CanWest and Harper - Birds of a Feather

As a former journalist I'm very concerned about the independence and diversity of the news media. Put simply, the more voices that we hear and the broader the range of opinion, the better informed we are as a people. An informed electorate is necessary for the functioning of a healthy democracy. Voters who are ill-informed or, worse, misinformed are vulnerable to political manipulation.

We have no shortage of proof of this in the experience of the United States since 11 September, 2001. A shaken, even traumatized people turned to what they perceived to be the voices of strength and resolve - the far-right media epitomized by FoxNews and ultra-conservative commentators such as Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and, of course, Rush Limbaugh.

A powerful symbiosis evolved between the corporate media and their political benefactors, the Bush Republicans. Media ownership concentration was the reward for media collaboration and it paid off handsomely for the Bush administration. Even today, Condoleeza Rice is overheard virtually gushing over "my boys at Fox" and, when he wants to spew his spin unmolested, it is to Fox that Dick Cheney inevitably turns.

In a healthy democracy, the national media have a tempered, adversarial role to government. The media serves the public as its watchdog over government. That breaks down, and democracy suffers accordingly, when the media transforms into the lapdog of government, doing tricks in return for treats.

A media outlet that can deliver, say 1,200 radio stations, to the political purposes of a particular party is a treasured ally and one that will receive reciprocal attentions - one scratching the other's back. One of these rewards is a relaxation of the government's role in curbing excessive concentration of media ownership. When that happens the circle of mutual benefit is perfected and, in its perfection, perpetuated. As for the public, well they are merely targets for predation and manipulation.

In my day (when ships were made of oak and men were made of iron) our governments sought to restrain both concentration of media ownership and cross-ownership of media outlets. Both were considered impediments to the free flow of ideas and information. This was largely effected through control of licensing of television and radio stations.

It was a complicated business but, in its simplest terms, was aimed at ensuring that, in a market that had, say 20 radio stations, no chain or group held more than one AM and one FM licence. Likewise, licensing restrictions would be used to prevent a newspaper chain from taking a dominant position in a market's broadcast media. Where concentration became a problem through cross-ownership, the chain might be forced to divest itself of a radio or television licence, just to keep the mix healthy.

How things change. Now we have an emerging media giant, CanWest. From its base in Winnipeg, Leonard Asper reigns over a national media conglomerate comprising the CanWest broadcast network and the former Southin newspaper chain acquired from Conrad Black.

There is very little editorial independence at the Asper newspapers. Indeed Asper himself writes the editorials from his offices in Winnipeg and he likewise controls the news content that is forwarded to his papers for publication. That means Mr. Asper also gets to determine what is to be excluded from all of his newspapers. That's fair enough if there are plenty of competing news outlets to ensure your access to the stories Mr. Asper doesn't want run or the views he's not prepared to publish or broadcast. It's anything but fair when he holds a dominant position over certain markets or even regions, such as his media domination in British Columbia.

Leonard Asper is committed to promoting the interests and views of Israel. Oddly enough, so are the Harper Tories. This gives rise to a powerful mutuality of interests that creates yet another level of influence in CanWest's editorial outlook. Okay if there are plenty of alternate voices to be heard. Dangerous when there aren't.

For good and bad, news reports help shape our views. Studies have shown that FoxNews viewers remained far more ignorant than the general population over the Iraq war, the non-existant link between Saddam and al-Qaeda and the non-existance of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Those so powerfully misled, in turn, were much more ready to support the Bush administration. You didn't have to be powerfully ignorant to support George Bush but it sure helped.

It was from this background that I stumbled upon an interesting article by Richard Fricker today at consortiumnews.com, an American reporter's take on the Harper government and our right-wing media:

"I first took note of the right-wing U.S. strategies that Harper was importing to Canada while visiting my wife’s relatives in Ontario last summer.

"As an American journalist, I had always been struck by how ardently Canada’s political discourse focused on substance – the budget, health care, schools, roads – without the cheap theatrics and angry divisions common in the United States.

