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Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Transport and Communications

Issue 2 - Evidence - March 11, 2004


OTTAWA, Thursday, March 11, 2004

The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 10:52 a.m. to examine the current state of Canadian media industries; emerging trends and developments in these industries; the media's role, rights, and responsibilities in Canadian society; and current and appropriate future policies relating thereto.

Senator Joan Fraser (Chairman) in the Chair.

[English]

The Chairman: Welcome to senators, witnesses, to members of the public, and to members of the television audience to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications.

[Translation]

The committee is resuming its consideration of the appropriate role of public policy in helping to ensure that the Canadian news media remain healthy, independent, and diverse, in light of the tremendous changes that have occurred in recent years — notably, globalization, technological change, convergence, and increased concentration of ownership.

[English]

Today we welcome representative of various newspaper unions — the journalists who produce the news. We are joined by Mr. Arnold Amber, director of The Newspaper Guild of Canada, Mr. Jan Ravensbergen, president of the Montreal Newspaper Guild, and Ms. Lois Kirkup, president of the Ottawa Newspaper Guild. We thank you very much for joining us.

As you know, our format basically consists of asking witnesses to make an opening statement in the range of 15 minutes. Then we go to a Question Period. I suppose that you will have agreed among yourselves who should lead off. Whoever does, would you tell us, for the record, what the newspaper guild is? Is it Mr. Amber who leads?

Mr. Arnold Amber, Director, The Newspaper Guild of Canada: Thank you very much, Senator Fraser. We obviously welcome the opportunity to be here. When you are involved in union work in Canada and the media, the issues that we have been discussing — that we have been seized with, basically go back about 10 years when massive media concentration began, in 1996 with the emergence of Conrad Black and Hollinger on the scene.

The media guild, though, existed in Canada way before that. We go all the way back to roots that are 50 and 60 years old, as a newspaper union. We have other folks who now belong to the newspaper guild that also work in the print sector and they go back literally 100 years.

The Newspaper Guild of Canada, TNG Canada, has what we call "locals," which means individual union groupings at employers from coast to coast to coast. In the media wing of our union we have approximately 8,000 media workers, in all chains, in all forms of media: newspapers, news agencies, radio-television and new media. We are the union for institutions across Canada like the Canadian Press and the CBC and at major papers and very small newspapers.

We belong to the Communications Workers of America, which exists across North America, and has a membership of 750,000 people. Our purpose in coming to you today is to give you some of our insights about the issue that you are examining. We welcome the opportunity because some of the best work that has ever been done in Canada about media has been done by the Senate. We are hopeful that this committee will continue in that tradition and we are sure it will.

First, my two colleagues will speak to you about their perspectives from Montreal and Ottawa. I will then lead you through a document that we have provided you earlier today. In preparation for this, and so that we could give the best possible view of what our members think, we conducted an opinion poll amongst our members who work in large chains and particularly in chains which in the last few years have undergone change of ownership. I will lead you through that. It sheds some light on the perspective across the country.

Mr. Jan Ravensbergen, President, Montreal Newspaper Guild: The Montreal Newspaper Guild has 350 members. We represent editorial, reader sales and service, business office, electronic data processing, advertising and classified employees at The Gazette in Montreal. It happens that two of the three guild witnesses here today represent employees working for CanWest Global newspapers — myself and Ms. Kirkup.

We believe the experience we draw on can be applied to the overall issue of media concentration and media cross- ownership and most explicitly to the determination of appropriate future policies, which is part of this committee's very important mandate.

When CanWest Global acquired the Southam chain — the Black newspapers — in 2001, the company knew only the TV side of the business. It had a vague idea that convergence of different media would pay off. We have seen a considerable amount of cross promotion between the two. Sometimes stories written by Global reporters appear on the CanWest wire and in CanWest newspapers. There have been some joint features projects. There has also been a dramatic tightening of control over what had been a loose chain of independently published newspapers.

In the past, these newspapers had operated with considerably more autonomy. You do not have to go far to look for examples. The local publishers are being replaced by general managers, which is a very visible way of asserting and consolidating centralized control. It has been very visible of course in this city, in Ottawa, at the Ottawa Citizen after the firing of Russell Mills. There is now a general manager rather than a publisher in Calgary at the Calgary Herald. We can safely assume this policy will roll out across the country as other publishers leave. I heard an interview in 2002 with Mr. Mills in which he said that one of the publisher's key responsibilities was to defend the newsroom and to allow them to do the job, to get the job done without undue pressure. That line of defence is being taken away by CanWest. It is worrisome.

Local critics have been sidelined in favour of national ones operating out of corporate headquarters or under the direct supervision of corporate headquarters but located in other cities. There is no longer a TV critic at The Gazette in Montreal. I understand that is the same situation in Ottawa. Functions like payroll, customer service, and accounts payable have been centrally relocated in Winnipeg. Computer work has been taken away from various cities and relocated in Winnipeg.

There was reference to the formation and expansion of the Canada news desk two days ago. That has enormous implications for the future of Canadian Press. Senator Carney picked up on that right away.

Various ways of downsizing at various departments such as the newsroom at The Gazette and at the other CanWest newspapers have been hitting very hard in the last few years. That is meant a loss of local jobs. As union representatives, we are extremely concerned about that. The committee's interest is more in the loss of the direct connection that the newspapers had with their local communities.

It is clear to readers across the country that the local papers are being hollowed out. There is a loss of local identity. There is a homogenization that is extremely worrisome. This has been coupled with a change in philosophy — one of many — from the days of Southam over the past two to three years. As you will remember, and Mr. Davy was explicit in June, Southam pride in the fact that the local editorial boards were independent in order to be able to reflect the communities that they serve. It is no surprise to the committee that CanWest has attempted to impose a "one-view-fits- all" approach across the country. The bid to introduce national editorials up to three times a week in every major daily it owned in the country sparked an enormous outcry. The idea for the moment appears to have been quietly shelved, but it is symptomatic of the kind of thinking that is taking place. That kind of thinking requires the committee to make some very strong decisions or recommendations.

There have been other relatively more subtle approaches. I will emphasize the word relatively. There have been initiatives and changes that have also cut deep across CanWest — and certainly in Montreal — that have not attracted as much public attention as the national editorials affair did.

Managers at the various papers have been made painfully aware of the owner's views on a variety of issues including tax policy, foreign policy, and when and in what fashion the governing party should change leaders. Smart managers — or at least managers who want to survive in this new kind of environment — know not to deviate too far from the prescribed corporate line.

When there is an established line, it often means in practice ignoring or downplaying contrary opinions. The list of columnists who have left CanWest voluntarily or otherwise is long and illustrious. The result is a loss of diversity of opinion. This translates over the long run into a loss of public credibility and a narrowing in the range of debate. That is the core of the issue. That endangers the viability of the newspapers on which our members depend for our livelihoods.

It is not endangering their profits. Newspapers are classically a very profitable business. We understand at the CanWest papers that there are some 30-cents of profit before interest payments — which are onerous — on each dollar of revenue. These are huge numbers.

I remember the complaint perhaps 15 years ago. The goal at that time at Southam was to get to 15-cents on the dollar. I see Senator Fraser remembers those days as well. Now, the profit is double. There has been a lot of squeezing out. Our members have certainly been the object of a lot of those squeezes.

We recognize that a newspaper, like any business, must be profitable if it is to remain healthy and viable. The big danger — and we have already seen many signs of it — is that they will stop playing the key role they have played across Canada in our society in our local communities to foster free and open public debate. They should not just grudgingly allow it but actively fuel it and spark it and inspire it, and in some cases, provoke it. It is one of the public trusts to get that debate out there.

How do we correct this? Structurally, the CRTC only looks at the electronic side of media. The Competition Bureau looks only at the financial aspects of media concentration. Who is watching for the public trust?

Few cities are big enough for more than one substantial metro paper. Cross-ownership is now a big issue with the same owner having a major TV outlet in many cities, as we noted. The diversity of the wire services that provide basic news from across the nation to newspapers across the nation large and small is at grave risk.

