papers in New Brunswick are owned by the Irving family. In Québec, only one small circulation independent paper remains. In Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland, all the daily papers are now owned by one company.

Meanwhile, our television and radio stations, as well as our cable providers, are with few exceptions owned by a handful of powerful corporations. In Canadian television, five corporations reach more than 60 per cent of all viewers. In cable TV, three companies now have 68 per cent of the market, nearly double that of 1983. Just ten companies control 55 per cent of the revenue in the radio industry, an increase of 50 per cent in the last decade alone.
Cross media ownership, or conglomeration, is also on the rise. The Canadian company Rogers Communications, for example, has over 3 million cable subscribers, owns the Home Shopping Network, 20 video stores, ten radio stations, one television station, the YTV Network, a one-third share of AT&T Canada, the Rogers Cantel cellular phone network, and Viewer's Choice cable service. This gives one corporation an incredible control over a vast range of media products within the same geographic markets.

Globally, the story is very similar. Time Warner Communications, AT&T, MCI, British Telecom, News Corporation, Sony, General Electric, Bertlesmann, Microsoft, and Disney Corp. are among just a handful of companies which control the vast majority of the world's media and communications sector.

Furthermore, international trade and investment agreements are making it increasingly difficult for governments to effectively regulate media ownership even if the political will is there. Negotiations on services that are commencing at the World Trade Organization could sharply restrict the ability of governments to regulate foreign investment, protect domestic companies, expand public service broadcasting, and prevent takeovers and mergers in the media and communications sector. The likely result will be yet further concentration and conglomeration.

Clearly, this is incompatible with a healthy democracy. By allowing a handful of powerful and often politically ambitious media owners to set the news and information agenda we run the risk of limiting the diversity and range of opinion given public expression.

Candidly, some media owners express their interest in influencing news content to conform with their views and values. Former Canadian press baron, Lord Beaverbrook, told the British Royal Commission on the Press that he ran the Daily Express "purely for propaganda and no other object." John Bassett, former publisher of the Toronto Telegram was asked by a reporter if he used his newspaper to push his conservative political views. "Of course," replied Bassett. "Why else would you want to own a newspaper?" When Conrad Black purchased the Jerusalem Post in 1989, he pushed the moderate newspaper to adopt a more right-wing editorial position. The editor of the Post resigned over the editorial interference and eventually 190 employees were cut from the payroll. After Black purchased the Southam newspaper chain in 1996, the editors of the Ottawa Citizen and the Montreal Gazette resigned citing "significant differences of opinion" with the new owner.

The tightening grip of the big media corporations has other dramatic impacts on the work of journalists, and on the choice and quality of news and information. Caught in the tidal wave of mergers and takeovers in recent years, media companies have become increasingly linked to corporations operating in other sectors of the economy. This leads to the increased potential of "no go" areas for critical reporting as corporations use their media holdings to promote a favourable public image. Even if there is no heavy hand of owners dictating what can and cannot be reported, journalists may feel pressure to exercise self-censorship by holding back from areas that might prove embarrassing for their employers. How could we expect, for instance, the daily newspapers in the Canadian province of New Brunswick, all owned by the Irving family, to report fairly on a strike at Irving Oil?

In short, if the trend toward concentration and conglomeration continues, our voices -- the voices of working people, women, youth, students, minority groups, and public interest organizations -- will be further shut out from public debate. Without our views finding their way into the news, who will speak up for public education and social programs? Who will defend the interests of the poor, minority groups, women and working people? The truth is without our voices, public affairs reporting will only further reflect the narrow views of the political and corporate elite.

Finally, added to this mix is the enormous growth of the public relations and advertising agencies that provide corporations with powerful new tools to influence media content. In fact, more and more of the news and information we receive is 'manufactured' by public relations firms hired by corporations to manage issues in an attempt to influence public opinion and, ultimately, control public policy.

Alarmingly, at the same time ownership of the media is falling into fewer and fewer hands, public broadcasters like the CBC and PBS are struggling with funding cuts. Cuts to public service broadcasting play directly into the hands of the big media conglomerates. Having gobbled up most of the world's private television stations, media monopolies are now looking to public stations as one of the few remaining growth areas.

But public service broadcasting continues to play a critical role in our society. With a mandate to serve the public interest and not the bottom line, public broadcasters are not subject to the same commercial pressures as private broadcasters. That ensures a certain, albeit in many cases limited, independence from advertising pressures. Public broadcasting stands as an important counterweight to the growing concentration of private media. Recent cuts to public broadcasting, therefore, have a serious impact on the diversity of media content and ownership.

As television, radio, newspapers and magazines congeal into "Media Inc.," the Internet is commonly pointed to as an example of a communications technology putting more power into the hands of people.

But this utopian vision is threatened by both the extremely limited access most people in the world have to basic communication services let alone computerized communication, and by the big media companies seeking to commercially exploit the new technologies.

