INDEPENDENT MEDIA by Steve Anderson
IN THE QUARTER ending November 30, 2008, media giant Canwest reported a $33M loss with an overwhelming $3.7 billion debt. (See links at end of article.) In the past 12 months, Canwest has also cut more than 1,000 jobs and is scaling back local operations. It is also considering shutting down some stations entirely.
Collectively, Canwest, Torstar, Quebecor and CTVglobemedia have cut about 1,300 more jobs in the past three months, on top of deep cuts made last year. With ad revenues expected to slump further, there is no end in sight.
The effects of these dramatic cuts in journalism will negatively affect public debate and discourse in Canada because, as former Toronto Star publisher John Honderich notes, “The quality of public debate, if not the very quality of life in any community, is a direct function of the quality of media that serve it.”
Journalism’s diagnosis
In his piece entitled All the News That’s Fit to Fund, John Honderich does a good job of explaining why journalism is important in a democratic society. And while Honderich also offers some good ideas on how to revive journalism, he fails to discuss why journalism is in its current state of crisis.
So what is the cause of the current state of journalism in Canada? In a statement made by Leonard Asper, Canada’s largest media baron, on the likely demolition of TV stations located in Montreal, Hamilton, Red Deer, Kelowna and Victoria, he declared, “As they are currently configured, these stations are not core to our television operations going forward… we believe that our efforts are best focused on the areas of greatest return.” Asper’s comments reveal that news outlets, and the journalists that work for them, are increasingly treated as a part of a business rather than a unique social institution that is essential to a functioning democracy.
“Big Media” executives, however, try to claim that journalism’s woes are caused by the slumping economy or the displacement of audiences to new online media. While certainly these are factors, the primary cause is highly concentrated media ownership combined with the deepening bottom-line mentality of big media corporations. Media ownership is more highly concentrated in Canada than almost anywhere else in the industrialized world. Something to think about is how just hours before CTVglobemedia announced its intention to take over CHUM they laid off 281 people and cancelled news broadcasts across the country.
Big Media’s race to the bottom
In 2007, the Canadian Energy, Communications and Paperworkers (CEP) union published a study entitled Voices From the Newsroom (see links), in which they found that only 9.5 percent of journalists indicated that they believe the corporate owners of their news outlet valued good journalism over profit. The CEP report clearly illustrates the sentiment felt by most journalists: that the bottom line mentality of big media owners is having an increasingly negative impact on their ability to do their jobs.
A newspaper is not likely to provide engaging journalism if it is geared towards efficiently delivering eyeballs to advertisers while investing the least amount of money possible in journalism. Combine this bottom-line mentality with an uncompetitive, concentrated traditional media market, along with the erosion of ad revenue, and you’ll find a race to the bottom for journalism in Canada.
Experiments needed
Despite the layoffs, weak morale and big media debt, journalism in Canada is far from its grave. On the contrary, with the decline of big-business-financed journalism, this is the perfect time for us to re-imagine what journalism in the 21st century should look like.
In my next column, I will lay out various schemes for a rejuvenated 21st century public services journalism in Canada. There’s no shortage of experiments underway and you may, in fact, be reading this column via one of those experiments right now.
Links
• $33M loss:
www.canwest.com/media/viewNews.asp?NewsroomID=916
• $3.7 billion debt:
www.newslab.ca/?p=138
• Voices From the Newsroom:
www.cep.ca/cep_on_line/MediaStudyEN.pdf
Steve Anderson is the national coordinator for the Campaign for Democratic Media. He contributed to Censored 2008 and Battleground: The Media, and has written for The Tyee, Toronto Star, Epoch Times and Adbusters. Reach him at:
steve@democraticmedia.ca
www.FacebookSteve.com
www.SteveOnTwitter.com
