Newspapers: Endorse Conservative

[earth_as_one]

I have no problem with biased editorials as long as newspapers present all points of view. Otherwise we are talking about propaganda not freedom of the press.

Gilbert recorded Goering's observations that the common people can always be manipulated into supporting and fighting wars by their political leaders:


We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Manufacturing Consent
by Noam Chomsky
The Political Economy of the Mass Media

A Propaganda Model

The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda.

In countries where the levers of power are in the hands of a state bureaucracy, the monopolistic control over the media, often supplemented by official censorship, makes it clear that the media serve the ends of a dominant elite. It is much more difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent. This is especially true where the media actively compete, periodically attack and expose corporate and governmental malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the general community interest. What is not evident (and remains undiscussed in the media) is the limited nature of such critiques, as well as the huge inequality in command of resources, and its effect both on access to a private media system and on its behavior and performance....

http://www.thinkingpeace.com/Lib/lib098.html

and

Diversity, Democracy And Access:
Is Media Concentration A Crisis?

A handful of multinational corporations controls nearly everything we see and hear on the screen, over the airwaves and in print. What impact does consolidation have on news coverage, entertainment culture, freedom of speech and democracy? ...

http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/front.shtml

and

Confronting the Problem of Media Ownership Concentration in Canada

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

Need I mention George Orwell's 1984?

So yes there is a real danger to our freedom when every media source is really the same media source and they all express the same opinion. Take a look at the list of newspaper endorsements in the first post in this string. If 95% of all newspapers endorse the conservatives are they trying to inform or controll?

 

[sanch]

All of these newspapers suddenly endorsing the conservatives strikes me as a bit odd and fishy. To me there is a general news and intellectual blackout in Canada. Canada does not have a real intellectual class that examines Canadian issues and brings them to the public’s attention. It’s probably best to leave to the imagination whose interests the universities and the press serve but it is clearly not Canada’s. On each visit I hit the university and general bookstores in Toronto and Montreal in search of critical studies on Canada and always come up Empty.

If you look at the data in the article below for who is employed by Canadian universities the absence of any intellectual focus on Canada is not surprising. The mean here is about 32% but Canada has the highest level of foreign teachers. To some degree there are immigrant faculty in the university but the overall trend has been to employ teachers from the US. This trend has been prevalent since the seventies.

The article only includes data on faculty who have published. It doesn’t include faculty who don’t publish which is the majority. As with all cliques membership is tightly controlled. I know a Canadian with a doctorate from a prestigious university who has written about 8 or 9 books on Canada who can’t get a job or even make the short list in a Canadian university. He writes the wrong kind of books obviously and from the wrong perspective.

http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/full/18/9/936

There is lip service paid to freedom of speech in Canada but on close examination there are a lot of mechanisms that curtail the open discussion of ideas. It is an effective and insidious process of indoctrination and touches all areas of Canadian intellectual life essentially blocking the free flow of ideas. This is one of the reasons forums like this are so important.

But back to the newspapers which I see as simply representing certain class interests. They are opportunistic and well aware that the tide is turning. They do not want to be left out of the party and excluded from access. They also want to benefit from the advertising dollars aligning oneself with the right party will bring.

As they scheme though they neglect to report the news. Canada has always been dominated by foreign interests and these interests have been catered to by a very small class of Canadians. Look at Nelnet which purchased Edulinx from CIBC last year. The purchase was played up in the annual reports as access to the big market in the north and the stock price of Nelnet moved up accordingly. It almost doubled in a year and with stock appreciation and salary the chairman and vice chairman each earned about 85 million US. This was in the same year that Nelnet gained control over administering the student loan system as well as providing other administrative services for Canadian universities. It is a very lucrative business but it has been farmed out. None of this was reported in the Canadian press in any depth. Why?

Yet all of a sudden there are these hysterical charges that Canada will become a US colony with a conservative victory. All of this demagoguery obscures what is really going on which I suspect is the intention. The country was sold to outside interests a long time ago. Also conservatives tend to be nationalists and so we are getting a lot of false information on their character.

Right now we have a prime minister who likes to stand on his chair and scream at the US while cutting deals under the table. With Harper there will still be deals but since they will be cut in the open and be transparent at least Canadians will know what is going on. There is a big distinction here.

It will be interesting to see how the Canadian Press responds to the new ear of openness. It does seem from the endorsements they want to be on board.

 

[#juan]

I wonder how many

of those newspapers are owned by Global. I'm guessing most of them.