Senators Let Big Media off Hook
Committee's long-awaited report shrugs at CanWest, targets CBC.
CanWest's Asper: Future is bigger.
In February 2005, the Senate Committee on Transport and Communications visited Vancouver as part of its cross-country study of the Canadian news media. It heard nearly a dozen presentations bemoaning the fact that one company -- CanWest Global Communications -- has a near stranglehold on Vancouver news media. And it heard nearly a dozen complaints that this unprecedented concentration limits the diversity of sources and opinions available to Vancouver news consumers. "Frighteningly powerful" and "debilitating for voices" were how two presenters framed the situation.
So you would expect this outpouring of concern to be reflected in the committee's final report, which was released on June 21.
But you would be wrong. The Liberal-dominated committee -- and the commercial media reporting the study -- go after the CBC instead. The public broadcaster should get out of sports programming and give up its advertising revenues, the committee recommends. They say to replace the advertising dollars with more public dollars: a recommendation that hasn't a hope of being implemented.
The committee wrote that the "core" of its work concerns the "influence on news and information of media ownership in Canada." The senators began looking at the industry after CanWest acquired most of Canada's major dailies and Bell Globemedia took control of the CTV television network and the Globe and Mail.
But the study's release was framed around the alleged failings of Canada's public broadcaster.
The senators did a classic bait-and-switch ploy: say you're going to do one thing and then do something else to take attention away from your original goal. And in this case, their original goal was to examine media concentration.
Too bad for BC
One explanation is that the committee downplayed its mandate and targeted the CBC instead in recognition of the new political masters in Ottawa. The CBC-loathers and free-enterprise ideologues in the Harper cabinet should be pleased.
But there may be another reason. The committee probably never intended to grapple with ownership. The committee is dominated by former private sector journalists: chair Joan Fraser, Jim Munson from CTV, and Pat Carney. Their allegiance evidently still lies with the industry.
Volume Two of the report contains 135 pages of testimony from witnesses and additional studies prepared by the committee. About 10 pages are devoted to CanWest's hold on the Vancouver market. Yet not one word of this background made it into Volume One, which contains the report's essential analysis and recommendations. CanWest gets off scot-free.
Instead, the report talks about future mergers and take-overs. It recommends a review of a proposed merger if one company reaches 35 per cent of a particular audience. There are precedents for this figure. It is a limit used by Canada's Competition Bureau in triggering a review of a merger or acquisition. It is also a cap imposed by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
Canadian Press estimates CanWest's control of the Vancouver market at 70 percent, twice the proposed limit. But the Senate Committee suggests no remedy for the long-suffering Vancouver audience. It merely documents the history of how this sad state of affairs came to pass.
Asper's agenda
A week before the report was released, CanWest primo Leonard Asper told a group of business leaders that another round of media consolidation was coming up and the government needs to step aside and let it happen.
We in Vancouver don't need to worry, says Asper, because we have Google, Yahoo and MSN available to us as alternatives. Asper didn't mention The Tyee but that's probably because his eye is more drawn to web organizations with burgeoning advertising revenues rather than news and information offerings. For the corporate media, providing news and information is never more than the means to attract audiences, which can be sold to advertisers.
The report documents other failings in the Asper family's stewardship of the news organization. When one media company takes over another, cutting costs seems to be inevitable, so an easy and obvious way to save money is to close down the organization's foreign news bureaus. This helps the company pay for the takeover but robs local readers and viewers of a Canadian perspective on world affairs. It means that if there is a dominant media organization at home, readers have nowhere else to turn.
Of course, some media companies do a credible job of maintaining foreign bureaus. The CBC leads with 12 bureaus, including Bangkok, Beijing, Dakar, Jerusalem and Moscow. Second is CTV with nine. The Globe and Mail follows with seven and the Toronto Star with six.
But dead last, with only two foreign bureaus in Washington and London, is CanWest. This is down from eight when Southam owned the chain. To be fair, CanWest does have a correspondent temporarily on assignment in Afghanistan. But the vast majority of international news in the Vancouver Sun comes from the Associated Press, with its American-oriented cookie-cutter news presented in bite-sized chunks. A second source is the conservative Daily Telegraph, likely a holdover from the days when Conrad Black owned the Canadian papers and the Telegraph. Sometimes the Sun will provide stories from foreign dailies.