You heard on Tuesday that CanWest news service is increasing in size and prominence. You heard on Tuesday that the National Post has apparently given notice of withdrawal to Canadian Press. We cannot help but believe that this may be a harbinger of worse days to come. For instance, what if all of the other dozen or so CanWest daily papers withdraw from CP and rely on CanWest news services as directed from Winnipeg?

It would be catastrophic in terms of diversity. We believe that there is a danger that the situation might evolve in this way. At this point, inside CanWest, individual papers are strongly encouraged to run CanWest copy off the CanWest wire, even if the Canadian Press has covered the same story better, more succinctly and earlier. The danger to CP's existence is profound. Senator Carney suggested that it was inconceivable to think of a nation without Canadian Press, in at least its present form. I am afraid that is now a possibility.

That ties in directly with your mandate. Democracy depends on informed, open, free-spirited debate. Any to limit the latter by corporate or ideological means, limits the former. That is what we have been experiencing.

What to do about it? Journalists have, up until now, always resisted adamantly any government intrusion or intervention into the craft on the grounds that it would necessarily compromise our independence. However, we are on the horns of the dilemma. If we continue to treat the concentration of media and cross-ownership solely as a business issue, which is how it is structured at this point, we run the risk that some day an American or foreign-based conglomerate could snap up Canada's major newspaper chain, and with it the wire service that provides much of the opinion and information that Canadians receive.

To some extent there is a great deal of concern that the local papers across the country are being "Knight- Ridderized." I should explain that. Many of you travel in the States. For newspapers of comparable circulation, Canadian papers historically have been much better and more comprehensive than the American ones. It is an all around better product with more local orientation. We are concerned that with the hollowing out of the Canadian papers the quality is being reduced to a level where a large American media conglomerate would be able to come in, assuming the law is changed to allow more foreign ownership. I know that there is much pressure coming from various business interests on that.

Our sovereignty and national independence would be seriously damaged. It is a one-way gate. We cannot go there.

Where do we go from here? Your research document pinpoints some very interesting sub questions. When we say freedom of the press, whose freedom do we mean? In the pages of The Gazette during the national editorials affairs, Murdoch Davis, who at the time was the senior editorial executive, defined freedom of press as freedom from government interference — an extremely narrow approach.

We went through some very heavy times in the past two years in terms of being gagged. A gag order was issued. There was a lot of controversy. We did an open letter that was very strong and very direct. We saw that the company was narrowing debate and corrupting both news coverage and commentary to suit corporate interests. There were threats from the management of suspension or termination. We went through the legal procedure that we have available to us, a grievance procedure. We have now reached agreement with The Gazette on fundamental principles that we have agreed should have governed and will govern the relations and the future employment conditions of journalists working for paper.

I will finish by reading off these basic principles because perhaps they can provide us with a way of looking at things that will at least allow fundamental freedoms to remain, or to be restored, in some cases, in the newsrooms of this nation. Just think about that for a moment. We are talking about restoring freedom of expression in the newsrooms of the nation.

First, freedom of expression and freedom of the press are crucial matters for the public, The Gazette and the journalists it employs and are enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. All publishers must preserve and defend those rights.

Second, journalists and other staff working for The Gazette recognize that they are employees of a company. Legally, they are bound by the same obligations as the employees of any other firm in any economic sector.

Third, equally, the parties agree that they have an obligation to serve the public trust. In that regard, both journalists and The Gazette should work to ensure freedom of the press and freedom of expression. Journalists must be free to produce fair, accurate and balanced coverage and analysis of the news; to contribute to the formation of editorial policy, taking into account the publishers' ultimate right to determine such policy; and, to contribute to and participate in open public debate. That has been a huge issue for us.

Fourth, the parties recognize the need to respect and balance the legal obligations and rights of both journalists and The Gazette as employer. These rights include those of the owner, represented by the publisher, to run that newspaper consistent with the law, the practices of journalism and of ethics. Both owners and journalists owe obligations of prudence, diligence, honesty and fidelity to the public.

One of the key issues is that we have a situation that has been clear from the beginning and remains true today. We certainly pledge that it will remain true in the future. Journalists will not and cannot be silenced while owners push aside freedom of speech and freedom of the press in favour of their own political, cultural and commercial agendas. These various legal proceedings we have endured teach us that if we as journalists do not fight every attempt at censorship and thought control, this country will gradually lose its democratic freedoms. Those are words uttered by Bill Marsden, who has been active in this.

The Chairman: Mr. Ravensbergen, I wonder if you would be so good as to provide for the committee copies of the documents to which you have referred. You referred to gag orders, the agreed statement of principles, and a mediators' report.

Ms. Ravensbergen: There was an arbitration verdict. I will provide the full package.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Ms. Lois Kirkup, President, Ottawa Newspaper Guild: The Ottawa Newspaper Guild represents approximately 200 employees at the Ottawa Citizen, 130 from the editorial department. I will give you some examples of things that have been happening at the newspaper.

Since CanWest Global purchased the Southam newspaper chain from Conrad Black, there have been many changes at the Ottawa Citizen. One of the more publicized changes is the occasional publishing of national editorials. This shift in editorial policy was a contributing factor in the firing of publisher Russ Mills and later the resignation of the editorial page editor.

The relocation to Winnipeg of the customer service representatives in our reader's sales and service department — our front-line employees who have direct contact with our readers — was the start of centralization in areas outside the newsroom. Next came the centralization of the accounts payable department, other business office functions, and payroll. On the service, these back-shop changes can be seen as simple cost-cutting measures, but on closer look, some of these changes have taken away readers' primary local contact with their newspaper.

The centralization of jobs has not stopped with our back-shop departments. In fact, it has moved rapidly into our newsroom. Besides the national editorials, we now have two national film critics and a national television writer. These positions replaced local columnists at the Ottawa Citizen.

The newsroom has also suffered from recent buyouts and retirements. The editorial department lost more than a dozen employees, and because of a hiring freeze imposed by CanWest head office, none of these employees have been replaced, but in the meantime, CanWest has hired writers to work nationally for the Canada news desk. This translates into a dramatic increase in workload for those left behind. At times, we have been left with a severe shortage of reporters to cover important local news events. Some editors are now responsible for more than one section, while our copy editors have been left severely stretched. Morale is low, and stress levels are high.

Contributing to stress levels is the suspicion that, in the future, certain feature sections, such as entertainment, automotive, food and travel, will be paginated in a central location. This means that completed pages will be sent to local papers with most of the content already on the page. Local editors will be left with a small hole to fill with local content. This could mean more local job losses and further homogenization of our newspapers and Web sites.

A disturbing trend worth mentioning is the blurring lines between news stories and advertising. For example, a recent health page contained an article about allergies on the top half of the page and an advertisement for an allergy medication on the bottom half. This page was put together by the Canada news desk staff, and local editors were told to publish the page as is with no changes. This page was published in many papers across the chain.

Lately, there have been ads for a national retailer who sells televisions. Usually these ads will have generic photos on the televisions. Instead, these televisions have photos of Global programs on them. These are just a few examples of the effects of convergence and centralization we live with every day at The Ottawa Citizen.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Amber: Earlier this morning, we circulated to you a poll we did across 14 newspapers. I would like to give you a little more background and lead you through some of the more important findings.

Our purpose in coming to the Senate, in addition to hearing specifics such as my two colleagues presented, was to try to give you some of the opinions as we could find them from across the country by people in the editorial departments of newspapers that have undergone at least three changes of ownership since 1996, and in some cases four. Therefore, this survey was not done with folks, for example, at the Halifax Chronicle-Herald because that is a family- owned newspaper and is not part of the media and concentration issue.

We fixed our questions on the people we spoke to who actually work for papers that have undergone this. We asked them about change to describe the effects of the most recent change. As you all recall, we had media concentration, and then we added to convergence, and in 2001 there was the massive switch, CanWest buying Black, and CTV buying The Globe and Mail.

This survey, as noted on page two, was done by a public opinion poll, Viewpoints Research, based in Winnipeg. The survey was done across the country last week, and it has that famous 19 out of 20 will be right — or a degree of error of 7.5. I will only talk to issues where the spread is so high that the 7.5 is not in question. If you are 49 to 56, or even a little bit more, 60 to 44, the 7.5 is important. When are you getting things turned back in the 80s and high 70s, it is not an issue.

