The Dominion - Media Analysis

Supporting Independent Media to Grow

taramichelle — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 11:13:01 +0000

Innovative financial models along with public policy support are key

OTTAWA—If independent and alternative media are important to the success of social movements, then finding ways to fund that media is something that needs to be taken seriously.

This is a subject of vital discussion, and there are people in Canada and abroad working on suitable approaches to this problem, both in terms of structural models and also supportive public policy.

Viable media projects are able to sustain themselves over the longer term as well as allowing a more diverse set of media-makers to take part, especially those who aren’t able to pour so much of themselves into a (low-to-no-paying) “labour of love.”

Christine Crowther, a PhD student in Communication Studies at McGill and part-time Journalism lecturer at Concordia in Montreal, sees a need for broad support networks to get involved in advocating for public policy supporting responsible journalism.

“We're talking about people who care about journalism and public policy taking responsibility to put these issues on the public agenda in various circles: in community journalism organizations, in professional journalism organizations, through professional associations, through unions,” Crowther told The Dominion. “There is a history of public policy supporting journalism in this country. It's a matter of making sure that Canadians understand that.”

Along with a need for public policy support, independent media-makers are also confronting immediate funding challenges to keep their media outlets and projects afloat and sustainable.

One inspiring model is led by Tom Stites, Founder and Director of the Banyan Project in the US. The Banyan idea won a Game Changer award from the We Media Conference in 2010, which paved the way for Stites’ fellowship to work on the project at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

The project is also backed by the National Cooperative Business Association in the US because it is a co-operative model, something akin to The Dominion/Media Co-op. The Banyan Project seeks to be the first community-level journalism co-operative in the United States.

The first place they will try out this model is Haverhill, Massachusetts, a city of 61,000 that last had its own daily newspaper 14 years ago. The aim is for this model to be used in many different cities experiencing a journalism deficit, across the US and eventually elsewhere.

Stites explains the starting idea was a value proposition to “deliver journalism that people experienced as relevant to their lives, respectful of them as people and worthy of their trust.” The co-operative model was deemed to be the best way to deliver this service even prior to the recent collapsing of traditional journalism business models which didn’t necessarily deliver on those three vital aspects.

The Banyan business model will rely almost entirely on financing from inside the community, not only in the form of regular memberships, but also through community advertising, “extra” memberships specific to businesses or institutions, crowd-sourcing, foundation funding and ancillary sales. Content will be free to view online, but a provisional membership will be required to engage in the interactive portions of the site.

“Think of it as a food co-op,” Stites told The Dominion. “We are operating at the community level where civic engagement happens and the idea is that these news co-ops are going to be generators of civic adhesion and engagement. That's where you get a really rich democracy and...you can have a healthy co-operative.”

There will also be the Banyan Publishing Corporation, a non-profit organization or maybe eventually a co-op of co-ops, to provide the sophisticated software infrastructure for both the journalism and community engagement website features and for what is needed to successfully run and administer a co-operative.

“The Internet culture is changing; for a long time, the idea was start your thing up, get a lot of people engaged in it, and then we'll figure out how to monetize that,” says Stites. “There are not very many [journalism] places where it has worked. So I do think that the kind of deliberate work that my colleagues and I have been doing for three-and-a-half years now seriously, to build this model and shape it and start to test it and do it with real care, is crucial.”

Another person who’s been looking at how different types of media projects can finance themselves is David Skinner, a professor of Communication Studies at York University in Toronto.

He’s co-editor of the newly released book, Alternative Media in Canada (UBC Press, 2012). A few of the book’s chapters look at this issue, including Skinner’s, entitled “Sustaining Independent and Alternative Media.”

He looks at three main alternative media outlets: rabble.ca, The Tyee, and The Dominion/Media Co-op. “[The] people that do run these organizations are very entrepreneurial, so they often cobble together different kinds of financing to keep the organization going,” he told The Dominion in an interview. “They may have some sort of membership dimension, where people provide even a small monthly amount; they may also solicit donations from unions or other kinds of organizations; or look to philanthropists to help support them through different times. Some of them even have different kinds of advertising.”

While Skinner describes the three alternative media outlets as extremely valiant and creative efforts, he also highlights the role of federal policy.

“It's not as though we're talking about these being unsuccessful organizations that need a hand out of some sort, that's not the case at all. Historically in Canada, almost all media fields have had some kind of policy help from the federal government simply because the economics of media production in Canada make it much more difficult to produce media than say in the United States, and as such Canadian media fields simply get filled up with American product,” he says. “It's only at this time, in this historical moment, that really the government is retreating from that role. And it's at a moment where it's particularly important, I think, for them to maintain or even step up that effort.”

Crowther agrees that government has an important role in supporting a strong and healthy media environment. She was the lead co-ordinator of and part of a diverse volunteer team that put on the Journalism Strategies conference in Montreal last spring.

“The framework of the conference was based from the outset in the notion that public policy has a key role to play in journalism in Canada,” she says. She went on to say public policy not only refers to the federal government, but also municipal and provincial governments, as well as educational institutions such as universities.

The conference was meant to generate ongoing networking and discussion around public policy advocacy. Crowther noted that OpenMedia.ca, which does advocacy work on net neutrality in Canada, was featured prominently at the Journalism Strategies conference as an organization to look to and work with on public policy advocacy.

“Community-powered” news organization OpenFile.ca was represented on the conference panel, “Paying the Bills,” by their CEO Wilf Dinnick. “Community-powered” means that users suggest stories they would like to see covered, suggestions get voted on and leading suggestions are added to the “file.” Journalists are assigned to cover the stories that are voted the highest.

Both the cost structure and revenue streams are non-traditional, stemming from the fundamental idea behind the site's concept: “If we started from scratch journalism, like we weren't shifting from a newspaper model to digital, and we were just working in digital, what would we do? And we'd say, 'Well, social media is connecting everyone, why don't we hear from people what they want to see reported, what's important to them?'" Dinnick told The Dominion.

Dinnick explains that there is less overhead to OpenFile than a traditional news organization due to the user-generated portion of the process that doesn't require comprehensive news coverage, but more of a selective approach. There is also a different market to sell the content to; they work with news, media and marketing organizations that pay for some of what the OpenFile journalists produce.

The notion of new or alternate journalism as “social entrepreneurship” is something Tom Stites of the Banyan Project welcomes as a label. He notes that public policy could help journalism, but he’s not waiting for anyone to take up his suggestions: “The most important support government could offer journalism would be to absolutely insist on net neutrality, and then subsidize the net so that broadband access is ubiquitous.”

David Skinner noted that one “self-starting” concept that can help alternative media outlets in becoming more sustainable and successful is the model of The Media Consortium in the US, which provides its member organizations collective public policy advocacy, along with offering up economies of scale for developing and distributing content and support for technical infrastructure. This model of collaboration could also be something that would work in Canada.

There is no shortage of discussion about the many available possibilities for a better future for independent media in this country. Perhaps, as Crowther notes, it is time for people who care about journalism and public policy to put these issues on the public agenda.

Greg Macdougall is a media activist, organizer and learning coach based in Ottawa on Algonquin Territory. More of his work is online at EquitableEducation.ca.

Editor's note: Since this piece was written, OpenFile temporarily suspended publication.

Media Seeks Change

CBC misrepresenting Quebec student strike?

Tim McSorley — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:22:52 +0000

Coverage of yesterday's demo leaves more questions than answers

MONTREAL—CBC coverage of yesterday's Quebec student protests in downtown Montreal was driven by a painfully obvious bias against the student strike.

Across Quebec, over 55,000 students are currently on strike to protest Quebec government plans to raise post-secondary tuition fees by $1,625 over the next five years.

News reports via CBC yesterday, when 15,000 students marched in Montreal, consistently failed to scrutinize violent police actions against striking students, and the station's coverage bent towards the austerity-driven logic of the Quebec government's policy to hike tuition fees.

CBC television cameras and reporters were on the ground yesterday to cover the massive student protest but failed to convey the real story, missing the full message of the student protesters and misreporting facts on police actions.

CBC News Now host Reshmi Nair's live national commentary on the student protest is important to highlight.

In this clip Nair describes live footage from Montreal via Radio Canada, broadcast as thousands of students, who had been marching throughout downtown all afternoon, converged around Montreal's Jacques Cartier Bridge, leading to a temporary blocking of bridge traffic.

Montreal riot police were on location and began forcefully clearing student protesters from the bridge and surrounding public streets. As police move on the protest, using batons and pepper spray against students carrying protest signs, Nair announces that the "police are fighting back."

Police were "fighting back" against what exactly?

"Fighting back" with pepper spray against a widely popular student protest?

Is employing batons and peppery spray against young students holding placards justified?

Certainly more balanced ways for CBC to report on unfolding events were possible.

Unfortunately this example points to larger systemic failures in CBC's coverage of the current Quebec student strike.

A lead article on CBC.ca gave the first quotes and focus in the report to a few individual students voicing support for tuition hikes and opposition to the strike. Also, this CBC post does not quote a single student participating in the strike, failing to document one voice from the thousands protesting in downtown Montreal streaming past multiple on-location CBC reporters.

Additionally, CBC coverage has widely focused on comparing Quebec tuition fees to the rest of Canada, an argument that misses the Quebec specific context to the protests.

Key historical events central to the current protests, like the major Quebec-wide student strike in 1996, which featured mass street protests that lead to an almost decade-long freeze on tuition hikes in Quebec, is largely being excluded from CBC coverage. Without clear facts on past strikes—collective student action that secured relatively lower tuition fees in Quebec—CBC is failing to provide critical context to the current story.

Students across Quebec are motivated by victories of past strikes like the protests in 1996, but also the 2005 strike when students confronted an attempt by Jean Charest’s Liberal government to slash $103 million from bursaries granted to students. Again in 2005 Quebec students successfully forced the Quebec government to back-down after months of street protests and direct actions.

CBC is also failing to address broader questions on increasingly inaccessible university education across Canada, an issue that current Quebec protests should inspire people across Canada to consider.

Tuition fees are going up coast-to-coast, rising in many cases to levels that make post-secondary education inaccessible for many, a reality illustrated in a recent study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives on university education in BC. Is this a reality that Quebec should move toward?

In a CBC live report from Montreal yesterday, reporter Dan Halton was equipped with statistics on tuition fees from across Canada, listing off the differences in tuition across the country. In doing so, he completely failed to address the central issue that Quebec students are striking to fight for: sustaining an accessible post-secondary education system.

"As it stands now Quebec has the lowest tuition fees in the country," declared Halton, finishing off the report, missing the broader point of the protest.

Implied by the CBC reporting that compares Quebec tuition fees to the rest of Canada is that Quebec students should accept proposed tuition fee hikes, given that people in the rest of Canada are paying more for post-secondary studies.

If fewer and fewer people in Quebec or Canada can access university education due to tuition hikes, increasingly a fact today, what impacts will that reality have on the collective social health?

Key to the current student strike in Quebec is a broader political struggle for accessible or even free university education as a political principal rooted in social justice.

Certainly governments are able to find billions of dollars for military spending, like the controversial billions the Conservative government is moving to spend on fighter jets, so why is the financing for more accessible or even free public universities not being explored?

CBC coverage on the Quebec student strike seems to completely side step more meaningful questions about the direction of post-secondary education in Quebec and in Canada.

Stefan Christoff is a Montreal-based musician and writer who contributes to the Media Co-op. Stefan is on twitter @spirodon

This article was originally published by the Co-op média de Montréal

Student strike Montreal 2012

Khader Adnan's Unpublicized Hunger Strike

stephlaw — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:26:43 +0000

Vigil called on CBC to end the silence

VANCOUVER—Khader Adnan, a Palestinian political prisoner, ended his 66-day hunger strike on February 21, after reaching an agreement with the Israeli government in which he will be released on April 17, four months after he was first detained. During his strike, Adnan lost about one-third of his body weight and put his life in danger, according to a doctor who examined him last week on behalf of Physicians for Human Rights.