Foreign sources rarely pick up on what the Canadian government is doing around the world, which leaves Canadian readers in the dark.
How CanWest 'covered' it
The decimation of its foreign bureaus, the Vancouver media monopoly, the reduction of staff in its Victoria news bureau, the creation of a Canadian news desk to feed wire copy and re-edited material to the papers in the chain: none of these was mentioned in CanWest's stories about the report.
Instead, the Vancouver Sun front-page story's headline is, "CBC urged to 'get back to its roots' and dump Hockey Night in Canada." It is accompanied by a picture of Don Cherry. Only two paragraphs of the 26-paragraph story discuss consolidation of media ownership, and these give no indication this is a problem in Vancouver or Canada.
In fact, if you rely only on the Vancouver Sun for your information, you wouldn't know that media concentration in Vancouver is a big issue.
The Sun weighs in with an editorial that attacks the CBC. The writer does admit that the Sun has a conflict of interest because it is a competitor to the CBC for both audience share and advertising revenues. The writer then argues we should think of the Sun as a bunch of citizens and taxpayers, just like us. Never mind that for years, family patriarch Izzy Asper had his eye on these CBC revenues, which reached $350 million last year.
Conservative wish list
We likely won't know the Harper government's official position on media concentration and the fate of the CBC until Harper has his majority. But we obtained some indications of their leanings when Harper was leader of the Canadian Alliance. In 2003, the Commons heritage committee reviewed the Broadcasting Act, and the Alliance wrote a dissenting opinion to the report.
The Alliance claimed there is no longer a unique role for a public broadcaster: there are just too many commercial alternatives available. And they argued that funding should continue for CBC Radio but should be eliminated for CBC Television, which should become just another commercial network.
The party also called for the removal of all rules that require two news outlets in the same market owned by the same company to maintain separate newsrooms. This rule applies, for example, to the Vancouver Sun and BCTV in Vancouver. Says the Alliance, media companies should have unfettered rights to carry on their businesses as they see fit.
So while the report recommends curtailing this kind of media monopoly and instituting ownership caps, these recommendations likely won't be fulfilled under this industry-friendly Conservative government. And even if the Harper government did enact the recommendations, they would only have an effect on the Vancouver media market if some other company tried to take over CanWest.
Few companies in Canada are large enough to swallow the CanWest behemoth, but Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which owns Fox News, is likely waiting in the wings. Of course, foreign ownership of news media is not allowed under the Broadcasting and Income Tax acts. But that was before Stephen Harper and the Conservatives took over government. The Alliance, in its dissenting opinion, called for an end to foreign ownership rules on telecommunications and broadcast distributors, like cable companies. These are a hindrance to the free flow of goods, services and labour, it said.
Who's naming the tune?
Two government ministers share responsibility for broadcasting and telecommunications.
Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda is responsible for broadcasting. Oda worked in private broadcasting for 20 years, with Rogers Communication and Global Television. She ended up as a senior vice-president at CTV before being elected to the House of Commons in 2004. In the 2006 election, Oda received campaign contributions from some powerful broadcasting industry people, such as Phil Lind of Rogers, Jay Switzer of CHUM, and Gary Slaight of Standard Broadcasting, the largest radio station owner in the country. The Canadian Association of Broadcasters also kicked in to her campaign.
Oda's colleague, Industry Minister Maxime Bernier, holds the telecommunications portfolio. He comes to his post fresh from a vice-presidency at the libertarian, corporate-backed Montreal Economic Institute, which opposes all government regulation. It promotes the eighteenth-century view that the invisible hand of the market will produce the best outcomes. Bernier is on record for opening the door to more foreign ownership of Canadian telephone companies and radio and television stations.
What's a possible future scenario?
Get rid of the CBC with its mandate to tell Canadian stories and provide Canadian news and information.
Don't do anything to reverse the trend towards increased concentration of ownership. This will make Canadian companies more attractive to foreign mega-corporations.
