CanWest: A Case Study In Zionist Media Control

Dr. William Pierce Comments [mp3] [text]

In 2002 Dr. Pierce reported on an unusual display of chutzpah, unusual in that the late Israel Asper who owned some 60% of Canada’s media outlets at the time had actually issued a written (vs. verbal) directive instructing his newspapers that they must not print anything critical of Israel or of Zionist policies. Some Canadian reporters rebelled and there was a small protest, unfortunately most Canadians didn’t care to turn off their ball games long enough to contemplate the negative ramifications that a Zionist media monopoly poses to their lives. A nation’s media is its nervous system, if you ever wondered what the heck happend to Canada or America over the past few decades we have assembled a number of historic reports on this scandal that document just how shockingly bad the problem of Zionist media contol has been in the past and still is today, also check out Dr. Pierce’s excellent report on this story at the above links — admin:

Canadian Media Giant Censures Editorials Deemed Critical of Israel,
Arizona Daily Star, December 29, 2001
“Canadian newspaper readers are being warned not to expect a balanced opinion from their dailies after executive orders from the country’s largest media corporation were given to run a select number of national editorials and homogenize remaining editorials across the country so as not to, among other things, reflect negatively on Israel’s occupation of Arab land. Recently, media giant CanWest Global Communications Corp., owned by Israel (Izzy) Asper and family, announced that beginning Dec. 12 one, but eventually three, editorials a week would be written at corporate headquarters in Winnipeg and imposed on 14 dailies, which include the Vancouver Sun and Province, the Calgary Herald and the Montreal Gazette. CanWest also owns 50 percent of the nationally distributed National Post, which will be subject to the new directives as well. Furthermore, in addition to the imposed editorials themselves, all locally produced editorial column pieces will be forced to conform to reflect the viewpoints of the CanWest Global corporation. CanWest last year became Canada’s dominant newspaper chain when it purchased Southam News Inc. from Conrad Black’s holding company, Hollinger Inc., for a reported $3.2 billion Can. ($2 billion) The deal transferred ownership of the 14 metropolitan dailies and 128 local newspapers across the country.”

Canadian Publisher Raises Hackles,
Washington Post, January 27, 2002
“Late last year, columnist Stephen Kimber says, the editing of his writing became more and more inexplicable. It wasn’t so much dropped commas or the introduction of errors. Sometimes he would open the newspaper, the Halifax Daily News, and find that his opinions had been removed. ‘I put up with that for a while, then I began to censor myself,’ said Kimber. ‘I would remember, ‘No, I’m not supposed to write about that.’ Kimber had been writing his column without such concerns for 15 years. But things changed, he said, after CanWest Global Communications took over his newspaper and 135 others last summer. In December, the company announced that all 14 of its big-city newspapers would run the same national editorial each week, issued from headquarters in Winnipeg, and sometimes written at CanWest papers around the country. Any unsigned editorials written locally at the 14 papers, the company said, should not contradict the national editorials, which covered such subjects as military spending, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and property rights. The decision provoked immediate complaints from journalists across Canada, who say its effect goes far beyond the editorials, imposing control on columnists and reporters as well. In the United States, the National Conference of Editorial Writers, whose members include Canadians, joined in, saying the decision was ‘likely to backfire with readers who are accustomed to editorials on national and international subjects that take account of the diversity of views in their communities.’ Many journalists say the company is breaking age-old traditions that keep reporters and columnists independent of the publications’ owners. CanWest and its owners, the [Jewish] Asper family, deny that the policy restricts freedom of expression in this way. All they are doing, they say, is exercising the legitimate prerogative of owners to influence a limited part of their publications, the editorials. They show no sign of bending. In a recent speech in Oakville, Ontario, CanWest publications committee chairman David Asper borrowed lyrics from the rock group REM: “I can say to our critics and especially to the bleeding hearts of the journalist community that, ‘It’s the end of the world as they know it . . . and I feel fine.’ ” … CanWest controls a major newspaper in every major city outside of Toronto.”

