Washington File

The real definition of the term "Freedom of the Press" means that he who owns the press can print what he wants or doesn't want.

What amazes me is the questions that the main stream press doesn't ask. Thank goodness there is an alternate source to the news, and I'm not talking about blogs either. One would think that the main stream press would pick up on some of the articles in the internet press?

The media is very liberal in Canada and seems to think it is another political party and try to steer public opinion, for example same sex was much a media driven thing, where any critism of it is edited out. Depending on your point of veiw to edit those opposed and calling them right wing christian extremist seems a little much and has cost the media credibility by not allowing critisism of a more traditional global veiw. Unfortunatly when the media failed to question all aspects of government the result for society were negative and people have turned away from traditional media and to the net, particularly young people that are made uncomfortable with the media obession with social engineering they describe as social justice.

The Internet provides news in a more timely manner and can view many mediums such as plain text, videos or interactive blogs. But I agree - it's the message that counts.

You can stay with the "old guard" such as the newspaper and television websites AND the advant-guard such as blogs and compilation sites like Information Clearing House.

I don't trust the media conglomerates in Canada. As Zsolt Sary - they are "owned by the same corporations, controlled by the same small group of individuals, who are also busy manufacturing missiles and attack helicopters." Or simply put, they're very conservative leaning and pro-Israel.

The Internet allows a person to filter through many sources and find the kernal of truth rather than have only media conglomerates filter it for you. I believe this means that it will be harder to pull the wool over the next generation's eyes as hopefully they'll be more aware of issues and how they interconnect.

What about books? The fact that books weren't even an option in the poll tells us alot.

It's true that books are not instant vehicles of reporting like newespapers or the web. Books come out much later after the fact.

However, magazines come out after the fact too, by about a week or so. And that's the piont: magazines are supposed to have longer, more indepth, and therefore (supposedly) better articles because the reporters have had more time to investigate the stories.

An author of a book has had even more time! In fact, an author of a book will (in theory take all the time that is needed to fully tell the story!

Nowadays, a book can come out within only 6 months to a year after the fact. There are now, for example, a lot of excellent books out there on still very current topics like Iraq, Afganistan, etc...

I personaly consider reading a few books on a particular, current topic/story to be much, much more informative than all the other medias combined!

So why weren't books even an option in the poll? Answer: Availability, cost, and time!

If you want a book you must go to a library or you must go to a book store and buy one. That's not nearly as easy as it is finding a newspaper, or turning on the TV, or logging on.

And, if you want to get as many sides of the story as possible, you'll have to borrow or buy more than one book. That can be more expensive than your cable/internet monthly fee

Finaly, it takes a lot longer to read a book than it does to read an article, or sit and watch the article read to you.

For all that, I still prefer books! I prefer to know a lot, rather than a snippit! And I don't mind putting in the time.

And I am very grateful that Winnipeg has an excellent public library system full of books on current topics!

May we all have a good, long read!

Kelly, the sitution is much the same down here. Media is largely a monoculture. Even if the reporters tend towards the left (and they do, even in Canada) the owners, and thus the outlets, tend towards the right. Even in those papers usually viewed as "liberal" - the New York Times and the Washington Post spring to mind - the editorial page reflects a balanced view, which maintains a conservative voice in their marketplace. By contrast, a "conservative" paper - the Washington Times, for instance - shuts out the liberal view entirely. As a result, where liberals are viewed as dominant, conservatives have a voice, and where conservatives are viewed as dominant, conservatives have a voice. Which is why I get most of my news online.

Too many observations about getting news via the internet neglect that the notion of "internet news" is mostly bogus, and "old media" are still the source of the lion's share of the original information that becomes packaged news. Happily Henry's piece does mention this.

