Be an F.C.C. Grinch

ONE OF THE peculiar things about living in the City of Toronto is that we probably are better served by media than most places in the country. That's because we have four daily newspapers -- a rightish tab called The Sun (which rose from the death of a newspaper called The Telegram in the early 70's -- today it's owned by a company called Quebecor.) The Toronto Star is a left leaning broadsheet, and the overall circulation leader. Then there's The National Post -- which was started by right wing jailbird tycoon Conrad Black, and is now owned by Canwest. Finally, there's the good grey Globe & Mail -- which people elsewhere in the country call (sometimes rightly) "Toronto's National Newspaper."

Then there's the two alternative weeklies eye and NOW. They're big lefty, mostly.

The competition for stories, and the different focuses and political stripes of the various papers help make for a lively debate. This debate, though, is ultimately couched in the larger context of media consolidation. Two of the papers are owned by the same companies that own Canada's two private television networks.

If the current WGA strike and the last ten years have taught us anything, it's that the whole fooferal surrounding vertical integration of media is a lot of hooey. No one talks about 'synergies' anymore -- and nobody even tries to pretend it's better for us folks.

What it is better for, is the bottom line of rapacious corporate media behemoths. The same kind, loving, reasonable corporations who are currently trying to break the WGA and offer them nothing for new media.

When you reduce the number of owners of media outlets, you reduce diversity and opinion. More and more stories get ignored. It's not hard to find evidence of this -- there's plenty of links to be had if you go looking.

In my experience, I've noticed the effect of consolidation twice recently. When I had a Vancouver adventure earlier this year, I got used to the fact that the two newspapers there were owned by the same company. That's the case in a lot of cities. The coverage was bland and uninspired, very rarely straying off canned content for Arts and "feature-y" things. I've been a daily newspaper reader all my life, but after a week I dropped reading the daily paper altogether, and sucked it up to buy the Weekend paper, along with a nine dollar Sunday New York Times.

But as bad as that experience was, and as softened as it was by still being able to check all the online sources I love, the experience I get when I visit the U.S. is worse.

My parents retired to Florida a couple years ago. We lived in Florida in the 1970's. Now, when I go back, I notice that the newspapers and the tv stations are all owned by the same people. Radio in the USA is a joke -- it's all bland Clear Channel crap, or Dittohead noise. No wonder people have started diving for NPR.

It's astonishing how narrow a field of information actually gets discussed there. The paucity of thought and ideas expressed has actually noticeably started to affect the democratic process. People are ill informed. They're kept in the dark and fed bullshit. And the bottom line of the media congloms grows ever larger.

This is sounding pretty lefty, I know, and I'm sorry for that. I do try to keep an open mind. There are plenty of centre, and rightish thinkers that I admire. In Canada, you actually get to hear all of these people for yourself. You're allowed to decide.

If you're an American, now that it's coming up on Christmas and you're cutting down trees, dreaming of reindeer and songs of joys and peace, and TeeVee and media seems like a background sideshow, I'd ask you to pay attention to one more thing.

This.

The other rule, which gives owners of newspapers more leeway to buy radio and television stations in the largest cities, is a step in the direction of deregulation. It is intended to help the newspaper industry, which is suffering from dwindling advertising revenue, and to recognize that the historical conditions that gave rise to cross-ownership restrictions have changed, now that more news sources are available on the Internet and cable television.

But the change drew criticism from newspaper executives, who said it was too modest to be meaningful, and from prominent lawmakers and commission Democrats, who called it a Christmas present to the nation’s largest conglomerates.

Both rules are certain to be reviewed by courts in the coming months. On Capitol Hill, some lawmakers said Tuesday that they would try to undo the rule about the newspaper industry.

Bush's F.C.C. flunky has been trying to push through further media consolidation for a while now. Earlier this year, he was rebuffed by an outpouring of citizen outrage. No matter. He promised W. that the rules would go through and that the kinds of good, thinking citizens who run the AMPTP would get a Christmas gift -- the ability to control even more of what you read and see and hear.

The rules were successfully changed yesterday. But it's not final. There will be appeals.

I want you to think about the news in the last few years -- the bad info leading up to the Iraq war, and everything else and ask, "have you been well served by your media?"

If you think the answer's no, then before you start wrapping or playing Guitar Hero or trying to figure out what to do with weird Uncle Harry, take a second to write your congressperson.

Tell them that -- never mind changing the rules -- they should hold hearings into media concentration.

It's bad for us as citizens. It's bad for America. (It's not great for Canada, either, but we're at least not as far down the road in restricting voices.)