Postmedia and the invisible handjob of the marketplace

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G&M Endorses Harper's Perps with Perks Without Harper

Hilarious G&M editorial election endorsement today: "His party deserves to be re-elected. But after Oct. 19, he should quickly resign." 

In other words, as Antonia Zerbisias put it : "The flying monkeys but not the wicked witch"

Editor-in-Chief David Walmsley then went on Faceplant to perform the 'little man behind the curtain' sketch. He bombed.  #MoreGlobeEndorsements followed.

Munchkinland flashback! Here's the G&M's 2011 Harper election endorsement :

"Only Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party have shown the leadership, the bullheadedness (let's call it what it is) and the discipline this country needs.

.... during his five years in office has demonstrated strength of character, resolve and a desire to reform ... 

Those who disdain the Harper approach should consider his overall record, which is good. The Prime Minister and the Conservative Party have demonstrated principled judgment ..."

With few exceptions, the rest of the media Munchkins also follow the yellow brick road of Harper endorsements with a yellow front page Con attack ad buy today ...as they have for the entire nine year Harper regime.

Saturday update : I'm updating the media graphic above as new editorial endorsements are published today.  Original graphic found at Reddit  

Also : Not only the Ottawa Citizen but the PostMedia chain is apparently running the same attack ad on their front page today, using Elections Canada's trademark yellow. Note : not merely an endorsement for the Cons, but an attack ad that mimics an Elections Canada notice.

Who are you getting your news from lately?
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Sunday update : 
National Observer : YELLOW STAIN : the bystander bigotry of newspaper endorsements
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Kinder Morgan: Taking the BY out of NIMBY

h/t Waterbaby

That's very good, isn't it? "Kinder Morgan has solved the NIMBY problem by taking the backyard".

I also liked his debunking of the attempt to de-legitimize protest itself - the argument that "protesters undermine the rule of law by claiming to speak for the whole community".

Hey, here's one now from the senior editorial board of the Vancouver Province!
Mountain mob don't speak for the rest of us

The Province senior editorial board wonders why the protesters are available to protest in the middle of the day and aren't at work "generating taxes", and whether the protesting "clever university professors" understand where their salaries come from. 
My personal fave here - Are their tents made from oil products? Oh, the hypocrisy! 
This one is akin to the argument that First Nations should only have 'preferential fishing rights' if they are restricted to using 14th century tools.

But then of course the protesters don't speak for you, Province editorial board, because you're already speaking for your editorial partner CAPP, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.




And a bang up job you're doing of it too -  introducing Postmedia stories that "CAPP needs to bring to the forefront of Canadian consciousness".

Last month, backed by its major shareholder New York hedge fund GoldenTree Asset Management, Postmedia added to its stable of CAPP-promoting opportunities with its purchase of Sun Media and 175 more newspapers and websites across Canada, including the 24 Hours daily. 
At left is the before and after effects of the buyout - just another day of tarsands-friendly media concentration in your backyard.

Fun story : Seven years ago, Texas Governor Rick Perry was pushing to build the Trans-Texas Corridor, a quarter-mile-wide swath of truck-only toll lanes, railway lines and multiple traffic lanes rolling from Mexico to the Oklahoma state border. The prime bidder was Cintra SA, Macquarie Infrastructure Group's partner in the Ontario Highway 407 ETR 99 year lease, of which Australia's Macquarie is the largest shareholder. 

To many Texan ranchers and farmers, Perry's superhighway just looked like a royal pain in the ass and opponents of privatizing roads came out against it in the thousands. All up and down the proposed route, ads and editorials critical of the proposal ran in the local newspapers. Macquarie bought those local newspapers out. All 40 of them. 
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Update : Carol Linnitt : Canada’s Petro-Politics Playing Out on B.C.’s Burnaby Mountain

Meanwhile on BC's Burnaby Mountain, RCMP act as Kinder Morgan's private security force, protecting a foreign corporation against the municipality of Burnaby and the people protesting in a public park who actually live here.

