CKNW Editorial
for January 11, 2000

Two things this morning.

If you wonder why Medicare is in trouble, ponder this. About 8 months ago I had what is called a pre-cancerous growth removed from my face right under the right sideburn that starts my beard.

This was done on referral of my family doctor to a specialist. Fair enough. Now I think I notice - it's hard to tell - that this growth has re-appeared. I called the dermatologist for an appointment and learn that under the Medicare program I must get re-referred by my family doctor. I imply no criticism of either doctor here but isn't more than faintly absurd that I must burden the system twice over a problem that is either a re-occurrence of the old one or my imagination? How often does this happen? And what is the rationale?

I could certainly see it if one were sent to a dermatologist for a growth on a leg then six months later had one on the arm. But this is exactly the same place. Come to think of it I am not sure I really meant it in the example. If you have skin problems why should you have to see your family doctor at all?

On another matter, we all should be deeply concerned at the huge Amalgamation of America 0nline and Time Warner. This places in the hands of a few people, power a Khan, Napoleon or Hitler couldn't have dreamed of.

Back at the beginning of this century we're still in, President Theodore Roosevelt broke up Standard of New Jersey because it seemed to be dangerously close to cornering the market. We saw the same in more recent times with AT&T. But by and large those huge monopolies only had it in their power to make unconscionable profits as private monopolies. This new oligopoly will not only make huge profits as a near monopoly but will also have a near monopoly on influencing voters and thus public policy.

We have this dangerous situation with newspapers in Canada now where three large owners, by no means always competing, control the press. I say by no means competing because the Toronto Sun and its spinoffs fill a niche that probably wouldn't be occupied by the broadsheets in the same community. The danger isn't by any means only in controlling the news although when you think of Time Magazine and CNN you can see the huge danger of a single opinion impact. There is the additional danger of captive editorial opinion even where that is rendered by columnists. Let me give you an example. I escape censorship on this station because that has been the tradition of CKNW competing in the marketplace. But what happens when they're run by Shaw Cable who might well think that the free speech exercised by NW broadcasters ought to be sacrificed to some greater corporate policy? I don't think that will happen with Shaw but let's look at the Conrad Black newspapers. We have already seen what happened to Greg Felton at the Vancouver Courier when he offered opinions on the behaviour of the State of Israel that offended the Canadian Jewish Congress. For those who don't know it, Felton was threatened with dismissal and the paper, partly owned by Southams, was forced to apologize by David Radler, who happens to be Jewish. But it's not the threat of action that inhibits journalistic freedom, it's the fear of that threat. I write for the Vancouver Province and have an excellent relationship with their editor and the editor I report to. They have never changed so much as a comma of what I've written. But I haven't written anything critical of Conrad Black either. And I probably won't for the simple reason that if I want to write columns there is really only one game in town. Now I don't chafe at the bit to write nasties about Mr Black or his wife, Barbara Amiel - I just don't think about it because there are lots of things to write about that won't lose me my position. And that's how the system works. Big time publishers hire editors that are of the same point of view and know where their butter is breaded. Columnists don't have to be told, under these circumstances, that some subjects are best left alone.

If this is so in Canada where there is, in some cities at least, real competition, what will happen in the United States and indeed Canada where the mass media including access to the internet is almost in one person's hands? Yes, it makes economic sense for these companies to combine . . . but at the same time it made a hell of a lot of sense to John D Rockefeller to have a monopoly on oil too. Publishers don't on a day to day basis censor their writers. They don't have to. But only the brain dead would think for a moment that if they wanted to write a three piece series on the greed of Ken Thompson, the Toronto Globe and Mail would be the t place to see it published. What can we do? I'm not sure. But we can start worrying about it a bit. In fact, a lot.