I would like to direct you, for example, to Question No. 2, which is following the two pages. I think it is an important question, which the polling company insisted we put. That question was, "How satisfied are you with your job?" We asked this question to get a sense of whether or not people are happy where they are working. The satisfaction level is 82.4. That is interesting, because the rest of the document indicates that journalists have some major concerns. However, I want you to know, by asking this question we are establishing that these are people who have worked in the newspaper industry for many years who like being journalists and, while they are happy with the work they do as journalists, they are very unhappy with the effects of media concentration.

Question number five asks whether morale has improved or declined since the last change in ownership. Just over 65 per cent of respondents indicate that morale has declined. When asked whether their workload had increased or declined since the last change of ownership and 66 per cent or respondents indicated that it had increased. These results tell us that people still want to be journalists and do a good job, but they are having great problems.

Questions 9 and 10, ask about change in editorial content and quality of the newspapers. When queried about editorial change, 20 per cent said there has been no major editorial change since the last ownership. However, the big decrease appears to be related to quality of the content. If you look at responses to question 10, and add the answers "declined" and "declined a lot" together, you see that 71.3 per cent say that the quality has decreased. Is stress up? Yes, 58 per cent have more stress.

Further along in the document, we asked respondents to indicate why the quality of content has decreased. Questions 23 through 26, show responses and 86.1 per cent indicate that quality has decreased because of understaffing. Over the past few years, we have continually heard, as my colleagues indicated to you, that they keep letting people go in the editorial departments. Editorial departments do not make money. Editorial departments spend money. One of the first things that anyone does is start cutting staff. Conrad Black and his colleagues used to say, "I could walk into any newsroom and cut the staff by one-third." However, they never actually answered the question of what happens to that newspaper when they do that.

Among other reasons for the decreased in quality, 74 per cent of respondents believe that there is not enough time and resources to do a professional job. Just over 57 per cent attribute the decline to the fact that control of the editorial policy rests outside the city in that newspaper and 60 per cent say it is a result of the shrinking volume of news content.

These are all indications that we understand why the quality has dropped; and these, we believe, are all manifestations of the problem of media concentration.

We asked them to rate the seriousness of the problems owned by the large chains? You will notice that 71 per cent say that a loss of local independence in editorial policy is a serious problem. Sixty-seven per cent said the reduction in the adversity of opinion published is a serious problem. That means that more and more, the editorial policies in the paper — not the news pages — and the columnists are showing less and less diversity of opinion and thought. Finally, 68 per cent say that the decrease in the overall quality of journalism is a serious problem in newspapers owned by large chains.

When we asked whether there should be limits on degree of media concentration allowable in Canada, 77.6 per cent of respondents said yes. When we asked how it should be limited, 27 per cent said not to allow cross-ownership; 14 per cent said to restrict the number of newspapers anyone could own; and, 30.9 per cent said to establish guarantees of local editorial control.

Then we raised an issue that is before two different committees of the House of Commons now. It is about levels of foreign ownership, both in telecommunications and in the media. Our results indicated that two-thirds of our respondents — 64.9 per cent are "strongly opposed" and "opposed" to the idea of more foreign ownership.

They have been spending the last up to 10 years dealing with media concentration and convergence. We asked them to look into the future and say what they think will happen if this continues. We found that 89 per cent of respondents think that control over news and programming decisions will be concentrated in too few corporate hands. Eighty-seven percent of respondents indicate that there will be increased commercialization of news and programming; 83 per cent predict there will be fewer points of view; 86 per cent say there will be less credibility with the public. This last point is crucial. We are facing an election, sometime this year. We are all going to be wringing our hands after Election Day because of the turnout. We know we have a problem — particularly with younger Canadians — about not tuning in, not reading newspapers, and not watching news on television. The more credibility you lose, the more readers you lose.

As to whether the quality of news coverage will decline, 82 per cent believe that it will; 75 per cent think that there will be more corporate bias in the news. About 67 per cent say that continued media concentration will lead to a decrease in the number of local stories in newspapers. Honourable Senators, one of the first things you do to save money when you are running a newspaper is cut the local coverage, because you have to go out and get those stories. You can fill up a newspaper with stories from Canadian Press or the Associated Press or Reuters or Agence France Press, but you have to pay to get local stories. Local coverage is the first thing that goes by the wayside.

Finally, we have a differing opinion of what others witnesses have told you. We asked whether media concentration will bring greater stability to the newspaper industry? Only 30 per cent of the journalists believe that is likely; 57 per cent do not believe that is so. We asked this question because those that believe that media concentration should go on its merry way — and people have testified before this committee — have actually made the other point. They keep talking about the need for stability; and stability, in their mind, is larger and larger corporations.

A well-run newspaper has always been able to make money in this country. Well-run newspapers have, in fact, exceeded the profit margin levels of most other industries. The issue is not the size; the issues for the Canadian people are the quality, the diversity of opinion, and the freedom of journalists to actually do their job.

These are the reasons why I think this committee has taken its time and effort to study this issue of media concentration. We are the people who represent some of the workers who work for all the great chains. Although my colleagues here are both from CanWest, we represent workers, as you will see on question two, at the Irving chain, which basically now has not been sold, but has been added to. In the last two years, Irving has bought up almost the rest of the media in New Brunswick. We are at Transcontinental, a newly emerging group, which is both in magazines and newspapers. We are at Osprey, which is now the dominant regional newspaper chain in Ontario. We are at the Sun Media Group and, of course, we are at CanWest.

We say to you today that the issues facing the industry are difficult. The issues facing the Canadian people are even more important.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. Before I go to the questions, might I just ask who paid for your opinion poll?

Mr. Amber: This union commissioned the poll and we paid for it.

Senator Phalen: Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for your submission. I have a couple of questions relating to content. Before I do that, are you affiliated with the Communication Workers of America?

Mr. Amber: Yes, sir.

Senator Phalen: Are there significant differences between the role and treatment of journalists in the United States and Canada?

Mr. Amber: Having never worked in the United States, I cannot give you first-hand experience. However, in many of the large chains, there is not that much difference. Because we are affiliated with people who represent a lot of workers — approximately 30,000, in the United States who work in the media, mostly in newspapers — we do know that some of the same operational changes that occur when chains get larger, particularly right after the point of buying the new properties, the same things happen. Editorial staffs are cut and there is a greater tendency to centralize control.

Senator Phalen: You say that your polling indicates that there is a high degree of concern for editorial content. In the testimony before this committee, a witness suggested that the owners of multiple newspapers could use one paper as his or her mouthpiece but that the other newspapers should be required to operate under a guarantee of editorial independence in their reporting and comments. Do you believe this or some other form of legislative restrictions on multiple ownership could ensure a better range of content?

Mr. Amber: We only have to look at some of the European examples of some newspapers that operate under various trust agreements, which is, I think, what you are essentially speaking about. The best of our knowledge is that those arrangements work very well in Western Europe. There is the issue of our traditions and heritage in North America, whereby government has had a hand in broadcasting and telecommunications generally, because we are talking about the public's airwaves. This has never been to such an extent in newspapers. The persuasive powers of the political body could be brought to bear on this. I know there are other models that make much more sense than permitting one group of people own 15 or 20 major dailies across the country.

Senator Phalen: Mr. Russell Mills, when he testified before this committee, said: "Managers of media companies must balance the quality of information they provide to the public against the demand for improved earnings per share and other business imperatives." Would you have any recommendation to make to this committee to better balance the needs of the public with the corporate profit imperative?

Mr. Amber: Some things have come out of the tumult at CanWest, particularly in Montreal because many of members of that journalism staff there are pushing us to toward that. For example, my colleague read the four points of an agreement between the management and the union at The Gazette that speak to this public interest, and our union has a proposal about "in the public trust." Newspapers have to be regarded as different than other properties that people own. That is an essential part of it because newspapers and journalism in this country are part of the democratic process. I could see greater transparency on issues of how newspapers run so that the public understands and an actual undertaking by the owners of newspapers to understand that they have not only a business interest but also a public interest. I could envision a situation whereby they would be required to sign on to various forms of public trust.

Senator Graham: Thank you for the information and the opinions that you have expressed. Do any weekly newspapers belong to the Newspaper Guild Canada/CWA?