There was next to no mention of Adnan's strike in Canadian media, though, according to Vancouver Palestine activists who held a vigil and picket at the CBC building in downtown Vancouver on February 16. The activists were calling for CBC to end its silence about his case.

"Khader Adnan is invisible in Canadian media. We see [Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister] John Baird saying that Israel has no greater friend than Canada, at a time when Khader Adnan is protesting his arbitrary detention without charge, settlements are expanding and the illegal occupation continues," said Khaled Barakat, a Palestinian community activist. "We think it is very important to say that Baird does not speak for all Canadians."

Activists from a number of Vancouver-based organizations, including the Boycott Israeli Apartheid Campaign, Canada Palestine Association, Canadian Boat to Gaza, Independent Jewish Voices, Seriously Free Speech, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, and others joined the picket, where protesters distributed flyers informing the public about Khader Adnan's case, held signs with his image and candles honoring his struggle and sacrifice.

Khader Adnan is a Palestinian political activist, baker, husband and father, and was put into administrative detention by the Israeli occupation military forces. His hunger strike was undertaken to demand the end of administrative detention in Palestine.

Administrative detention is detention without charge, based only on secret evidence, indefinitely renewable by Israeli military judges.

“My husband is dying inside an Israeli jail. The world should make sure I am able to see him,” said Randa Adnan, Khader's wife, before Tuesday's announcement was made. “And it should pressure the Israeli government to release him before it’s too late…Israel denied Khader any fairness or decency…But maybe the rest of humanity will show more mercy."

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had also called for Khader Adnan to be charged or released. Thousands of people around the world called for his release. In Palestine, dozens were injured at protests calling for his release, where they were attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets.

Despite those calls, domestically and internationally, an Israeli military court of appeal upheld Khader’s administrative detention as late as Monday, Feb. 20. That was before Khader struck the agreement for his release in April. He has still not been charged with any crime.

Charlotte Kates is a Palestine solidarity activist with the Boycott Israeli Apartheid Campaign and Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish territories. This article was originally published by the VMC.

Questions? Comments? Drop us a line: info@mediacoop.ca.

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The Honorable Voices of Four Women Killed in Kingston

Tim McSorley — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:21:20 +0000

Reflections on the Shafia murder trial

TORONTO—Somewhere in the calm setting of an Islamic cemetery in Laval, Quebec, lie four headstones belonging to four women; all members of a single family. Neatly arranged next to each other, they share similar color, style and design. A Farsi gender-specific religious title for the deceased (Marhoome) is prefixed to their names. One verse of Koran, in Arabic, decorates all four gravestones: “Yea, enter thou My Heaven!” But it was their mortal lives, the very hellish existence that they had to endure, which is more telling. Who were these people? And how did they, all originally from Afghanistan, end up buried, thousands of kilometers away, in the serene surroundings of a town in Quebec?

The primary details of the case were always clear from the outset. In Summer 2009, three sisters aged 13, 17, 19, and their 52-year old stepmother, were found drowned in a car in the depths of the Rideau Canal. It was always unlikely that it was an accident that had led them.

Now, we know much more. The police investigation led to the largest trial in Kingston's history; it took over three months, was conducted in English, French and Persian, and involved summoning 58 witnesses. The accused were the parents and brother of the three murdered sisters. Over the course of the trial, those in the courtoom were able to form a picture not only of the gruesome murder, but of the real lives of Geeti, Sahar, Zainab and Rona.

In the last days of January 2012, the jury returned a guilty verdict for all three accused on four counts of first-degree murder. Police uncovered damning statements, primarily from Mohammad Shafia, the patriarch and murderer-in-chief of this plot, which recorded no sorrow.

But as Shafia’s statements fill the newspapers, what we don't hear is the story of the four victims. Shafia said that they had to be murdered because of their "treason" in supposedly violating his "honor", and that of Islam. What he saw as betrayal, however, was a brilliant story of resistance and expression.

A breathtaking exhibit in this trial was a journal kept by Rona Mohammad Amir, 52, the first wife of Shafia, who was discarded for her infertility and later murdered along with the three children of the second wife. Written in a beautiful Persian prose, it describes an educated woman, who was just 20 when the 1979 revolution signaled an era in which a proliferation of woman's rights, and other social progressive policies, took place in Afghanistan. The Kabul in which she spent her youth was called "Paris of the East", a city with a young female population, known both for their university degrees and liberal fashion sensibilities. Her own polygamous father, a retired colonel, had welcomed the waves of modernization. Rona could wear whatever she wanted and was fond of cheering for her favorite basketball teams in the stadiums. Those days ended in 1981 with an arranged marriage to a young man from a rich family, who gave her an extravagant wedding ceremony at Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel.

One would need a novel to delve more into the story of how this ‘family’ found new members; how it traveled around the world to Pakistan, India, the UAE, Australia and finally Canada; how the very-rich Shafia (whose business included buying a shopping centre in Montreal for two million dollars) decided to run his family according to his own sick notion of “Islam,” a notion that (as Kurdish-Iranian Feminist scholar, Shahrzad Mojab testified) is discarded by millions of Muslims around the world as a backward tribal code that has nothing to do with the religion.

Never resting, the eldest girl Zainab, 19, made recurring attempts to escape with a Pakistani boy whom she loved were not tolerated. Sahar, 17, loved nothing like taking cellphone pictures of herself and her large beautiful eyes. And Geeti, 13, never got a chance to go beyond her first teen year.

These voices of resistance are the true honorable voices in this story, a story which, when finally told, will defy all clichés about Afghan women. Both those that the patriarch Shafia had in mind, and those apparent in the sensationalized racist accounts that have filled the newspapers in this country.

Arash Azizi has spent countless hours covering the Shafia case for Shahrvand, a Toronto-based Persian publication.

This article was originally published by the Toronto Media Co-op.

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Canadian Media Failed to Deliver

Martin Lukacs — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Media coverage of Canada Post labour dispute uncritical, Inaccurate

By June 14, members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) had been staging rotating strikes for 11 days. Workers had decided they would slow down the delivery of mail by striking in different communities for two to three days at a time. Workers in Winnipeg, Hamilton, Fredericton, Victoria, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Cape Breton, and more, had all taken their turns on the picket line.

So while CUPW members in Toronto and Montreal were walking the picket line on June 14, workers in every other community in Canada showed up to work as usual. Letter carriers — Canada Post workers who deliver mail in our communities every Monday through Friday — were told there was no work for them. No mail was being delivered that Tuesday. So mail sat in Canada Post processing plants; undelivered.

Indoor workers in Halifax, who process and sort the mail, were working — but no mail would leave the plant. Even priority packages, which should be delivered by noon the day after they are shipped, were not delivered.

In Fredericton, management sent indoor workers home after only three hours of work, even with mail still to process, according to a twitter update from activist Ella Henry. Fredericton workers had just come off a strike rotation, so the claim from Canada Post that there was no work for both indoor workers and letter carriers seemed quite perplexing.

Despite these circumstances, the local hourly CBC radio broadcast in Halifax told listeners all day that Canada Post workers “consider themselves to be locked out.” A CBC News headline online reads, “Union calls postal service reduction 'partial lockout.'”

The Canadian Labour Code, which governs postal workers, states that a “lockout” “includes the closing of a place of employment, a suspension of work by an employer or a refusal by an employer to continue to employ a number of their employees, done to compel their employees, or to aid another employer to compel that other employer’s employees, to agree to terms or conditions of employment.”

Letter carriers showed up to work on Tuesday, June 14, and were told to go home because Canada Post decided no mail was to be delivered. This is very clearly a “suspension of work by the employer” and in the context of the previous rotating strike, very much “done to compel their employees … to agree to terms or conditions of employment.”

The workers were locked out by their employer, plain and simple. The addition of the caveat “consider themselves” casts doubt on a clear situation, and works in favour of the employer’s spin on the situation.

There are several complexities that reporters and editors may not be familiar with when it comes to labour reporting. For example, during the June 14 partial lockout, CUPW declared the locked out workers to be on strike. This is not because the workers chose to strike that day. By declaring those members on strike, the union was able to protect workers who were not locked out from being pressured or disciplined for refusing to do the work of their locked-out co-workers. It is the responsibility of reporters and editors who intend to cover labour issues to understand these issues in order to cover labour issues fairly and accurately.

This example, though, is just one small example of the corporate and public media’s lack of fair, critical, and accurate coverage of the labour dispute.

Prior to both the rotating strikes and the lockout, which became a nation-wide full lockout on June 15, news sources reporting on the labour negotiations, repeatedly listed wages and benefits that Canada Post workers receive. At $26 per hour, a full-time worker makes about $54,000 per year. While this is higher than the median individual income of Canadian workers, it is well below the median household income of $68,860. The sticking point of the dispute was not wages for current workers. Instead, the issue has always been the implementation of two-tiered wages – lower wages for new workers. These lower wages would see new workers paid about $10,000 less than the median Canadian income, and more than $30,000 below the median household income. We are talking about middle-income, stable, secure jobs. The kind of jobs that governments argue are necessary for economic recovery. CUPW has been fighting to keep these kinds of jobs for new workers.

Many sources, including the CBC, continuously cited Canada Post’s statistic that mail volumes have fallen 17 per cent since 2006. In the Vernon Morning Star in BC, an editorial told readers, “E-mail obviously took over sending a friendly letter in the mail long ago for many of us and internet billing has become the norm … Therefore the amount of mail going into the system has obviously decreased.” Overall, however, mail volumes have increased by 10 per cent since 1997. Considering the worldwide economic recession that has been going on since at least 2008, it is understandable that mail volumes would be down the past couple of years, but it’s hardly an obvious trend. Where was the slew of reporters who should have been asking Canada Post President and CEO Deepak Chopra about the impact of the recession on mail service, whether there were signs of recovery, and what Canada Post was doing to improve and expand services for the future?

Also, there was little to no investigation of why or how mail volumes are dropping. Are people using the mail less? Are people using other mail services? Has Canada Post lost contracts to private companies, or has it given contracts to Purolator, which it owns? Are all volumes down? It is very possible that letter mail volume is down, but parcel shipping is up (think about all the online shopping people do.) Also, the whole argument that mail volumes are down because more things are being done electronically needs to be examined since the internet has been around for a while now. Why wasn’t the corporate and mainstream media looking into all of these issues? Why wasn’t the media exploring what Canada Post could be doing instead – improving door-to-door delivery, providing expanded public services (think of how processing EI claims at a post office could reduce backlogs), or the slew of services taken up by European postal services in the face of more electronic business.

How many stories, instead, were written on the opinions of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business on the strike? How many opinion editorials were published by right wing think tanks? Where were the journalists who are supposed to uncover facts?

Perhaps most frustrating was the incompatible arguments that on one hand mail is becoming irrelevant, and on the other, the disruption of the mail service has significant detrimental impacts on the economy – so detrimental that the government needed to legislate the resumption of mail service. Canada Post and the Harper government can’t have it both ways, and where were journalists to interrogate this contradiction?

Repeatedly, articles published that Canada Post lost over $100 million during the labour dispute. This is a number that was put forward by Canada Post and reporters have given no context for how the corporation arrived at that number. Reporters did little to question where that number came from or even when those losses were from.

While the rotating strikes presented delays in mail delivery, mail was still being delivered to the customer, something that postal workers were keeping in mind. While in a legal strike position, they could very well have held a nation-wide strike and stopped mail delivery all together. Instead, rotating strikes were implemented to balance the need to pressure Canada Post to bargain in good faith, and to continue to serve Canadians. Still, though, the corporate and mainstream media consistently repeated Canada Post’s rhetoric that service reductions, and the lockout were the fault of the union.