Even in the so-called developed world, access to the new communications technologies is very limited. Most people in Canada and the United States have no access to the Internet. Only those with the necessary income, tools and skills are able to take advantage of the new information technologies. More importantly, the news we receive from the new communications technologies is no substitute for our daily newspapers. True, Internet users can access sources such as the New York Times or the South China Daily News, but what will these papers tell us about the events taking place in our local communities? Readers in smaller communities around the globe looking for local news will find little on the digitized pages of the New York Times. It may be the case that in "cyberspace" geography does not exist. But in the real world, geography does exist and it does matter.

As well, the big media companies are investing millions of dollars in the Internet. All the major newspaper chains and media monopolies now offer 'on-line' information services, many of which are free -- for now. Microsoft has increasingly extended its grip to include control over internet-related hardware, software, and content. Without action today, these large corporations will use their marketing muscle to control access to the Internet or charge prohibitive rates for their services, shutting out most of us.

The case must be stated clearly. We will not reap the full benefits of the new technologies without public action. We must take affirmative steps now to ensure the newest communications technologies work for us and not against us. Public service principles, redefined and revitalized, need to be developed to encompass not just the traditional media, but the information superhighway as well.

Faced with these enormous challenges, an alliance of viewers and listeners, those working in the press and broadcasting industries, and others concerned about the democratic importance of the media have come together to form a campaign to press for media reform. The main activities of the campaign include:

The basic requirements of a democratic media system should be that it is representative of the rich diversity of interests and opinions in our societies, that it is accessible to all citizens so that their voices may be heard, and that it lives up to its responsibility to provide people with a broad range of views and information.

Building a truly democratic media system is a critical policy challenge of our time because who gets represented in the media, what gets left out, and how people, things, and events are portrayed have important consequences for the kind of society and world we will become.Without a vigorous and democratic news media, our public policy debates will become even more narrowly defined and dominated by corporate and political elites.

We need to address these concerns today if we are to be a vigorous and healthy democracy in the next century. Not acting now means the news and information we see, hear and read, how we receive it, who owns it and controls its content, and how we pay for it will be left to the whims of the big media conglomerates with little or no consideration of the public interest.

The ownership and control of most newspapers is today highly concentrated under interests whose business concerns extend far beyond the particular newspaper. Much of our press, consequently, is not itself dedicated exclusively to the purposes of the press, to the discharge of its public responsibility. Extraneous interests, operating internally, are the chains that today limit the freedom of the press.
--- Kent Commission on Newspapers, 1981

When [media] concentration endangers the free flow of information, diversity, accuracy, the mobility of reporters, then surely it is the responsibility of parliamentarians to act.
--- James Fleming, 1984

Concern about the concentration of ownership in the mass media is hardly a new topic. In 1970, the Davey Committee on the Mass Media was the first to sound the alarm bell. Daily newspapers in particular, the committee warned, were falling into fewer and fewer corporate hands. Ten years later, another government inquiry, the Kent Royal Commission on Newspapers, underlined these fears. By then, the three biggest chains controlled 57 per cent of the daily circulation -- up from 45 per cent in the short time since Davey issued his report.
In surveying the state of the newspaper industry, both the Davey Committee and the Kent Commission noted the growing concentration of newspaper ownership carried far-ranging social costs. The "rationalization" of Canadian newspaper markets and the accompanying rise of chain ownership would inevitably, in their view, lead to a narrowing of the news and views presented in the press. This, both bodies cautioned, would ultimately threaten the public's right to freedom of expression by restricting the number and diversity of voices heard in the daily press.

Today, the concentration of newspaper ownership is far worse than either Davey or Kent could have imagined. The three biggest chains now control more than 74 per cent of daily circulation. One company alone -- CanWest Global -- owns or controls more than 40% of English language circulation. Particularly troubling is the fact that there exists a complete monopoly of the daily press in Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland.

Set against this backdrop, it is clear that legislation to curb the concentration of media ownership in Canada is long overdue. Faced with this possibility in the past, media owners have argued such measures infringe upon their individual rights and transgress freedom of the press. While we are sensitive to this argument, the truth is the case for imposing limits on media ownership is based solely on democratic, social and journalistic concerns. The media have a social responsibility that makes them unlike other commercial activities. As such, freedom of the press is not just the proprietary right of owners to do as they see fit. It is a right of the Canadian people.

For this right to be respected, therefore, we need to actively encourage diversity and openness in our media. That means enacting policies to promote wider participation in the media industries and reverse the concentration of media power in fewer and fewer hands.
Other countries and jurisdictions have recognized this basic principle and have developed measures to confront the threat of media ownership concentration. Others are taking action now:

The European Commission is proposing legislation to restrict the reach of big media corporations and control the spread of cross-media ownership.

In Britain, television broadcasters are limited to 15 per cent of the national audience. In the case of newspaper mergers, the British Monopolies and Mergers Commission, unlike Canada's Competition Bureau, is required to assess the impact on "the accurate presentation of news and free expression of opinion" when deciding whether to approve a merger.

Sweden has a long-standing press subsidy scheme whereby a diversity of newspapers, not always supported by private corporate advertisers, are provided public financing.

The Italian Broadcasting Act of 1990 sets concrete limits on media concentration. Under the law, no one person or company may own or control more than 20 per cent of all the media.