Updates from Burnaby Mountain

Media advertorials

Hey kids, remember PostMedia's pitch for their tarsands promotion partnership with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers :

"Postmedia is proud to present its 2013 media partnership with CAPP.

We are a media company national in scope but community-focused. Canadians know our brands, trust our content, and welcome us as a vital member of their communities.

CAPP's messaging will extend to our massive mobile and tablet network so that vital energy information is never more than a click away. Our print coverage will include weekly energy editorial across our entire newspaper chain*, along with monthly joint ventures and quarterly special reports on subjects CAPP needs to bring to the forefront of Canadian consciousness."

* National Post, Financial Post, Vancouver Sun and Province, Ottawa Citizen, Calgary Herald, Windsor Star, Edmonton Journal, Regina Leader-Post, Saskatoon Star Phoenix, Montreal Gazette, and canada.com

Here's a few of the last two weeks' crop of Postmedia stories that "CAPP needs to bring to the forefront of Canadian consciousness".  If you only scanned the headlines, you might mistake them for actual news : 

Pipeline, barge, tanker, truck or rail-car: Producers putting safety first in oil and gas transportation

Strong global demand has Canada’s oil production on target to almost double by 2030 

Five Canadian oil and natural gas companies awarded for innovation in sustainable resource development

Oil Industry set to grow

Production of conventional oil on the rise

All five carry this byline at the bottom :

"This story was produced by Postmedia’s advertising department on behalf of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers for commercial purposes." 

Here's a bonus one from CIBC :

Skilled trades shortage in Alberta a tremendous opportunity for new and growing businesses

"This story was produced by Postmedia’s advertising department in collaboration with CIBC to promote awareness of this topic for commercial purposes."  

Then it was the Globe and Mail's turn. Currently the G&M staff are threatening strike action over this :

Leaked memo confirms Globe and Mail wants journalists to write advertorials

Globe executives want to monetize the integrity and reputations of The Globe and Mail’s journalists – the same award-winning reporters and editors that management proudly (and rightly) claims are vital to the enterprise’s future as a powerful, independent, fearless and profitable news organization. 

Under the company proposal, editorial staff would be assigned to write or produce advertiser sponsored “branded content” (i.e. native advertising) that is vetted by the advertiser prior to publication and held out to readers as staff-written content.
That content cannot offend a paying advertiser’s specific opinions and corporate interests or it will be changed. 

This proposal was presented to us by editorial management and has been vetted by the Editor-in-Chief. 

That would be Editor-in-Chief David Walmsley, recently busted for portraying his own published endorsement of teabaggin' Tim Hudak for premier of Ontario as the choice of the G&M editorial board :

The Globe's editorial board endorses Tim Hudak's Progressive Conservatives

when in fact the G&M editorial board had endorsed Kathleen Wynn instead.


So ... where are you getting your news lately?
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Joint CAPP/Postmedia tarsands promotion

Postmedia - CAPP Showcase - January 2013 from Postmedia 3i on Vimeo.

Thurs AM update : Postmedia just yanked the vid.

Transcript :

"Postmedia is proud to present its 2013 media partnership with CAPP.

We are a media company national in scope but community-focused. Canadians know our brands, trust our content, and welcome us as a vital member of their communities. 

In 2013, we'll join Canadians in discussing what really drives Canada's economic engine - energy.  With a multi-media strategy that includes a digital sponsorship of the Energy Channel across our national network. Our editorial coverage will be tied to multiple touchpoints for CAPP including : 100% of all advertizing on energy pages, sponsorship logo, live conversation feeds, social media feeds, CAPP's partner representation, videos, promotional links, homepage takeovers, and more. 

CAPP's messaging will extend to our massive mobile and tablet network so that vital energy information is never more than a click away. Our print coverage will include weekly energy editorial across our entire newspaper chain, along with monthly joint ventures and quarterly special reports on subjects CAPP needs to bring to the forefront of Canadian consciousness. 

We'll direct our audience to the CAPP Energy Channel, Direct Mail, with a combination of promotional advertising and social media amplification.
The CAPP and Postmedia program will be executed with seamless project management and continuously optimized throughout to ensure your success. 

Be where your audience is : Postmedia."