News sources completely failed to point out that locked out workers received no pay from Canada Post. Postal workers, like all Canadians, have families and bills and responsibilities and were being prevented from working by their employers. What was the economic impact of 48,000 workers being locked out? How much did workers see in lost wages? What were workers doing to make up the lost wages? Did they borrowing more? Did they dipping into savings? Did bills being left unpaid?

Where is the corporate and mainstream media on all of these questions?

Deafeningly silent.

Kaley Kennedy is a member of the Halifax Media Co-op and is involved in Support Postal Workers, a campaign organised by people in Halifax to generate community support for postal workers.

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Convicted by the Media, Sentenced by the Courts

hillarybain — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 05:52:51 +0000

Supporters of Nicole Kish say she is innocent and the media is guilty

HAMILTON—Nicole Kish feels like she’s “living in a bad John Grisham novel.”

Kish was convicted of second-degree murder on March 1, 2011, and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 12 years. An activist, artist and a singer-songwriter with no criminal record, Kish has maintained her innocence since the 2007 death of Ross Hammond, which occurred after a large street brawl near the Toronto intersection of Queen and Bathurst.

Friends and supporters of Kish argue the media storm around the so-called "panhandler killer" was partially responsible for her unfair trial and wrongful conviction, and they are fighting for her release.

The physical altercation that resulted in one man’s death, first described by Detective Sgt. Gary Giroux—and then reiterated by both local and national media—as being between “street kids” and “jocks,” began when a woman identified as Faith Watts allegedly asked for money from George Dranichak and Ross Hammond. On the stand at the preliminary hearings and at the trial, Dranichak testified that he and Hammond, who died of a stab wound that night, responded to Watts with sexually derogatory remarks, such as telling her to perform sexual acts if she wanted money. While on the stand, Dranichak went on to acknowledge that their persistence had fuelled the confrontation.

Nicole Kish had been walking down Queen Street that night with a large number of people celebrating her 21st birthday. She had been in Toronto only for a day prior to the altercation.

Out of the 20 witnesses to testify at the trial, not one identified Kish or saw anyone stabbed that night. In rendering his verdict, Justice Nordheimer addressed this as being inconsequential, saying, “In this case we are not dealing with direct identification but rather with circumstantial identification.”

Two witnesses did testify to seeing a woman in possession of a knife. Kish’s former co-accused, Faith Watts, testified to having pulled out a knife during the altercation and said she had done so out fear for her life and the life of her boyfriend, who witnesses testify was beaten unconscious. Additionally, a substantial amount of DNA was found on Watts’s clothing. However, Nordheimer attributed the DNA findings as being the “limitations of physical evidence,” and while he acknowledged that the knife belonged to Watts, he goes so far as to suggest the knife may have changed hands three times before its fatal use. Stating his case for conviction, he focused on Kish being stabbed, saying that since Kish had been stabbed, there’s an “irresistible inference” that she must have killed Hammond.

Several surveillance cameras were recording that night; two, however, were inexplicably lost while in police custody: the footage on one was recorded over, and the other was “lost”. The explanation Detective Giroux had provided to the courts was that the video was placed in the evidence box but by the time it came into his possession, the video was simply no longer there. Citing previous case law (R. v. La), Nordhiemer attributed the loss of that video to the “frailties of human nature.”

“It’s dumbfounding,” says Kish via telephone from the women’s prison in Kitchener, Ontario. Reflecting on her conviction and the lack of evidence to substantiate it, she emphasizes that she is not alone, saying, “To one end, I understand oppression. I understand humanity’s long history of abuse; I understand I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to be convicted of a crime I did not commit. I just don't understand why.”

“This was not a fair and impartial trial, but a politically-motivated attempt to vilify a young activist, justify draconian ‘Safe Streets’ legislation and further criminalize and marginalize youth and poor people,” says Kevin MacKay, a Professor at Mohawk College and the Executive Director of the Sky Dragon Community Development Centre in Hamilton. MacKay first met Kish when she asked if she could use the centre as a drop off location for Books to Bars, a non-profit organization she founded in Southern Ontario which donates reading and educational material to over a dozen correctional facilities. Describing Kish as being “hard-working and passionate,” MacKay grew to know her through their joint organizing of the G20 Hamilton Primer and her stage performances at the Sky Dragon. MacKay describes Kish’s trial as revealing “a desire on behalf of the police to force a conviction against massive contrary evidence,” in order to obtain the conviction that, from the very beginning, the Toronto Police had promised to the media and the public.

Furthermore, MacKay blames the mainstream media for showing an “equally disturbing level of bias and corruption” in what he describes as “erroneous reports” such as the Toronto Sun claiming Kish was identified at trial as having the knife clenched in her mouth (which she wasn’t), or the media labeling her “the panhandler killer” despite the fact that no evidence indicated that Kish had been panhandling.

Many of Kish’s supporters share this criticism of the media. Within hours of the altercation, the case was highly publicized as the “panhandler stabbing,” causing an extraordinary amount of public outcry against the city’s perceived leniency towards panhandling and the homeless. Top city and provincial officials as well as columnists and talk show hosts weighed in on the incident, calling for panhandling to be made illegal in the city. The media storm began before much was known about the case except what was included in press releases from the Toronto Police, which Kish’s mother Christine Bivens said the media treated “as gospel.”

“One of the ways they [the media] shaped the case [is that] Nicole was always referred to as the panhandler despite the fact there was absolutely no testimony that she was a panhandler,” said Bivens. “Contrast this with the portrayal of George Dranichak, purveyor of porn, and his business associate Ross Hammond, whom the media referred to as internet marketers.”

George Dranichak is an owner of a multi-level porn marketing company, which manages such sites as Uncaged Marketing and Guerrilla Traffic. Also, it came to light during the trial that while attending school in Kentucky, Dranichak settled out of court after violently assaulting an individual after forcing his way into the person's dorm. Being someone who runs a pornography marketing company and has a history of violence carries entirely different implications than being an “internet marketer,” and might have provided a very different narrative to the public discourse. However, these elements of Dranichak’s character were left out of media coverage.

When Kish was out on bail she was under a stringent publication ban that prohibited her and her family from speaking publicly about the case. Her grandmother Val Lewis says the ban affected the outcome of the case. She feels this way especially in regards to Kish’s character, saying that Kish “would fight for a cause up to but excluding violence. Violence has never been a part of her makeup. But drawing attention to wrongs always has.”

Despite the media coverage, Kish’s conviction sparked immediate backlash and a grassroots campaign to advocate for her release. Weeks after her conviction, supporters organized a show to raise awareness and funds for her appeal. They held a rally outside the courthouse immediately following Kish’s sentencing on April 4, 2011, which heard the courtroom erupt in chants of “Free Nyki!”

When asked what’s next for the Free Nyki Campaign, Bivens believes that the courts will “overturn Nicole’s conviction if [they find] it wasn’t properly based on points of law.” If this happens, it will make Kish eligible for bail pending a second trial, which is a priority for Kish’s family and supporters.

Eugene is a writer and activist living in Hamilton Ontario. He came to know Nicole Kish through both their participation in the arts and in community organizing. He currently supports the campaign to free Nyki.

Free Nyki

Victoria Bivens

Writing Off Sovereignty

dru — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 06:24:58 +0000

Quebec media on Haiti since the earthquake

In the five weeks following the January 12 earthquake in Haiti, Quebec’s mainstream French-language media focused a considerable amount of attention on the devastated nation. What follows is a critical look at the opinions expressed by columnists during this time. Their ideas on three themes are examined: (1) The Reconstruction Process; (2) Haiti’s poverty; and (3) Attitudes towards former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his party, Fanmi Lavalas.

Looking ahead: the reconstruction process

When opinion writers look to the future, Haiti is depicted as a clean slate, a country bereft of capable people. Hope for the future and leadership in the reconstruction process are to be found not within the Haitian majority population but in the diaspora, the Haitian business elite and the international community. Journalists’ ideas and the ideas of the people they quote or interview are distinctly colonial and there is virtually no diversity of opinion. Haitian sovereignty and the building of a strong Haitian state are seen as unimportant, and the extraordinary ability of the Haitian population to mobilize and create progressive political programs is overlooked. A new Haiti is to be imposed, it would appear, by the few on the many.

Vincent Marissal is a columnist for La Presse in Montreal and a prominent figure on the Quebec media landscape. One month after the earthquake, he called for the international community to "impose the required decisions.” Responding to an urgent plea by the World Bank to strengthen the Government of Haiti, Marissal said: “How do we say cut the crap in Creole?...The word is strongly displeasing to Haitians, and this is understandable, but the solution starts with trusteeship, or protectorate if this word is less troubling to sensitive types.” More concretely, Marissal suggests ignoring democratic procedures and imposing an elite government: “...[W]e must install, for the next five years, an emergency government composed of several respected Haitian personalities, including members of the diaspora and representatives of the international community, whose mandate would be to restore order and security, save and give security to the victims, establish and supervise the reconstruction plan and follow the money carefully.”

Marissal suggests that “respected industrialist” Charles Henry Baker could be one of the “respected personalities” on the new political scene. Marissal’s colleague at La Presse, Philippe Mercure, later ran a puff piece on Baker entitled “The big-hearted entrepreneur.” Mercure did not mention that “big-hearted” Baker is a key member of the reviled Haitian business elite whose millions dodge government coffers; that in 2009 he opposed paying his sweatshop employees more than US$2 per day; that his pro-coup d’état organization, the Group of 184, promoted armed UN attacks on heavily populated slums following the 2004 coup d’etat; and that he was supported by 8.2 per cent of the Haitian population in the 2006 Presidential election.

Writing in Actualite, Quebec’s largest selling news magazine, editor-in-chief Carole Beaulieu continues themes she developed in 2004 when she suggested annexing Haiti and turning it into Canada’s 11th province. In 2010, she writes: “The Haitian government is an empty shell...Let’s speak frankly. When the cadavers are piling up, when people are being amputated by saws with no anesthesia, when hundreds of thousands of people are hungry, Haitian pride, which is outraged at attacks on sovereignty, is inappropriate...Reconstruction needs a leader in which Haitians can have confidence and who can rally foreign powers, someone who knows that decentralizing the economy and building roads to allow peasants to sell their products in cities is more important than rebuilding the national palace...Why not [Canadian Governor-General] Michaelle Jean? She is on good terms with Barak Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy and knows the language and culture of the country. What’s more, her mandate as Governor-General ends soon.”

Little matter that since the earthquake thousands of people regularly take to the streets in Port-au-Prince carrying signs showing the face of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, not Michaelle Jean. For Beaulieu, the wishes of Haitians seem to matter little, but she assures us that her ideas are not colonial in nature: “No foreign country wants to take over Haiti! Who would want a miserable country with no resources other than the sun and the smiles on the faces of her inhabitants?”

Disrespect for Haitian sovereignty continues. Also writing in Actualite, journalist Michel Arseneault introduces his article on the reconstruction of Haiti by quoting his interview subject, Haitian geographer Jean-Marie Theodat: “The international community must now do everything to help a population with no other options, even if it means taking a chip out of Haitian sovereignty. A state unable to coordinate foreign aid must let others take on the responsibility.”

Actualite’s Jonathan Trudel interviews Haitian-born Quebec sociologist Franklin Midy about solutions for the future. Midy proposes 16 solutions for Haiti. Number 11 is called, “Supporting the State.” We learn that in Haiti’s current government, “competent people remain; they’re not all dead, and it is important to give them work and responsibility. To avoid the collapse of the state, the international community must ensure that the salaries of nurses, teachers, police officers and bureaucrats are paid.” Other than this, the Haitian state is absent from Midy’s reconstruction effort. The only initiative in which the state appears to be involved (in conjunction with the UN) is in encouraging people to move to the countryside from Port-au-Prince.