Mr. Amber: Yes, some very small weekly newspapers do belong.

Senator Graham: Could you tell us where they are located?

Mr. Amber: In Alberta, for one. Some provincial newspapers belonging to the guild also own weeklies. In some cases, some of our members provide much of the editorial content for those weeklies. Most of the weeklies, bi-weeklies and tri-weeklies are in Alberta.

Senator Graham: The poll that you presented to us was interesting. Could you give us an idea of the size of the sampling? Was it 125?

Mr. Amber: The universe comprises 485 people and we polled 125.

Senator Graham: Could you tell us how the polling was done? Was it face-to-face or by telephone?

Mr. Amber: It was done by telephone.

Senator Graham: Did the pollster tell you how long each interview was? How in-depth was each interview?

Mr. Amber: The estimate was approximately 15 minutes.

Senator Graham: Ms. Kirkup, in your presentation this morning, you spoke to the centralization of accounts and payroll. I do not know what that has to do with editorial content or news coverage but would that not be regarded by a business owner as simply good business practice?

Ms. Kirkup: Yes, it would be.

Senator Graham: Does that affect morale?

Ms. Kirkup: Yes, it definitely affects morale because of uncertainty and lack of face-to-face contact that we have. We have many frustrations, especially internally with payroll because it is done in Winnipeg. We cannot go down the hall to fix an item that may have been inadvertently missed. Rather, fixing such a problem requires many e-mails back and forth in advance.

I do the payroll for my department and there have been times when I have received e-mail late Tuesday night, when I am not there, to advise that they have not received the payroll for the current week, when in fact they had received it. That creates frustration. Issues occur in accounts payable as well. I do much of that for my department as well. I order many magazines because I work in the library. The invoices for these used to be paid right away but now I am often faced with overdue notices and lapsed subscriptions because the invoices are not being paid on time and we do not have the option of face-to-race contact for resolution. That is an internal problem.

In the reader sales and service department, the customer service reps have a great deal of frustration with customers because, for example, some people simply do not know where Harrington Court in Kanata is, for the customer who did not receive the paper that day. Internally and externally there have been frustrations and internally there has been low morale and high stress.

Senator Graham: Those are the two salient factors, I guess, that come into play.

I want to ask about this matter of centralizing editorials. I suppose the issue is when an owner introduces editorials that may contain a strong bias. Does this affect the coverage of news stories? What is the influence of expressed opinion on news and information?

Mr. Ravensbergen: That is a tough question. You can see from the poll results that our members have fairly high job satisfaction levels because they are out there trying to do the best job possible. I do not know of any reporter who goes out to report a story with the company line on that story first and foremost in his or her thoughts — for example, we should pump copy that says that charitable foundations should get exceptionally favourable tax treatment. There is danger over the long term as people leave. If you are coming into the business and you want to move ahead, there is always that danger of taking that angle if the copy might receive better play.

These are very subtle, difficult questions. I know that there was much discussion on Tuesday about the lack of research on these issues. Frankly, no one can be totally objective about this. Over the long term, there is certainly an issue about leakage from one side to another. When there were national editorials in favour of this, that and the other, I did not notice any noticeable increase in stories that took that line to the exclusion of other opinion. Journalists have an obligation to do the straight news and to do it as well as they can and that is reflected in the principles.

Senator Graham: Is balance in reporting — and perhaps you could include editorial content or the slant of editorial commentary — affected by ownership?

Mr. Ravensbergen: Balance in reporting is indirectly affected by staffing levels. Ms. Kirkup made that clear and we see that every day. There are stories that do not get covered. Smaller stuff is knocked off the table sometimes because there are no bodies to cover it. There are some news events that clearly bomb because there are not the bodies out there. However, there are other stories that may require a little more investigative reporting. There is not much of that left in the CanWest chain. We have people who have won awards for investigative reporting and that has been very much downplayed and in some cases eliminated.

Talking about balance inside news stories is one thing. However, there is a problem with balance in terms of what the readers are getting because some of the stories that would otherwise get coverage, that are interesting, and that contribute to public information just do not happen any more because there are no bodies.

Senator Graham: I had my toe in journalism at one time to a very limited degree. There seems to be more editorializing creeping into actual reporting stories than there was 10 years ago. There is more editorial comment that you read in the coverage of a story where the reporter, who is there really to report the event or the news in a straightforward basis, slips some bias in there once in a while. Why is that?

Mr. Amber: You have to ask the people who do that.

Senator Graham: Do you agree with what I said?

Mr. Amber: Yes, I do. Like many other things in life, some shifting has occurred. That does not have to do with the issue of media concentration. That goes back 25 or 30 years ago where journalists — whether right or wrong — began to say the test is not objectivity, it is fairness. We began to have a shifting of what journalists viewed themselves as doing.

Suddenly we had the era of personalized journalism where often there would be stories about the journalist and sometimes you would actually find out what event they were covering and sometimes you would not do that. This is an issue about journalism. The process swings this way and then back.

As an example, after a major debate in the House or the Senate, but particularly the House on things like budget, your paper might have 35 inches that account the event — he said, they said, he said, he rebutted and so on. Now the stories are much shorter and there is usually the idea of putting it in context allows for more interpretive reporting rather than verbatim reporting.

Senator Eyton: You mentioned that you conducted a survey that covered 125 people. They were referred to variously in your presentation as editorial workers or journalists. Can you define what that means? Who were the 125 people that you spoke to?

Mr. Amber: At the back of the documents there is a section showing the demographic of those polled. You will see the breakdown between male and female, age and so forth.

Senator Eyton: Is that the last item?

Mr. Amber: If you look at Z5, you will notice that almost half of the respondents are reporters.

The Chairman: In your covering press release, you refer to editorial workers in editorial departments. For greater clarity, I assumed from reading this that what you mean is there the old newspaper jargon term, if you will, "editorial" being everything that is not advertising or financial. In other words, these are journalistic workers, not just editorial writers?

Mr. Amber: Pardon us if we are using an expression that can confuse. We mean people who work as all types of reporters, all types of copy editors and all the people who support them. For example, Ms. Kirkup works at the Ottawa Citizen in the library of the editorial department as a researcher. That is what it encompasses.

Senator Eyton: Looking at any media, including newspapers, I divide it into owners, employees and the public. I see this as a survey of the employees. I would be curious about a similar exercise with the public. I am one of the broad public. I consider for a variety of reasons that I have immense choice. I probably have too much choice every day. I cannot absorb all of the choices before me. More than that, the quality within that choice is better, not worse. You spoke about investigative reporting. We surely must be at a zenith now in investigative reporting, because there is something to read about every day or maybe twice a day.

I suggest that the public may believe they are being well served. For example, I happen to come from Toronto. In Toronto, I am well served by newspapers and a variety of other media. I do not think the quality of our newspapers has ever been higher than it is now. That seems contrary to some of your submissions. Can you comment, please?

Mr. Amber: You made the point about investigative reporting being at its best. If you actually look to the origin of the recent events in Parliament, although a couple of years ago there was an investigative report in The Globe and Mail by one particular reporter, the reporters are now following up on an investigation by one arm of the federal government vis-à-vis the other arm of the federal government.

I would suggest that investigative reporting is where reporters or editors would uncover the basics of the story that is now breaking or has broken. There is a difference.

You mentioned Toronto. I, too, live there. Toronto is a unique situation in all of North America. If you count the subway paper, we have five or six daily newspapers. There is a wide variety of both the political spectrum and the sociological approach in regard to newspapers — that is, which particular part of society they want to talk to. That is not the same across the country. It is not the same when you live in Regina. In most cities across the country — with the exception of Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto — you are limited to either one newspaper or if you are fortunate enough like in Halifax, there may be two. It is a different perspective when you are out there.

As to the quality of the newspapers, this is the view of people who say the quality has decreased. Obviously, like everything else in life, people have different views of what it is. Personally, I do not believe the quality of the newspapers is necessarily at the zenith today. Some look better; layouts are better, which technology has helped.

As to the actual content and what we cover, my colleague talked about one of the problems being that if you do not have the body, then you cannot cover the story. Measurements of what makes a good newspaper have not only to do with how they cover what they cover but what they are actually covering and not covering.

