Part 2. On how the media influences Canadian democracy

A story about the Georgia Straight ran in the back pages of the provincial media on the same day that media baron Izzy Asper was being eulogized across the media landscape. The story was that the BC Liberal government had decided that this and only this alternative weekly was not a “newspaper” because it exceeded the 75% limit in space devoted to ads. They were going to remove its tax-exempt status and impose a $1 million back-tax penalty and were only stopped by a public outcry. The BC Liberal government, in the opinion of many whose views are seldom reflected in newspapers (social activists, feminists, the unwaged) are only masquerading under that name and are really neo-cons. I doubt that they attended or would have agreed with the March 2000 lecture given by Camp as Stanley Knowles Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies called “Neo-Conservatism: How to Wreck a Country with a Hammer, Part II.” Judy Rebick quipped on Rabble News (March 2002) that Camp received his transplanted heart from a socialist donor, which is why he wrote his political commentaries as a Red Tory while his contemporaries moved to the Thatcher/Reagan/Bush-led right. The Toronto Star does not provide equal coverage to small farmers or organic farmers. The last major organic story covered was in 2002 when canola farmers in Saskatchewan had the “cojones” to sue Monsanto over genetic contamination. The unbalanced coverage is very evident in the current hot topic of avian flu. Some farmers have resorted to websites and blogs to tell their stories but those outlets do not have the same impact as a national newspaper (unless of course you are Arianna Huffington compiling a fake blog by George Clooney). The Globe and Mail newspaper (which like The Star, I read on-line every day) allows 90 day searches and below are some recent headlines on avian flu revealed by the search: 1. Five countries report presence of avian flu virus 2. Don't wait till it's too late: CME. Plan now for a bird flu pandemic, report urges, it could devastate your work force 3. Avian flu killed five youths in Azerbaijan, WHO says 4. Have experts made too big of a squawk about bird flu? 5. Bird flu picks bad place to spread Only the last two articles, after a year or more of pandemic headlines, start raising questions on the level of the threat posed by the virus.