We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Biased? Damn Right I Am

Click here to access article by Andrew Gavin Marshall from The Occupied Wall Street Journal. 

Clearly Canadian researcher Marshall has been viciously attacked by spokespeople of the Canadian One Percent and their media sycophants for his online coverage of the ongoing student protests in Quebec which has been met by the full fury and arsenal of Quebec police forces. Clearly the Canadian ruling class is very worried about the prospects of the Quebec student rebellion spreading across Canada, and are doing everything they can to prevent it.

From 2002 to 2006 I spent considerable time in Vancouver BC and became aware of how concentrated the media was there. One family headed by Israel Asper, incorporated as Canwest, owned nearly every significant newspaper in the country and numerous TV stations. I was shocked to learn that they owned all three newspapers in Vancouver. All their newspapers exhibited a strong Zionist bias. A Wikipedia entry describes this:
Canwest was often cited as an example of how the ownership of Canadian media has become concentrated in the hands of a few individuals and large corporations. Canwest founder Izzy Asper was known as a strong supporter of both Canada's Liberal Party and Israel's right-wing Likud party, and of many laissez-faire policies in both countries. Observers have suggested that Asper's political views have had a significant impact on news coverage at CanWest media outlets. For example, in 2002, Ottawa Citizen publisher Russell Mills was fired by Canwest after the paper published a series of articles exposing a financial scandal involving then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.
Following this article, I learned that in 2009 Canwest apparently succumbed to the influence of the internet and was broken up: most of the print media went to one corporation and their broadcast stations went to Shaw Communications, another very large broadcast corporation.

But more importantly, I also learned of an exciting new development among left media activists in Canada--the formation of the Media Co-op across Canada which was started in 2009 by the Dominion News Cooperative based in Halifax. I have always argued that it is of critical importance for anti-capitalist activists to establish their own media as a first step in establishing a solid counter-culture. Canadians are doing this!