The media

These commentaries, going back to 1974, cover the gamut - concentration of media ownership and power, media bias, public broadcasting, brand-name propaganda, regulatory failure, and everything in between. Some of the analysis is altogether unique, all of it is original. A notable example: the exploration of television financing (public financing is much more efficient than commercial financing). Another example: the critique of the CBC (it is blatantly right-wing, not left-wing). Also touched on is the failure of Canada’s political parties to take on concentration of media power. Many of the earlier columns deal with the hapless Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission [CRTC], a lamentable excuse for a regulatory agency.

(For the complete story about the CRTC and broadcast politics in Canada, see Closed Circuits: The Sellout of Canadian Television. For the definitive essay on Canada’s public broadcasting culture, as it once was, see Part IV in A Nation Unaware. For a probing looking into the brand-name propaganda system and its destructive consequences, see Chapters 7 and 8, on the advertising and marketing bureaucracy, in The New Bureaucracy: Waste and Folly in the Private Sector) .

"Media concentration: self-promotion and not much else," Columbia Journal, December 2002.

"Media concentration scarier than editorial control," rabble.ca, April 2002.

"It's the media, stupid," The Democrat, September 2001.

"B.C. media make false charges stick," Straight Goods, June 2001; Free The Media, July 2001.

THE BIG TABOO, a six-part series, Free The Media, May 2001; votehardin.com (Vancouver South – Burnaby federal election campaign website) November 2000
    The big taboo! The issue the other parties don’t dare talk about
    Danger: extreme concentration
    How media bias works: the joke is on us all
    Now you see it, now you don’t - how editors make us blind
    Brainwashing Stalin would have admired and, boy, does it cost you!
    Restoring media democracy. Let’s do it!

"Vancouver Sun conducts biased survey," The Republic of East Vancouver, May 2001.

"The CBC & Bias: A Counter-argument," Scan, April 2000.

"Lazy editors lend credence to Fraser stunt" (on "Tax Freedom Day"), Georgia Straight, June 10-17, 1999. Earlier version: "Tax Freedom Day is an ideological gimmick," Ottawa Citizen and Toronto Star, July 26, 1997; reprinted Monitor (November 1997), The Provincial (January 1998).

"A Faustian Bargain" (review of Hidden Agendas, by John Pilger), The Democrat, February 1999.

"Back to Basics" (on the CBC's "repositioning"), Scan, Nov/Dec 1992.

"Sweet Bureaucracy" (on the waste and inefficiency of financing television by advertising), Scan, Jul/Aug 1990.

A review of Sultans of Sleaze, by Joyce Nelson, for Books in Canada, June-July 1990.

A review of The Mass Media in Canada, by Mary Vipond, for Canadian Public Policy , Volume XVI:3.

"The Gospel of Grab" (on concentration of private broadcasting and cable ownership), Scan, Nov/Dec 1989.

Reprinted as "The Power of Concentration," This Magazine, June 1990.

"Pushing Public Broadcasting Forward: Advances and Evasions," in Rowly Lorimer and Donald Wilson, eds., Communications Canada, Toronto: Kagan and Woo, 1988. "Business as Usual" (on the CRTC specialty channels licensing decision 1987), Scan, Jan/Feb 1988.

"The Cable TV Con" (on cable deregulation), The Facts, Vol. 9 No. 4, July-August 1987.

"Culture and Sovereignty," The Facts, Vol. 8 No. 2,March-April 1986.

"Cable-TV Licensing: `Them thet has gits,'" two parts, Content, January-February 1982, May-June 1982.

“Bringing democracy to the airwaves,” Toronto Star, September 7, 1979.

“Canadian TV is ‘a coddled club,’” Toronto Star, June 29, 1979.

“On big, happy, profitable family,” Toronto Star, June 22, 1979.

“CTV: Profits before programming,” Toronto Star, February 16, 1979.

“The CBC’s Al Johnson stands up to be counted,” Toronto Star, October 13, 1978.

“TV’s biggest giveaway show is in Ottawa,” Toronto Star, September 1, 1978.

“TV is destroying Eskimos and their culture,” Toronto Star, July 21, 1978.

“Support filmmakers’ independence,” Toronto Star, May 11, 978.

“Canada needs broader public TV,” Toronto Star, April 26, 1978.

“Takeover of TV stations would be a scandal,” Toronto Star, April 4, 1978.

"The CRTC: Caught in its own straitjacket," Vancouver Sun, February 23, 1978.

“West should have a voice in broadcasting,” Toronto Star, January 10, 1978.

“TV should reflect all of Canada,” Toronto Star, December 19, 1977.

“TV commission continues ‘sordid record,’” Toronto Star, September 1, 1977.

"Buccaneers at the border?" (on U.S. television in Canada via cable), Monday Magazine, December 22, 1975.

"The Frontier in Canadian Television," In Search (the Canadian Communications Quarterly, Department of Communications), Summer 1978; "The Fight for Public Broadcasting," Afterthoughts (Simon Fraser University Alumni Association Magazine), Vol. 2, No. 1, 1974.

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