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The press we deserve: a legacy of unheeded warnings.

Article Excerpt
No one who followed the debate over press concentration during the 1970s and 1980s should be surprised at the current state of control of the Canadian newspaper industry. Successive federal government inquiries warned that the inevitable result, absent any measures to slow or reverse the inexorable economics of a business classically subject to the cost-saving advantages of large size, would be control of the country's press by a few powerful businessmen. But the predictions of Keith Davey and Tom Kent resulted in only inaction; their reports languished dog-eared on Canadian bookshelves, where they had been placed out of mind by a generation grown weary of the debate over press regulation. After that, it was perhaps predictable that the acquisitors who paid increasingly higher prices for publication empires would justify their costs by exerting political influence as a form of value added. But the new realities of ownership now being visited upon the nation's press have crept up quietly, until the overt exercise of accumulated power has again raised the question of whether something should, or even could, be done about it.

Aside from the acknowledged economic forces, the situation arose as a result of several factors, two of which have been well-recognized, and one of which I will argue has been under-appreciated. The two familiar complaints have been a lack of political will to enact specific legislative measures to preserve the independence of the press and the historic ineffectiveness of anti-combines laws already on the books, nominally intended to prevent monopoly business practices. A third was, in hindsight, increased ownership of newspaper chains by stock market investors, which allowed their eventual acquisition by takeover artists. This paper reviews those factors in historical context, with some comparison to the situation in the United States, and discusses some possible counterbalancing factors which might affect the current situation. Finally, a new variable that has entered the equation, with perhaps even more disturbing implications, is discussed.

Political Hesitance

the emergence of Winnipeg-based F.P. Publications as the largest newspaper group in Canada following its merger with the Toronto Globe and Mail in 1965, marginally ahead of the family-owned Southam chain, set off alarm bells for stone that ownership of the nation's press had become accumulated in too few hands. From a regional partnership formed in 1958 by Calgary Albertan publisher Max Bell and Winnipeg Free Press owner Victor Sifton, F.P. Publications had grown into a national chain with its acquisition of the Ottawa Journal in 1959 and the Vancouver Sun in 1963. (1) One of those most concerned about increasing control of the press by large chains that grew by acquiring hitherto independent dailies was Keith Davey. The federal Liberal party head was appointed to the Senate at his own request in 1966 by then prime minister Lester Pearson as a reward for service and his fired-raising ability, which earned him the nickname "The Rainmaker." The former advertising executive held a keen interest in the newspaper business; his father had worked at the Toronto Star for more than 50 years. Davey confessed in his memoirs a fascination with newspapers despite his choice of a career in radio. "Much as I wanted to be in the newspaper business myself, to my way of thinking I could not work at the Star because of my father, nor could I work on staff at any other daily newspaper because of him" (Rainmaker 8).

Davey first proposed an investigation into the growing corporate control of Canada's press in 1968. Initially considering Parliament the appropriate body to conduct such an inquiry, Davey noted in the preface to the three-volume report of his Special Senate Committee on Mass Media in 1970 that he felt appointed senators would be better insulated from direct political pressure brought by publishers against any measures proposed to counter press concentration. Davey observed that his concerns about political influence on elected politicians had been borne out in the interim by easy passage through the elected U.S. Senate of the Newspaper Preservation Act, which exempted from federal anti-trust laws dozens of newspapers that had for years been sharing production facilities, setting advertising rates jointly, and pooling profits. U.S. president Richard Nixon's flip-flop on the issue, according to Davey, justified his concern that "politicians looking to re-election must depend substantially upon the mass media in the very real world of practical politics" (Uncertain vii).

The Davey committee forced media corporations to open their books for the first time and the senators not only found...

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