Vancouver Observer posted slides from an alternate joint PostMedia/CAPP presentation that turned up on twitter yesterday.

Postmedia includes National Post, Financial Post, Vancouver Sun and Province, Times Colonist, Winnipeg Free Press ***, Ottawa Citizen, Calgary Herald, Windsor Star, Edmonton Journal, Regina Leader-Post, Saskatoon Star Phoenix, Montreal Gazette, and canada.com.

In November, 19% of Postmedia was acquired by a second New York hedge fund, raising the total percentage of its foreign ownership to 54%.

*** Ooops - sold in 2011. Serves me right for copying the list of papers directly off the Postmedia 2013 presentation at top. I guess they were referring to their *brand*.
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Canadian media : It can't happen here.

We're getting a lot of stories from our media who are at pains to assure us a Canadian equivalent to the Rupert Murdoch scandal of cozy incestuous relationships with British politicians and illegal phone hacking/dirty tricks couldn't possibly happen here in Canada.

Really? No cozy incestuous relationships? No dirty tricks?

On March 30, 2009, Stephen Harper, PMO staffer Kory Teneycke, Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, and Roger Ailes, president of Fox News and former communications adviser to Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., all sat down to lunch.

We know this because it showed up in the mandatory disclosures media consultant and former White House flack Ari Fleischer made to the U.S. Justice Department. Ari, you will recall, had a personal contract with Steve to grease US media wheels for him. Teneycke had a dream of a Canadian Fox news channel.

Four months later, Teneycke had left the PMO - barely a year into his job as Harper's chief spokesman - only to pick up a contract with Quebecor to explore a project that Ottawa insiders almost immediately described as a fledgling "Fox News North."

Three more PMO staffers followed Teneyke to SunMedia : an issues management adviser, an advertising manager, and an issues management researcher, described as "a guy who could dig up any dirt on the opposition in a jiffy".

Teneycke himself had to take a brief three and half month leave from heading his new project after conflict-of-interest embarrassments ramped up following his Sun op-ed and public admission to prior knowledge of the hacking of an Avaaz petition hostile to his setting up of a Fox News North in Canada.

Teneycke was back in the Sun saddle during Steve's re-election campaign in April this year when a fifth former PMO staffer, Harper's former deputy chief of staff Patrick Muttart, sent him a photo of an Ignatieff look-alike posing in full combat gear in Kuwait in 2002.
"Ignatieff linked to Iraq war planning" ran the SunMedia headline and story, sans photo, before Teneycke apparently tumbled to the ruse.

Patrick Muttart was working for the Con election war room at the time, while simultaneously heading the "Canada/US practice" at the US PR firm Mercury Public Affairs, where he works under Terry Nelson. Nelson, former political director of the 2004 Bush Cheney campaign and McCain-Palin campaign manager, now a Senior Advisor to teabagger and 2012 presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, is famous for the race-baiting campaign ads and phonejamming dirty tricks done under his GOP watch, and for employing the media advisor on the original Swiftboat Veterans For Truth ads which used lies and doctored photos to smear John Kerry's war record during his run for US president.

Amusingly, the CTV piece, Harper immune from Murdoch-style scandal, makes extensive use of analysis from Muttart to assure us a similar scandal could not happen here. We just don't have the same "intense, quasi-incestuous" clique of political and media elites, Muttart says without irony.
Besides, another Harper former chief of staff, Ian Brodie, explains about Canadian papers: "so few people actually read most of them."

Yet somehow the rightwing National Post muddles on for 13 years losing $9-million a year, no one seems to know who owns CanWest/PostMedia now besides it being some US hedge fund and so much for the rule limiting foreign media ownership to a third, and 99% of the papers which endorsed a candidate in the last election all endorsed Steve.

We could have a Murdoch-style scandal here and it would be out of the news cycle again the same week, no damage done.

Update : More from David Climenhaga at Rabble
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The best democracy money can buy

From Paul Wells' The untold story of the 2011 election :

"In the weeks before the budget, a Liberal strategist said, the Conservatives bought airtime to run 1,600 ads. “We had 131, and the NDP had, like, 25 or something,” the Liberal said. “It was a massacre.”