Allow foreign takeovers, so that decisions about Canadian programming will be made in Los Angeles and New York.
The Senators opened the door to this scenario. Let's hope the Harper government, once it has its majority, won't go all the way in its support for narrow corporate interests over the people's right to know.
Donald Gutstein, a senior lecturer in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, writes a regular media column for The Tyee.
Related Tyee stories: Donald Gutstein raised the curtain on the Senate Committee's Vancouver visit; Tyee editors David Beers and Charles Campbell testified at the time, sharing these ideas for bolstering independent media; and Tom Barrett asked how much power mass media has on people's voting decisions.
Find the Senate Committee's final report here. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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IAMC
5 years ago
Comments on "Senators Let Big Media off Hook"
Mr. Gutstein has done a good job of laying the cards on the table.
We are now communicating totally outside of Canwest and The New York Times. This isn't China, and any ideas that push us into that direction are soon to be eliminated.
The CRTC as it is, meddling into our culture, should be dismantled and replaced with a regulatory body, that simply regulates wave length or digital channel that is required by clients. They created this stupid monopoly by Shaw, Rodgers, Bell, Telus etc. that will only be dismantled by drastic measures. It probably won't happen as I see it.
With the CBC, I think that we should discontinue publicly funding the television network. The radio should be kept alive, with a satellite service, so we can here it anywhere. We could afford to give a rebate on our tax return, to help compensate Canadians get with the new technology.
This would probably save us 1/2 billion a year. Probably not worth the effort to save only 50% ?
Skookum1
5 years ago
How very Canadian, IAMC- being more concerned with budgetary reality than the dangers of very anti-democratic press/media consolidation.....do you guys take courses in this stuff or what?
Fact is, it's not just trying to please the new masters in Ottawa; it's the blunt fact that CanWestGlobal are vested partners in the BC Liberal regime, and have persistently helped in selling Liberal politics/agendas and in suppressing dissent and change. There's no way the BC Liberals want an independent mainstream media in their bailiwick; it would threaten their powerbase (the CanWest-brainwashed, who style their high ratings as "the most popular"....only because the more watchable, relative to CBC's cultivated aura of boredom and self-importance.
Decentralizing media in Canada is the number one problem, not whether or not the CBC or CRTC is a waste of money; what's much more questionable is how much money goes in to controlling and manipulating public debate, elections, policy and more.
Decentralizing the CBC into regionally-directed information and culture markets (instead of a preachy, pan-Canadian overtly nationalistic and propagandistic one, lately Tory-propagndistic despite IAMC and others who would claim the CBC is leftist).
bpither1
5 years ago
The CanWest grip on the local media is in contrast to the several European countries where I enjoyed a lively competitive press. In a small country like Denmark with its well educated 5 million inhabitants I can think off hand of 4 independent daily papers in Copenhagen, ranging from an employee owned publication with its marked left of centre editorial board to the more conservative broadsheets. The UK has several national dailies and the Sunday papers are brilliant. Then there is Vancouver. I hardly look at the Scum or the Provincial with their screaming headlines, and actually I find the Courier more interesting and personal(even though it's CanWest owned)than the other two rags. I don't understand how people can put up with it...and thank goodness for the Tyee.
Skookum1
5 years ago
last paragraph cont:
decentralizing the CBC...to me is what's needed at the national level; we need more made-in-BC programming, more reflection of what BC is about; not being told about stuff in TO and the Maritimes as if it mattered to life in BC (it doesn't). The Pacific Broadcast Centre was supposed to be for BC-based programming when it was built; from the day of its opening it was booked solid for Toronto productions who wanted a working holiday on the West Coast, and that set the pattern ever since. Actually made-in-BC ideas, programs, and more? No, not anything worth sniffing at, anyway....
G West
5 years ago
Skookum 1
You're right about the direction the CBC has taken since Jan 23. Even am radio appears to have been given orders to pander to Alberta, Calgary, the military and the Harperites. Nary a critical word has been heard.
I can't figure out if this is happening out of fear because Bev Oda is breathing down their necks or because of the new executives they've hired from the US media.