Actualite’s interview choices mirror those of 2004 when “specialists” were telling Haitians to make room for an international trusteeship. In 2010, Jean-Frederic Legare-Tremblay interviews former Quebec Liberal politician Gerard Latulippe, current director of the National Democratic Institute in Haiti. After resurrecting old lies by criminalizing Aristide and his followers (the majority of Haitians), Latulippe states: “...I see no other way than by imposing a trusteeship run by the international community... This means that during the reconstruction of the political institutions, decisions will be made by a group of people appointed by the Security Council of the United Nations who would run the country.” Latulippe and Actualite seem to have forgotten the murderous legacy of the 2004 trusteeship.

In Quebec City’s Journal de Quebec, columnist Jean-Jacques Samson reminds us of the incompetence of Haitians living in Haiti: “Since they can’t do it alone, Haitians will have to count on international aid for many years. The brilliant Haitian minds that emigrated to developed countries will have to return to their country of origin to show leadership. They must be the first to believe in a future for Haiti so that the citizens of donor countries believe.”

Francois Brousseau, writing for Le Devoir, states: “...A profound awakening is necessary—by foreign countries and Haitian elites—as to the inadequacy of everything that has been attempted until now.” For aid to work, he states that a sort of “cultural revolution” is needed in Haiti. Brousseau neglects to mention that ordinary Haitians already had their cultural revolution long ago, without any help from foreigners or elites, and created a progressive democratic movement. Not only that, but what they achieved was hardly inadequate. On the contrary, the program of the Lavalas movement, had it been supported and not crushed by violence, could have solved many of the problems created by colonialism.

Looking back: reasons for Haiti’s poverty

Journalists used the earthquake as an opportunity to discuss the history of Haiti’s misery. French and American colonial practices are explained with varying degrees of detail, but Canada’s role in the 2004 coup d’etat is unexplained. In fact, five weeks of copious journalistic output in Quebec produced one sentence mentioning (not explaining) that Canada was involved in a coup d’etat in 2004, validating the thesis of Noam Chomsky’s propaganda model—whereby mainstream media toes the line of existing power structures and points the finger elsewhere.

One week after the earthquake, Quebec journalist Chantal Hebert recommends in her blog with La Presse that Michael Ignatieff and Denis Coderre patch up their differences so Coderre could handle the Haiti dossier. During the last trusteeship in Haiti, Coderre was special advisor to Haiti and skilfully ensured that blame for Canada’s role in the coup be deflected. Hebert’s suggestion, if realized, would guarantee more of the same.

Shockingly, several high-profile journalists look to Haitian cultural “defects” to explain Haiti’s economic woes. There is no corresponding inquiry into US, French or Canadian cultural flaws that would induce these nations to sack Haiti. Richard Hetu, for example, a New York correspondent for La Presse explored the reasons for Haiti’s poverty in his blog. He relates uncritically the ideas of New York columnist David Brooks who notes that even though over 10,000 NGOs in Haiti “are doing the Lord’s work...even a blizzard of these efforts does not seem to add up to comprehensive change.” For Brooks, the “thorny issue of culture" is the root of Haiti’s poverty. Quoting Lawrence E. Harrison’s book, The Central Liberal Truth, Brooks points out that “Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences,” such as “the voodoo religion” and “high levels of social mistrust...difficulty internalizing responsibility, and faulty child-rearing practices”.

Patrick Lagace is a prominent columnist with La Presse in Montréal. In no uncertain terms, he attributes Haitian misery to passivity: “...Sorry, but Haitians collectively are horribly, depressingly and dangerously passive...I believe I’ve described the urgency with enough compassion to have the right, just once, to say that by their passivity, Haitians actively contribute to their misery.” Twisting historical fact in new ways, Lagace claims Haitians were too passive to oust their own elected president (Aristide), whom he describes as a dictator: “No one is ever brutal with Haiti for fear of being called insensitive or racist. Haitians don’t need it anyway. They’re already brutal amongst themselves, tolerating dictators and putchistes. And when an elected president screws them, it’s the US marines who kick him out, not Haitians.”

Francois Brousseau, like Lagace, also muses as to the cultural roots of Haiti’s poverty. “Perhaps there is something in the local culture...something that blocks things such as economic development, an enterprising spirit, construction and projects.” He wonders also if voodoo and superstitions do not "stuff Haitian minds with a dreadful fatalism.”

Attitudes toward Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Fanmi Lavalas

Quebec mainstream media attitudes toward former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide—despite voluminous and widely published research dispelling the lies about his second presidency—have not changed since prior to the 2004 coup. He is consistently depicted as a megalomaniac, a dictator, a last-ditch hope for desperate Haitians, and a danger to Haiti. The real story of his ouster is apparently not worth sharing with the Quebec public, perhaps because it involves Quebec political figures and NGOs.

Furthermore, the tendency to focus only on Aristide and not on the grassroots movement that brought him to power (or the corrupt opposition that undermined him) has the added benefit of keeping the Quebec public unaware that there is a coherent democratic force in Haiti. We are not told, for example, that in 2009, the party Aristide created, Fanmi Lavalas, the largest political organization in Haiti, was banned from elections. Nor are we told that 90 per cent of the voters boycotted the election. Why is this dynamic democratic political force not being discussed or supported by Quebec mainstream commentators?

Evoking old disinformation, Vincent Marissal likens public demands for the return of Aristide to the pleas of desperate people clinging to a former dictator for help. “It’s not for nothing that we see banners and graffiti demanding the return of Aristide. People are looking for a glimmer of hope, even if it means looking into the darkest corners of their recent past.”

Michel Arseneault did not challenge his interview subject, Jean-Marie Theodat, after his absurd reply to Arseneault’s inquiry as to whether Aristide should return to Haiti: “If he returned, it would be like adding another layer to the destruction already caused by the earthquake.”

Brousseau portrays Aristide as a sort of madman: “...The dark episode of February 2004...when the US of George Bush, together with Canada and France as sidekicks, apprehended the elected president in his home and sent him into exile, a Jean-Bertrand Aristide with all his very real errors, prey to his visions.”

Finally, Quebec caricaturists expressed themselves when after the earthquake Aristide requested to return to Haiti from an illegal US-imposed exile. Serge Chapleau, caricaturist for La Presse, portrays a feeble Aristide waving a feeble Haitian flag. The caption reads: “When it rains, it pours.” (A similar translation would be, “Bad things come in twos.”) In Sherbrooke’s La Tribune, caricaturist Herve Philippe portrays Aristide holding a halo above his head and we read the following: “The former Haitian president in exile, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, capitalizes on the chaos in Haiti to stage a comeback by posing as the Messiah.” In Gatineau’s Le Droit, caricaturist Bado shows us Baby Doc riding a wooden horse yelling: “If Aristide can do it, so can I!”

Conclusion

If the function of media in a democratic society is to provide its citizens with the information and ideas they need to take meaningful action in their democracy, then Quebec’s opinion writers have failed dramatically. Quebec, home to one of the world’s largest Haitian diaspora populations, is being told that Haiti should once again be controlled by everything but the will of its own majority population; that Canadian crimes in Haiti are not worth mentioning; that Haitians possess cultural flaws that perpetuate their suffering; and that Haiti’s most popular political figure and the party he led—the most popular in the country—have no place in Haiti’s future. It is clear that unless Quebeckers read outside the mainstream media they will support ideas destined to perpetuate the errors of the past and prolong the suffering of the people of Haiti.

This article originally appeared in Haiti Analysis.

Sources

Arseneault, Michel. "Il faut rebâtir par le bas!" Actualité. March 1, 2010, pp 18-21.

Beaulieu, Carole. Et si on anexait Haïti?. Actualité. April 1, 2004.

Beaulieu, Carole. "Haïti: parlons franchement!" Actualité. March 1, 2010, p. 9.

Brousseau, François. « Les conditions de la renaissance. » January 18, 2010.

Brousseau, François. “Commentaire – les damnés de la terre.” Le Devoir, January 14, 2010.

Brousseau, François. « Reconstruire. » Le Devoir. January 25, 2010.

Cyberpresse.ca. “Caricatures du 10 au 16 janvier, 2010.”

Facal, Joseph. Les sept plaies d'Haïti. Le Journal de Montréal. January 18, 2010.

Hébert, Chantal. Sortir Denis Coderre des boules à mites? Actualité.com. January 18, 2010.

Hétu, Richard. "Pourquoi Haïti est-il si pauvre?" La Presse Blog. Januay 15, 2010.

Lagacé, Patrick. "Haïti, malade de ses charades." La Presse. January 30, 2010.

Légaré-Tremblay, Jean-Frédéric. «Urgent ! Vide politique à combler» Actualité. January 28, 2010.

Marissal, Vincent. "En attendant la secousse politique." La Presse. February 6, 2010.

Marissal, Vincent. "Le temps d’agir." La Presse. February 12, 2010.

Mercure, Philippe. "Charles-Henri Baker: l'entrepreneur au grand-coeur." La Presse. February 17, 2010, p. A18.

Samson, Jean-Jacques. Un nouvel Haïti. Le Journal de Québec. January 19, 2010.

Trudel, Jonathan. "16 solutions pour l'avenir." Actualité. March 1, 2010. p. 22-24.

Boy in Cite Soleil

Embedded at the Olympics

dawn — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 06:06:35 +0000

Media's sponsorship of 2010 compromises coverage, begs alternatives

MONTREAL—The announcement came nearly five years to the day before the 2010 Olympics: CTV and Rogers had won the bid to be the official Olympic broadcasters in Canada for both the 2010 and 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The broadcasting deal offered up a Canadian record of $153 million for the rights, including $90 million alone for the exclusive broadcast rights for the 2010 Vancouver games. That was an increase of 221 per cent on what CBC paid to broadcast the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics and marks the first time the bid for the Winter Olympics bested the bid for the Summer Games.

Four years later, in Spring 2009, CTV/Rogers would be joined by La Presse, Canwest Global regional newspapers and The Globe and Mail as the official Francophone, regional and national media partners, respectively, of the Olympic Games.

Together, these five media outlets, which cover the vast majority of the Canadian media landscape, have a vested interest in how the Olympics are perceived, and how many people tune in or read.

“It sort of undermines any kind of journalistic independence or any claim to journalistic independence,” Mike Gasher, chair of the journalism department at Concordia University in Montreal, told The Dominion. “It's like when Quebecor [which owns Star Academie] covers Star Academie: you know there's a sort of official endorsement and I think that 'officialness' makes a big difference.”

Gasher emphasized it's unlikely that coverage is dictated by a direct order; in most news organizations, sports and news coverage will remain independent. But he warns that there could still be unconscious implications for coverage: “Most journalists would say, 'No, no, no, that's not gonna affect me,' and it probably wouldn't on any sort of conscious level, but I think on a more unconscious level, clearly you know that your newspaper is implicated in this event in some way, and it's probably going to show up [in coverage].”

Interview requests to the CTV/Rogers consortium and The Globe and Mail went unanswered. In a press release announcing their partnership with the 2010 Olympic Games, though, Globe publisher Philip Crawley stated, “As always, The Globe and Mail will do its utmost to deliver insightful, balanced and in-depth news through the stories that matter most to Canadians coast-to-coast."

Chris Shaw, author of Five Ring Circus and member of the Olympic Resistance Network, is no fan of the Olympic Games. While he admits this taints how he interprets Olympics coverage, he believes that very few in the mainstream media are making an effort to cover the Olympics in a serious way.

“It's really been kind of a 90 per cent to 10 per cent split. The 90 per cent being really bad, non-critical coverage, and the 10 per cent being some fairly decent coverage.”