And then there's the best democracy media concentration can buy.

Dwayne Winseck tracked 62 daily newspapers from the ten main newspaper groups in Canada comprising 97.5% of the industry. QMI Sun Media has 18 papers while Post Media is the largest publisher of English-language daily newspapers in Canada at 12, plus another 8 weeklies. Together these two account for just over 50% of the market share.

He found that 21 out of 22 editorial endorsements that advocated for a specific candidate for Prime Minister - including 10 from Post Media and 6 from Sun Media - plumped for Harper. As noted by Winseck, that's 95%.
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And now ... a message from CEO Steve

Another brilliant vid from Pale at A Creative Revolution , featuring the smooth but fuzzy blue sweater vocalizations of Reverend Paperboy from the Maple Syrup Revolution and the Beav.

Canwest, Natty Post, CBC ... and Goldman Sachs

Canada's largest media company, Canwest Global Communications, aka AsperMedia, filed for bankruptcy protection on Tuesday in a deal that essentially would hand control to its US creditors :

"Canwest reached a deal with a key group of lenders - mainly U.S. and foreign distressed funds that own most of the company's bonds - which will give them control of most of the restructured media company. Current shareholders would own just 2.3 per cent of the shares of the new Canwest, effectively wiping out most of their value."

The filing covers Global TV and the National Post but thus far not Canwest LP - Canwest's major daily newspapers across Canada - or its 15 money-making tv specialty channels whose profit rose 41% to $53-million in the most recent quarter over last year.

In January 2007, Goldman Sachs - this Goldman Sachs - bankrolled 64% of Leonard Asper's purchase of of 13 Alliance Atlantis specialty TV channels :

"a level far above Canadian foreign media ownership limits. However the CRTC approved the deal after the partners persuaded it that Canwest - not its giant Wall Street financial partner - would have effective operating control of the TV channels."

On the other hand, as the G&M Investor blog Streetwise reported yesterday (italics mine):

"Financiers working with Goldman said that over the past year, the investment bank put forward programming ideas for the TV networks, and offered strategic advice on restructuring, but was ignored by CanWest management and its creditors.

One concept that’s been tossed around, but couldn’t move forward until CanWest recapitalization was set, would see Goldman Sachs provide programming and financial support to the conventional television network as part of a larger deal that reworks the entire ownership structure to more closely align all the TV holdings.

There are three hedge funds driving the CanWest restructuring, and two of them are U.S. money managers: GoldenTree Asset Management, Beach Point Capital Management, along with Toronto-based West Face Capital Inc. ... These funds are also Goldman Sachs clients."

So, CRTC, you still good with this?
Goldman Sachs was not supposed to interfere with the programmimg of the Food Network but now expects to "provide programming and financial support" to local TV news stations?

More complications : The National Post - which never misses a chance to slag the CBC - and the CBC are now sharing content :

"The Post [will] republish CBC sports stories in the online National Post and sometimes in the newspaper. The CBC will run daily financial stories and podcasts from the Financial Post in cbc.ca’s Money section."

Translation : the publicly funded CBC will move further right as promised to run corporate news daily, while the privately owned Natty Post will now be partly funded by our tax dollars.

And those remaining 12 national and 26 community Canwest papers?
Paul Godfrey, CEO of the National Post, says he has found backers for a buyout of them.
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Who will own what we think now?
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MediaWatch : The Vancouver Sun and the Fraser Institute

An article at The Tyee notes the "remarkable success" the Fraser Institute has had in blanketing the Vancouver Sun with its guff.

Not so remarkable when you consider The Sun's senior editor for the editorial pages is Fazil Mihlar, former director of regulatory studies at the Fraser Institute, and that the Sun is owned by the Aspers, former Fraser Institute board members.

Here is all you need to know about that :
From Peter C. Newman's book, Izzy: The Passionate Life and Turbulent Times of Izzy Asper, Canada’s Media Mogul, as quoted in the Georgia Straight :

Leonard Asper : “I don’t see that a journalist is any different than an employee at Wal-Mart."