Can West is so appallingly bad that the cable channel is preferable for news and CTV - well, it's not much better. I refuse to listen to commercial radio and always found CBC to be at least nominally acceptable but even that is seldom true anymore.
I think your point about more regional programming is excellent - especially re TV - sadly, it would seem likely that CBC will not have any revenue-producing sports programs much longer so where will the money come from? Clearly the Harper Govt appears ready to sacrifice CBC-TV to its corporate masters in the private media.
Ten years ago I think Canadians would have risen in outrage; today, given what a degraded product it has become - (hours of coverage on Newsworld today of Prince Ralph in Washington slithering oilily up to Dick Cheney) - I'm not sure anyone will much care.
RickW
5 years ago
We'll soon be better off getting all our "news" from FOX
http://www.foxnews.com/
I think there is someone on staff there who knows where Canada is.......
Alcibiades
5 years ago
RickW
You mean Rachel Marsden?
God help us - our own home grown version of Ann Coulter!
Grumpy
5 years ago
Every morning i read the BBC on Line, then the Tyee, then the local Black press; then the Seattle PI and Seattle Times. Only after that, I will read the Sun.
CanWest/Global is os bad that the news is not only dated, it is so slanted to the Liberal/Conservative complex, it is not to be believed.
Case in point:
RAV, one only hears 'good' news about RAV, not that it is a giant ponsie scheme, where the taxpayer is paying now $1.5 billion more to friends of the government (big business)quite legally)than it would if LRT was to be built. The Asper Press regularily censor's anything anti-RAV, nor will they print any letters negative about RAV. The same is true with SkyTrain. Right now there is an ongoing problem with the system, a problem which may have caused Monday's accident, yet this is greatly downplayed. RAV's construction has bee halted for a week now, yet no mention of this in the Sun, on the time sensitive project.
All the Sun has become is a Liberal scandal sheet, with very little in depth reporting. Yet this committee just followed the old boys/girls club rules, what is good for our friends is good for us and to hell with the rest!
Jeffrey J.
5 years ago
Great article. I downloaded the pdf. version of the Senate Committee Report after hearing about the Sun headlines. The Report made many mentions of media monopoly concerns but nary a word from the Sun. Not surprising. We have stopped watching CTV and Global TV altogether. We obtain all our news from the following sources: CBC radio; The Tyee; BBC; sometimes the Globe & Mail; Aljazeera.net (quite literate, actually); and a host of other independant web based news broadcasters. The pap coming out of BC's David Black weeklies and CanWest's dailies is more than anything, boring. The lack of freedom of their reporters has driven out those with any creative or intellectual spark. So the "product" has become incredibly bland. I suspect many people are dropping these sources for news and looking elsewhere. Hats off again to the Tyee.
woody
5 years ago
The Senate is a Liberal eastern Canada dominated bunch of useless hacks desperately saying and doing whatever they have to in order to secure and hang onto their , cushy, over paid, positions, get rid of them, their support staff , with all the money we save, put it towards C.B.C. and Canadian programing, what’s left over put towards day care, at least then we would have some value for our money instead of just pissing it into the wind.
BC Dude
5 years ago
I'm so peed off at the so called news in BC especially in Vancouver. Canwest Corp is worse than all the Hollywood rags put together.
Here are some very interesting sites but the Tyee is still #1!
http://www.bcpolitics.ca/left.htm
http://www.thefilter.ca/
http://www.friends.ca/Resource/briefs/policy05150601.asp
http://www.iwtnews.com/home
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
http://www.rabble.ca/
http://www.the-daily-planet.ca/content.php
Bailey
5 years ago
Given the state of the art in information manipulation in these days of such effective thought control, this is a very scary article.
One short bit struck me as more remarkable than all the rest, though it was just a short throwaway.
Just look at it for a minute. It first assumes as a given that Harper will have a majority. Then acknowledges that he is hiding his intentions and position from Canadian voters. The way it acknowledges this makes it clear that the author considers that his readers know about this dishonesty, as common knowledge, a position I believe I concur with.
But the assumption remains. So I want to ask a question:
How many readers believe all of these statements?