Compared with 20 years ago, where are all the education reporters today? Where are the city hall reporters? You would be surprised by how many city halls are now covered by a general assignment reporter. Twenty years ago every newspaper had a city hall reporter, a provincial legislature reporter and, if they were big enough, a federal politics reporter, and so on. That is a missing ingredient in many of our newspapers across country. I will agree with you again, Toronto is a different situation.

Senator Eyton: I travel a great deal. I think that we are well served across the country. I compare it with the choices that are available to me in Arizona, Mexico City or a variety of other places. Broadly speaking, our newspapers are significantly better in quality than the ones I see in other countries for the most part.

You have argued eloquently that the newspapers and the people who work for them should be treated differently because of their role and because of their importance to the public generally. Would you suggest that those same values, if I can paraphrase, such as independence, integrity, professionalism and an independent voice of the public, should apply to other media, such as radio, television and the Internet?

Mr. Amber: Yes, without a doubt. You cannot legislate people to use one or the other medium to obtain their information. It is valid to say that it should be across the board.

The head of the CRTC, interestingly, said, "We do not have the resources to be a watchdog. We give out the licence. We cannot be the watchdog. We work on complaints." That is an issue. Other countries use the same type of system for broadcasters. If no one complains, the regulatory body does nothing. It is interesting to note that in other walks of life — the health area, for example, — we do not necessarily wait for someone to complain about a problem.

Senator Eyton: I was asking a question, not stating a value. In radio and television, the regulatory authorities have said that it is an impossible task. Would you agree with that?

Mr. Amber: Everything is an impossible task, unless you decide that it is part of your core function. I have watched the CRTC for a number of years. I wonder why, as they have an entire mechanism with the ability to grant licences, they do not actually have a couple of people monitoring what is actually done. That is a bit of a bizarre way to do business.

Senator Eyton: In business I have always looked for a competitor. Do you have a model? Is there someone doing this exactly right with exactly the right parameters and in the right environment for the enterprise?

Mr. Amber: The issue we are here about is media concentration. The only places where I have seen they are doing the right thing is in Western Europe — including Britain — where ultimate control of publications is in a public trust or a document that is usually a trust document. Those seem to be a start to achieving a balance between the legitimate business concerns and the rights of the shareholders to expect a return and the actual function of a newspaper.

Senator Merchant: Thank you for your presentation. I thought I would jump in here because you mentioned Regina. I come from Regina. I agree very much with what Senator Eyton said. That is the kind of approach I take to news. I think we are very well served. In Regina, I get three papers in the morning and I do not usually have time to read them.

The whole way of life has shifted in everything. As a result, we get our news in a variety of ways. I have found that since the second national newspaper has come into being, the other newspaper has improved in the way it presents news. Thus, we have benefited from having another large newspaper. I do not know how many people get their news through the medium of newspaper.

Frequently, when there is an event somewhere, I will look at the paper. I find that all the front pages look the same. The photograph on the front page of The Globe and Mail is exactly the same as the one on the front page of the National Post. Why is that? Do different journalists look at things differently or in the same way? Why is this happening?

Mr. Amber: Sometimes the photograph you see is the photograph that should be on everyone's front page. I would ask you to turn your attention to Monday last. There was an incredible photograph on the front page of The Globe and Mail of a young Canadian woman winning a championship. She is known in track and field as the best jubilation giver that there is because the look on her face made everyone feel better. Her face portrayed an incredible sense of joy, happiness and achievement.

I was standing in the newsroom at the CBC. In one hand, I had The Globe and Mail and in the other I had the Toronto Star. They both used coloured pictures. I was trying to figure out which was more effective. In the end, I opted for the one in The Globe and Mail because they cropped the picture better.

On Tuesday, many papers — including the New York Times — used the story on the signing of the declaration in Iraq that might lead to some sort of different government. Should that have been the picture on the front page of most serious newspapers? With the exception of some local event, I would say yes.

The same story or picture in different papers comes about as a result of three ways of thinking. The first has to do with what should be there. In some of the chains there are discussions among editors as to what the central point should be and what should be leading the paper.

There is something else that exists for smaller papers across the country. Canadian Press often puts out what the large papers are doing. Years ago, that was a bit of signal to the smaller papers that if certain papers were leading with this, it might be a good idea to do it, too. It was not forced, but it was a suggestion.

The clash is always between local news and international news and national news. Sometimes, editors make the same decisions because if that is what you are trained in — to be an editor, for example — then your news senses and values are the same.

Senator Day: I have two areas of questioning. One is with respect to the impact of the Internet on traditional print media. The other is with respect to weeklies.

I will expand on each of those questions in a moment. First of all I want a clarification. You are representing, each of you, the union known as TNG Canada, is that correct?

Mr. Amber: Correct.

Senator Day: It is indicated here that the union deals not only with people who are involved in the media directly, such as a journalist as we would normally be thinking of the national guild of Canadian journalists. It also deals also with interpreters, translators, social service providers, clericals, and administrative and industrial jobs. Are those people also in your union? Is that correct?

Mr. Amber: Yes.

Senator Day: Do you have an affiliation with the Canadian Labour Congress, the Communications Workers of America, and a number of international organizations, including the International Federation of Journalists?

Mr. Amber: Yes.

Senator Day: Why do you have all those various affiliations? Is there stability in numbers here? Is that what you are trying to tell us?

Mr. Amber: It is not just stability in numbers. Let us take the last one you mentioned, the International Federation of Journalists. It can only be good for the profession of journalism that people from around the world in the profession exchange views, talk about standards and issues.

For example, the International Federation of Journalists is currently setting up a safety institute to protect journalists who are going into hostile environments. Over the last number of years there have been a number of journalists killed covering wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, it also protects people in hostile circumstances. The International Federation of Journalists, which is the ultimate trade union for journalists, has almost 500,000 journalists across the world belonging to federation through affiliation.

We now have a pact with some of major news providers around the world — including the CBC and many of the major international newspapers and wire agencies — agreeing that before a journalist is sent off to a hostile zone, he or she undergoes some training on how to keep alive out there. This is very expensive, but that is what that institute is doing. So, it is always protecting. These organizations all provide some service back to our members.

You asked about the Communication Workers of America, CWA. The CWA is the largest North American union involved in the communications area. We are lucky to be with them. The survey we conducted to present to the Senate obviously represented the views of workers. Our counterparts in the United States, in conjunction with a many other unions in the United States, have done a similar survey of workers in the United States about their views on cross- ownership and about media concentration.

We exchanged that knowledge with the idea of making journalism a better place to work and apply your trade.

Senator Day: I am thinking about one of the replies in the survey where the people surveyed said that they felt that journalism was not being improved but in fact it was deteriorating as a result of the concentration. Therefore, there is no stability from a concentration point of view, from the point of businesses with journalist in the area of print media and in the media generally but from your point of view there is stability in terms of concentration and collaboration.

That is what I was going on in my mind.

Mr. Amber: If you had a publisher sitting here, he would say he belongs to the Canadian Publishers Association and the Canadian Publishers Association belongs to the International Publishers Association. Everyone does that. Doctors belong to doctors' groups to talk about what they do, and trade unions get together with other trade unions. All unions in Canada belong to the Canadian Labour Congress, CLC.

Senator Carney: Mr. Amber, you mentioned that your American affiliates had done the same kind of survey that you have done of your members. Was there a difference between the results of the surveys? Second, could we have what information you feel free to give, given to the committee?

Mr. Amber: I know that the survey that was done in the United States is going to be presented to their Senate in about two weeks' time. I happen to have a copy, however, I am not at liberty to talk about it in detail. However, I thought that one of the things that may be of interest to the senators in this committee is to make sure that you get one.

The Chairman: We will rely on you to provide it.

Senator Day: Thank you. One of you indicated in your remarks that one of the first things to go when an owner wishes to improve the bottom line in the media company is to cut back on local reporting, and then take things off the wire, et cetera. I wanted to explore that a little bit.

We are seeing in certain areas of Canada, where local reporting appears in weeklies, that we are finding that the daily owners are buying up a number of weeklies. Is that a trend that you are seeing in different areas, and is that bringing back some of the local reporting? Are you seeing a crossover of some of the weekly reporting into the dailies and that sort of thing? Are you seeing some of that cross over happening?

