When politicians fail to tell the truth, when the Internet is littered with individual versions of truth, and print media is failing to survive, where do you look for truth? And where do you turn when your daily routine for most of your life that has started with a cup of coffee in one hand and the daily newspaper in the other? Does broadcast media fill the void? Does news on an I-pad step up? Does the electronic news fill the need for trust? Are these not similar questions to what we asked when broadcast news first challenged print?
But when American news media came to Canada and loosed their political vitriol in the form of Canadian news, were we better off? AMI, the US-based company that owns Postmedia and Sun newspapers, are an embarrassment. These right-wing Americans, with their National Enquirer falsehoods, are now likely the largest newspaper chain in Canada. The only good thing you can say about them is that they sold off their fictional tabloids, led by the National Enquirer, a couple years ago. Their version of Canadian news is best explained by their mindless devotion to Donald Trump in the United States and Trump-light, Pierre Poilievre in Canada.
The reason Postmedia seems bigger and more dangerous for our country is the collapse the other day of Metroland Media, a subsidiary of the Toronto Star. It meant the loss of 65 jobs in Ontario, without severance or pensions. It also spelled the end of the weekly publications that were nothing more than wraps for grocery fliers. Before criticizing TorStar, the owner, for this treatment of their employees, you should also wonder if the proper treatment of those employees might not have collapsed the entire TorStar enterprise? Judging by what we see in the Toronto Star every day, its best revenue generator these days appears to be the obituaries.
Metroland is expected to try to continue its dailies in print form and provide the other papers in limited on-line versions. You might want to wait until the courts are through with the bankruptcy claims before betting further on TorStar. This last step it took with Metroland is obviously a sign of desperation.
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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry
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