For Shaw, that 90 per cent doesn't lie simply with official sponsors, but extends to other mainstream TV and news outlets, including English CBC, which was runner-up in the bid for the Olympic broadcast rights. “By and large CBC's opinion has been see no evil, hear no evil,” he says. “Other stations like Global are far more likely to be critical, but they aren't anti-Olympics by any measure.”

Charlie Smith, of Vancouver's alt-weekly Georgia Straight, sees things as a little less black and white. He argues media has done their job uncovering stories such as cost overruns, city deficits, and legislation that could further criminalize homelessness, but has failed to provide adequate context.

“I think that certain things have been introduced because of the Olympics, but have not been linked to Olympics,” Smith told The Dominion.

Smith points to the expansion of the Vancouver Police Department as one example. “It's gobbling a larger and larger share of the budget and leaving less to be distributed elsewhere. The expansion began about 5 years ago [in 2004, the year after Vancouver was granted the Games]."

“That might be one place where the mainstream media has not done a thorough job of contextualizing.”

But oft-lacking analysis in the mainstream media doesn't mean that there will be no critical media coverage of the 2010 Olympics.

Shaw believes that international journalists coming to Vancouver to cover the games won't hesitate to report on protests or on the immense poverty and homelessness among the residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. When the International Herald Tribune or the London Daily Times begin to run stories on these issues, he says, Canadian media will have no choice but to follow, or risk embarrassment.

There are also independent journalists coming to Vancouver with the express goal of ensuring coverage of the social impacts of the games.

“We are less interested in covering Olympics themselves than the effects, and covering what is happening in the streets. Paid media will be interested in the sports and games, while we'll be trying to fill the void on covering social issues,” says Franklin Lopez, who is helping to organize independent media coverage of the Games.

Online and new media, such as video, photo and audio posts to various sites including the Vancouver Media Coop, will play a critical role in such a project.

But while there will be alternative media coverage, the resources at the mainstream press' disposal and the sheer amount of coverage they will provide—CTV will be airing 22 hours of Olympics coverage per day on its national affiliates—mean they will certainly capture the bulk of the audience.

And as long as media outlets continue to fly the Olympic flag, people will be right to raise questions.

“If the whole point of journalism is to give sort of objective, independent, non-partisan account of events, then it really casts doubt because the media are partisans, officially,” says Gasher. “It's the same issue as embedded journalists with the military. It does raise questions about what kind of compromises are in play, whether they're conscious or unconscious.”

Tim McSorley is the Media Analysis Editor at The Dominion.

Embedded media

Media Pie

Tim McSorley — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:40:12 +0000

Argentina’s bold new law and the future of the press

BUENOS ARIES—In 1867, as Canada became itself, every town big enough to have one newspaper had two. Why? When our constitution was fresh and new, the notion of democracy demanded people be informed. And, informed, the people demanded partisanship. Toronto, for example, had the liberal-backed Globe and the conservative Mail, each directly funded by their respective parties. The political ties were clear, and each paper kept its alter ego in check.

With the rise of advertising at the turn of the century, and the ties between the press and the government waned, the responsibility of many newspapers drifted away from the citizens en mass to land in the padded laps of the citizen elite. The private media empires were born, and the invisible hand of the market has fed a few enough to grow them into giants. Meanwhile, this year alone our government’s starvation tactics have lost the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 800 jobs and a string of programmes.

Yet, just as last century saw its rise, this century is witnessing the fall of advertising. Canwest’s publishing revenues dropped 19 per cent in one year; its staff lost 560 jobs; and Izzy Asper’s empire teeters on the edge of bankruptcy. NewsCorp CEO Rupert Murdoch announced in November that his model is failing, while experts predict that in the next two years, 85 per cent of newspapers will cease to exist.

The model we know is collapsing. And although both are certainly kicking, the public press is too enfeebled and the private is too panicked to propose a viable alternative.

So how about an old-time duel, the kind Canadians used to demand from their local papers? In Argentina the battle between public and private has been raging around a radical new law that redistributes broadcast licences into three equal parts: private, public, and NGO.

As this law comes into force, the Argentinian example serves as a case study of how fascinating things can get when press, politics and power take off their masks—and fight.

A Newspaper

This September, Argentinian president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner hauled a media bill through Congress and the Senate in record time: in October it was signed and became law. The Audiovisual Communication Service Law (LSCA, by its Spanish initials) certainly appears to be popular if you ask the crowds of people marching to mark its victory in the streets of Buenos Aires: “Our current law was passed in 1980 by the dictatorship—it had no place in today’s democracy!” insists an elegant young woman.“ Only commercial interests have been able to publish or broadcast under the old law,” says an elderly man with a soft face.

This was October 10 at 2am: the moment the Senate passed the LSCA 44 votes to 24. Half an hour later, Argentina’s biggest newspaper, El Diario Clarin, responded on its website, claiming, in bold font, that “many [members of the crowd] conceded that they didn’t know what they were supporting or what had happened, and that they had been paid.” The others, the article claimed, “repeated by memory the slogans the government has launched against Clarin.” It was with this exasperated article that Clarin, Argentina’s largest media conglomerate, conceded its defeat.

The media group had fought with claws and teeth for months, throwing all its weight and hate across the countries’ airwaves and front pages. Pick up any copy of Clarin from 2009, and you will be stunned: the newspaper, its vicious headlines and vile adjectives, bold fonts and awful photographs, had become a war cry.

It turns out the now-ousted dictatorship-era law had one principle beneficiary: Clarin. The newspaper reported the 1976 military coup to be “inevitable,” and then reaped the bounty of the new regime: censorship, privatization, and the nation’s press controlled by the State Intelligence Agency. Private media holders in turn supported the dictatorship by silencing reports across the country of systematic murders, in which an estimated 30,000 civilians disappeared.

The dictatorship saw to the eradication of Clarin’s competitors, and the subsequent neoliberal reign of the 1990s brought a series of conglomerations and shady backroom deals that have lifted the newspaper’s parent company, Grupo Clarin, to a close monopoly of Argentina’s television, radio and print. Today, the media group holds more than 264 broadcast licenses nationwide, over a dozen print publications, two of the three nation-wide television networks, and two national radio stations. Clarin is the most watched and read newsgroup in Argentina: El Diario Clarín circulates half a million copies daily, and its electronic version is the most visited Spanish language newspaper on the Internet, whereas Clarin cable reaches 80 per cent of the homes in Buenos Aires and half of homes nationwide.

And just as it had cajoled the dictators during their terror, and president Menem during his infamous beeline into national bankruptcy in 2001, Grupo Clarin faithfully supported Peronista president Nestor Kirchner when he was elected in 2003. At the height of his presidency, President Kirchner enjoyed a 70 per cent approval rating nationwide.

A President

When Nestor Kirchner’s wife, Cristina Fernandez, won the 2007 elections with a sweeping majority (22 per cent above her closest opponent), Clarin was enthusiastic about her win and what they called the continuation of Modelo K. On the front page of the post-election paper, El Diario Clarin affectionately called the new president "Cristina," and quoted her saying that she wanted to call together “the whole society, because a country is not only its government.”

Not two years later, every copy of Clarin discharges the name "Cristina" alongside a string of insults: oligarchy, colonialism and corruption have boldface priority. Dreadful photographs of the president, poorly cropped, red-eye enhanced, and features skewed—a photo editor’s vengeance—relentlessly depict her as a furious despot: and this is exactly how she is now perceived by a great number of her country’s citizens. In a country in which every citizen between 18 and 70 is subject to enforced compulsory voting, recent polls place the president’s popularity at 20 per cent.

Cristina Fernandez has blamed Clarin directly for her fall from grace.

As of December 10, 2009, having lost the midterm vote, president Kirchner will sit seemingly powerless atop the last two years of her coalition government. And so, in her last two months at the helm of Argentina’s quickly sinking Kirchnerism, she has rushed to sign the new media law, which, many people claim, is nothing more than a dagger of retaliation, aimed right at the heart of the writhing Grupo Clarin.

A Law

The people are partly right: the new law is daring and drastic, the kind of law necessarily born from fear and loathing. It has echoes of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s media reform, but it has a singular approach.

By this time next year, Argentina’s media pie will be reallocated in three even slices of 33 per cent each: one will be retained by the private conglomerates, including of course the Grupo Clarin, whereas the other two will be redistributed between state-funded press and non-governmental organisations. Seventy per cent of radio content and 60 per cent of television content be produced in Argentina, and cable TV companies, now fountains of North American media, will be required to carry channels operated by universities, unions, Indigenous groups and other NGOs.

Clarin, furious, is now being forced to sell its empire, at a minimal price, to what has become its enemy: the government.

In a crucial editorial titled, "Don’t violate the freedom of expression," Clarin denounced the State as an imperialistic oligarchy, under whose control Argentinians will be left with nothing more than “a gigantic network of media outlets, apparently diverse, but actually obeying a single voice and serving one single ideology.” What "Cristina" is planning, another editorial fumes, is “to colonize our media.”

The president has been vilified before her entire country, and her attempts to redeem herself by buying expensive commercials and publicly denouncing the mighty Clarin, have, in the eyes of her voters, done nothing but discredit her. Cristina Fernandez has held but three press conferences in two years: her relationship with journalists is clearly reluctant—when not altogether confrontational. Does she now propose herself to be guardian of the media?

A recent poll found most Argentinians agree it is high time for a new law. Yet, almost unanimously, people interviewed on the street have more trust in Clarin than they do in their democratically elected leader.

Although the Argentinian government has perhaps won the airwaves, it seems to have lost the public trust.

A prominent Argentinian journalist, whose anonymity is required to protect his job, pointed out how the situation—Clarin’s arrogance and the government’s vicious new law—is a symptom of the country’s immature democracy. Both Clarin's and the Kirchners' bully tactics have reduced the discussion of the new law to a petty contest, he says, instead of a critical debate about democracy, information, and the future of the press.

The changes in Argentina's media landscape point to a debate that should be worldwide. Argentina has taken a significant step: while journalism is dying elsewhere, it is being turned on in Argentina.

The fall of Argentina’s old law effectively refutes the notion that media is a commercial venture. The Internet negates it; the newspaper gravestones confirm it. In the last two years, the United States has laid off a quarter of its journalists. We have all been watching: “The free market,” as American journalist John Nichols claims, “is killing journalism.”

There is no money in media. But is there no future?

Let's return to the beginning, back when our constitution was shiny and new: At the time, the newspapers in Canada and the US were the most subsidized newspapers in the world. “If there is to be journalism,” says Nichols, “there has to be government intervention,” through a free, federally-subsidized press. It is, he argues, the only answer.

Maybe Argentina is on to something.

Samara Chadwick is a Canadian journalist/filmmaker currently traveling through Latin America. More at http://justsostories.org.

QUICK FACTS

- Percentage of Argentinean media privately owned in 2009 and 2011, respectively: 80, 33
- Percentage of broadcast licences reserved specifically for NGOs in 2009 and 2011, respectively: 0, 33
- Approximate number of hours per day allotted to local television production in 2009 and 2011, respectively: 3, 15
- Grupo Clarin net profits in the third quarter of 2009: 103 million pesos (US$27.1 million)
- Grupo Clarin estimated net profits in the third quarter of 2011: much much less

LINKS

Maria Trigona’s well-researched article on the media law (there aren’t many!): http://upsidedownworld.orr/main/content/view/2166/1/, including a map of Argentina’s current media landscape: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/images/stories/Oct09/medios.gif

Another good article by Eduardo Szklarz: http://ciempre.com/bin/content.cgi?article=846&lang=en

The government-funded, pro-LSCA website, featuring tv-spots and the testimonies of recognized artists, Indigenous leaders, and Diego Maradona himself: http://www.argentina.ar/_es/pais/nueva-ley-de-medios/

"The Future of Journalism" by John Nichols: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuie5rSlY9c

Press Court Full

dru — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 05:41:50 +0000

An inside look at Canadian journalists and Harper's PMO

PORT-OF-SPAIN, TRINIDAD & TOBAGO—It's another hot, muggy afternoon on this Saturday in mid-April, my second day at the Fifth Summit of the Americas. Making my way through security and up the police-patrolled driveway of the Hyatt Regency Hotel, I recalled scenes of the previous day’s madness: heads of state driven to the doors in black cars with tinted windows; the sardine can-packed crowd of journalists systematically yelling and shoving each other around, to get a prized sound byte or photo of the person about to emerge from the car and walk ten feet towards the lobby doors; and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s entrance—and pause to chat with the media—that almost caused a stampede.

