The 24th January marked the one-year anniversary of the lockout at the Journal de Montreal newspaper. The 253 members of the reporting and office staff were locked out after a contract dispute over salary, benefits, and media convergence. The issue of media convergence is one that the union has been fighting against. Owned by Quebecor, one of Canada’s largest media companies, the management of the newspaper says that it wants to increase its profit by merging online content throughout the media conglomerate’s network of publications. In reality, this will effectively blur the line between journalistic reporting and advertisement for Quebecor’s empire of commercial printing, cable services, music, books, videos, business telecommunications, and marketing. The union (Le Syndicat des travailleurs de l’information du Journal de Montréal) correctly points out under Quebecor’s plans, “There would be no way of knowing where the information stops and where promotion and advertising starts. In short, the convergence will override all notions of journalistic ethics.”
Quebecor had already indicated its intention to merge all of its media subsidiaries; it claimed that media consolidation and convergence would help to maintain press diversity. In 2007, Quebecor spokesman Luc Lavoie told the CRTC that not only is consolidation necessary in today’s fast-changing media climate, it may actually be amplifying the diversity of voices available to Canadians. The media bosses have come up with all sorts of rationales to explain why media concentration is good for Canadians. One example is Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau, who argues that consolidating Quebec-owned media will strengthen French language and culture in North America.
While it is true that there are now more magazines and newspapers published due to the increasing productive capacity of humankind, the tendencies within capitalism have promoted their concentration into just a few hands. The concentration of the media has put editorial control into the hands of a few people. The editorial boards of these news outlets are hand picked to suit the political and economic interests of the media owners, who are often also part of bigger syndicates and trusts. There is no way to know where the reporting stops and where the promotion stops. Thus, effectively what we have is a single voice or single interest expressed in a diversity of outlets.
Bourgeois democracy praises the virtues of a free press. Furthermore, the defenders of capitalism claim that the free market helps to uphold the freedom of the press. However, what we are seeing is the opposite. As with other industries under capitalism, media companies are buying each other out, and consolidating their newsrooms to become more efficient and profitable.
The media is getting increasingly concentrated into the hands of a few big conglomerations. Most Canadians are aware of how CTVglobemedia and Canwest Global control most of the English-language media in Canada. However, Quebecor is an even bigger league than these two companies. Quebecor owns 77 newspapers, 22 magazines, and 13 publishing houses. It also owns Groupe TVA, the largest French-language TV network in North America, which runs 17 channels and other TV-related endeavors. In addition, Quebecor also owns Videotron, which provides TV, telephone, and internet connection to more than 2.5 million homes in Quebec. Quebecor is the second largest commercial printing multinational in the world.
All of this consolidation means that there are fewer voices in the media. More often than not, it will be one opinion that will be presented across several different sources. Moreover, we cannot forget the old saying, “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” The interests of these large conglomerates end up getting presented as “news.”
It is media workers who have been at the forefront of trying to defend the freedom of the media from more corporate control. The Communication, Energy, and Paperworkers union (CEP) published a report titled, “Canadian Media Study: Voices From the Newsroom,” which explored media workers’ concerns that corporate interests were dictating what news was coming out of these companies. In the study, only 9.5% of media workers agreed with the statement, “The corporate owners of this publication/station value good journalism over profit.” When they were asked, “The values and politics of our corporate owners do not affect our editorial agenda,” 41.9% of workers disagreed. Most disturbingly, 65.2% disagreed with, “The financial bottom line of our owners does not affect our editorial agenda.”
The supporters of capitalism claim that media freedom can be restored through greater regulation. However, there is regulation today (as evidenced by the CRTC), and this has not stopped a few companies from dominating Canadian media. The root problem is private ownership of the media. The first step in ensuring true democratic access to the media for everyone is to wrest control of the media from the hands of the big corporations, and to put it under the democratic control of its workers. At the same time, the state should give resources to communities so that they can establish their own media, which will be under the democratic control of the people in the communities. This is the real manifestation of mass media, which is a media with full participation of the people.
The media is not independent of the class struggle. The capitalists are fully aware of this and thus they are adamantly guarding their control over the media. Capitalism cannot uphold the ethics necessary of journalism. Under capitalism, freedom of the press can only mean freedom of the bosses to control the media. Under socialism, where all the major industries, including the media, are in the hands of the workers, freedom of the press will find its true expression as the people can genuinely voice their opinions in the media by participating in creating it. Socialism is the only social system that will make this possible.