1. Mr. Harper is lying about or at least hiding his true intentions from Canadians.
2. Canadians know it.
3. Canadian voters who know it will nonetheless elect him to a majority government.
The rest of the article is about the Aspers and their true natures. No big surprizes there.
This bit is about Canadian voters and theirs, and I'm very curious how many share this belief. Have we really changed so much? Do politicians no longer even have to pretend to be forthright and honest to get our votes?
G West
5 years ago
Bailey
With respect to your first statement, my view, as I've been saying for the duration on this site and others, and as I think you're probably aware is that it is a clear and easily demonstrable fact - necessitating nothing other than Mr.Harper's own statements and writings. Nothing he's done or said since the election - beginning with the Emerson incident - has disabused me of this belief.
Statement 2. My view, some Canadians do know this. In this group some care and are appalled while others see this as an opportunity to enhance their own wealth and power. Among this opportunistic group I'd include the Government of several provinces and the 'brains trust' of the Canadian military. There are other, chiefly business interests who also belong to this group and for whom the only thing of any importance is profit.
Statement 3. I can only say I hope not. Further “Aspirating†the media will not help.
As to your last question - so many young working Canadian families are so stretched and stressed by the life we lead these days that I just can't answer it. I do think politics no longer has anything much to do with truth and openness and I am deeply worried about the difficulty of addressing this debacle in the current atmosphere of media disengagement, impotence and corporate malfeasance.
My question back to you, if you'll permit, is simply a query about whether or not this country still has the active and well-informed electorate that I believe is necessary for Canada to continue to exist as a real popular democracy. Absent a critical press I think we are sliding rapidly into fascism.
woody
5 years ago
Bailey--G West Will you two turds knock it off, the topic is the Senate, media , C.B.C.
Bailey
5 years ago
Absent a critical and energetic free press, you're maybe right.
The free press is the only check to power that was assumed to be outside the direct influence of the power structure. As such, it's the most important check of all. All the other protections of democracy, as we've recently seen, can be attacked by those in power.
Civil rights, privacy, independent auditors, etc. etc. All vulnerable to those who have power and wish to abuse it. And now the Aspers have made their massive attack on the free press.
It's why I have such hope for this Tyee experiment, and it's brothers and sisters online. It's maybe the last hope of recreating an informed electorate and saving the future of democratic government.
Bailey
5 years ago
Whoops! Sorry everybody. I didn't realize the topic had been set in wood.
woody
5 years ago
Bailey- Harping on Harper, Along with being a phlosopher (professional bull sh!ter) your also psychic, you said.
3. Canadian voters who know it will nonetheless elect him to a majority government.
How about next weeks 649 numbers, seeing you know the future
Capitalism
5 years ago
Personally - I don't mind the concept of public broacasting, however I would like to see some competition.
I agree that some of the CBC sponsored television content is quite interesting and informative. However, the network is basically an extention of the Liberal party, and incredibly slanted in its reporting. They should have to compete for Hockey Night in Canada broadcast rights, and should fund itself through advertising.
People need to be inspired to watch the CBC, and I believe they are moving in the right direction.
Let the market prevail, and don't listen to the report from the Senate. The Senate is useless, and full of a bunch of unelected, high paid, underworked diplomats....
Working Memory
5 years ago
Here's an interesting take on The Sun and their biased reportage regarding 2010.
http://www.olyblog.com/06/BickeringS06052006.shtml
Alcibiades
5 years ago
And your own posts are evidence of this?
Give me a break! Are they showing poker on CBC now?
anarcho
5 years ago
We don't need the CRTC or the Senate to tell us what to do about the sorry state of the media in Canada. What we do need is a mass movement to democratize the media. For a democracy to work, you need an infomed public. To have an informed public you need a broad range of viewpoints. With the centralization of the media, you lose this diversity, and as such, it is an attack on democracy.
Bailey
5 years ago
Dear woodpecker; Number 3, that seems to annoy you so much wasn't a prediction. It was a question. Actually only part of one, since 1 and 2 were included in the set.
Careful reading aids comprehension. I would be interested in your honest answer to the whole question, given what I know about your thinking.
