CANADA SEES CROSS-OWNERSHIP THREATENING EDITORIAL INDEPENDENCE
Canada’s TV regulator was skeptical in hearing this week about how country’s media conglomerates could maintain editorial diversity in face of cross-media consolidation and convergence. At license renewal hearings for Canada’s 2 private national TV networks, CTV and CanWest Global, Canadian Radio-TV & Telecom Commission (CRTC) asked conglomerates, which own TV networks, newspapers and Internet portals, to explain why bigger was better. Increased competition from U.S. border stations, new specialty channels and loss of viewers to Internet make it imperative that conventional TV networks be part of larger companies, Global TV’s Pres. Gerry Noble said.
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But CRTC Vice Chmn. of Bcstg. Andree Wylie questioned how media giants could maintain editorial independence across their operations. “Will there not be a tendency… to standardize output and therefore reduce the variety of information?” Wylie asked. Given “the potential negative impact on the diversity of voices, editorial independence and quality broadcast programming” from cross-media ownership, CRTC may need to impose safeguards, including code of conduct and complaints mechanism, Wylie said. Those measures would ensure “functional separation between editorial decision-making and management of the broadcasting and print media,” she said.
Countering their claim that diverse media could use same ingredients to produce different news stories, Wylie said: “At the end of the day, whatever one has bought at Loblaws is what one can choose to make the meal. And if you didn’t bring any vegetables, you are not going to have a vegetarian pizza. So how will diversity and editorial independence be ensured only by a separate management team establishing overall goals and direction … How can you separate so easily the gathering and the preparation and the investigation, and then the presentation, and not have something that may be dangerously similar?”
Wylie suggested both companies consider following code of ethics adopted recently by Quebec print and TV conglomerate Quebecor Media. In that voluntary code, newspaper and TV reporters can’t work in same building, communicate in person, by phone, fax or Internet, or share equipment, she said. In response, CTV volunteered code of ethics that would separate TV and newspaper decision-makers and board members but allow them to share reporters, researchers, administrators. “We have put forward what we believe are strong safeguards,” CTV Pres.-COO Trina McQueen said. “This separate structure… we think restricts us very considerably.” She said CRTC must make sure it didn’t stretch its regulatory powers so far as to interfere with freedom of press.
CanWest would accept code of conduct that would impose limited degree of separation between its print and TV operations, but strict code like one for Quebecor is “bordering on, if not, unconstitutional,” CanWest Pres.-CEO Leonard Asper said. Moreover, Quebecor code isn’t necessary in English Canada, where there are more media choices, he said.
It seems foregone conclusion that commission will impose safeguards of some kind, Wylie suggested. “We may end up indeed doing something… We have already put ourselves on the record that we are prepared to impose restrictions in certain circumstances. We have in Quebec, and considering the offer that has been made by Quebecor it is likely there will be some again.”
Any conditions CRTC imposes on TV networks as part of their licensing regimes also will affect their print and Internet assets, Wylie said. Although CRTC’s mandate doesn’t extend to print industry, govt. body “has taken the position that it has the responsibility to ensure that ownership of other media by its broadcasting licensees does not reduce the number of news and information voices for Canadians or the quality of broadcasting programming,” Wylie said. With 7-year licensing terms, this regime will define relationship between federal regulator and country’s converging media industry for coming decade, commissioners said.