[Montreal] Gazette Reporters Protest National Editorials,
Straight Goods, December 14, 2001
“For two days last week, many reporters at The Gazette in Montreal removed their names from the articles they wrote. It was a protest against the decision by Southam News to force all of its 12 major metropolitan newspapers to run ‘national editorials’ written at the Winnipeg corporate headquarters of parent company CanWest Global Communications Corp. The first was published last week. Another is to run next Thursday. Credibility is the most precious asset a newspaper possesses. When the power of the press is abused, that credibility dies. We believe this is an attempt to centralize opinion to serve the corporate interests of CanWest. Far from offering additional content to Canadians, this will practically vacate the power of the editorial boards of Southam newspapers and thereby reduce the diversity of opinions and the breadth of debate that to date has been offered readers across Canada. CanWest’s intention is initially to publish one national editorial a week in all major Southam newspapers. This will eventually become three a week. More important, each editorial will set the policy for that topic in such a way as to constrain the editorial boards of each newspaper to follow this policy. Essentially, CanWest will be imposing editorial policy on its papers on all issues of national significance. Without question, this decision will undermine the independence and diversity of each newspaper’s editorial board and thereby give Canadians a greatly reduced variety of opinion, debate and editorial discussion. Editorial boards at each newspaper exist to debate public policy issues, reach a consensus and then present the reasoning to the public. They are designed to be largely free of corporate interests. This crucial process of journalistic debate is undermined by editorials dictated by corporate headquarters. We believe this centralizing process will weaken the credibility of every Southam paper. Last week’s first editorial, for example, calls on the federal government to reduce and eventually to abolish capital-gains taxes for private foundations. Who would blame a reader for thinking the editorial simply serves the interests of the foundation run by the Asper family, owners of CanWest and Southam?”

The CanWorld Chill: ‘We Do Not Run in Our Newspaper Op Ed Pieces that Expression Criticism of Israel,’
Electronic Intifada, December 11, 2001
“The 7 December 2001 broadcast of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s As It Happens [online link included] uncovered a disturbing example of corporate and political interference in freedom of the press. The program reported on a new editorial policy directive from CanWest Global, a leading Canadian media conglomerate, that impairs readers’ ability to make up their own minds about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, among other issues. As It Happens reported that over two dozen journalists at the Montreal Gazette have pulled their bylines to protest a new policy imposed by the newspaper’s owners, Southam Newspapers Inc, which is owned by CanWest Global. The new policy requires the company’s main local newspapers to run editorials written at headquarters in Winnipeg by Southam Editor-in-Chief Murdoch Davis. Bill Marsden, an investigative reporter at the Montreal Gazette, noted that up to 156 times a year — about three times a week — the editorial would be imposed and that the remainder of locally-written editorials would be required to reflect the viewpoints and stances taken by the paper’s corporate headquarters … …[O]n July 31, CanWest announced its acquisition of all of the major Canadian newspaper and Internet assets of Hollinger Inc., including the metropolitan daily newspapers in nearly every large city across Canada and a 50% partnership interest in the National Post.” [The owner of CanWest Global, which owns a huge percentage of Canadian newspapers, and the second largest Canadian TV network (as well as some media venues in Ireland, New Zealand, and other countries), is avid Zionist Israel Asper].