Is he forthright? Do you know it? Will you vote for him?
G West
5 years ago
woody
You might want to read the essay again. The topic is not just the Senate, the media and the CBC. It deals with regional matters, Harper's attitude, the Conservative government and its commitment to public broadcasting as well as the role of Bev Oda and others. At its core is the very concept of the role of free and independent media in a free and democratic society.
I know it's hard for you to deal with more than one concept at a time but this is a complex world and you'll need to try a little harder if you're going to provide anything other than comic relief.
woody
5 years ago
West says woody
You might want to read the essay again
I would say your reading something into this thread that's non existent
Bailey says
Careful reading aids comprehension
Same answer to that I gave West.
Bailey asked?
Is he forthright? Do you know it? Will you vote for him?
woody
5 years ago
Bailey asked?
Is he forthright? Do you know it? Will you vote for him?
Answer to all three questions,
I don't know.
Bailey
5 years ago
Oh, woody, you should.
If you have any opinions on any politician, you should have an opinion on this.
woody
5 years ago
Bailey says
If you have any opinions on any politician, you should have an opinion on this.
Why?
Capitalism
5 years ago
Haha - speaking of which, I am heading to Vegas tonight with the fellas for Canada day weekend - entering a poker tournament. Wish me luck!
I love that place!
woody
5 years ago
Here you two read this, never mind the will he ,may he, could he, hypothetical questions.
[The Senators opened the door to this scenario]
Thank the previous Liberal government, Liberal party,and as I mentioned earlier the Liberal Senators, for what may come down the pipe.
nightbloom
5 years ago
Truman Green - R u out there? You were right. This is a scarey precedent, and I'm not convinced the medical necessity has been demonstrated. What a money-racket, and young girls are the lab rats:
Panel backs HPV vaccine for young girls
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060629/ap_on_he_me/cervical_cancer_vaccine
BC Dude
5 years ago
DO NOT KEEP SILENT when your own ideas and values are being attacked. ...If a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the default of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell." -- Ayn Rand, Philosophy
very true.
Truman Green
5 years ago
Yeah, nightbloom, you got it right. So here's the truth about other claims by the medical scientific industry.
1. human papilloma virus (hpv) does not really cause cervical cancer. (Same stupid latency claims, only 30-50 years for hpv to cause cervical cancer) The link is exacly the same as the link between between hiv and Aids: coincidental; that is to say acausally correlative. zur Hausen claimed there was a link twenty-five years ago and everybody laughed at him. Before that the cause was supposed to be herpes virus. Cervical cancer is caused by unknown aneugens (bisphenol A, for instance), PLUS SMOKING. The pharmaceutical industry picked it up and now Merck's got approval for Gardasil and in the States 10 - 12 year old girls will have to get it to be eligible for public school. The entire question is about whether neoplasia in hpv women leads to carcinogenisis. By the way, just about everybody, male and female now carry the human papillom virus. It doesn cause genital warts, though.
Glaxo's got its own vaccination coming on stream soon too.
2. hepatitis B is a mild, usually temporary, infection that causes jaundice and temporary weakness. Almost everyone gets over it in a few weeks, although some remain carriers.
IT DOESN'T CAUSE LIVER CANCER, AS CLAIMED. In all my research re. aids I have found that Hepatitis B and the Hepatitis B vaccine given to gay men in New York in l979 is the MOST SIGNIFICANT factor regarding CONCURRENCE WITH AIDS. In other words, these two (hep B and hep B vaccine) are somehow related to the weird new diseases first discovered among gay men in l981.
3. hepatitis C ditto. It doesn't cause liver cancer. All the Canadian recipients of Hep C money should give the money back to the government.
4. HTLV-1 (human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1) doesn't cause leukemia, as claimed. It is the only retrovirus, besides hiv that has ever been claimed to cause pathogenicity in human beings.(among the hundreds of harmless passenger retroviruses that inhabited our cells at all times.) This is basically a joke. A retrovirus couldn't kill a cell if its life depended on it.
In fact, the oncogene, tumour suppressor gene model of cancer has all but been discredited by serious scientists, but it's still in vogue because of all the billions that are made from it.