Mr. Amber: It is happening more and more. In fact, for those that live in the Greater Toronto area, the Toronto Star is the ultimate example of owning the major dailies and all the weeklies. There is a synergy about production and about selling ads. An ad sales person can go out and sell you the weekly, the daily and sell you this and that. It is one of the major shifts within the journalism industry and newspaper industry in Canada. It is going on and quite rapidly.

Last year, there was a swapping of newspapers between the Osprey Media Group and the Toronto Star to achieve more of this. They are not creating new weeklies. They are just changing who owns the weekly. Therefore, you are not necessarily expanding the coverage; you are just changing the ownership for basically business reasons.

Senator Day: Is the public benefiting from this, from the point of view of getting some local coverage that might be moving over from what normally would be in a weekly and now appearing in the daily?

Mr. Amber: No.

Senator Day: Are you not seeing that?

Mr. Amber: We are not seeing that to any extent.

Senator Day: Therefore, it remains a problem that we are getting less and less local coverage in the print media, at least.

Mr. Amber: Yes. There is a study done at the University of Regina following some of this media concentration that noted there was a decrease. There are very few academic studies done about these things in Canada. We in the profession say that we know and someone else could say that you do not know, however, there are not enough studies done. The University of Regina's Department of Journalism undertook some studies immediately after the selling of the local chain to Black's interests. This was three or four years later and found there is an evidentiary base about this.

Senator Day: Do you look upon the Internet as a positive influence or a negative influence from the point of view of traditional print journalism?

Mr. Amber: I think it is both. You cannot tell people where to get their information. It is better if some people, particularly younger people who are more adept or more willing to use the Internet, find information there than to not get it anywhere.

The problem with the Internet, which is in its infancy, is that people who often purport to have facts are just reporting what is in their head, not what is factual. That is the negative side of some of it.

Senator Day: Is the journalist using the Internet more than in the past?

Mr. Amber: There is no doubt that usage of Internet for research is very important. In fact, there are many courses given now to journalists on how to use the Internet to get the information they want.

Senator Gustafson: One of the reasons for this study is to examine how it is impacting Canada, of course. I am sure Senator Eyton would not agree with me but we are becoming an urbanized society.

When I was first elected 25 years ago, Alvin Hamilton told me that there is an undeclared war between rural and urban Canada. It is true. There is very good coverage in Toronto, but in Macoun, Saskatchewan you cannot get The Globe and Mail or the National Post delivered on a daily basis. It does not happen.

Our society is fast changing. What happens in the media impacts the entire country. The farm population is down to almost 3 per cent of the population of Canada, and dropping fast. This has not only media implications; it also has economic implications.

We get international news over television and we are well informed about what is going on in Iraq and Iran. We can flick that on quickly.

Do you have some ideas about how this kind of situation could be corrected?

Mr. Amber: I do not. No matter who owns it, a newspaper serving a community needs a certain potential of readership. I am not familiar with that part of Saskatchewan as well as I am with others parts, but, obviously, if there are not enough people to support a newspaper, you will have many problems getting the local coverage you seek.

Senator Gustafson: I live only 20 miles from the U.S. border. The Premier of our province reported the other day that statistics show that 24 per cent of Saskatchewan people would support joining the United States. That number has been in the papers. That number has risen quickly from 10 years ago. The media has some responsibility for what happens in Canada and where we are heading.

The Chairman: That is why we are here. We need coverage of national issues and national unity.

Senator Gustafson: Perhaps we in the political realm have some responsibility of informing the public, as our premier, did of what is happening.

The Chairman: Thank you, Senator Gustafson. Any answers? It is bigger than we are.

Senator Spivak: We have an old problem, or maybe it is a problem that was recognized a long time ago and it is now coming to fruition — that is, as someone once said, "What is good for General Motors is good for the country."

We have a blanketing of corporate values — good, bad or indifferent — that accounts for creeping commercialism everywhere including the frustration of phoning to make a hotel reservation in Toronto and speaking to someone in India. That has led to extreme advocacy, like Fox Television or CNN. It has also led to more columnists and "infotainment" instead of good objective reporting.

It is too late to get a handle on that. The Internet started out as a great democratic, diffuse thing and was quickly seen by corporate interests as a place where you could make some bucks. They have not succeeded totally in doing this.

I have the same question as Senator Day had. What do you think can be done? We will use more and more electronic access to news. There is no question about it. If you look at the youth, they use it almost exclusively.

How do you think we can prevent complete commercialization of the Internet? Legislation may be the only way. Could we have electronically what we might wish for ideally in the print media?

Mr. Amber: We are going through a transition. We are speaking fundamentally about the old models of "message sending." I do not use the word communication. Newspapers send us messages, and we take them in as we see fit. The newspaper is really old. There is radio and television. The area about which you are asking is really in vast transition.

You raise the issue of how do we control and legislate the Internet vis-à-vis commercial interests. We even have difficulty regulating the Internet vis-à-vis criminal activities. I do not have any expertise on what to do about the Internet file. I also suspect that the legislation will always be a number of years behind the technology. There may never be any legislation passed because we still have a perception about certain freedom of the right to go on the Internet and say what you want to say. Even if you could get legislation, someone will have another way. I have no answer.

Senator Spivak: Let me put it a different way. So far, people have thrown up their hands. They have said that we cannot control the Internet. Corporations can control the Internet. However, I am not suggesting control. I am saying a democratic view of the Internet rather than a corporatist, monopoly view of the Internet. This is a broad brush. It is not true everywhere in the print media. I do not suggest this is everywhere, but we have a corporatist, monopoly model. It is becoming even more so.

Should we be looking at legislation? If we can put a man on the moon, we can do anything. It is merely a question of will. Should we not be looking at that issue or should we just throw up our hands and say that we cannot control the Internet so there is nothing that we can do?

I am putting the question in a slanted way. I would like to know how you view that issue in terms of the future.

Mr. Amber: In this transition stage, one of the things one could do is make sure that there are some good Internet services out there. For example, as you may or may not know, the most popular Internet news service now for information in Canada is the CBC Web site. The CBC has attained that for two or three reasons. The CBC made a decision about four years ago to remove all advertising from its Web site. Second, none of the newspapers or news organizations providing this kind of service has made any money. CanWest Global now is setting up a system whereby you will pay to access their sites. Sometimes, in transition stages, the best you could do maybe is encourage the creation of the best possible site.

Senator Spivak: Let a thousand flowers bloom?

Mr. Amber: I know an incredible number of people is studying this — both through divisions of UNESCO and the United Nations. People are studying this issue in every country. No one has come up with a solution, other than things that this country, the values of this country, will not allow for. I do not want to be living in a totalitarian dictatorship where they tell you what you can use the Internet for.

[Translation]

Senator Corbin: I have four questions which I am going to put to you seriatim, and you can answer them all together as well.

[English]

There was an important seminar held at the University of Moncton last fall on media ownership. Did you attend or were you represented? Do you have any comments? That is my first question.

Are provincial governments involved in checking quasi-monopolies, cross-ownership issues, and what have you? Should they be? Should they not be very concerned? That is my second question.

Of what utility is your guild, for a journalist who works at the Irving papers in New Brunswick? In fact, if it is not a trade secret of yours, I would like to know how many members you have from the Irving group of papers. That is my third question.

Would you know what the turnover rate of journalists is at the Irving group of papers. That is my fourth question.

Lastly, with the exception of CPAC, the national media does not cover these meetings. Is that not a bloody shame? How do you get your very legitimate concerns to the public?

Mr. Amber: The issue relating to media concentration in New Brunswick is the worst in the country. You know better than I do the exact number of purchases that Irving made over the last two years.

Senator Corbin: We are trying to keep track.

Mr. Amber: It is very hard. Not only did they buy up weeklies and a small daily but they have also bought up in the French press as well.

Senator Corbin: Yes, they have bought Le Madawaska, which is a 90-year-old family concern — again that is a shameful thing.

Mr. Amber: It is incredible. There were some people from the guild at the media conference that you mentioned.

