Newspapers

2010 - In the desert, ignoring all news.

A piece of news I missed in 2010:

I’ve just learned something shocking about the newspaper business in Canada.

In 2010, Darrel and I were living on CanKata, spending our time in Malaysia and mostly Thailand and then a good chunk of time on the hard while CanKata was repainted. It was a busy year, a year where we took a long-awaited trip to Canada, a year which saw our son and his family move from PEI back to Alberta and which saw us taking an eventful trip to India. In 2010, we had a number of visitors to CanKata, we started to learn the Thai language, Darrel used Expedia for the first time, and for the first time I did our taxes online. It was a sad year in many ways; close family members died and I learned that two brothers were dying of a rare lung disease.

While all this was happening, I missed some important news. On July 13, 2010, the Manhattan-based hedge fund, Golden Tree Asset Management, acquired the CanWest media empire. Our Canadian newspapers haven’t been the same since … and they keep changing (see HISTORY below).

The new company, which now owns a staggering amount of newspapers in Canada including the Sun Media papers, is called Postmedia and while it looks like a Canadian company, 66 percent of its shares are now owned by an American media conglomerate which has close ties to the Republican Party.

Why am I paying attention now?

It was just an innocent remark. One of my Facebook friends said something about the Ottawa Citizen that made me wonder, “What way does the Ottawa Citizen lean these days?” My first question to Google was “Who owns the Ottawa Citizen” and the answer led me to a whole bunch more questions about the owner – Postmedia.

(NOTE: If you want more details or want to know my sources, you can click on anything with a light-grey highlight. This will take you to the web site that provided the information.)

What Postmedia owns

Here are a few of the Canadian daily papers that Postmedia owns: National Post, Calgary Herald, Calgary Sun, Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, Kingston Whig-Standard, Leader-Post, The London Free Press, Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa Sun, The StarPhoenix, Toronto Sun, Vancouver Sun, Winnipeg Sun and the Financial Post Magazine, plus a number of other dailies and weeklies. Postmedia’s media outlets represent a far greater concentration of news media ownership than exists in any other major economy (a degree of foreign ownership of the free press that would not be tolerated in the U.S., France, Japan or Germany for instance).

Foreign Ownership

Canada once had strong laws to protect us from foreign ownership. But in 2010, the ruling party – the Conservatives – signed off on Postmedia’s creation and tried to make it look Canadian by selecting Canadian Paul Godfrey as Postmedia’s CEO. Godfrey immediately took away local editorial autonomy and ordered all Postmedia publications to endorse the Harper government’s bid for re-election.

One of the Board Members

Here is the name of one someone who once sat on the Board of Directors of Postmedia: David Pecker – who headed up the most infamous tabloid in the United States – The National Enquirer, and who is a close friend of Donald Trump. He was appointed in October 2016 but he resigned in August 2018 after his interactions with Trump were heavily reported. Those “interactions” were his “catch and kill” operations to buy exclusive rights to stories that might embarrass Trump and to prevent negative stories from becoming public during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Are these newspapers biased?

Here is what Media Bias Fact Check says about one of the Saskatoon papers: “The StarPhoenix typically sources poorly as they source through quoting rather than providing links to their assertions in opinion pieces, whereas they utilize credible media sources when publishing national and international news stories such as the Canadian Press and Associated Press, therefore we rate them high for factual news reporting overall, but mixed for local reporting and right-center biased based on editorial and opinion positions”. A check of all the Postmedia papers shows that they are all right-center.

I wondered what Media Bias Fact Check says about Fox News – not a newspaper but probably a key source of news for a few of my friends. “Overall, we rate Fox News strongly Right-Biased due to editorial positions and story selection that favors the right. We also rate them Mixed factually and borderline Questionable based on poor sourcing and the spreading of conspiracy theories that later must be retraced after being widely shared. Further, Fox News would be rated a Questionable source based on numerous failed fact checks by hosts and pundits, however straight news reporting is generally reliable, therefore we rate them Mixed for factual reporting.”
"Questionable source based on numerous failed fact checks by hosts and pundits" is really all that matters to me here. I never have and never will watch Fox News because I think that was pretty evident from the get-go.

This is what Media Bias Fact Check says about CBC: “Overall, we rate CBC Left-Center Biased based on editorial positions that leans slightly left and High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact check record.”