David Asper, chair of the National Post : “We own the papers. We have the right to have the papers print whatever the hell we want them to say. And if people don’t like it, they can go to hell. They can leave, get another job."
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According to the CRTC, as of Sept 22 2009 Canwest holdings in Canada include :
Global TV - National Post - Calgary Herald - Regina Leader-Post - Vancouver Sun - Edmonton Journal - Saskatoon StarPhoenix - Victoria Times-Colonist - Montreal Gazette - Vancouver Courier - Windsor Star - Ottawa Citizen - Vancouver Province - Alberni Valley Times (BC) - Nanaimo Daily News (BC)
plus 21 weeklies and 7 shopping guides.
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So Canwest adherence - and subsequently much of the Canadian public - to rightwing Fraser Institute principles is not so remarkable after all.
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Where are you getting your news?
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Oh well then

Two experts on the TASER™ payroll testified at the Braidwood Inquiry that they don't believe that the five TASER™ jolts inflicted on Robert Dziekanski contributed to his death.

Dorin Panescu, an electrical engineer who received $92,896 from TASER™ last year for "consulting work " :

"With a high degree of scientific certitude, it is my opinion that Mr. Dziekanski's death was not caused by, and not contributed by, the use of a TASER X26."

Dr. Charles Swerdlow, a US cardiac electrophysiologist on Taser International's scientific medical advisory board :

"There is no medical, scientific evidence to support the conclusion that [conducted energy weapon] discharges contributed to Mr. Dziekanski's death. The circumstances of Mr. Dziekanski's death are typical of the poorly understood syndrome of sudden, in-custody death, often occurring after restraint."

That would be the "poorly understood syndrome of sudden in-custody death, often occurring after restraint" in conjunction with five applications of 50,000 volts.

The National Post, the Province and all the other cross-Canada CanWest papers helpfully ran this story under the headline : "'Experts' say Taser did not kill Dziekanski" or just "Taser did not kill Dziekanski".
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Update : Via Chunklets in comments : an item from CanWest's Suzanne Fornier, whose coverage has been excellent and who does not get to write her own headlines, although I have no quibble with this one : Alcohol allegation not backed up : doctor

"An eminent forensic pathologist told the Braidwood inquiry Wednesday that Robert Dziekanski's death -- after five Taser jolts and restraint by the RCMP -- was likely a "cardiac-related" death linked to the Tasering.

Dr. John Butt, who received the Order of Canada in 2000 for his work over almost four decades, disagreed with the report by pathologist Dr. Charles Lee that failed to mention use of the Taser but did conclude "chronic alcoholism" contributed to Dziekanski's death."

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Canada as a northern banana republic

Good opinion piece in the Star from Jim Travers today : The quiet unravelling of Canadian democracy.
It's not often one reads in the press about our slow slide towards becoming a northern banana republic and I can't remember the last time anyone mentioned the quiet coup perpetuated on an unwitting electorate by Canada's premier paramilitary organization or the failure of our three main parties to address it.

To Jim's points I would add the following three conditions that also qualify Canada for banana republic status :

The Security and Prosperity Partnership
Rumours of its demise have been greatly exaggerated and mostly by its fans. A government assisted corporate plan to free up the movement of capitol and labour without public participation or oversight within a militarized North America, it has scarcely received mention since the last big Three Amigos bunfest. Yet on Thursday Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan appeared before the public safety committee to announce some princely sum in the millions "towards further implementation of the SPP".

Dispensing with the bother of elected representation
In addition to the first-past-the-post electoral system in which only a handful of votes in a few swing ridings actually count, there is the matter of both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition holding office by fiat. Harper dissolved parliament rather than face an election and Iggy was just simply crowned after the Liberal Party executive voted last year not to give the actual rank and file members of the Liberal Party the vote.

Media concentration
Canadians are more likely to know the names of Sarah Palin's grandchildren than they are to know that they probably got this news from just three Canadian media corporations.

Banana republic stuff - all of it.

Travers' column previously noted today by Jennifer, Chrystal, and Chet.
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