OWNERSHIP
A CHILL IN CANADA

Quick: What is Canada's leading media company? You may not have heard much about CanWest Global Communications, but given the company's recent stunning growth and troubling behavior, you soon may.

Canada has relaxed its reluctance to allow media companies to own both television and newspaper outlets, and that paved the way for CanWest's biggest deal -- the purchase in 2000 from Conrad Black's Hollinger Company of the fourteen-newspaper Southam chain. "As a general rule, cross ownership in Canada was not allowed," says Peter Desbarats, the former dean of journalism at the University of Western Ontario. "When CanWest purchased Southam, it created a conglomeration of unprecedented scope."

The company got its start nearly thirty years ago when Israel Asper purchased an independent TV station in North Dakota, then relocated it to Winnipeg. Now it's a global presence, with some 9,000 employees and broadcasting properties in Australia, Northern Ireland, and New Zealand. The company's Canadian portfolio includes more than 120 community papers, sixteen television stations, seven specialty networks, and the news portal, Canada.com, as well as fourteen English-language metropolitan dailies, including the National Post, based in Toronto and with a daily national circulation of 322,000.

The Southam deal between Black and the Aspers -- Israel's two sons, Leonard and David, now run the company -- not only highlighted a change in the power structure of Canadian media, but seemed to confirm the fears of those who were nervous about how large media companies might use their muscles. The Aspers apparently have no qualms about directing media properties to fall in ideological line.

In December 2001, CanWest ordered all its dailies to begin running the same corporately crafted "national editorials," and as of this January the company said it would supply them three times a week. Many Canadian journalists feel that the required editorials -- lower taxes and less regulation are among favorite Asper causes -- are intrusive. Even more intrusive was a no-rebuttal order after a national editorial last August, following an attack on Israel by Palestinians, arguing that Canada should back Israel no matter how it responds, "without the usual hand-wringing criticism about 'excessive force.'" Papers in the Southam chain were told to carry neither columns nor letters to the editor taking issue with that editorial, according to journalists at two Southam papers, who said the order came via a conference call.

Meanwhile, Canadian journalists say the Aspers have censored local columnists whose viewpoints they disagree with. Stephen Kimber, a longtime columnist for the Halifax Daily News, resigned in January "because a number of columns of mine were changed to match the owner's point of view." Kimber says he does not dispute an owner's right to express a political position, but he disagrees with CanWest's reining in differing points of view, especially from columnists. He also believes CanWest's national editorials undermine the value of a local newspaper. "The power of a newspaper," he says, "is a local perspective."

Stephanie Domet, also a Daily News columnist, wrote a piece in support of Kimber, then quit when it was rejected. One of the Southam chain's most popular syndicated columnists, Lawrence Martin, was let go recently in what CanWest attributed to cost-cutting, but which many journalists think is tied to Martin's recent critical pieces on Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. The veteran syndicated columnist Peter Worthington had his column terminated in the Windsor Star after he was critical of the Aspers.

Such moves angered Montreal Gazette employees to the point where, as of late January, seventy-seven of them had signed an open letter in protest. The letter says: "This is an attempt to centralize opinion to serve the corporate interests of CanWest. Far from offering additional content to Canadians, this will practically vacate the power of the editorial boards of Southam newspapers and thereby reduce the diversity of opinions and the breadth of debate."

David Asper, chairman of CanWest's publications committee, in a December speech following the Gazette staff protest, spoke of the "bleeding hearts" of the journalistic community. "If those people in Montreal are so committed," he said, "why don't they just quit and have the courage of their convictions?"

All of this is giving second thoughts to some who supported media deregulation. Desbarats, who publicly supported the Southam deal, is rethinking the matter. He finds it "alarming" that the company would throw its weight around so soon after regulators awarded CanWest cross-media ownership, and after opposition forces voiced their fears over such a concentration of media power. "My concerns have intensified since the two sons have shown a tendency to use their influence to get involved with the national political debate," he says.

What's next? CanWest will inevitably expand into the United States, according to Gordon Pitts, a Canadian journalist working on a book about Canadian media groups. Pitts said the Aspers envision CanWest developing into a global print, radio, TV, and Web empire with Winnipeg as its hub. "They realize the only way to play in this league is to truly go international," Pitts says. "They would love to get into the United States and pattern themselves after Tribune or News Corp."
-- Aaron J. Moore

For more on CanWest click here.

photo courtesy of The Canadian Press