Senate communications report fails to look outside the news box
Norman Spector
Globe and Mail
As with most discussions of the media in Canada, British Columbia received special attention in the report released a fortnight ago by the Senate committee on transport and communications. That's because Vancouver is the most concentrated media market in the country, and it has been for many years. One company, CanWest Global, owns the two daily newspapers, a gaggle of weekly papers and the most-watched TV station in the province.
[!-- /Summary --] This amount of power is worrisome in a democracy, and, though it's long past time something were done about it, the Senate committee proposes no remedy. It's also a mistake to extrapolate our situation to the entire country. With three national networks and a fourth in the making, most Canadians have available a multiplicity of local, national and international television and radio stations providing news and information.
Indeed, Toronto is one of the most fiercely competitive media markets in North America. There, as in Montreal, four newspapers compete for the attention of readers and the dollars of advertisers.
The more serious shortcoming of the Senate report is the obsession with news and information to the exclusion of other programming. Likely, that's the result of ex-journalists, including former Montreal Gazette editor (now Senator) Joan Fraser, being the driving force behind the committee. How else can one explain the bizarre recommendation that federal departments and agencies should fund fellowships for mid-career journalists? Or that Ottawa should establish a centre of excellence for study of the media?
While journalists, both current and former, may be preoccupied by the pay and perks of the profession, in a free and democratic society governments should be kept far away from news and information. Many Canadians, including yours truly, believe Ottawa is already too involved through its ownership of the CBC.
In fairness, the committee recommended that the government give up the power to appoint the CBC's president, though that power would still be held by the government-appointed board of directors.
It also suggested that the corporation's mandate be reviewed and that long-term public funding be provided so that advertising can be dropped. However, there was virtually no discussion of why the CBC was set up in the first place and whether it was adequately fulfilling that mandate.
Today, the last day of the Canada Day long weekend, is as good a time as any to reflect back on the thinking that went into the creation of our broadcasting system.
In the 1920s, Canadians were being inundated with programming emanating from the United States. Moreover, there was a serious risk that American networks would set up shop in Canada -- a development that policy makers of the day correctly believed would threaten our survival as an independent country. In the words of one of the leading proponents of public broadcasting, Graham Spry, the choice was between "the state and the United States."
Unfortunately, in setting up the CBC, the policy makers of the day did not act as boldly in bridging Canada's two linguistic solitudes. Instead, they set up two separate organizations, which is a major reason that Canadians live in separate cultural worlds today.
Radio-Canada, the French arm of the CBC, has accomplished much in the development of a national consciousness among Quebeckers, but has done little to forge a common sense that we are all in this together, regardless of which official language we speak. Meanwhile, in English, the CBC has been spending most of its energies finding new ways to compete with the private sector across a broad range of media platforms.
Forty years ago, a House of Commons committee reported, "The only thing that really matters in broadcasting is program content; all the rest is housekeeping." That remains true today. While the Senate committee focuses on news and information programming, the reality is that we're relatively well served as a country in those departments. And, though news and information may be the essence of the existence of current and former journalists, the truth is that most Canadians read newspapers and watch television to be entertained.
As a country, we've done well in fiction and popular music, but have a poor record in drama and entertainment programming and film production, which are very expensive and where we must compete with high-budget foreign product. In a country of two languages and 33 million people, filling that gap with Canadian stories that Canadians will want to watch provides the only valid rationale for the continued expenditure of taxpayer dollars on broadcasting.