I have two things to say about the issue of cross-ownership. In respect of the provinces and cross-ownership, most of the provinces regard the cross-ownership issue as being out of their realm because broadcast licences are at a federal level so they do not do that. However, in Quebec, when Quebecor Media bought up a lot of things, the Quebec Government at the time, and the opposition at the time, took a very active role in bringing a degree of pressure on the situation so that in the merger and buying agreements and in the right to operate the way Quebecor does, there is the greatest separation between editorial on the newspapers, editorial on the other newspapers and editorial on the broadcast side.

With respect to Irving newspapers in New Brunswick, we represent employees in the Moncton paper, the Saint John paper and the Fredericton paper. I cannot give you the numbers off the top of my head, but I do know that it is always a dwindling number because they have not changed the ownership, but every year they seek other ways to centralize all their work so there is one printing press now putting out two or three newspapers. On the editorial side, all the editorial departments at all three of those newspapers over the last 10 years cut back drastically on the number of people covering the news.

In respect of your question about the turnover at Irving, there has not been a great deal of turnover. People choose to live in New Brunswick. Many of them are from New Brunswick but many who have gone there seem to enjoy living in New Brunswick and actually turnover rate at Irving is not higher than elsewhere.

In respect of the CPAC issue — I obviously agree with you. How do we get our message out? In about a week's time there will be a Web site that we have created for Canadians and people in the business to discuss issues about the media and about journalism and the quality of their newspapers. We hope to start a national discussion that will provide some information and some continuity of thought that may be helpful in this whole area. It is called yourmedia.ca.

Ms. Ravensbergen: It will be out on March 17. Watch for it. Everyone can, right across the country. It is the Internet.

Senator Corbin: Were there any additional comments to my questions?

Mr. Amber: I thought I dealt with all five of them, but maybe I did not.

Ms. Ravensbergen: Certainly in Quebec, we have a more activist, or did have an more activist, standpoint from the previous government. When the national editorials were introduced, the National Assembly saw the damage that was being done in a very important local newspaper, The Gazette in Montreal, and passed a unanimous motion condemning the concept of imposed editorials from elsewhere. There is a lot of discussion around the issue, but we have not seen anything concrete in terms of any legislative initiatives. Will we? I do not think so.

Senator Carney: I have two areas I would like to ask questions about. One deals with the survey and the other one follows up on Senator Gustafson's concerns about rural Canada.

I would like to direct your attention to page nine of the survey you have discussed. You have advertised something that I find interesting. If you look at question Z2, 66 per cent of your survey responders are between the ages of 40 and 59, so you would say they were mature. Only one-third is in the younger age group. Seventy-five per cent of them work for CanWest, and almost half — 48 per cent — of course, are reporters, which would be normal since the guild represents the reporters, not necessarily editors and managers. Two-thirds of the respondents are male. You present a mature workforce, mostly male, and predominately working for CanWest. In that sense, it is a skewed survey.

My question relates to the labour force among your members. Why are there not more young people? Are you describing an industry in which entry is limited, or are the younger workers being laid off? Why do you have a workforce that is predominantly mature, male, and obviously CanWest? What is happening to the people who produce the news?

I would like to hear from all three of you on that. I think it is an interesting question. What is happening out there in the labour market for newspapers?

Mr. Ravensbergen: In Montreal, we have a phenomenon where, as the full-time equivalent, FTE, counts that are allowed to the management go down, there are fewer positions opening up. There have been some buyouts and enhanced departures. For the young people coming in — and this has been a very difficult problem — the term that is commonly used in our area is "permatemps." They are on temporary assignment. They are wonderful reporters, very sharp, 25 or 30 years old in some cases, but when they go to the bank to sign for a car loan, they are temporary workers.

Senator Carney: They have no benefits.

Mr. Ravensbergen: They get benefits after six months. We push very hard to get these people on staff, but you are absolutely right. It is the reduction in the permitted body counts — if I may use graphic business terms — that makes it difficult to bring some of the younger people in. When they do come in, they are faced with a terribly precarious work situation where they are replacing people on leave or whatever, and they cannot really plan a career. This is a direct result, from our standpoint, obviously, of the drive to reduce the local workforce.

Senator Carney: I should also point out that 56 per cent of your respondents had been with their employer for 15 years or more. Maybe I am wrong, but I am interpreting this to mean having a permatemp labour force. When I was a journalist, it took five years to be a senior reporter in the guild system. Is it true that we are not training and encouraging and keeping the people in the media that we are going to need?

That is not a leading question. I am asking you. This is mature, stable and male-biased. It does not show me much flexibility. I would like to hear the others.

Ms. Kirkup: At the Ottawa Citizen, our last big group of hires came in 1988 when we went from a six-day paper to a seven-day paper. Lately, we are not hiring. We are just not hiring people. All the young people who are coming in are interns. We have an intern program where we bring for 12 months, and it is a temporary position. Every year, we get six new interns and they are there for a very short period of time. In the last five years, one or two interns have been hired. The other young people who are coming in are coming in as office staff and they work part time. Hardly any full time people are being hired. They are young people. Our interns are on six-week stints, two-week stints, three-week stints from universities and colleges.

Senator Carney: Should we be concerned about this?

Ms. Kirkup: I think so.

Senator Carney: My second area of questioning returns to the area raised by Senator Gustafson. There are two issues about rural Canada. One is the distribution of news and inability to access the national papers.

On the other hand, I live on an island of 300 people, half a mile from the U.S. border, two ferries away, and we get delivered by mail-boat and by a woman who bicycles around the ferry system, The Globe and Mail, National Post, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Province, Victoria Times-Columnist, plus three or four smaller local papers, including the Saturna Scribbler, and we have the Internet. We get lots of access, but we do not get coverage of rural Canada. That is a concern. We cannot get our issues in the paper. There is vast unemployment and economic misery, but unless someone shoots someone or burns down a house, we cannot get our issues covered.

The major cities have Canadian Press and they circulate the news and things like that. How should we address the inaccessibility of 20 per cent of Canada that lives outside of the three big cities to get their issues covered? They are newsworthy issues, but they do not have access to the mainstream. Do you have a comment on that?

Mr. Amber: Not one that may be helpful. We represent people who work for people who make the decisions. For example, in this city, when I went to university here, the Ottawa papers had a very long and lively Ottawa Valley coverage. I do not live here any more, so I do not read the paper that often, but I suspect that has been chopped back considerably. This is evidence of what we were talking about before about things just falling away. One of the problems is that the larger the corporation that owns the newspaper gets and the more newspapers it owns, the local sensitivities and local interests are the first things that go by the boards.

There is a reasonable expectation on your part that, although we are not going to cover every little local event that happens in lower British Columbia, there are issues that are in fact universal, or at least national, about the plight of people living in small communities that should be on the national radar. The issue is that the people who own and manage a lot of the media tend to have been turning away from this very coverage.

Senator Carney: Is this a reflection of the cutbacks in staffing? The story is there, but is it fact there is no stringer to cover it? When people hear about these stories, they are just as interesting as something that happened in a hockey arena in Vancouver. Is it because of staffing or because of distribution costs? Why is 20 per cent of Canada basically left outside the media watershed?

Mr. Amber: Staffing is number one, but why are these staffing decisions made? If, in the particular community you lived in, there was a complementary ad bank for ad sales, the paper may take a different approach to it.

The other thing is the people who are sometimes editing the newspapers have a perception of what their readers want. This is one of the weakest parts about journalism. Sometimes people at the top have a perception of what the newspapers should be giving the readers, not understanding that many people who live in that area may actually came from some of those small towns that you are speaking about. It is a major issue.

Senator Carney: Is there any role that government should play in this? I do not think that has been asked. In your view, what role should government play, if any?

Mr. Amber: I am not an advocate that the government should be everywhere and set up programs that do not work. I would like to see a case that for the "government" to intervene to make sure that, to use the terminology, the countryside gets covered. I am not sure how you do that.

Senator Carney: I am not talking just about the countryside. Broadly, in the whole spectrum of this media committee, is there any role for government intervention anywhere? We have had a lot of requests for intervention before this committee.

Mr. Amber: We definitely think so. We think that one has to look back at the decision that allowed cross-ownership. We believe that has turned out to be a terrible mistake; so on that area, it is really easy for us to say we think something should be done there with the government intervention.