In Germany, whenever a merger enables a company to control a specific press market or strengthen its already controlling position, the federal cartel office is required to intervene to prevent the merger. The regulations have been used several times and with some notable success. Most recently, the cartel office prevented Springer from acquiring monopoly control of the Munich newspaper market.

The French government restricts any group or individual from owning more than 30 per cent of the daily press. However, if a company or individual has substantial interests in the broadcast media, it may only control up to 10 per cent of the daily press.

Clearly, Canada is lagging behind most of the developed world when it comes to regulating media ownership.

In an effort to help promote and protect a free and democratic press, the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom is pressing the government to take action. We believe that legislation aimed at addressing the problem of media ownership concentration should have a least three broad goals: 1) to limit and eventually reverse the current level of media ownership concentration; 2) to provide measures that will promote a diversity of media ownership; and 3) to encourage the media to more effectively live up to their social responsibility and provide a wider range of coverage and content.

Most industrialized countries have legislation that limits the amount of media holdings any company or individual can own. Others are working decisively to limit cross-media ownership. By contrast, Canada has very weak requirements. In short, there is little to prevent one company from dominating the newspaper, television or radio markets in the country. In a free and democratic society, that is clearly unacceptable.

Specific restrictions on ownership limits are required. However, the Competition Bureau, the federal body which regulates mergers and acquisitions, also needs to take a more active role in protecting the public from the adverse affect of mergers in the media sector.

To tackle the immediate problem, we propose the following two measures be given force in legislation:

1. The total number of daily newspapers, radio stations, or television stations owned by one company or individual in any market should not exceed fifty per cent.

2. No one company or individual should directly or indirectly control more than 25 per cent of the circulation of daily newspapers in Canada.

3. To limit cross-media ownership concentration, we propose that no one person or company may own or control more than 20 per cent of all the media.

4. The current Competition Act should be amended so that it contains the following clause: "The Director of Research and Investigation shall report whether or not a merger involving media interests may be expected to operate against the public interest, taking into account all matters which appear in the particular circumstances to be relevant and having regard to the need for accurate presentation of news and free expression of diverse opinion."

Limiting the amount of holdings one company can control is an important step toward protecting freedom of expression. However, it will only be effective if accompanied by measures to encourage new owners to enter the market and to promote alternative forms of ownership. There is now considerable evidence available to suggest that a high degree of concentration of ownership makes it virtually impossible for new parties to enter the market.

To address this problem, we propose the following:

1. Legislation should be enacted to provide special tax inducements and interest-free loans for the establishment of new newspapers by small local investors, community groups, and non-profit organizations.

2. Tax incentives and interest-free loans should be provided to encourage employee purchases of media properties.

3. The future role of the CBC/SRC and provincial public service broadcasters is crucial to ensuring a diverse broadcasting network. Public broadcasters should be guaranteed adequate and stable multi-year financing coupled with a renewed mandate clarifying their public service goals.

Media concentration breeds a number of dangers: one-dimensional perspectives on major events and debates; information manipulation; and the disappearance of alternative views and opinions. The impact on journalistic independence is particularly troublesome. Fear of lay-offs and reprimands from management can led to pressure on journalists to self-censor.

Moreover, the increasing degree of media concentration is matched by an equally alarming movement toward conglomeration. This occurs as non-media corporations directly or indirectly gain holdings in the media sector, a development that raises the spectre of potential editorial interference. Clearly, the increasing reach and power of these corporations gives new urgency to concerns about who controls them and whose interests they serve.

Given these concerns, we propose the following legislative measures to encourage responsibility on the part of media owners and to help diversify coverage and content:

1. To further develop editorial independence from managerial interference, legislation should establish a code of professional practice to protect journalists and other media workers from possible obstructions.

2. In concert with a reform of the current libel law, legislation should be enacted establishing a right of reply to inaccurate or misleading reporting.

3. The self-regulatory press councils and the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council have often proven to be ineffective in dealing with public complaints about media coverage. We propose that an independent and publicly accountable body, a Media Commission, be established to investigate such complaints, report publicly on its findings, and order any redress where it has decided an infraction has occurred.

4. Media corporations, particular those involved in other sectors of the economy, should be required to provide full details about their ownership holdings and a statement of the relationship to be maintained between the editorial department, including the editor and publisher in the case of newspapers, and the corporation.

5. Broadcasters are currently required to set aside a small amount of time for public service organizations and community groups. We believe a similar policy should be developed whereby daily newspapers would be required to set aside a modest amount of space for community groups and local non-profit organizations. Such a requirement would help ensure more diversity of voices and issues in the press.

Most democratic societies recognize the need to ensure the printed word and visual image should not be unduly monopolized. If diversity of opinion lies at the heart of democracy, then surely no one person or company should be permitted to dominate what Canadians see, hear and read. The modest legislative proposals outlined here, if adopted, would represent an important step toward encouraging wider diversity, openness and choice in our media by limiting and reversing the concentration of media power into fewer and fewer hands.
We believe action is required now. If we fail to act now, the range of news and information we receive will be further restricted as the pool of those who own and control its content shrinks.

The campaign for press and broadcasting freedom

Good links and stats on circulation of newspapers in Canada and how owns which ones.