As the media tilt rightward, so will the country
LAWRENCE MARTIN
From
Thursday's Globe and Mail
February 14, 2008 at 5:22 AM EST
It's not often you'll find Prime Minister Stephen Harper at a media bash. But there he was the other night pumping hands at an Ottawa fete celebrating the expansion of the CanWest Global news organization.
CanWest, the conservative news chain (and the country's largest media company) was officially launching a national news service to compete with Canadian Press and inaugurating its Global National newscasts out of the capital.
No surprise, therefore, that the Prime Minister (Jack Layton also attended) showed up. The conservative presence in Canada was being further entrenched -- and in no small way.
The CanWest expansion will secure, among other things, a larger media presence for Western Canada, which has understandably chafed at Eastern bias. "It's almost ironic," said CanWest's CEO Leonard Asper, "that we have a Western-based company in CanWest that has the only national newscast coming out of Ottawa."
The Aspers have made a big leap. After purchasing the Southam News chain and the National Post from Conrad Black, they looked out of their depth and were roundly criticized for their management practices. Now they are growing in strength and impact.
Their continued ascendancy is a major blow -- tilt the message and you gradually tilt the mind -- to the left and to moderates. The Aspers make no bones about their conservative bias. It is evident every day in their national flagship paper, The National Post, which regularly runs the likes of Charles Krauthammer.
Given Canada's relatively small right-wing population, what the Aspers have achieved is all the more surprising. They have hardly been preaching to the converted. Their empire's growth exacerbates the trend that sees a growing disconnect between a moderate mainstream Canada and a more right-wing media elite.
In the past - in the early Trudeau era, for example - the Liberals and New Democrats could count on having much of the media at least philosophically in their corner as an election campaign began. But when these same parties peer out at the fourth estate now, they must want to duck.
They see the huge CanWest empire - whose chairman is Derek Burney - frequently railing against them. They see the large conservative Sun chain that has been piloted by Brian Mulroney. They see Maclean's, the national magazine, now being run by a former National Post editor. They hear AM radio pounding out conservative gospel. They see Global TV, run by the Aspers, and CTV, which hardly has a Liberal tilt. At the CBC, the lefties find more soulmates, though the network's editorialist, Rex Murphy, could hardly be accused of being one of them. There's the Liberals' old standby, the Toronto Star, but it is experiencing tough times.
A right-wing philosophical bias does not mean, as the Aspers would point out, a reporting bias. On their TV network and across the great swath of Asper newspapers, the reporting itself is not pro-Conservative. In today's media, however, there is great intermingling of reporting and comment. Sometimes the front page of the National Post has more columnists commenting on the news than reporters reporting it.
Currently, polling is a source of some contention. CanWest has been running polls by Ipsos-Reid, which have consistently been giving the Conservatives a showing five or six points higher than other pollsters. Ipsos pollster John Wright, who says he's been getting heat on this from bloggers, says there is no bias and anyone who makes such a suggestion will be sued. Other pollsters I talked to aren't suggesting any bias. They just find the discrepancy, as pollster Nik Nanos put it, "strange."
The Aspers once caused a stir with their policy of running national editorials in all their newspapers. They moved away from that policy, but editorialists who cross them on their views, on the Middle East, for example, know they will have a lot of explaining to do.
Success for the Aspers in Ottawa and elsewhere is by no means assured. The Post has run up huge losses over the years. Its founder Conrad Black is soon scheduled to be entering prison. But what Mr. Black initiated with his purchase of the Southam newspapers and creation of the Post, and what the Aspers have continued to build and expand, is having a significant impact on our political and media culture - liberalism beware!
You alter the character of a country by changing how it sees itself. You can change how it sees itself by changing the character of its media. Led by the Aspers, the character of Canadian media is changing.
;D
