Vancouver Observer: Canada's right-wing media monopolies move further right

I've made the domination of Canada's right-wing media the centrepiece of this blog. Sometimes I wonder why. Those posts are the least travelled, the least linked of any on this blog. I guess the blogging community has other things to talk about. As for the media, it certainly doesn't want to spoil its own party.

However, it is heartening that the 10% of the media not in the pocket of the Conservative party is doing its job pointing out the shameful dominance of the right wing in our media. Operation Maple recently profiled the 'Gang of Seven', the most prominent and powerful of the Conservative media monopolies. The Vancouver Observer picks up the Gang of Seven angle and amplifies the signal. Too bad it's against the best interests of the major players to share in the exposition.

The Canadian news media landscape has changed dramatically since the Senate Committee on Transport and Communications released its underwhelming report on the state of Canadian media in 2006. 

Three major players — CanWest Global Communications, CHUM Ltd. and Alliance Atlantis Communications — are gone, while others scrambled to pick up the spoils and adjust to life in the wireless-online world, some more successfully than others. 

Those changes, however, did not translate into a more diverse and balanced media system. If anything, Canadian news coverage and commentary is more conservative than it was five years ago, and just as concentrated, as the Harper government ignored every recommendation the committee made. True, alternative media have made great strides to provide more balanced coverage of major issues in the intervening years, but a great gap still persists between advertising-financed journalism and everything else.

Canada's media shouldn't be dominated by pundits auditioning for a place at Harper's Senate table. With the secrecy endemic in this government, reporters and opinionators are almost forced into servitude to conservative causes to get any little snippet of news from the Conservatives. That's not the reason they do it, of course. Canadian journalists just happen to be largely Conservative supporters.

In the meantime, LFR will keep beating the drum, exposing the Conservative media, hoping other bloggers join in the mocking and writing about this scandal. US rightbloggers made 'liberal media' a popular catchphrase and protest movement in the States; we need to do the same. Unlike the rightbloggers, we have reason to complain.

X-posted at Sister Sage's Musings.