By day two, it became clear that while some Ministers were open to chatting informally, others were not. I contemplated, first-hand, how my efforts to reach our Prime Minister only managed to elicit a wave and a smile—as he climbed into an SUV. Indeed, the only opportunity journalists had to question Stephen Harper—known for his strict limits to media access – was a press conference.

Entering the room, I was told that the closest I could sit was the fifth row back; the first few were "reserved"—though mainly empty.

Harper spoke for 10 minutes, most often referring to his goal of opening up free trade in the Americas. He then "opened the floor" to questions, i.e.; taking one from each reporter in a select group of Canadian journalists seated up front: in attendance were writers from CBC, CP, CanWest and Radio-Canada.

In his speech, the PM acknowledged the "distinctly different" approach of some of the other leaders present, notably the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA)—a group consisting of Bolivia, Venezuela, Dominica, Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – but he said he was confident that they were “a small number of countries on a very different track than the rest of us.”

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, prior to his election, had also signed a joint agreement with Hugo Chavez to join ALBA, but had ultimately refused to commit, until a sudden change of heart in June of this year (two months after the Summit). There is some speculation about his reason for the about-face, though his recent re-election and heading off an impeding economic crisis are possible factors. Interestingly enough, in its Summit analysis, the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs notes that in 2008, the year of Correa’s refusal, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) promised his country a line of credit of $150 million.

That Saturday evening, Correa and Harper met for a closed door meeting, one that Canadian Minister of State for the Americas Peter Kent called “a good session.” Having coerced my way into the delegation-only area where such encounters take place, I convinced—with some effort—a member of the PM’s entourage to allow me to photograph the typical, post-meeting handshake.

Back to the earlier press conference. “I've spoken with Central American leaders who are very eager to push forward aggressively,” continued Harper. “We are negotiating free trade agreements, but we have also established good solid trade [talks] with Panama, with CARICOM [Caribbean Community]... Virtually all of these countries put a high priority on opening up markets.”

The overall tone of the conference was firmly established and the journalists respected their opportunity to ask one question and one question only. By the time it wrapped up, an anti-climactic lull hung in the air like the humidity outside.

Instead of using the opportunity to question the beneficiaries of Harper’s free trade policies, for example, inquiries merely floated on the surface of the summit’s activities: what was said, what progress was made, and the PM’s thoughts on Cuban-American relations.

Harper himself perhaps even alluded to the superficial nature of the conference, noting afterward he was surprised no one asked him about his meeting with President Obama. He then listed off topics the two chatted about.

Non-delegation journalists, and non-Canadian journalists, were not offered the opportunity to ask questions. "That’s not fair," voiced one local journalist to his colleagues after the conference. "You come to the Caribbean..."

To an already skeptical budding journalist, this select group of embedded reporters held the access key to the PM. Plus, in the context of the combined restrictions of the Summit and the Prime Minster's office (PMO), it was the only key. Thus, as the names present popped up as bylines across Canadian media that weekend, personal and professional reservations about such methods grew louder.

Wasn’t this a link between state and press, one that—by virtue of a free press practice—should not be so tightly intertwined? What restrictions were imposed upon these reporters? Furthermore, how critical can one be when the government in question determines your access to information?

The eventual criticism came sparsely, in a similar surface-skimming fashion. A Globe and Mail article noted that Harper's championing of free trade and calls to avoid protectionism have "made him appear a bit of a lone wolf at this summit... where the phrase raises a reminder of the failed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas."

The Toronto Star’s op-ed writer Thomas Walkom and the second part of a summary article by the Canadian Press echoed this idea. Albeit in a more objective, quote-based fashion, the latter in particular highlighted the reticence on the part of Canadian executives, organizations, and even CARICOM members over Harper’s focus on trade agreements, at a time when the economic crisis and drug-related crime in the region are being blamed on trade liberalization.

Still, in an exclusive interview with FOX News at the start of the summit, Harper had warned that protectionism is the “biggest threat to the global economy,” and that the countries involved should focus on free trade; the article referred to the PM’s “stout defense of Colombia and its democratic progress.” (The exclusive nature of the interview was carefully coordinated by the PMO and cost at least $24,500, as reported CanWest both before and after the summit.)

At the very least, Harper’s media strategy came to light at the Summit; namely, upon seeing the sometimes chummy nature of reporters and Harper’s entourage or hearing the PM refer to journalists on a first-name basis. It also demonstrated a serious difference between his reserved, hidden-from-the-public style, and those of the leaders (notably, from Latin American countries) who held public conferences. But going beyond that, when one considers the impact that Harper’s free trade deals could have in the Americas, the nature of the questions and the overall neutral, quote-laden style of the published articles left much to be desired.

For example, on his commitment to a $4-billion financial guarantee for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Harper said at the conference, “We [the US and Canada] are working to ensure access to credit in the region.” The CBC ran a brief on that fact, noting the loan amounts to double the previous Canadian funding.

A cursory search reveals that the IDB is, according to the Council of Canadians, "one of several international financing groups who pulled money out of Haïti with the effect of further destabilizing the democratically elected government of [Jean Bertrand] Aristide."

Furthermore, Harper’s reference to Canada’s desired leadership role in the Americas, “reestablishing foreign policies that we’ve had historically with the Caribbean,” might have been a historical hint towards the potential for industry gains at the expense of human rights or environmental protection policies.

The free trade ambitions of the Prime Minister are but one issue the press could have used the Summit to explore further. Instead, they left the analysis and the tough questions to others.

Harper after Correa meeting

Kenney's Quiet Revolution

Moira Peters — Sun, 10 May 2009 05:14:34 +0000

Media focus on guns, drugs and hard-nosed ministers precludes dialogue on government shifts in immigration policy

MONTREAL–A massive police operation in the Toronto area on April 1 caught the attention of major Canadian news outlets.

One hundred and twenty-five people were rounded up in a pre-dawn raid and charged with arms, drugs and organized crime-related violations. The arrests made top headlines across national media and were featured in most large metropolitan dailies.

A day later, another police operation in Ontario resulted in the arrest of nearly as many people, but hardly a word was written about it.

On April 2, Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers and southern Ontario police officers arrested approximately 80 people on immigration violations.

While not as sensational as the first news item—which nabbed some 30,000 tablets of ecstasy and 40 firearms—the story contained much of the same interest, drama and newsworthiness: one hundred officers arrested undocumented workers at their places of employment and homes in at least three communities in Southern Ontario. And, according to the CBSA, it was the largest action of its kind in the Greater Toronto Area.

The April 2 raids received next-day coverage in small-circulation local papers like the Barrie Examiner. Not a word was mentioned in the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail or National Post. CTV.ca and the Edmonton Journal eventually picked up on the story, but only several days later, when dozens of people gathered in Toronto and Edmonton (and other cities) to protest the raids and the workers' incarceration.

The Toronto rally was held outside the Rexdale Detention Centre, where those arrested were being held. The individuals were all living or working in the communities of Bradford, Markham, Leamington and East Toronto. Most were apprehended at their workplaces; some were reportedly followed home from work and then arrested. Most were migrant farm workers, employed by at least three companies, including two farms owned by Cericola Farms, Inc.

The raids come at a time when Canadians are questioning subtle but important changes in the Conservative government's immigration policy and in the CBSA's tactics when arresting undocumented individuals. Just as concerning, critical coverage of this event—and recent immigration policy issues in general—has been lacking in the Canadian press.

A recent report by Citizenship and Immigration Canada says that over the past year, crackdowns on illegal immigration in the United States is causing thousands of non-status immigrants to flood across the border to Canada. Last May, then-Minister of Public Security Stockwell Day applauded the arrest of 45 undocumented workers in Toronto and declared that "[large-scale operations protect] the integrity of our immigration program," signalling the government's intent to continue on this path.

Spokespeople from No One Is Illegal (NOII) Toronto and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) denounced the April 2 raids. "Clearly Harper and his Minister of Immigration are moving closer to a US-style immigration system where fear and enforcement are routinely used to terrorize migrant workers," said UFCW Canada National President Wayne Hanley. Both spokespeople expressed concern that large-scale raids on workplaces targeting undocumented workers have become regular occurrences.

In a release from the CBSA, no reason was given for the timing of the raids, simply that they came after three months of investigations. While this is the first police action of its scope in the area, in a report on the event NOII quoted several sources stating that this is not an isolated incident.

The Toronto Star recently ran an investigative piece on problems in Canada's home-care worker program, where individuals, particularly women, are incited to immigrate to Canada to work as domestic workers, only to find themselves labouring in extremely difficult and constrained conditions. The Globe and Mail recently reported that an immigration officer impersonated an individual's lawyer and lured him to a meeting before arresting him on immigration violation charges. The fact that nearly 80 undocumented workers were arrested in the largest raid of its kind in Canada's history and that the event was overlooked in news outlets is surprising. After all, both the Star and the Globe demonstrate a willingness to report to some degree on immigration issues.

But their commitment to these issues is disappointing. By declining to cover the April 2 raids, they shied away from deeper questions about Canadian government policy in dealing with undocumented workers.

Neither the Sun Media nor CanWest Global news chains covered the massive arrests in-depth, and recent articles—particularly in CanWest newspapers—raise questions about what Canadians can expect from immigration news coverage in the months to come.

CanWest papers recently ran an article highlighting the toughness and work ethic of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney in his push to bring about an immigration policy revolution—without asking what that revolution might be. What they did highlight was that the government is continuing to use outreach policies, such as funds for immigrant communities to draw on to build statues and plaques.

According to NOII, the government has also given misinformation to the press: recently, as reported in CanWest, Conservative candidate Parm Gill claimed the government is aiming to reduce the number of rejected applications from Indian youth. New information reported by NOII and researched by the Canadian Migration Institute found that the number of refugees to be accepted from India is in fact slated to drop from 150 to 125 this year. And nowhere to be found in the article on Kenney was the news, reported by the Toronto Star in February, that the immigration ministry had admitted the economic downturn could reduce the number of immigrants accepted to Canada, all the while trumpeting a planned increase in immigration from 250,000 to 265,000 newcomers per year.

Tim McSorley is Media Analysis editor with The Dominion.

access not fear

good enough to work

Forced Off-Air

dawn — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 06:58:05 +0000

ECHR rebukes Georgia for Soviet-style repression of independent TV station

TBILISI, GEORGIA–In the wake of a January 27 judgment by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which strongly rebuked the Georgian government for its wrongful arrest, sham trial and inhumane imprisonment of media personalities Shalva Ramishvili and Davit Kokhreidze, controversy is spreading about the wider implications of their case, and the circumstances surrounding their arrest.

Georgia, a former Soviet republic, burst onto North American newscasts in August 2008 when Russian tanks came to the defence of two pro-Moscow breakaway regions in Georgia and rolled to within spitting distance of the capital, Tbilisi. The short war quickly entered the rhetoric of the US presidential campaign, with both Barack Obama and John McCain calling for a tough stance on Russia and staunch support for US allies in the Georgian government.

The story of Ramishvili and Kokhreidze echoes numerous stories of media crackdowns in Putin’s Russia. The comparison is uncomfortable for a government desperate to clean up its image, and achieve NATO membership and general Western support.