"But suddenly I noticed that the tone of Canada had changed. There was a nastier edge to the commentary. There were not so subtle appeals to racism and xenophobia, references to Muslim neighborhoods in Quebec as “Quebecistan” and to Lebanese-Canadians as “Hezbocrats,” a play on the Muslim group Hezbollah.

"It was as if a virus that had long infected the people south of the border had overnight jumped containment and spread northward establishing itself in a new host population. But – as I began to study this new phenomenon – it became clear that this infection did not just accidentally break quarantine.

"Rather, it was willfully injected into the Canadian body politic by conservative strategists and right-wing media moguls who had studied the modern American model and were seeking to replicate it.

"Harper even had brought in Republican advisers, such as political consultant Frank Luntz, to give pointers on how the Conservative Party could become as dominant in Canada as the GOP was in the United States.

"Canada had its version of Rupert Murdoch and Fox News in the Asper brothers and their CanWest Global Communications Corp., which owns the National Post, the Montreal Gazette and nine other Canadian newspapers, 25 television outlets and two radio stations.

"It was the Montreal Gazette and the National Post that trumpeted the phrase “Quebecistan” after demonstrators in Ottawa and Montreal protested Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon in summer 2006.

"CanWest’s National Post even offered up a Canadian version of Ann Coulter in columnist Barbara Kay.

"In one of Kay’s columns, she noted that 50,000 Lebanese-Canadians lived in Montreal and added, “We can expect those numbers to swell as Hezbollah-supporting residents of southern Lebanon cash in on their Canadian citizenship and flee to safety.”

"Kay denounced Quebec as “the most anti-Israel of the provinces and therefore the most vulnerable to tolerance for Islamist terrorist sympathizers.”

“'The word would go out to the Islamophere that Quebec was the Londonistan,' Kay wrote. 'It won’t if our political class takes its cues from principled Stephen Harper rather than shameless Quebec politicians who led the pro-terrorist rally.'

"As this Americanized version of Canadian conservatism took shape, Harper was cribbing, too, from another rising U.S. politician, George W. Bush. Harper said his goal was to tap into a political base “similar to what George Bush tapped.”

"Amid a surge of anti-minority sentiments, Harper merged his operations at the Canadian Conservative Alliance with those of Peter MacKay, the last leader of the Progressive Conservative Party. In 2003, they officially formed the Conservative Party of Canada.

"Their timing was perfect. As with the congressional Democrats in the United States a decade earlier, the Canadian Liberal Party found itself beset with corruption allegations and suffering from growing public resentment about high taxes.

"In contrast to these tainted Liberals was the fresh-faced Harper at the head of a shiny new movement with powerful backing from right-wing interest groups, neoconservative media outlets and stirred-up social conservatives.

"Though Conrad Black’s media empire had collapsed in a financial scandal, some of his properties, such as the National Post, were snapped up by CanWest Global, which shared Black’s staunchly pro-Israeli stance on Middle East affairs.

"Harper also brought into play evangelical Protestants, through his membership in the Christian and Missionary Alliance, which opposed gay rights, was staunchly anti-abortion and targeted North Africa’s Muslims for conversion to Christianity.

"In 2004, Harper engineered a political breakthrough for the Conservatives in Ontario, boosting their standing in the House of Commons by 25 seats.

"This new conservative coalition flexed its muscles again in January 2006, denying the Liberals control of Parliament by claiming 124 seats (out of 308) and putting Harper in position to piece together a coalition government, which he did.

"Harper was sworn in as Canada’s prime minister on Feb. 6, 2006, consolidating right-wing political power across the North American continent. President Bush finally had a likeminded Canadian leader who also shared Washington’s neoconservative doctrine for confronting the Islamic world.

"The tone of Canadian political discourse followed this shift in the government, especially with CanWest media outlets ready to trumpet news that puts the Islamic world in the worst possible light.

"For instance, on May 19, 2006, the National Post published a front-page article by expatriate Iranian journalist Amir Taheri, claiming that Iran was enacting legislation that would require color-coded “badges” for Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians.

“'Jews would be marked out with a yellow strip of cloth sewn in front of their clothes while Christians will be assigned the colour red' and Zoroastrians would wear blue, Taheri reported in the article distributed by Benador Associates, a public relations firm representing neoconservative writers, such as Michael Ledeen and Richard Perle.

