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There are two sacred cows for the Aspers
which CanWest journalists dare not criticize. First of
these was the Liberal party. Izzy Asper headed the Manitoba
Liberals in the 1970s; former prime minister Jean Chrétien
visited Izzy in the hospital, days before he died in 2003.
Not surprisingly, their papers and other media rarely went
after Chrétien’s scandal-ridden government.
That situation has changed now, since the passing of Izzy
and the retirement of Jean Chrétien. Most CanWest papers
are pushing for the Conservative party of Stephen Harper.
What hasn't changed is the stance on Israel. The first national
editorial back in 2001 urged the Canadian government to side
with Israel. People may remember Conrad Black’s flattering
columns about Israel. But did Black also call his reporters “anti-Semites,” or
say that almost all reporting from the Middle East is unbalanced
and wrong? No.
Hearing these comments from their bosses, reporters and editors
at CanWest know what to look out for. In the words of former
Vancouver Sun chief features writer David Beers, “Don’t
go after Chrétien and the Liberals because it’s
bad for business; and never a bad word about Israel, never
a good word about the Palestinians.” You will look in
vain for any point of view saying that peace is possible, or
that a person named Arafat could be part of that deal.
For his part, Leonard Asper says journalists just can’t
get it right. “If we could find a commentator on the
Middle East that would actually use facts and not innuendo
or misguided or misleading statements about the conflict, I
would have no problem airing it.”
What he has no problem airing are documentaries that strive
to rewrite Israel's wrongs, like the disputed incident in Jenin,
Israel, in 2002.
It's ironic to hear Leonard Asper complain about poor coverage
from the Middle East because CanWest has no reporters stationed
in the region. Maybe he should consider hiring a journalist
for a change.
Walter Soderland, a professor at the University of Windsor,
has written about the Aspers in his forthcoming critique of
Canada's media landscape. He says their national editorials
can lead to self-censorship. They “clearly” had
a "chilling effect,” he says. “People working
for newspapers are not stupid. If you value your job, you say ‘okay,
these are things I’m not going to say.’”
Former Ottawa Citizen publisher Russell Mills, who was fired
by the Aspers for his attacks on the Chrétien Liberals,
summed up the situation for the Canadian Senate Committee on
the Canadian News Media: “In Canada, freedom of expression
ultimately belongs to the owners of the news media, not to
the editors or journalists.”
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