I think that government can also set out what it considers to be the proper democratic role that the industry should play in the country. This country is about good governance, good government, and there is a role on a positive side, rather than a punitive legislative side, that might be very interesting.

The Chairman: I have a purely factual request. Would you be able to provide us with data showing the number of journalists in your membership over time, whatever you have, with enough information for us to understand whether changes in those numbers are due to certification of new bargaining units or decertification, and how much is due to new hires or downsizing or whatever? I am talking about journalists. If you want to give us the others as well, that is fine, but if you can single out journalists, I think that is probably closer to the core concern of this committee.

Similarly, you said — and you do not have to answer this because we are short of time, but if you could write us a letter explaining — that your universe for your poll was 425 journalists.

Mr. Amber: 485.

The Chairman: My point is that you represent many more journalists than that, so perhaps you could give us a little more detail on what you were talking about there.

You said in response to, I think Senator Merchant, something that I should like to clarify. You said that in the chains, increasingly there is a tendency for editors to be getting together to talk about what goes on page one. Are you talking about centralized decisions about what local papers put on their front pages? Is that actually happening?

Mr. Amber: I do believe that there are some. We keep talking about CanWest, but in terms of the way chains are developing, you can look at an organization like Osprey as well. They have appointed certain people to talk to the various newspapers about their editorial content. I would presume that may not come down to the day one — at eight o'clock at night, someone calling up and saying everyone get that picture, that runner on page one — I do not mean that. I mean there are actually policies and perceptions of the roles of the newspaper and a if you are going have a discussion with someone about what your newspaper is doing, it includes which types of stories you cover, what that chain's view is of what the news is and what it is not.

I do not want to go too far on this; but, for example, if you took editorial meetings between people in the Sun chain, they would obviously be vastly different from those of people in a broadsheet chain. That is what I meant. If I overstated it, I would say that this is the context.

The Chairman: I suspect part of what you are talking about might just be shared attempts to understand better what "my kind of readers, as distinct from your kind of readers" tend to like, or what are good ideas about how to serve readers. There is a difference there between advancing understanding of the way a given industry or craft works and central control about how it gets implemented.

Similarly, Ms. Kirkup talked about what in the craft are known as "adjacencies." I think the example you cited was a story about allergies that was to run next to an ad for a medication. We have previously heard about this — perhaps it was Clark Davey who spoke to us about this example as well. In what way is that different from the well-known classic pattern of running stories about travel in the section where there are a lot of ads about travel, or movie reviews in the section where there are ads for the movies? What is different?

Ms. Kirkup: I do not know if it is different, it is just new. We have not dealt with this before in the health pages. What is also a little different from what we are used to as well is that this page had come to the Ottawa Citizen already laid out and done. The copy editors were told not to touch the copy. Sometimes you will get copy from wires to which you will add your local content, but in this case, they were told they could not change this specific page, and so it came as a whole page.

Mr. Ravensbergen: This is a very chilling example of what could happen in many other circumstances. Can you imagine other sections — perhaps the entertainment section, perhaps the business section — all being centrally produced in one location in this country and then used in 14 different daily newspapers? The wheel has started to turn in terms of pulling stuff in, centralizing, cost-cutting and control. This is a command-and-control kind of company.

The other element I want to bring forward, the adjacencies were over some allergy remedies, if I remember correctly. This was clearly a head-office project; I do not think there is any question about that. This is from the same company that has been pushing extremely hard, as you are aware, to be allowed to broadcast prescription drug advertising on its television stations, much akin to what is now happening in the United States. Every second ad is to see your doctor and, by the way, side effects could include death.

We have to look at the bigger picture. We do not pretend to have the whole picture but we have an extremely disturbing number of elements that all appear to be moving in the same direction. There is an absence of solid information. We have tried to bring some to the table here. Mr. Amber mentioned the TNG Canada initiative that is coming next week — yourmedia.ca — we hope to bring more information through that way.

Senator Corbin: I would like to know what services you provide to your membership — besides professional growth and legal assistance and that sort of thing. The obverse side to that question would be, do you accept and how do you deal with, if they are addressed to you, public complaints about rotten journalism, for example? I do not have anyone in mind.

Mr. Amber: We provide traditional labour union services for our members. We provide support for them if they get into a labour dispute where there is a cessation of work; we provide help for them when they have a grievance with their owners which then goes to arbitration. We have lawyers on call. We provide a certain number of benefits that they can get — they are able, through our system, to buy things more cheaply through various programs. We do education for them about labour codes and labour issues. We basically are a full-service union provider.

Senator Corbin: Do you hold seminars?

Mr. Amber: We do seminars and all those sorts of things. The bigger locals do them on their own, and the national union is there to help the smaller locals.

Senator Corbin: What about public response and complaints? Do you get any of that stuff?

Mr. Amber: We tend not to get them because people differentiate between the union and the newspaper. If people have a complaint with, for the sake of it, the Sudbury Star, I presume they take to the Sudbury Star rather than to the union. On a personal level, when you work at a paper, you are always besieged by people with complaints.

Senator Merchant: I have a question of you because you represent journalists. You have spoken about your concern that the public be well served.

Journalists decide what stories to present to the public. I am not saying this as a criticism but I think journalists care about certain issues. Who oversees the range of stories to ensure that all segments of society believe that their stories are covered? I am not talking about local stories only but rather about a bias in journalism. There are certain segments of society that do not think their stories are presented because the journalists are not interested in those kinds of stories. We have a skewed notion of what is important and what is happening in the world around us. What could be done about that?

Mr. Ravensbergen: In essence, the journalists who write the stories do not make the decisions on coverage. If a journalist has a story idea, it is brought to the assignment editor. Given the current staffing situation and the must- cover stories, we run into a body-count problem on a fairly regular basis. What does not get covered is the material that takes extra time to put together. I remember that Peter Menzies, in Calgary, after the strike was over put out a memo that said he expected three stories each day from his reporters. There can be no depth to a story pulled together that quickly. A journalist would have to rewrite press releases to make that kind of quota. How is the public's trust served by doing that? I can leave that to your imagination.

One way to ensure broader coverage for groups in society who think they do not have enough exposure or that their stories are not being told is to tell the people who make the news assignment decisions — the assignment desk, the city editor and the editors-in-chief. Certainly, you will have a sympathetic audience among the reporters. They will all tell you variations on this theme — there are not enough bodies to cover the news that absolutely has to be covered. That is the situation.

Senator Merchant: All the people making the decisions are journalists — the editors, et cetera. They are like-minded on the issue.

Mr. Ravensbergen: Okay.

Senator Merchant: We receive — especially through television where everything is so vivid — the impression that this is the important story of the moment. You just said a minute ago, when I talked about using the same photograph in many papers, that journalists make the decision on the important story. That is fine for big news events but for other things that society is concerned about, our interests are not always reflected in the news media. Perhaps reporters do not feel comfortable covering certain stories or promoting certain causes they have. This does not give us a complete picture of what is happening in society. We receive all of our information through the media.

Mr. Amber: Last week on Inside Media Television, which looks at the media and with which I am associated, we had a discussion about coverage of religion. One of the panellists, who is a proponent of more and better religious coverage, said we are not receiving it because many reporters do not know enough about religion to cover it properly. This takes me back to something we discussed earlier — the minute you decrease specialist reporters — people who have a specialty and know their subject — the more of this once-over you get, or no-one is fighting and arguing in the news room. There are a few former or present journalists in this room and they will tell you that is the way it works.

Often, it is a lack of sensitivity, particularly as Canada changes. Are we aware enough of the various communities whose interests we should be addressing? I would say that this is one of the bigger issues that has nothing to do with concentration. It has to do with the field of journalism that is right out there in your face. There are numerous reasons that journalism is not as good as it should be.

One could only hope that if we could straighten out things in the industry, it will get better. Our point, and the reason that we have come to you with this survey, is that we do not think that it will necessarily get there with increasing concentration of ownership.

I want to thank all senators for giving us this opportunity. I never thought you would put up with us for this long; it has been a pleasure to have this discussion. We are looking forward to your deliberations when they come out.

The Chairman: Thank you. As you know, the senators have been extremely interested by what you had to say and we are grateful that you took the time to appear before the committee.

The committee continued in camera.


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