Critics allege that the 2005 arrest and imprisonment of Ramishvili and Kokhreidze was part of a successful plot—whose aim was to close a politically neutral television station and turn it into a propaganda arm of the Georgian military—engineered and executed by the Georgian Ministry of Defence, a policy group known as the “Freedom Institute,” and an elusive German businessman.

****

Georgian television station TV 202, and its co-founders and shareholders Ramishvili and Kokhreidze were looking forward to a good year in 2005. They had aired the first part of a documentary alleging foul play in the death of former Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania; they were hosting “Debates,” a popular talk show in which government politicians were often publicly challenged; and “Dardubala – 2”&mdashan animated comedy program satirizing Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili—was planned for the following season. The TV station's optimistic future reflected the hopes of many Georgians, who looked forward to life in a stable and democratic Western-leaning nation and a fulfillment of the promises of 2003’s Rose Revolution, which brought President Saakashvili to power.

In 2005, the two close friends and respected public figures drove to meet with a member of parliament, Koba Bekauri, who was the subject of an upcoming TV 202 report on corruption. Bekauri had tried to block the report’s screening and Ramishvili and Kokhreidze agreed on a price of US$100,000 to keep the program off the air. Although bribery is not an uncommon phenomenon in Georgia, Bekauri and the government declared this an act of blackmail and Ramishvili and Kokhreidze were arrested in their cars as they left the meeting.

****

Goga Kokhreidze is a former Member of Parliament and an activist for the rights of the disabled in Georgia. He hadn't seen his brother Davit for over two months when he finally visited him in prison. He found Davit pale, malnourished and surrounded by desperate and miserable convicts.

“If you are not a strong man, you are broken in this place, you go down. In Georgia it is bad, but this, in jail, this is too much.”

Davit Kokhreidze was kept in a 12-bed cell with 29 occupants, where the prisoners had to take turns lying down to sleep. After protesting his treatment by announcing a hunger strike, Kokhreidze was ignored and six more prisoners were added to his cell.

Ramishvili was allegedly held in a cell that had been used for solitary confinement for death row prisoners in the Soviet era. He shared the unventilated 5.65-metre cell and its tiny, vermin-infested bed with another prisoner. Their “toilet” was a thin pipe directly next to their bed that was “so narrow that it was difficult for the inmates to pass urine and excrement through the hole.”

The Georgian Penitentiary Department announced after an investigation that the conditions of Ramishvili and Kokhreidze's imprisonment fully complied with international standards.

The ECHR disagreed, ruling that their incarceration was a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, citing “inhuman and degrading” prison conditions and a trial of dubious integrity. (The European Court of Human Rights was created by the European Commission to award damages to individuals who suffered at the hands of a state. The Georgian government is not required to follow the ruling under international law.)

During their appeal hearing, the two men were kept in metal cages and surrounded by masked men with machine guns. Dozens of plain-clothes government agents filled the courtroom, arguing with families and supporters of the defendants and visiting the judge in the deliberation room. After viewing a video of the hearing, the ECHR decided the judge was openly partial—rephrasing difficult questions to the prosecutor in a leading manner and sometimes answering them himself. Of this hearing, the ECHR cited violations of Article 1, Article 3, Article 4 and Article 5 of the Convention.

Following the ECHR judgment, the government announced structural and policy changes based on the ECHR’s criticisms and paid total damages of EUR 6,000 to each defendant, as well as a joint sum of EUR 14,694 for “costs and expenses.”

****

“The [trial] was against TV 202,” said Lia Mukhashavria, Ramishvili and Kokhreidze's lawyer during the ECHR case. “They wanted to close it down. Once they were imprisoned, it collapsed, and by doing that the government has now another TV station on that channel, Sakartvelo, purely a Ministry of Defence channel. They made a clear message to all journalists in Georgia: these guys got in trouble; so could you.”

****

Following their arrests, Ramishvili and Kokhreidze were approached by German businessman Hans von Sachsen-Altenburg, who offered to purchase TV 202.

But Altenburg soon sold the station to Beka Paatashvili, a small-town Georgian pig farmer who became the station’s official owner. How Paatashvili acquired the money to purchase the station has never been publicly explained, but the sale also involved Georgian businessman Kakha Ninua, whom Georgian media has alleged is the brother of the Deputy Minster of Defence. The station was given a new, pro-government management team, and, supported by the Georgian Ministry of Defence and a political advocacy organization called the Liberty Institute, was launched in September 2007 as SakarTVelo. Altenburg became the station’s manager and part of its legal team.

Little information can be found about the current shareholders and managers of SakarTVelo. Their website is under maintenance and the Ministry of Defense declined to comment on the station's ownership.

The Liberty Institute, officially a Georgian research and advocacy organization, is seen by most Georgians as representing and enforcing American foreign policy interests. As with the station itself, very little information is publicly available about the funding and management of the Liberty Institute. Liberty did not respond to repeated telephone calls and e-mails.

“I saw the contract of sale that was signed by Hans von Sachsen-Altenburg,” said former owner of TV 202 David Mapley about the sale of TV 202 to Altenburg, detailing a $500,000 payment to his account at Merrill Lynch in Dallas, Texas, and $60,000 to Nana Andronikashvili in Georgia. “This was obviously a set-up."

Mapley has given all relevant files to the FBI for an investigation. He adds that he contacted Merrill Lynch to freeze Altenburg’s assets and they did not respond.

“The whole [Georgian] government is in on the take! It is significant that I wrote to Prime Minister Noghaideli for help, and he orchestrates stealing the station!”

Altenburg refuses to comment on questions related to his background or his involvement with SakarTVelo, but he says he strongly supports the ECHR position, claiming the judgment is “a gift to the people of Georgia,” and adding, “Those with honour should resign in shame and those without honour should be fired.”

****

While Kokhreidze was released in 2007 after the transfer of TV 202 to government control, Ramishvili remains behind bars. In an interview conducted with Ramishvili through his lawyer, who wrote down his responses while visiting him in prison, the message relayed was: "The president personally is interested in keeping [him] in prison to serve full time"; that he was a "very close person to the president"; and that he wants "to publicize private materials on the president, what [he] personally knows about him. But [he] will do this after [his] release.”

Meanwhile, international aid pours into Georgia and its progress toward democracy is celebrated in the Western World.

Jay Heisler is a Canadian-born journalist who has worked in Sudan, the West Bank, Georgia, Northern Iraq and Lebanon. His writing has been published in Georgia Today, the Beirut Daily Star and The Dominion.

Georgian TV

They’re Animals!

hillarybain — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 09:58:34 +0000

Dehumanization, media and the War on Terror

MONTREAL, QUEBEC – While most people were glued to their television screens, confounded by the images of the burning Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, Erin Steuter started to notice a trend among television announcers and in news coverage of the event. "I noticed right away that some commentators were starting to use animal metaphors, terms like 'the hunt for bin Laden,' instead of 'the search for,' or they would talk about them hiding in caves and lairs or nests instead of bunkers or something human-made."

While the Professor of Sociology at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, found the analogies off-putting, at first she thought little of it, chalking it up to the immediate frenzy that would follow such an event. But gradually, as she followed the language used informally, she noticed a disturbing trend. "[The animal metaphor] started to grow and be used for all citizens of Afghanistan or all the people of Iraq." Increasingly alarmed by the pervasiveness of this language, she began following it more closely, doing thorough searches in media databases such as Lexis-Nexis. As she delved deeper, she realized that instead of receding as time went on, the dehumanizing metaphors continued to spread, "not just to specific enemies or to specific people associated with particular countries we were at war with, but to all Muslims and in some cases all Arabs." The result is the recently published At War With Metaphor, which documents and attempts to explain not just where this language comes from, but what its dangers are, particularly based on historical precedent.

Taken alone, using animal metaphors does not necessarily seem so nefarious. Indeed comparisons to animals – eating like a pig, strong as a bull – are fairly common in nearly any language. The danger lies, according to Steuter, when we move beyond simple comparisons, to persistent metaphors; people are no longer like something, but have become something. You’re not like an animal; you are an animal. Steuter points out that we have seen this kind of dehumanization before in some of the most brutal and bloody human conflicts.

The image of the rat was used both by Nazis in their dehumanization of Jews, making it easier for neighbour to turn on neighbour during the Holocaust. The rat metaphor was also adopted in America when it came to locking up Japanese-Americans in internment camps later in the Second World War, following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour and the United States' subsequent entry into the conflict. Most recently, Steuter points to the 1994 genocide of Tutsi populations by Hutus in Rwanda. International tribunals have condemned journalists for inciting and provoking the massacre, particularly radio stations, which painted Tutsis as cockroaches and calling for their extermination. As animal metaphors grew in the coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Steuter found it difficult to believe that these recent lessons about the use of language in committing violent acts had disappeared from the public consciousness. "I thought it would be more resonant, but people have short memories. I don't think they realized that the records of what is being said about this war on terror is not dissimilar to those previous records."

In April 2008, it was revealed that the Pentagon, with the complicity of the major American news agencies, had co-ordinated the use of military analysts in US coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in order to drum up support for the military operations. The American media has been roundly criticized since for allowing military officials too large a place in shaping the media's approach to its reporting on the war on terror and related elements.

Steuter agrees that militaries – American and Canadian – have played a large role in pushing the animal metaphor. "I think there's a sort of masculinity and intensity and power in the military language and I think the media is sometimes quick to adopt it to take on some of the power and authority for themselves." But she is quick to add that chalking up how the war is framed only to military officials is scratching the surface.

"The very notion of the war on terror was developed with consultants to make sure it brought forward the right kind of responses that suited the American political agenda and even now in Canada, the Canadian political agenda."

Steuter contends that the Canadian media have not escaped falling into the trap of dehumanizing its opponents either. According to Steuter, while the Canadian media were fairly critical of the first Gulf War under George Bush Sr. in 1991, their analysis has since significantly softened. Though Canadian media seemingly haven't engaged in dehumanizing Muslims, Arabs or Afghans as much as our southern neighbours, Steuter sees a growing trend, leaving her with little doubt that if our media do not start to turn a critical light on our own country we will soon be as complicit as our American counterparts.

“I definitely see it happening as well in Canada and I think that as the Afghanistan situation is not being resolved I think it's going to escalate, so I've been keeping tabs on the way that the Taliban and the Afghan people are being portrayed.

"I think that soon enough we're going to start to see that if you keep thinking that these people aren't even human beings, you're not going to be treating them as such. I think it is just going to explode, where Canada is going to be humiliated and embarrassed by the way we're treating civilians of enemy combatants or anyone who’s in our hands in that way."

How do we avoid heading down that road? For Steuter, the first step is to develop more informed and critical-thinking media consumers. The last chapter of At War with Metaphor, "Talking our way to peace," outlines her vision of how more critical debate can help break apart the monolithic viewpoint presented by corporate media and that government public relations should have a more rounded debate on military exploits. The lack of a critical approach, she says, is what led to prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, where images and videos of prisoner abuse have clearly shown a physical manifestation of the metaphorical dehumanization within the media.

"The very famous picture we have of [US Army Specialist] Lynndie England is her standing over a prisoner who's on all-fours naked on the end of a leash. Look at the pictures at Guantanamo Bay – they're chained to the ground in little cages with water bowls like dogs. So these are the actions that are following [from the media's dehumanization]." To counter this, people need to start revisiting their own everyday language in discussing the war – and challenging the language used by others.

"If we start to consciously change our language and start to talk about the criminal acts that have to be prosecuted and tried and that people need to be brought to justice for their actions, then we will see a much better situation in terms of addressing the problems of the violence and not of spreading the abuses with it. So having a personal consciousness of the use of language and calling others to account, calling them on it in the way that we do often call public figures and journalists on inappropriate language in other contexts, I think it's definitely something that we need to step up."