Finally, let’s look at CTV: “Overall, we rate CTV News Least Biased based on balanced story selection and minimal use of emotional language. We also rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact check record.”

Of course, Media Bias Fact Check might be biased itself, and perhaps a little unscientific, but it was the only rating system I could find for these papers. I would love to hear from anyone who disagrees with the ratings.

 

Editors resign

On October 19, 2015, Andrew Coyne resigned as the National Post editor of editorials and comment. The National Post endorsed Stephen Harper and the Conservatives in the upcoming election, and Coyne wrote an editorial dissenting from the Post’s endorsement. They pulled his editorial (an unprecedented intervention), so he then resigned the editorial position to protect his reputation and to preserve his editorial freedom as a columnist. In case you weren’t aware, Stephen Harper did not win the 2015 election.

In November of 2015, the Ottawa Citizen’s two editorial writers, Kate Heartfield and James Gordon, announced that they were leaving the newspaper. Neither gave reasons similar to Andrew Coyne, but the timing is suspect. The Citizen, like the National Post (and all its other daily newspapers), was instructed by Postmedia to post editorials endorsing Stephen Harper and the Conservatives. I can tell you this - Kate Heartfield was not a fan of Mr. Harper. Here’s a couple of quotes from her from 2013:

“Stephen Harper … is a man who puts a lot of effort into making sure no Conservative ever says the wrong thing – never says anything of substance at all, if he can help it. He’s trained himself and his party to never get into trouble”.

“Almost everything Harper’s government does … is media strategy”.

“If there was ever a political party in Canada deserving of being called the Media party, it’s the Conservative Party of Canada in 2013”.

Yup, I can see why she resigned when she was instructed to endorse Harper.

Murdoch

I’m not overly alarmed at what I read about Canadian newspapers. I don’t think a lot of people read them these days anyway.  I’m much more concerned about what is happening on TV and how much influence Fox has. Oh Rupert Murdoch, you crotchety old man. Another spoilt boy who inherited family wealth.

I was interested in what Encyclopaedia Britannica said about him. He “briefly worked as an editor on the London Daily Express, where he first gained practical experience in the sensationalist journalism that would be a major influence early in his career as a publisher. His father having died, he returned to Australia in 1954 to take over his inheritance, the Sunday Mail and The News; he quickly converted the latter into a paper dominated by news of sex and scandal. … The News’s circulation soared, and he then went about instituting similar changes in papers that he bought in Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, and Brisbane.”

Encyclopaedia Britannica gives Murdoch’s formula for boosting circulation: “an emphasis on crime, sex, scandal, and human-interest stories with boldface headlines, prolific sports reporting, and outspokenly conservative editorializing”. And people just gobble this stuff up. And they think they are keeping themselves “informed”.

Am I Misinformed?

I have three key ways of staying informed – via television, through my Facebook newsfeed, and by listening to Darrel read news items to me while I’m making breakfast.

I usually turn on the television so I can watch YouTube or Netflix. While we’re getting settled into our chairs with our bowls of popcorn, and much to Darrel’s displeasure, I will watch a bit of news. CNN sometimes has good stuff but usually I get annoyed with their distortions so I switch to the BBC, which is much more balanced. Still, it does an incredible amount of reporting about the USA and has way too many videos of the US president, so, much to Darrel’s relief, I switch to YouTube. We use YouTube to watch the CBC National – we both find it balanced and upbeat – and to watch the late-night comedians. We’re always up for a laugh. They all tend to pick on the US president and we’re fine with that. They pick on any world leader when they have the opportunity, and we’re fine with that too. Our favourite YouTube activity is watching music videos and they are a refreshing diversion from news and politics.

My Facebook newsfeed is very diverse and includes feeds from such sources as the CBC, Globe and Mail, the Economist, Bloomberg Asia, The Thaiger (Thai), Phuket News, and the New York Times. The only ones I can read regularly for free are CBC and the Thai news sources, while the others let me read a limited number of articles. So I am somewhat informed by headlines. When something grabs my attention, I turn to Google to do a more in-depth review. I am often dismayed at the crazy posts that some of my friends share, and so I usually spend a bit of time each day blocking sources. Some of you might think that I should see this other stuff, but I’m afraid that some of the false information might stick in my head and in later years I might wonder if it was really true that the coronavirus was made in a Winnipeg laboratory. For me, changing the channel or blocking a Facebook friend is the safer route. Darrel feels comfortable with just the CBC and the Thai news sources. He helps me stay on the straight and narrow (but is certainly willing to explore off the pathways from time to time).