Bloggers largely deal in commentary based on "old media" primary sources. Aggregators like Yahoo provide the focus that many people like about internet news, but generate no actual content on their own. It is not hard to imagine a world in which, with actual news gathering having become too expensive an indulgence, bloggers just comment on each others' speculations, and aggregators provide any laser-targeted selection you want of government and corporate press releases. Some say we're already there.

We will always need some kind of infrastructure to collect money from consumers, on the open market or through taxes, and get it to people who dig around for the useful information we want. The ascendancy of the internet is really the ascendancy of free-of-charge, and the current free-market corporate news engine is dutifully driving all the costs out of news, and the news itself right along with them. The internet is revolutionary less because it is fast or flexible or popular with kids than because it has reduced the market value of a costly product to zero. If we want to keep having it, if our more-or-less democracy needs it, how will it be paid for?

If the study were done in Canada he'd probably find that conservatives are happy with the mainstream meadia and liberals are not. Every major daily in Canada with the possible exception of the Toronto Star and certain columnists at the Globe and Mail is staunchly conservative. The Canwest Papers (over 50% of the dailies in Canada) the Sun chain (rabidly right wing and unapoligeticaly so), the supposedly indpendent Winnipeg Free Press which runs quantities of Canwest copy and AP wire stories are all part of the conservative propaganda machine with strong links to the Fraser Institute, and all its spawn such as the Montreal Economic Institute, the Frontier Centre, etc. And oh yeah, the Canadian Taxpayer's Federation -- headed up by a failed Tory Candidate and formerly run by a variety of former Tory Party workers. Then there's the Corus Radio Network, Canwest Global television, and on it goes. I simply don't see how conservatives in Canada can complain about media bias unless they're being deliberately disingenuous.

What is killing the mainstream media is not lack of interest in news, it's their own lack of effort and lack of integrity in providing the information. The reason the internet is taking over from the TV, radio, and newspapers is that people are tired of getting all their news from very few sources - and which are deeply biased to begin with. Nobody thinks the internet news is *not* biased, but there are so many sources of it that you can get many different perspectives on any issue. The internet's biggest problem is separating actual news from stuff which is opinion, or even unsubstantiated gossip and propaganda. It's biggest advantage is that it's also good for people who want to see links between issues and stories - you don't have to be constained by editor's word caps or sound bites.

Brian Allardice was right about Vancouver having the worst newpapers, but he should expand it to all our media. The same people own the Vancouver Sun, the Province, and the National Post - ALL our newpapers run the same stories from the same perspective - they even own the small community papers. This same gang owns most of the radio stations and most of the TV channels too. On TV (leaving aside the CBC issue) the private networks news content sucks, and aside from each having a Washington correspondent, they get all their international news from US sources - when you watch stories about, Europe, east Asia, the middle east etc. - that is a US perspective you're watching, not Canadian. I don't know if that is an ideologoical decision, maybe they are simply too cheap and lazy to make their own newscasts with their own reporters. The Canadian government needs to finally grow a spine and bust up these private media empires, or at least spread their holdings out so they can't monopolize entire provinces and shove someone else's cheaply-bought garbage down Canadians' throats.

I agree that the internet is gaining importance as a news source. But what puzzles me is that the fact young people are using the internet as their primary source of news is considered surprising. Media personnel must be more out-to-lunch than I'd thought to be ignorant of a trend among millions of people. But of course, mainstream media types tend to focus on baby-boomer issues at the expense of issues affecting young people ... perhaps it's no coincidence young people don't care for mainstream media.

hard to argue..h

It would be simple for a corporation like CBC or CTV to bridge the gap between internet news and the stories shown on t.v. Start cutting ties with U.S. organizations immediately, report the news no matter what the political cost, because as Canadians, we want the truth , we want to know for sure that what your telling us is true. 9\11 is the ultimate example.
It has been proven that top officials in the white house had forknowledge of those attacks. Why? Who knows for sure, the media didn't seem overly interested in the Aug 9th PDB, so the majority of Canadians haven't even heard about that. Now I'm not going to talk about conspiracy theories, because I don't do theories, I'm interested in the facts, and to put it bluntly, your organization just hasn't been reporting the facts.