Tim McSorley is Media Analysis Editor at The Dominion.

They're Animals

Media Avoids the Dirt

dawn — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 09:43:48 +0000

Mining companies get an easy ride in Canadian press

MONTREAL, QUEBEC–From developing on fresh-water-providing glaciers in the Andes, to invading First Nations lands in Ontario, to blowing off the tops of mountains in Virginia, mining maintains one of the poorest records for environmental and social policies of nearly any industry.

“Forestry can be incredibly destructive for the environment, to the ecosystem, however if it is done properly...the forestry industry can be a nice example of a regenerative, natural resource-based industry that preserves land and ecosystems and also produces economic benefits and jobs,” says Toby Heaps, Editor-in-Chief of Corporate Knights magazine. “Mining– not so much in its present form,” he continues, adding that while practices can vary widely between companies, the last 30 years has shown the mining industry as both environmentally and socially destructive.

While Canadian companies lead the way in the mining industry, with almost 10,000 projects worldwide, mining activists say that lack of coverage in the mainstream media means many Canadians remain ignorant of Canada's role in the global mining market.

“I think people aren’t really aware of the scale of the industry; that Canada’s mining sector is so active in so many parts of the world,” says Ian Thomson, Corporate Social Responsibility Program Co-ordinator for Kairos, a Canadian ecumenical social justice organization. “Little is written [about mining development] unless it becomes a total disaster, so then you may get an article when there are family members who are murdered, or there is a huge spill of tailings or other toxic chemicals that impact a huge river system. It’s only when it reaches this horrendous scale that the media seems to think to pay attention.”

Beyond a lack of reporting, Thomson also sees an underlying lack of analysis when it comes to journalists covering the industry. “I think that what’s missing is there is a pattern here—that this isn’t just one or two isolated cases, but is the case where it’s just a heavily under-regulated industry,” he explains. “A report was issued by the UN earlier this year, saying the problem is that there is this governance gap, where companies operate as multinationals but are regulated at a national level and that’s what leads to these conflicts and these violations.”

A quick search through Canadian news database Proquest, which archives articles from all major English language dailies in Canada, seems to back up Thomson’s statements. While a search for articles on mining over the past year brings up over 6,000 pieces, a search for "mining and environment" brings up just under 300; similar results are achieved with "mining and community" or "mining and sustainable development." Overwhelmingly, the articles focus purely on economics, rather than the impact of the industry.

Heaps and Thomson both point to growing cuts in foreign and investigative journalism for this lack of coverage. Over the last decade, media consolidation and the quest for higher profits have resulted in closures of foreign bureaus. CanWest Global, Canada’s largest media conglomerate, maintains only two foreign newspaper bureaus, down from eight, when the chain was still owned by Southam. Tighter deadlines in order to meet the demands of the internet has also contributed to increased pressure on journalists, says Thomson, and less coverage of stories outside large urban areas, where mining operations are located.

But it isn’t just news media that has helped obscure the impacts of the mining industry; advertising has played significant role as well. Like many industries, mining has jumped on the corporate social responsibility bandwagon, attempting to reform their image through advertising campaigns vaunting their belief in a greener, cleaner and more equitable world. While some of the advertisements may be legitimate, it is difficult to distinguish which are real and which are simply window-dressing.

One company that has attempted to reform its image over the last 10 years is aluminum giant Alcan (Rio Tinto Alcan, since it was acquired by fellow mining giant Rio Tinto last year). In the past, Alcan has been heavily criticized for its operations in central India, initiating huge bauxite mines without public consultation or environmental precautions. Concerns persist over its plans to expand hydroelectricity production for smelters in Iceland and the company has also been embroiled in a messy dispute over the future of its operations in Kitimat, B.C., where labour officials claim that the company is not meeting its promised levels of job creation.

Throughout the fall, the company ran a massive publicity campaign in Alcan’s home province of Quebec. Featuring crystal-clear water, bright green forests and fields and a blue sky that you wish you could fly away into, the advert focuses on everything—sponsoring paralympians, research and technology, and job creation—except its environmental impact. It does state, in soothing tones as a lone deer trots across the screen, that it "produces respect for the environment," but it in no way quantifies how or what it does to minimize its environmental impact.

"If an ad has a little girl running through a field, but also gives numbers on its accomplishments, that’s fine,” says Heaps. “[But] if the purpose or the effects of that ad is to slow down progress [towards sustainability] in that company or give them a decoy for people who want to accelerate the progress [towards sustainability] of the company, then that’s a problem. Those are the key questions you need to ask yourself: what was the intent of the company with this ad, and was it to accelerate its move towards being more sustainable, or was it to slow it down or turn it back?”

Consumers are becoming more wary of these advertising campaigns. Recently, advertising watchdogs in Canada, such as the Canadian Standards Association and the Competition Bureau—and in Britain, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)—have seen an upsurge in complaints about misleading ‘green’ advertisements, resulting in the Canadian government adopting stronger rules on green labeling and terminology, and the ASA taking more and more companies to task.

But Thomson also warns that we cannot rely too much on the government to address the situation. He points to another story that has seen little coverage in Canada—the government’s complicity in mining activities.

“On many of the overseas trips [Prime Minister] Harper has taken, he has made sure to find the time to meet with mining executives,” says Thomson, adding that such meetings provide legitimacy to companies that are attempting to skirt social and environmentAL relations. In 2007, Harper met with Barrick Gold executives in Chile at the same time that residents of Pascua Lama were raising serious concerns about Barrick’s undertakings in their region; Harper refused their request for a meeting, entering Barrick's office through the back door. On other occasions, Canadian ambassadors, including Guatemala and the Philippines, have maneuvered in favour of mining companies facing difficulties in obtaining permits or facing criticism for the actions.

For now, both Heaps and Thomson say that Canadians will need to look outside the mainstream press to find out what Canadian mining companies are up to.

“What we need to see is renewed investment and commitment to investigative journalism, to work a story over the long term,” says Heaps. “That’s the only way to cover something like this.”

Tim McSorley is Media Analysis Editor at The Dominion.

Media Avoids the Dirt

The Media's FARCed

Moira Peters — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 10:51:07 +0000

Mainstream coverage of Colombia

In what most news outlets described as a daring and stunning military victory, on July 2, 2008, the Colombian government freed 15 hostages being held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The rescued group included the best-known of the FARC’s prisoners, former journalist and Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, as well as three United States military contractors and 11 Colombian soldiers and police.

The story and accompanying images and sound bytes--splashed across the front of newspapers and on heavy rotation in broadcast news for several days--praised the operation as a sign both of the effectiveness of the Colombian government’s battle against the FARC and of the revolutionary organisation’s decline.

The future of the FARC was questioned by not only mainstream media, but also by the independent press. While it is clear the insurgents are not on the brink of being wiped out, voices in the media--from independent journalist Justin Podur, to cable news outlet CNN--pointed out that the rescue mission follows on the heels of the assassination of the FARC's second-in-command, Raul Reyes, by the Colombian government the previous month and the death in March of the FARC's leader, Manuel Marulanda. It also accompanies a growing belief that the FARC’s tactics of kidnapping and waging an insurrectionary war is no longer the best way to change Colombia’s political landscape.

The event has led to a critical eye being cast on the FARC, but it has had the opposite effect on the Colombian government. A government recently plagued by scandals has been able to re-invent itself in the mainstream media as a knight in shining armour. In fact, the success of the operation has made Colombia’s president, Alvaro Uribe, more popular than ever, with polls showing support among the population at a stunning 91 per cent.

The extent to which this has allowed the mainstream press to gloss over questions surrounding Uribe and his government is surprising. While the FARC has used what many describe as deplorable tactics in its revolutionary fight, the groups responsible for the largest share of the killings in Colombia during their drawn-out civil war-–particularly deaths among civilians and non-violent progressive activists-–have been the country’s right-wing paramilitary groups.

According to some estimates, 75 per cent of the 3,500 to 4,000 civilian deaths in Colombia between 1998 and 2006 were due to paramilitary forces. The operations of these groups have been publicly denounced by the government, but have at the same time received thinly veiled support from Colombia’s military law-makers, including President Uribe’s cousin, Congressman Mario Uribe Escobar, who was arrested in April 2008. According to an Edmonton Journal article published in April, 62 current or former Colombian politicians have been arrested and 31 more are being investigated for their links to paramilitaries. Individuals named on the list of those connected with the massacre of 15 people in 1997 include the speaker of the house, a supporter of President Uribe, and the president himself. However, in articles such as “Betancourt liberation a tonic for Colombia's problems,” published in the Montreal Gazette on July 4, no mention is made of these links. Even an article ostensibly critical of Colombia’s president, “Alvaro Uribe has more work to do,” published in the Toronto Star on July 14, skirts the issue.

The rescue operation has also helped to deflect attention from a bribery scandal that nearly forced Uribe to hold a referendum on the legitimacy of his 2006 re-election. The Colombian Supreme Court recently sentenced congresswoman Yidis Medina to four years of house arrest for admitting to taking bribes in the form of money and promises of jobs for supporters in exchange for backing a constitutional amendment that allowed Uribe to stand for re-election. Faced with a legitimacy crisis, Uribe had announced he was willing to hold a country-wide vote on whether he should remain in office. He has called it off since the freeing of the hostages.

All things considered, it is not necessarily surprising that questions have arisen about the accuracy of the official story of the rescue. The Colombian government has claimed it managed to infiltrate the inner-circles of the FARC, thereby fooling them into believing a top FARC officer had ordered the transfer of the hostages when in reality they were being placed on a rescue helicopter. But Radio Suisse Romande, a Swiss radio station, has claimed that, according to a confidential source, a $20 million ransom was paid to the FARC to free the hostages and that the ensuing rescue operation was staged. Most media have ignored or buried this story. For example, the rescue itself made the cover of the July 3, 2008, issue of the National Post, but the story of the possible payment appeared on page A15. Adding further to this embarrassment was the little-reported story that the Colombian government was forced to apologise to the Red Cross when it was revealed one of the soldiers donned the aid organisation’s uniform during the mission. Impersonating the Red Cross is considered a breach of the Geneva Convention, which regulates war crimes.

The rescue mission has not only been used to minimise controversy in Colombian politics; the strategy is being used in North American politics as well. Several major news outlets have featured pieces using the hostages’ release as justification for increasing free trade ties with Colombia, despite Colombia continuing to be one of the most dangerous countries for labour organisers. Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson used the occasion to support a Canada-Colombia free trade pact in a July 5 article entitled, “A bold rescue is good news for Colombia--and Canada.”

In the US, Marc Grossman, vice-chairman of The Cohen Group and former undersecretary of state for political affairs in the George W Bush Administration, made the case for a US-Colombia deal in the Boston Globe. Unlike Canada, where the Conservative Government has all but signed an agreement, Democratic legislators in the US halted debate on the issue in the spring, ostensibly over the Colombian Government’s lack of action to curb human rights abuses. In his article, Simpson noted that, “Colombia has moved a long way from those grisly days when judges, mayors, police officers and other symbols of authority were targeted by the FARC, while paramilitaries targeted unionists, teachers and others.” While it's true that the rate of killing has dropped and that the FARC have ceased assassinations, in a July 8 letter to the Globe, Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, pointed out that Simpson went too far in saying the murder of trade unionists has ended; since the beginning of the year, the killing of labour organisers is up 70 per cent over the same period in 2007, and Colombia remains the country where the most labour organisers are killed every year.

As Colombian-Canadian surgeon and activist Manuel Rozental recently explained to Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman, “We’re talking about the regime with the worst human rights record in the continent and the army with the worst human rights record in the continent with the greatest US support, including the contractors or mercenaries. So the fact that this regime was involved in this liberation does not, and should not, and can not, cover up the fact that it is a horrendous regime.”

Betancourt in France