Democracy and diversity go hand in hand: group

With today the deadline for submissions in the Diversity of Voices proceeding, a Vancouver activist group will soon find out whether its campaign to get Joe and Jane Average involved in matters of media ownership has paid off."There are certainly opportunities to make it more accessible to the public, to make their feelings known to the CRTC and lobby them and just a more participatory, democratic regulation of media," says Steve Anderson, coordinator for Canadians for Democratic Media, of the proceeding, which aims to update the regulator's policy on common ownership of media assets and their vertical and horizontal integration with one another, among other matters.When Canadians have made their voices heard in the past, they've come out firmly against concentration of media in fewer hands, Anderson says. He cites a poll commissioned by Friends of Canadian Broadcasting and conducted by Ipsos Reid in August 2002 as evidence. More than two-thirds of those interviewed in that survey that media concentration subverts Canada's democratic process, and 60% said the government should ask the CRTC to either review and act on the situation, or hold a public inquiry.More recently, the Senate Committee on Transport and Communications tackled the problem in its report on the Canadian news media, and noted that in some instances "the concentration of ownership has reached levels that few other countries would consider acceptable."While Canada has a number of regulations and programs designed to prevent foreign ownership of Canadian media, corresponding rules to prevent high levels of concentration of ownership of media properties, either in particular regions or within the country as a whole, do not exist," continues the conclusion of the Senate committee's final report delivered in June 2006. "The Committee has also found compelling evidence that the responsible authorities have not used the processes available to them to limit media concentration."To Anderson's mind, that's proof positive that more attention should be paid to the process Canada's broadcast regulator follows when determining how much concentration is too much. "I think the CRTC should take notice of what both the Senate and, more importantly, what the public is telling them," he says. "They're supposed to be regulating in the public interest."And those current foreign ownership rules alluded to in the Senate committee's report - which allow a maximum of 46.7% direct and indirect ownership combined by non-Canadians (no more than 20% of the operating company and 33% of the holding company) - may be the next under siege. "If we get these big enough corporations that's probably what will happen next," Anderson says.Consequently, CDM launched an online campaign on June 27 aimed at getting the average Canadian's opinion heard in the Diversity of Voices proceeding. The group says that as of Monday, more than 1,000 citizens wrote the CRTC to make their feelings on media ownership known. A public hearing into the matter begins on September 17.While the final numbers of intervenors won't be know for a few days, Anderson hopes that Canadian's aren't lulled into a false sense of security by the seemingly "democratic" world of Web 2.0, with its blogs and social networking sites. "The Internet doesn't really save us - we still need to have a media policy," he says. And, corporate interests could have more sway over the very foundation of the Internet than many think: the ‘Net neutrality debate is a dire threat to its reliability as an alternative content delivery platform, he says."Some of the statements that Telus and others have released on this, they seem pretty aggressive on removing network neutrality," he says. "I'd say it's a dangerous situation right now."And even the CRTC's decision last month to disallow CTVglobemedia Inc.'s acquisition of five CityTV stations as part of its bid to buy CHUM Ltd. doesn't offer much hope that media concentration won't get worse, Anderson says."I see it as kind of putting a band-aid on an axe wound," he says. "At the end of the day, we're going to have one less media conglomerate there, so we're still concentrating media, we're just concentrating it a bit less. There's still no CHUM, right?"

Democracy and diversity go hand in hand: group

Broadcast | July 18, 2007

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