It wasn’t that long ago that I was a faithful reader of the Saskatoon StarPhoenix and later the Ottawa Citizen. It saddens me that, under new ownership, they are not the same papers that I once enjoyed so much. And it is ten years later that I am learning this … so while I might be doing my best at not becoming misinformed, perhaps I am quite uninformed.

~~~~~ The End ~~~~~

Some background HISTORY from Wikipedia

On July 13, 2010 the Manhattan-based hedge fund, GoldenTree Asset Management acquired the Asper family’s bankrupt CanWest media empire for $1.1 billion.^[5]

On October 6, 2014, Postmedia's CEO Godfrey announced a deal to acquire the English-language operations of Sun Media.^[5][6] The purchase received regulatory approval from the federal Competition Bureau on March 25, 2015,^[7] even though the company manages competitive papers in several Canadian cities; while the Sun Media chain owns numerous other papers, four of its five Sun-branded tabloids operate in markets where Postmedia already publishes a broadsheet competitor.^[6] Board chair Rod Phillips has cited the Vancouver market, in which the two main daily newspapers, the Vancouver Sun and The Province, have had common ownership for over 30 years, as evidence that the deal would not be anticompetitive.^[6] The purchase did not include Sun Media's now-defunct Sun News Network.^[6] The acquisition was approved by the Competition Bureau on March 25, 2015,^[8] and closed on April 13.^[9]

Margo Goodhand, a former Edmonton Journal editor-in-chief, wrote in a 2016 Walrus article that Postmedia executives were behind outsourcing of Postmedia content to produce “Regina Leader-Post sports pages, Arts fronts for the Montreal Gazette, editorial pages for the Vancouver Sun” to a site within an office in Canada. ^[10][11]

In 2016, the company sought to restructure its compensation plans and reduce spending by as much as 20%, after reporting a net loss of $99.4 million, or 35 cents per diluted share, in the fourth-quarter ended Aug 31, compared with a $54.1 million net loss, or 19 cents per diluted share, in the same period a year earlier. This resulted in 90 newsroom staff losing their jobs.^[12]

On November 27, 2017, Postmedia and Torstar announced a transaction in which Postmedia will sell seven dailies, eight community papers, and the Toronto and Vancouver 24 Hours to Torstar, in exchange for 22 community papers and the Ottawa and Winnipeg versions of Metro. Except for the Exeter Times-Advocate, St. Catharines Standard, Niagara Falls Review, Peterborough Examiner, and Welland Tribune, all acquired papers will be closed.^[13][14]

In March 2018, the Competition Bureau issued a court filing accusing the two companies of structuring the deal with no-compete clauses in an effort to reduce competition in the newspaper industry, in violation of the Competition Act.^[15][16]

On June 26, 2018, Canadian Press reported that, by the end of August, Postmedia will be closing the Camrose Canadian in Camrose, Alberta, Strathmore Standard in Strathmore, Alberta, Kapuskasing Northern Times in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Ingersoll Times in Ingersoll, Ontario, Norwich Gazette in Norwich, Ontario and Petrolia Topic in Petrolia, Ontario. It will also cease printing the Portage Daily Graphic in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, the Northern News in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, and The Daily Observer in Pembroke, Ontario while maintaining a digital presence for the three publications. As well, the High River Times in High River, Alberta will go from being published twice a week to once a week.^[17]

On November 27, 2018, The Competition Bureau applied for a court evaluation contesting Postmedia’s claims of solicitor-client privilege, for records seized by the bureau during raids at the company's offices.^[18]

On June 2019, Kevin Libin, the National Post and Financial Post comments editor and editorials editor and a founding editor of Western Standard, was assigned “executive editor of Postmedia politics". ^[3] The role focuses on coverage for federal politics in the Post. In addition, it focuses on coverage of federal and provincial politics within all of the dailies owned by Postmedia.^[10]

In November 2019, Postmedia announced^[19] that 66% of its shares were now owned by Chatham Asset Management, an American media conglomerate which owns American Media, Inc., and is known for its close ties to the Republican party.^[20]