"With its obvious Holocaust allusion, Taheri’s story flashed around the world, picked up by the New York Post, Rush Limbaugh and the powerful U.S.-Israeli lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Harper and Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard, who was visiting Canada, joined in denouncing Iran for the purported badge legislation.

"However, Taheri’s article turned out to be untrue. The Iranian legislation contained nothing about making religious minorities wear colored badges. After the facts were challenged, the National Post retracted the story and later published an apology.

Power Outage

"Despite the lingering embarrassment over the bogus “colored badge” story, CanWest’s neoconservative attitudes resurfaced in July 2006 when war broke out between Israel and Lebanon.

"As Israeli bombers inflicted heavy civilian casualties in Lebanon in retaliation for Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers, Lebanese-Canadians staged protests demanding that Israel cease its attacks.

"CanWest’s newspapers responded by injecting buzz words like “Quebecistan” and “Hezbocrats” into Canada’s public debate.

"While this kind of divisive rhetoric is common in the United States and is even encouraged as a way to energize the political base, it marked an escalation of political stridency for Canada.

"Some of the fury subsided after a ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel in late summer. But the larger question remained whether Harper would succeed in transforming Canada into a more belligerent and bellicose nation, much as Bush had done in the United States.

"For generations, Canada has prided itself on its well-liked image around the world. It is a nation renowned for sending peacekeepers abroad not occupying armies.

"There was also the possibility that having seen the consequences of right-wing governance in the United States, Canadians would recoil at the thought of losing their pleasant country with its national health insurance and fairly comfortable lifestyle, in favor of the more cut-throat economic system south of the border.

"Some analysts suspected, too, that the Bush connection would ultimately hurt Harper. With Canadian troops dying in Afghanistan and violence rising in the Middle East, Harper’s coziness with Bush had the risk of becoming a liability as it was for Tony Blair.

"Now, with the Republican congressional defeat in the United States, Harper’s political movement also has lost the glow of inevitability, one of the chief organizing principles for the planned right-wing dominance across North America.

"Instead, Canada appears to be turning against right-wing extremism, much as Americans did, in favor of more pragmatic politics.

"In seeking his party’s leadership, the 51-year-old Dion chided Harper for being too cozy with Bush, especially on policies in the Middle East.

“'I don’t want Afghanistan to become an Iraq,' Dion told the CBC. 'And, if we do what Harper is doing, to be the macho, to say ‘it’s me and we will do it’, copying the language and style of the President of the United States. We have a Prime Minister who thinks that the United States is not only an ally for us but a model, and not only for foreign affairs, but also domestically.'”

"Dion has made clear that he intends to hammer away at the similarities between Harper and Bush. In an interview with MacLean’s magazine, Dion said Harper had reprised so many of Bush’s speeches that the U.S. President “may request royalties.”

"Harper’s use of U.S. political consultants and his alliance with American evangelical groups also have rubbed many Canadians the wrong way.

"Much as Bush’s picture next to Republican candidates became a staple of Democratic campaign ads in 2006, Canada’s Liberals appear certain to pair up Bush and Harper during the looming campaign for control of Parliament.

"As Republicans were hurt by the impression they were Bush’s rubber stamps, Harper may have to overcome his earlier decision to mimic the strategy and tactics of the American Right.

"If the Nov. 7 election results in the United States and opinion polls in Canada mean anything, it may be that Bush’s tough-guy swagger has lost much of its appeal in the United States and may be in even greater disrepute in Canada.

“The conservative wave across Canada has crested,” declared Liberal Party spokesman Tait Simpson.

Fickers article serves as a welcome reminder of where the Harper fundamentalists have taken our nation and what is at stake if that's not undone. When Stephane Dion forms a government we will need to revisit the debate over concentration of ownership and cross-ownership.

We must do this because the existing state of affairs is impacting negatively on Canadian democracy. Canada, like other nations, is going to be facing some unprecedented challenges in the decades to come. If we're going to meet those challenges, we're going to need an informed populace that has been able to get all the competing points of view.