Sunday 12 August 2007

Another Sun, but . . .

Sean Condon's Flickr piece on "The Death of Canadian Journalism" tells the story of another demoralized Sun owned by another media conglomerate.

But it isn't difficult while reading the author's lengthy commentary to replace "Vancouver Sun" and "CanWest" with "Sun Media" and "Quebecor."

If the conglomerate shoe fits . . .

"The most obvious example of consolidation run amok is Vancouver, where one corporation has such a tight control over the city that it gets away with bullying its reporters and slanting its news coverage without ever being challenged," says Sean in summing up his commentary.

"The problems inside the Sun and CanWest papers will be repeated across the country if consolidation is allowed to continue unabated.

"Because the priority of the paper’s corporate controller is on the bottom line instead of the public trust, a once-proud newspaper chain has turned into a skeleton of its former self."

He also writes:

"When journalists are denied resources and can’t truthfully disseminate information, the entire public is held hostage. It’s time to set them free."

Another quote from his piece:

“This whole corporatization of journalism is not healthy,” says Mike Gasher, director of journalism at Concordia University and a former Vancouver Province reporter.

“I know journalism is a business, but I think it’s just a question of how you strike the balance between the quality of the product and the bottom line. My concern is that when you have these conglomerate ownerships, that not only own several newspapers, but radio, television, Internet, then I think by definition the commitment to any one of those properties is decreased.”

TSF seconds that emotion.

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