Robert Fisk: Journalists are under fire for telling the truth,
by Robert Fisk, The Independent (UK), December18, 2002
“Let us forget, for a moment, that Fox News’s Jerusalem bureau chief is Uri Dan, a friend of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the author of the preface of the new edition of Sharon’s autobiography, which includes a revolting account of the Sabra and Chatila massacre of 1,700 Palestinian civilians and Sharon’s innocence in this slaughter. Then Ted Koppel [also Jewish], one of America’s leading news anchormen, announced that it may be a journalist’s duty not to reveal events until the military want them revealed in a new war against Iraq. Can we go any further in journalistic cowardice? Oh yes, we can. ABC television announced, a little while ago, that it knew all about the killing of four al-Qa’ida members by an unmanned ‘Predator’ plane in Yemen but delayed broadcasting the news for four days ‘at the request of the Pentagon.’ So now at least we know for whom ABC works … In Canada, the situation is even worse. Canwest, owned by Israel Asper, owns over 130 newspapers in Canada, including 14 city dailies and one of the country’s largest papers, the National Post. His ‘journalists’ have attacked colleagues who have deviated from Mr Asper’s pro-Israel editorials. As Index on Censorship reported, Bill Marsden, an investigative reporter for the Montreal Gazette has been monitoring Canwest’s interference with its own papers. ‘They do not want any criticism of Israel,’ he wrote. ‘We do not run in our newspaper op-ed pieces that express criticism of Israel and what it is doing in the Middle East…’ But now, ‘Izzy‘ Asper has written a gutless and repulsive editorial in the Post in which he attacks his own journalists, falsely accusing reporters of “lazy, sloppy or stupid” journalism and being ‘biased or anti-Semitic’. These vile slanders are familiar to any reporter trying to do his work on the ground in the Middle East. They are made even more revolting by inaccuracies. Mr Asper, for example, claims that my colleague Phil Reeves compared the Israeli killings in Jenin earlier this year – which included a goodly few war crimes (the crushing to death of a man in a wheelchair, for example) – to the ‘killing fields of Pol Pot’. Now Mr Reeves has never mentioned Pol Pot. But Mr Asper wrongly claims that he did. It gets worse. Mr Asper, whose ‘lazy, sloppy or stupid’ allegations against journalists in reality apply to himself, states – in the address to an Israel Bonds Gala Dinner in Montreal, which formed the basis of his preposterous article – that “in 1917, Britain and the League of Nations declared, with world approval, that a Jewish state would be established in Palestine”. Now hold on a moment. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 did not say that a Jewish state would be established … At no point, of course, does Mr Asper tell us about Israeli occupation or the building of Jewish settlements, for Jews and Jews only, upon Arab land. He talks about ‘alleged Palestinian refugees’ – about as wrongheaded a remark as you can get – and then claims that the corrupt and foolish Yasser Arafat is ‘one of the world’s cruel and most vicious terrorists for the past 30 years’. He concluded his speech to Israel’s supporters in Montreal with the dangerous request that ‘you, the public, must take action against the media wrongdoers’. Wrongdoers? Is this far from President Bush’s ‘evildoers’? What in the hell is going on here? I will tell you. Journalists are being attacked for telling the truth, for trying to tell it how it is. American journalists especially. I urge them to read a remarkable new book published by the New York University Press and edited by John Collins and Ross Glover. It’s called Collateral Language and is, in its own words, intended to expose “the tyranny of political rhetoric.”

