Saturday, February 2, 2013

New Publisher for the Vancouver Sun and Province



Gordon Fisher replaces Kevin Bent as the new president and publisher of the Pacific News Group which puts out the Vancouver Sun and the Vancouver Province. Gordon Fisher appears to be a good guy and there was nothing wrong with Kevin Bent. It appears to be another move to help increase profitability of the newspaper industry in a digital age.

The freedom of the press can be a powerful tool in the democratic process. It can also be a powerful tool in the propaganda conflict where the truth is always the first casualty. Most of us, at least I always used to, think of newspapers and non biased reporting of current events. Far from it.

In England the biases are far more prevalent. Take Robert Murdoch champion of the wiretap scandal. The newspapers Murdoch produced were always biased towards supporting Conservative candidates in the election. Tony Blair was the one exception after he supported George Bush’s lie that formed the reason for the invasion of Iraq.

After that, Murdoch and his papers supported David Cameron. Now when I say support that doesn’t just mean he voted for and contributed to his campaign. I mean the paper ran biased articles in favor of those candidates. Which is in complete contradiction to what I personally thought newspapers were supposed to do. I thought they were supposed to be non biased. Now there are just supposed to make money.

We did see something similar in Canada when the media tyrant Conrad Black started buying up all the newspapers and media outlets. His newspapers became very right wing and very biased in the way it reported the news.

As shocking as this may seem for those as naïve as myself, it isn’t really a problem in our supply and demand world. If a paper is clearly right wing or left wing biased, it will generate that kind of readers and those kinds of advertizing dollars. No doubt the big corporations are going to have more money to spend on advertizing and are therefore in a better position to manipulate the media.

The thing we need to do as consumers is remember that those biases do in fact exist and seek out alternative or nonbiased media sources. Supply and demand. I will note that although Conrad Black created the National Post which was very right wing at the time, it never made a profit and lost millions under Conrad’s leadership.

Conrad Black sold the remaining 50% of his shares in the National Post in 2001 to CanWest Global Communications Corp which owned the other half of the paper. Gordon Fisher took over and the reporting became less biased. As a result, on October 28, 2011, The National Post announced its first ever yearly profit. Since it started in 1998, until it was sold in 2001, the National Post had lost millions. So Gordon Fisher comes back out West to turn the tide once again and help save the newspaper industry in our digital age.

Television is free. That industry makes money on advertizing. Likewise on the Internet, sites that get high traffic volume can also make money on advertizing. The question is, does the media answer to consumers who buy and read their material or do they answer to their sponsors and try to control their readers with ads like Steven Harper and Christy Clark’s painful propaganda paid for with tax dollars. Time will tell.

On the subject of modern main stream censorship I will cite the case of Dan Rather. One blog reader just reminded me and sent this link to the story. It is a flaming example of how pathetic our main stream media has become. Just like the Gary Webb case. Dan Rather and Gary Webb were both right.

5 comments:

  1. "I thought they were supposed to be non biased."

    But that is ONLY a North American way of thinking...In Europe it's natural that every newspaper supports a political Party. The Guardian's for Labour, Times for Conservatives. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, because it's totally up-front and openly expressed. You know what you're going to get.

    Also, it's been that way for centuries; I think the British Whig Party of the 1700's had its own paper, as did other political interests......

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  2. I read all the linked stuff about George Bush's flying days with the TANG.

    The trouble is, this happened so long ago they can't even decide which type-writer did the printing...of Xerox copies, whose ultimate provenance can never be known.

    Getting into the National Guard of any type, would un-fortunately be the rich, influential father's way of buying his son out-of-danger. It was done by many, and more fled up here; where I've worked with the now expat-US'ers for years...

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  3. Freddy,

    Please keep them up there, we don't want them back. Anyone who flees their countries call is a cowardly POS and you are welcome to them, rest assured they would not respond to Canada's call if it ever came either, perhaps they would have their son's flee to the US if that happened, LOL....

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  4. Them meaning GB Jr.? We don't want him. Vietnam was a horrible war. No parent would want their child involved in that. Yet ultimately it was an important cause so letting people volunteer for that missions would have been in order. I can totally understand why GB Sr. wanted his son not involved in that conflict. It's just ironic how they made fun of Kerry for the way he saluted when he was a patriot and GB Jr was not. Sad that they fired Dan Rather for telling the truth about it. The mainstream media is tainted.

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  5. Um..... No K, not meaning GB Jr..

    I was replying to Freddy, who said "more fled up here; where I've worked with the now expat-US'ers for years".

    I too met a few of these characters in the years I lived up there.

    So, nothing to do with anything you said there. Not GB Jr. Not GB Sr. Nothing to do with any Bush's.

    But don't let that stop you from making it about the Bush's. :D

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