Cancer is caused by carcinogens which interrrupt the mitosis (somatic cells, autosomes) and meiosis (germ or sex cells) and lead to cell division irregularities, which cause aneuploidy, or chromosome irregularities, hence birth defects and nascent speciation, that is, cancer. It's a no-brainer.
Nightbloom, if you can see that the hpv-cervical cancer link is a total farce, you have to know that the hiv-aids link is just as ridiculous, because all the same dubious rationalizations are used to prove the linkage. The joke regarding hiv is that they can't so easily come up with a phony vaccine like they have with hpv because they've painted themselves into a corner by using surrogate markers (cluster differentiation type 4 Thymus lymphocytes, branch dna and polymerase chain reaction for viral loads). In other words, in order for them to do a vaccine they have to abide by their own ridicuolus surrogates, not to mention non-specific Elisa and Western Blot antibody tests. So with invented absurd surrogates for hiv viral load and CD4 suppression, they've basically cut off their noses to smite their faces. That's why there isn't and never will be a vaccine for HIV. Because HIV doesn't cause aids.
Oh, and by the way intra-ocular pressure in the eyeball doesn't cause glaucoma, as claimed to the tune of millions in beta-blockers (timolol etc) sales.
Viruses do not cause cancer.
Mutations do not cause cancer.
There are no oncogenes
There are no tumour suppressor genes. It's all a fantasy.
Skookum1
5 years ago
For some reason I digressed on topics here over in a Tyee Books blog, the one on Bill Bennett Reconsidered; musta mixed up which blog is which, or there's sort of a connection over there to the subject matter (as big media lies/power are always part of any story); some thoughts on media, communication, politics if you want to pop over there and check 'em out, relevant to the above. Sort of.
http://thetyee.ca/Books/2006/06/27/BennettReconsidered/
The brain
5 years ago
Excellent article, Donald :-)
BC Dude
5 years ago
Truman Green I thought this was a blog about Big media bias reoporting?
Are you purpossly trying to sidetrack this very important blog with some aids/cancer/vaccine/BS,.
Stick to the blog!
TY
kurt
5 years ago
I'm just not sure Rupert Murdoch is waiting in the wings to take over CanWest's assets. The Aspers have a diminishing market and returns that diminish in lockstep with their ever-shrinking readership — they don't really seem to have a game plan. And when they do (eg. convergence, The Dose) it's an abortion.
Rupert's more interested in new media and he's succeeding, eg. my.space. And it's kind of funny that even the socialists who tell us they despise Murdoch, such as Billy Bragg, market themselves and their products on my.space rather than their own websites. I suppose it's like having a storefront on a busy street rather than a dusty corner of a back alley?
dorothy
5 years ago
Forget Canwest. Its an unredeemable dinosaur and its very creation shows the level of paranoia and desire to self-protect in the class(es) of people it panders to. Instead, work on developing and supporting the fantastic soource the internet has become. Somebody mentioned more stuff about BC. I recommend the First Nations websites from the communities all around BC. It is a fantastic amount of local information plus lore and gossip one can learn from these sites, and most of them are very well done graphically, enjoyable just as works of art. This is a good starting point:
http://www.johnco.com/nativel/
I should also mention, that most of the webmasters welcome questions and will answer them.
Sikhs have an answer book when in doubt; it is called the Guru Grant Sahib. For the Godless people, there is Wikipedia. This is a fantastic project, it has grown way beyond being just an encyclopedia. The updates on world events is now so swift and qualified, that it is a news source in its own right.
Did you know you can read a myriad of newspapers on the net? some require subscription, but worldwide, there are many that give you the latest news for free.
http://www.world-newspapers.com/
http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx
are two good sites.
Those are just some of the 'alternative' kinds of things we can go right out and find on the net. So, yes, Gutstein has the right of it: we do not have to care about Canwest and its hobby corner. Now we just need to find a replacement for all the newspaper logs we burn in the fireplace during winter, and we can all send our money to the Tyee instead of Pacpress.
