Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | Textual Studies in Canada

Getting the media we deserve.

Article Excerpt
When asked to write this, I had just returned from Human Resources Development Canada (read: Unemployment or UIC) in Lindsay, Ontario.

I'm a recovering journalist, unemployed at almost 54, after more than 36 years in Canadian media, though in truth my latest visit was to hand in separation papers that describe me as a "poultry processor," the way I made a living from May until Christmas, when the dozen of us who work in the plant on the outskirts of Omemee (find that on the map) were laid off until June.

My resume says I "have played a key role in numerous national media startups and product launches: canada.com as a content destination; National Post online; the suite of Canoe financial products; the tabloid Financial Post Weekend Edition; Financial Post as a daily; Globe and Mail Wednesday Travel section; the Toronto Star as a morning paper."

You can take those claims with a bag of salt, but still might expect me to rant against media concentration, since the CanWest takeover of Southam resulted in the end last March of quite possibly my final fulltime-benefits-security-pension-type job.

Sorry to disappoint.

In 1811, the age of political revolution, philosopher Joseph de Maistre said people get the government they deserve. Since this purportedly is the information age, I'll amend him and say people, particularly Canadians, get the media they deserve.

It's a little late to worry about media concentration. It's here, it's done and it's staying, despite the bluster of Diane Lemieux, Quebec's culture minister, about legislation to ensure "a plurality of opinion and a plurality of sources of information." That type of government interference in the past at a number of levels, and to an extent unseen in any other industry, has a lot to do with media concentration in the present.

In theory at least,...