Rumours of war Conflict in the Middle East has come to Canada, with Izzy Asper’s National Post criticizing the CBC’s coverage of the battle between Israelis and Palestinians,
Ottawa Sun, January 12, 2003
“The relentless Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a deep quagmire, and Canadians fear it. A recent polling of readers by the Globe and Mail [in Toronto] named Israel, not Iraq or North Korea, the world’s most dangerous hot spot by a goodly margin. Such an apprehension helps explain the federal government’s reluctance to discuss it, much less deal with it: Why jump into bottomless antagonism? But the Liberal government, and the other political parties, may be dragged into it if the Asper media empire has its way. In a recent, frank epistle in his National Post, Canwest Global chairman Israel Asper wrote of his love for his namesake. To him, Israel is a moral beacon to the world. So it is not surprising that since he took control of the Post from Conrad Black the paper has taken an ever-tougher line against Israel’s enemies and, accordingly, the CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Company] has become one of them. The Post now regularly harries the CBC for its ‘biased’ Middle East reporting. Leading the charge is Norman Spector, a former chief of staff to Brian Mulroney who was rewarded for this service with Canada’s ambassadorship to Israel. Spector’s attachment to the Jewish state seems every bit as strong as his employer’s, and if his columns are a guide, the Asper campaign against the corporation will continue to escalate. Last Wednesday Spector implied the CBC coverage fuelled anti-Semitism of the sort voiced by David Ahenakew, the former First Nations chief. Asper, Spector, and the Post accuse the CBC of mollycoddling terrorists by refusing to use that word to describe the organizations which back attacks on Israelis … Asper has previously called for the Chretien government to rein in the CBC, arguing the PM himself was being treated unfairly by the Mother Corp. The Post has just been in front of a successful campaign to have the government ban Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based radical party that sponsors attacks on Israel. If the CBC does not back down, can a demand for Ottawa to make it do so be far behind? … While Asper is a lifelong Liberal, his agitating on this issue is far from welcome. Hezbollah had few friends here, yet the government was reluctant to act. Why? Because it feared the issue might generate a national concern over the rights and wrongs of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with who knows what consequences for our vaunted multicultural diversity. Support for Israel in Canada seems to have been slipping in the last few years as its military might, including nukes, and televised images from the intifada — slingshots vs. tanks — have undermined the notion Israel is simply a noble little nation surrounded by relentless, powerful enemies. Those who accuse the CBC are further undermined by their very staunch support for the Bush administration’s plans to topple Saddam Hussein — which Canadians seem to favour less and less. And it seems to me the notion that Canada must support Israel because it is the front lines of the global war on terror is being more and more rejected in Canada as simplistic, and bullying. Finally, and vitally, the CBC, unlike Hezbollah, has many friends. The anger voiced and pressed by Asper and Spector is no sham. For them the issue truly is black and white. In taking on the CBC and insisting theirs is the only legitimate interpretation in line with history and democratic values, they seem to be overreaching. And it may rebound on them and on Israel.”

Canadian Media Giants Announce Landmark Convergence Deal,
Canada Newswire, July 2000
“[Israel Asper's] CanWest Global Communications Corp. today announced the largest transaction in the history of the Canadian media industry. CanWest, owners of Canada’s most popular national television network, Global Television, has agreed to acquire 100% of the principal metropolitan operations of the successful Hollinger newspaper chain in Canada, together with all of its Canadian Internet properties, its magazine group, most of the community publishing operations and a 50% interest in the National Post. The merged company will have complete and unparalleled national and local coverage in both electronic and print media, plus the canada.com network, a leading group of national and local Internet sites … With the addition of the Hollinger properties and the 50% stake in the National Post, CanWest will become Canada’s most comprehensive multiple platform media company, with a strong national and local profile in news, publishing, conventional and specialty television and the Internet, as well as in the production and international distribution of television entertainment programming and feature films. - CanWest will have the largest electronic and print information and news gathering capacity in Canada, with more journalists, editors and news gathering personnel than any other media operation in the country.”

Dateline Winnipeg,
Economist, March 15, 2002
“[Izzy Asper is] Canada’s most powerful media mogul … Mr Asper controls the country’s most profitable television network and a chain of more than 100 newspapers across the country, which he bought 18 months ago from Conrad Black. But he has resisted moving the headquarters of his company, CanWest Global Communications, to Toronto, Canada’s media capital. The company remains in Winnipeg, 2,100km (1,300 miles) to the west. As a result, Mr Asper has brought jobs to the city, as well as being a generous donor to local causes. But there is a more controversial aspect to Mr Asper’s devotion to making Winnipeg great again. All of his family’s papers, from British Columbia to Newfoundland, are now obliged to print company editorials, on national and international issues, written in Winnipeg. No subsequent deviation from the line they set is allowed in the local papers, which include the market leaders in most of Canada’s big cities. This has provoked howls of protest, and not just because the papers concerned were used to substantial editorial independence before the Aspers took control. Canada is a country of several distinct regions. But ownership of its media is now highly concentrated. And nobody has as much control over what Canadians read and watch as the Aspers. Mr Asper has strong opinions. He is a former leader of the Liberal Party in Manitoba, and a friend both of Jean Chrétien, Canada’s prime minister, and of Israel. Journalists fear that there is now no room for dissenting views: one columnist has been fired, another suspended and several stories killed because they expressed points of view the Aspers disagreed with.”

Above Historic Exerpts Preserved At: JewishTribalReview.org