Truman Green
5 years ago
BC Dude. The HIV/AIDS hoax wouldn't last two weeks if big media would cover the growing Reappraising Aids movement, and present the hundreds of facts which contradict the Hiv/Aids hypothesis.
In fact in the June 17, 2006 edition of the Vancouver Sun there was a multi-articled coverage of the Aids debacle, in which Peter McKnight, Nicholas Read and Darah Hansen presented some of the laziest and most ridiculous writing ever done on the issue. Darah Hansen claimed that neuropathy, which is widely known to be a side effect of the anti-retrovirals, is a "Hiv-related" illness; Peter Mcknight referred to Harpers Magazine as the "once reputable Harpers," because they did a story entitled, "The AIDS Machine, The Corruption of Science," March 2006, by Celia Harper.
One of the writers told the story of a "Mark Smith," who they claimed had been "living with Aids" since l983, but who had never shown any symptoms.
I was at the Senate hearings in Vancouver to which Mr. Gutstein refers. I sat through the senators pretending to be concerned about media concentration in Canada. To me this story is "old hat," as no intelligent person would consider the CanWest rags to be newspapers, anyway. Basically they're just an Asper family gazette. Why on earth, for instance, would Leonard Asper not be satisfied with the monopoloy he already has? Is there no end to greed?
I'm with Dorothy when she says, "Forget CanWest."
As far as me trying to "sidetrack this very important topic," I'll take my cue from the Tyee editors on whether I have a right to include what I believe is relevant to the debate about media monopoly; not from you. I'm sure if they think I'm misusing the forum they'll tell me.
I would assume we're protesting media concentration because it diminishes the possibility of fair coverage of specific issues, not just as an academic exercise.
The only reason that the hiv/aids hypothesis survives is that big media ignores the thousands of scientists who are now confronting it.
Here's one of the best Canadian sites for reappraising Aids:
http://www.aras.ab.ca/
ripponfalls
5 years ago
Good news service costs money to provide. Asper is in it to make money, not to spend it. Result: what was once a good newspaper thirty years ago (Sen. Keith Davey) is now a trashy tabloid, resembling nothing so much as a Thompson paper.
Big is not better.
R. Smiley
Skookum1
5 years ago
Hypothesis: the free press and a free market cannot co-exist, exactly for the reaosn fipponfalls points out; market forces lead to consolidation, consolidation means downsizing and simplification, as well seven tighter editorial control as much as tighter budgetary strictures. Unless the publisher is some kind of altruist saint who publishes media simply as a necessary service, without thought of profit, it can never be a truly free press.
The web can be, and historically/politically Wikispace can be (talk pages there, not so much in articles, which are ostensibly neutral; though the exceptions are as common as the norm IME).
rotlin
5 years ago
Interesting hypothesis. Just as free markets requires
some oversight to stay free (Canada's Competition Bureau)
so does a free press.
Looking towards the future one of the things that
worries me is the pending attack on Net neutrality:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality
In particular going beyond "packet filtering" (improving
Voice over IP quality) to "content filtering". I'm still
upset over Telus' blocking of internet traffic from their
customers to a union website:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/07/24/telus-sites050724.html
If you think CanWest is bad now, imagine various combinations
of mergers between the media and telephone/cable companies such
as BellGlobe, Rogers or Telus with CanWest. Traffic to
unsanctioned websites like theTyee may run into more disruptions
in comparison to other favoured partner sites.
Just me
5 years ago
Prov-duh, the dumber-downed of Vancouver's two dumb-downed morning papers, is dropping Canadian Press, according to a friend who works there. Prov-duh editors are telling staffers that Canadian stories now will come from other CanWest papers. (I don't know if the same is true of The Sun.) When greed is your only guideline, synergy will trump quality, let alone diversity, every time. Is this to pay for the Dose debacle?
Skookum1
5 years ago
Just to comment that "world newspapers" site linked above doesn't list the Tyee on its Vancouver page; gets a number of the commie and socialist papers, as well as pride-of-place for Big Media (natch).
blueswag
5 years ago
What else is to be expected from an "appointed" Senate (ie house of ward-heelers)along with a "Corporate Prissy-Press"?