Source : Toronto Star

Oda downplays Senate report on ownership

Thanks but no thanks.

That's the short version of Heritage Minister Bev Oda's response yesterday to a Senate committee's report on media concentration.

Last June, after three years of study, the Senate's transport and communications committee found that "the concentration of ownership has reached levels that few other countries would consider acceptable."

Indeed, neither the U.S. nor the U.K. has the level of media cross-ownership found in Canada.

Among its recommendations, the report said that:

- mechanisms should be created for public oversight when a certain threshold of media concentration is reached with a merger;

- media organizations should regularly publish their ownership structure, and

- the CBC should get "stable and long-term funding" in order to become ad-free.

But Oda brushed most recommendations aside.

"The government recognizes that convergence has become an essential business strategy for media organizations to stay competitive in a highly competitive and diverse marketplace," she concluded in her response to Senate committee chair Lise Bacon.

Noting that a bipartisan committee produced the report, committee member Senator Jim Munson said: "I am very disappointed that they would have this attitude. We feel (the report) gives some creative ideas on how we should monitor massive media concentration and sets some parameters for checks and counterchecks because we feel that the fewer voices that are out there, the less the public is served."

"Big media is in the driver's seat of big politics," said Peter Murdoch, vice-president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada.

"When a Senate committee investigates, takes the time, listens to citizens, listens to all the players, and then makes recommendations which big media may be concerned about, it's clear who the government is listening to.

"It's not just outrageous or appalling. It's scary."

© Toronto Star