I think you are looking at this the wrong way, and pace McCluhan the medium is not the message, the message is the message. So, I get almost all my news from the internet, but I get it from CBC/SRC, Grauniad, what have you. Even when in Canada I now seldom watch "The National" because I have no desire to sit through stories about Anna Nicole Smith that some editor thinks newsworthy, I certainly don't read the local newspaper (Vancouver must have the worst papers in Canada) because a: the first thing to do is throw out 3/4 of it because it is rubbish; b: both papers are owned by CanWest, the Voice not of Vancouver but of Israel, but that's another story; and c: I have to carry those unread pages to the bin, at great cost to our forest resources. But I consider myself an "old media" type. This is because I place priority on the message, not the medium. If I can access the CBC via the internet it is still the CBC, and a supermarket tabloid on the internet is still a supermarket tabloid. A crazed nut-case holding forth at speakers' corner is no different from a crazed nut-case with a blog. The medium is irrelevant. It is the message, and, as you say, trust in those who produce that message, that are important.

Cheers,
dba

The only thing I fear from today's youth reliance on internet-based decentralized news is the relativization of "truth". If any crackpot conspiracy theorist can put up a website, and our young today inform themselves primarily through the net, what sort of poisonous ideas are we going to see erupt in the next generation?

At least the traditional news sources were accountable; the Globe and Mail or CBC generally don't publish absolute falsehoods and proclaim them as truth, as they could be sued, or at least lose credibility and thus market share.

Independant internet blogs and newsgroups, which rely on self-referential sources, are drifting to the extreme of both sides of the political spectrum. This can only result in further division of our society.

I'm grateful for the online editions of responsible news venues - we're all able to read worldwide journalism we couldn't before. The news and political blog is not strictly journalism, but a vehicle for amateur and in a few cases, like this blog, professional punditry. By and large the blogosphere is to news what American Idol is to music - an indiscriminate venue for ear-shattering or ear-delighting noise - but maybe in need of a smart and hard-nosed Simon.

Blogs are the medium that gives us gems like the story about Barack Obama having been educated in a radical Islamic madrassa. No doubt blogs will be increasingly important and many will be trustworthy, but the presumption of trust for the media is a thing of the past.

Passing off conservatives who are dissatisfied with liberal slanting of the news as "grumpy" is arrogant and condesending. Papers are fading out for many reasons but their persistance in a leftwing agenda, pathological political correctness and lack of diversity on the op/ed pages do make this conservative a little grumpy. And by the way Henry, although you call yourself a "blogger", you are in fact an employee of the Canadian government. This means you hardly have the independence that give real bloggers their credibility.

Internet News is more up-to-date than television or newspaper news. Myself, I don't have cable TV, so it's nice to log on in cyberspace and get breaking stories without having to wait for the evening news. Sure, I miss some of the news babes, but then they're not going to go out on a date with me anyway. BTW, Happy VD! May you get all the love you are looking for, because as you all know by now: Love is all you need! Yehaw!!!

The main reason people are abandoning TV and newspapers as sources of news, and look to the internet for independent voices instead, is because the mainstream media simply cannot be trusted to tell the truth. It is a simple case of conflict-of-interest. Commercial TV channels and most newspapers are owned by the same corporations, controlled by the same small group of individuals, who are also busy manufacturing missiles and attack helicopters. So these people cannot be expected to expose the lies of warmongering politicians or show the horror of war, when they are actively engaged in profiting from that war. Just as it would be unwise to get health advice from tobacco companies, so it is unwise to get political news from missile manufacturers.

An anecdotal artifact, useful for next to no statistical purpose at all: I'm not planning on giving up on newspapers, radio and TV for my news any time soon. If anything, they all seem to fit right into my news-watching plans as much as the Web does, thankfully.