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Chapter 3 | Florian Sauvageau (continued) John Meisel has demonstrated above the role of Radio-Canada in the handing down of culture in this country. Journalism can more easily fit into this more general picture. There are enormous differences between this “citizenship” approach by journalists in the public media — Radio-Canada and CBC, Anglophone and Francophone — and that of the private sector who give the impression of seeing themselves mainly from a market point of view. Far more than sociodemographic factors, such as belonging to a linguistic community, where one works, as well as the nature and objectives of the employer, shape the way journalism is practiced. In a study for the Kent Commission, Simon Langlois and I arrived at the same conclusions. The journalists of Le Devoir did not see themselves the same way those of Le Journal de Montréal did. Several other studies have shown the determining role of the news firm in defining the type of journalism close to their hearts. David Pritchard and I have also compared our data with those of the last large survey of American journalists, published by David Weaver and C. G. Wilhoit in 1996. If we remove the journalists of CBC and Radio-Canada from our sample, there are only slight differences between how American and Canadian journalists view their role and the way they practice it. What makes the difference between Canada and the United States is the Radio-Canada/CBC way of seeing journalism as a public service. But the continuing decline of public radio and television in the past decade speaks to the decline of that distinct type of journalism, and the increase in commercial journalism, making uniform the journalistic practices of both countries. This leads to globalization. What is globalization in the world of media? It is not just the world wide prevalence of American cultural products. It is also the adoption almost everywhere in the world of the same model of communication, the same media model, the same journalistic model, the commercial model. 2. media, globalization and democracy Great changes have transformed the Canadian media landscape during the last decade. The expansion of private firms and the concentration of media properties in fewer hands, in Canada as well as elsewhere, have occurred at the same time as the cutting back of media representing public service. Important groups in several countries have convinced their governments of the necessity of letting “national champions” grow, able to compete with AOL Time Warner and the rising conglomerates on the international scene. This, more often than not, has coincided with the diminution of the audiovisual public service, with extreme examples in cases such as New Zealand, where public television, under the conservative government, was sold off in 1999, to bring in dividends to the State. In Canada, values of entertainment and exhibition have also invaded the field of journalism, especially television, with the enthusiastic participation of certain journalists, even at times at Radio-Canada, who share an idea of information which is more oriented towards satisfying public interest rather than serving the public interest as traditionally understood. Because of television’s role as the main source of information for citizens, David Pritchard and I raise the following question in the conclusion to our book Les journalistes canadiens, un portrait de fin de siècle: “One of the most pertinent questions at present is to see how far entertainment journalism is undermining the understanding of public issues on the part of the televiewer and jeopardizing his ability to think critically.” Some fear more the control of ideas — “the single thought” — and the uniformity of information that could result from the concentration of media ownership. Members of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) wondered about it in the spring of 2001, on the occasion of the renewal of the licenses of CTV and Global — which are now merged with daily newspapers — as to the standardization and the shrinking of the diversity of information that could be a consequence of the simultaneous ownership of newspapers and television networks. In the case of Can West Global, the problem was to see whether the CRTC would accept that it could simultaneously own newspapers and television stations in approximately ten of the major cities in this country. The same questions are raised about the acquisition of the TVA television network by Québécor, owner of the most important daily newspapers in Montréal and Québec in terms of circulation. This concern with diversity expressed by the regulatory agency is an irritant to larger conglomerates, especially in English Canada.3 |
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