Thank you so much for this. I had no idea of the magnitude the right-wing media has. It helps to know how to support our democracy media and progressive media and programs.
Much or most of Canada’s mainstream/corporate news-media are in bed with big fossil fuel industry interests. Notably, Postmedia — which, among many other publications, owns both of Canada's two national newspapers, The National Post and The Globe and Mail — is on record allying itself with not only the planet’s second most polluting forms of carbon-based “energy” but also THE MOST polluting/dirtiest crude oil, bitumen.
During a presentation, it was stated: “Postmedia and [Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers] will bring energy to the forefront of our national conversation. Together, we will engage executives, the business community and the Canadian public to underscore the ways in which the energy sector powers Canada.”
Also, Postmedia acquired a lobbying firm in 2019 with close ties to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney in order to participate in his government’s $30 million PR “war room” in promoting the industry's interests. And in May of 2021, the newspaper giant refused to run paid ads by Leadnow, a social and environmental justice organization, that exposed the Royal Bank of Canada as the largest financer of the nation's fossil fuel extraction.
Still, other concerned citizens would word it more intensely than I have.
“I would argue that what little ethical and moral foundation the country has is deeply threatened by the crumbling discipline of a fossil-fuel-based economy and the politics it spawns. Nothing requires government supervision in so many areas (and nothing has anything like the influence on government) as this industry.
"It follows that no other industry remotely requires the amount and kind of honest, wary media surveillance this one does,” Rafe Mair aptly wrote in his book Politically Incorrect: How Canada Lost Its Way and the Simple Path Home [published in October 2017, the same month he died]. Mr. Mair also had been an elected representative, journalist and talk-show host.
His book largely forensically dissects democracy’s decline in Canada and suggests how it may be helped. “What has the media, especially but hardly exclusively the print media, done in response to this immense challenge? It’s joined fortunes with the petroleum industry. And a very large part of it has done so in print and in public.
"The facts are that the rest of the media have not raised a peep of protest at this unholiest of alliances and that governments contentedly and smugly pretend all that favourable coverage they get proves their efficiency — not that the fix is in and they’re part of that fix. Let me just comment that the difference from 1972 to 2017 in the media’s dealing with governments and politics takes the breath away!”
I also listened to Senator Wyden and wow we need more like him!
💯
The dominance of right Wing alt media is scary.
Thank you so much for this. I had no idea of the magnitude the right-wing media has. It helps to know how to support our democracy media and progressive media and programs.
It better get better for the blue side or we are screwed!!!
Absolutely
Much or most of Canada’s mainstream/corporate news-media are in bed with big fossil fuel industry interests. Notably, Postmedia — which, among many other publications, owns both of Canada's two national newspapers, The National Post and The Globe and Mail — is on record allying itself with not only the planet’s second most polluting forms of carbon-based “energy” but also THE MOST polluting/dirtiest crude oil, bitumen.
During a presentation, it was stated: “Postmedia and [Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers] will bring energy to the forefront of our national conversation. Together, we will engage executives, the business community and the Canadian public to underscore the ways in which the energy sector powers Canada.”
Also, Postmedia acquired a lobbying firm in 2019 with close ties to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney in order to participate in his government’s $30 million PR “war room” in promoting the industry's interests. And in May of 2021, the newspaper giant refused to run paid ads by Leadnow, a social and environmental justice organization, that exposed the Royal Bank of Canada as the largest financer of the nation's fossil fuel extraction.
Still, other concerned citizens would word it more intensely than I have.
“I would argue that what little ethical and moral foundation the country has is deeply threatened by the crumbling discipline of a fossil-fuel-based economy and the politics it spawns. Nothing requires government supervision in so many areas (and nothing has anything like the influence on government) as this industry.
"It follows that no other industry remotely requires the amount and kind of honest, wary media surveillance this one does,” Rafe Mair aptly wrote in his book Politically Incorrect: How Canada Lost Its Way and the Simple Path Home [published in October 2017, the same month he died]. Mr. Mair also had been an elected representative, journalist and talk-show host.
His book largely forensically dissects democracy’s decline in Canada and suggests how it may be helped. “What has the media, especially but hardly exclusively the print media, done in response to this immense challenge? It’s joined fortunes with the petroleum industry. And a very large part of it has done so in print and in public.
"The facts are that the rest of the media have not raised a peep of protest at this unholiest of alliances and that governments contentedly and smugly pretend all that favourable coverage they get proves their efficiency — not that the fix is in and they’re part of that fix. Let me just comment that the difference from 1972 to 2017 in the media’s dealing with governments and politics takes the breath away!”
Source: https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2017/11/14/mair-media-unholiest-alliances