4
METROVANINDEPENDENT.COM
November 2015
OPINION
Canadian media as Harper’s little helper
By Yul Baritugo
The Harper Conservative’s sleazy
attempt to hold on to power demonstrated, in clear terms, that sections of
Canadian media -- The Globe and Mail,
the Postmedia chain of newspapers, The
Province and in the Filipino-Canadian ethnic community, The Philippine Asian News
Today (PNT) – all losers in the digital readership game, can be used as instruments
of deception in defense of a discredited
Tory government.
Postmedia publishes the National Post,
the Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal,
Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, Regina
Leader-Post, The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon),
The Vancouver Sun (N.B.: not related to the
tabloid Sun newspapers also owned by
Postmedia), The Windsor Star. It also publishes daily tabloids such as Calgary Sun,
Edmonton Sun, Ottawa Sun, The Province
(Vancouver), Toronto Sun, Winnipeg Sun
and free dailies in Toronto and Vancouver
known as 24 Hours. It also has some 40
other publications that services smaller
communities in Canada and four magazines including the Financial Post.
PNT was in good company although
severely handicapped in distribution,
depth and editorial content. Harper with
his “halo halo” -- had Filipino relatives on
his wife’s side -- was PNT’s lame attempt at
attention-getting. The paper was also wellknown in the close-knit Filipino Canadian
community as a rabid supporter of an
erstwhile singer who suddenly wants to
be a Conservative Member of Parliament
in Ottawa. The Tories never won this riding
although they again tried.
Today, they carry on the publishing business as if their credibility as an
information source had remained unsullied. They remain unmindful that they had
become instruments of Tory fascist propaganda and never to be trusted again on any
public discourse.
Publishing a newspaper or running a
broadcast facility is not akin to running a
burger joint for profit. These are essential
democratic institutions meant and organized for the public good.
In other dispensations worldwide,
media is looked upon as the people’s
defender, the fifth estate, a non-partisan
establishment dedicated to unravelling the
falsehoods that savvy spin doctors, corrupt
officials, fascists and dictators manufacture for the consumption of an unsuspecting public. At the very least, media is about
truth. It is also about principles.
One cannot simply advocate or editorialize a false idea that the Tories are good
stewards of the economy without solid
proof. Unifor economist Jim Stanford, who
co-wrote an analysis of all the prime ministers dating back to 1945, using 16 separate economic indicators, showed Stephen
Harper's government had by far the worst
economic record of any government in 70
years.
To add insult to injury, Harper spent
hundreds of millions of tax money for
propaganda on a non-existent program
called Canada’s Economic Action Plan.
This should be subject of a major inquiry.
Are these media payments actually blind
accounts that goes back to the Tories. Who
benefited?
This was precisely an extension of that
propaganda line these advocating newspapers took when they sided with the Tories
on a non-existent economic performance,
perpetrating a lie that most everyone knew
except the editors who wrote the pro-Conservative political position.
Of course, there were attempts to
blame the owners as Canada reportedly
has the greatest concentration of newspaper ownership in a few individuals -greater than any other Western country.
Agreements between Postmedia – the
country’s largest newspaper chain – and
the Canadian Association of Petroleum
Producers (CAPP), plus an equally disgraceful deal between the company’s
Vancouver Province and the LNG industry
have permanently stained the organization’s journalistic credibility, according to
a blog post from Commonsensecanadian.
It added: Television can hardly be
relied upon. Global TV is owned by Shaw
Media. Due to their connection, they and
Corus Entertainment are considered to be
“related” by the CRTC.
Corus, also controlled by the Shaw
family, owns radio station CKNW which,
under them, abandoned its longstanding
reputation for holding the “establishment’s”
feet to the fire in favor of good manners
and servility.
Harper with his “halo halo”
-- had Filipino relatives on his
wife’s side -- was PNT’s lame
attempt at attention-getting.
CTV is a division of Bell Media (BCE),
Canada’s premier multimedia company,
with leading assets in television, radio,
and digital, and owns 15% of the Toronto’s
Globe and Mail – which has already shown
its loving attachment to the Conservative
Party.
Now, to add to the media incest in
Canada, Bell Media (BCE) is in partnership
with, guess who – Corus Entertainment in
HBO and other deals.
In effect, through third party relationships Global TV and CTV are actually first
cousins. Fair journalism just died in this
country.
As the last elections show, partisan editorial attempt to influence the public mind
conjures visions of a smoke-filled, longdrawn, dark-lit backroom deals that must
have cost millions for media to give up its
-- well -- editorial virginity. After October
19, all we have are hoes.
The effect of seeing the end of the
Harper era reveals just how traumatized
millions of Canadians were – including hundreds of thousands of ChineseCanadians, East Indian-Canadians and
Filipino-Canadians and other hyphenated
In other dispensations
worldwide, media is looked
upon as the people’s defender,
the fifth estate, a non-partisan
establishment dedicated to
unravelling the falsehoods that
savvy spin doctors, corrupt
officials, fascists and dictators
manufacture for the consumption
of an unsuspecting public. At the
very least, media is about truth.
It is also about principles.
ethnic groups -- who became second class
citizens through Harper’s law.
Harper’s Conservatives declared
citizenship is now only a privilege, not a
right. Citizens are no longer protected by
Canadian laws and the Charter of Rights.
They have reduced citizenship into a mer