Canadian Media: Who Owns What? The BIG THREE

The problem with intense concentration in the media, such as today’s big monolithic and homogenious three, is that these monopoLIES start cranking out lousy products like the Big Three in Detroit. Consumers are the first to suffer, followed by the standards and employment opportunities of those who work in the industry and inevitably the whole industry itself is in jeopardy, since the industry ceases to have ongoing reasons to exist, particularly in light of the internet as it pertains to media.

I think the media scene in Canada today is at the equivalent stage of devolution as Detroit was in the 70’s, where consumers had the choice of owning a pimp mobile like a Chrysler LeBaron Opera Edition with Rich Corinthian Leather, or alternatively a smog legal Chevrolet Corvette that was perfect for the local Saturday Night Fever shoe salesman that cranked out a whopping 142 horsepower.

Investigative journalism in Canada is virtually dead

Simply look at the media’s ready acceptance of 18 pages of blacked out documents as satisfactory evidence to support a $35 billion loss. Who cares, it’s only our parent’s and grandparent’s money that’s being ripped off? Almost reminds a person of the Mulroney era, doesn’t it? However, unlike the Stephen Harper regime of today, Mulroney had sufficient empathy and/or political savvy towards the elderly to have famously reversed his position on pension indexing when confronted by an elderly woman seeking redress in a public encounter with the Chin. I guess these pesky senior people are now out of sight and out of mind with the big three, who are more preoccupied with severely limiting senior’s investment alternatives to those products that can be sold via paid advertising in the print and broadcast media, like the ubiquitous Income Plus by Manulife, as opposed to the latest income trust offering whose issuer and underwriters are precluded by law from advertising. Meanwhile the “media buy” of people like Manulife and Power Corporation’s Investment Planning Council is overwhelming the advocacy work done by token seniors advocacy groups like CARP, which have simply devolved into marketing portals to the consumer needs and habits of the growing demographic known as seniors or “50PLus”.

Quite pathetic indeed on all accounts, the extent to which money corrupts Canada’s democracy and the rights of its citizenry. Brian Mulroney is presently giving us a speed course in that reality. Who knows, maybe 14 years from now, we’ll finally learn that Mark Carmey was actually cooking the government’s books to fabricate the impression of tax leakage, since that appears to be the glacial speed at which today’s journalists operate, despite the internet and the abundance of irrefutable evidence that lays bear this complete falsehood, for any one brave enough to acknowledge it in the here and now:

Canadian Media: Who Owns What? The BIG THREE: