by Propaganda
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major media also should act as a common carrier of ideas, open “to all who have something worth saying to the public, since the essential object for which a free press is
valued is that ideas deserving a public hearing shall have a public hearing.” In the view
of the Commission, “The important thing is that the press accept the public stan-
dard and try for it. The legal right will stand if the moral right is realized or tolerably
approximated. There is a point beyond which failure to realize the moral right will
entail encroachment by the state upon the existing legal right.”
The Commission felt that the government had a supplementary role to play in
disseminating information useful to the public, a role that commercial vehicles would
find unprofitable:
Government may and should enter the field of press comment and news supply, not
as displacing private enterprise, but as a supplementary source. In so doing, it may
present standards for private emulation. While in our experience a democratic gov-
ernment is one in which government itself is one of the main objects of public discus-
sion and can therefore never be allowed to control or to regulate the debate, it is not
inconceivable that a government by the people should also be a powerful instrument
for the people, in respect to educational and other non-commercial possibilities of
the developing press.
One obvious way in which a government could help would be by subsidizing the
cost of gathering news in foreign locations, since the payoff in terms of reader inter-
est in foreign affairs was not usually present in large enough numbers to make the
cost of a permanent foreign correspondent in many locations worthwhile. However,
Zechariah Chafee drew attention to a number of risks attached to affirmative govern-
ment activities. He pointed out three ways in which well-intended subsidies could
have a harmful effect on freedom of the press.
First, there is the risk of accidental discouragement. The general tendency of
any widespread government action is to produce unexpected results. In order to
strengthen a Portuguese al iance, Britain reduced tariffs on Portuguese wines, result-
ing in increased consumption of port; unintentionally, the “result was to afflict two
centuries of Englishmen with gout.” The good intentions in developing highways hurt
railroads. More specifically, the Mail Classification Act of 1879 established low second-
class rates for the benefit of newspapers and magazines but to the detriment of books.
The Copyright Act of 1891 protected British authors but with the result that “contem-
porary English writers are almost inaccessible at any price, except for an occasional best-
seller.”53 Secondly, there is the possibility of deliberate government discouragement. For
example, when a government is in charge of licensing, officials may become “reluctant
to benefit an ungrateful recipient.” A precedent for fearing such a result is the case of
eighteenth-century British prime ministers who “did not grant literary pensions to
vigorous critics of their administration.” Any new form of regulation or subsidy brings
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with it an opportunity for discriminatory use “in accordance with an official’s judgment of meritoriousness” (GMC 477). Thirdly, there is the growing habit of government
concern with communications. Chafee alludes to the slippery slope, with each new
government initiative providing arguments for further intrusions and for controls on
forms of expression. Favours bestowed by government on media could result in control.
Chafee did not specifically mention advertising, but his remark was certainly
applicable to the Canadian scene. The Commission explicitly rejected what it saw
as the Canadian model for government involvement in the information business,
as voiced by John Grierson, former general manager of the Canadian Wartime
Information Board (WIB), who acted as a foreign advisor to the Commission. As
summarized by Chafee, this model involved a very active role for government in dis-
seminating information. It did more than pass on information sought by the media,
it also did in-depth research the media were unwilling or unable to do for themselves
and produced reference papers prior to events of interest.
Interestingly, this conclusion, made in 1947, would have to be thoroughly
revamped today. A Royal Commission in the early 1960s recommended putting a
brake on government information in Canada, specifically to reduce or eliminate propa-
ganda.54 Subsequent policy papers moved in the direction of providing more informa-
tion, and the Access to Information Act was passed in the 1980s. Meanwhile under the
Reagan administration, large budgetary increases were given to support US propaganda
around the world, and foundations were encouraged to promote propaganda at home.
The control of media by government became especially tight for war correspondents
in Grenada, the 1991 Persian Gulf war, the 2001 war on terrorism in Afghanistan, and
other areas of combat.
The Commission drew special attention to the fact that the Canadian govern-
ment was the largest advertiser in newspapers and that here was “a powerful means of
directly influencing newspapers to co-operate” (GMC 740). Nothing has changed in
this regard. On the other hand, the existence of a government network for distribut-
ing its documentary films in public theatres no longer exists, although such films are
available in public libraries and are sometimes shown on television. The Commission
report also revealed some clever manipulation by the WIB. Recognizing that its own
output would be distrusted, WIB arranged to get a noted US columnist to publish
material. Chafee commented, “Only the exigencies of war against the deadliest of
enemies could, I believe, justify the full extent of the Canadian government’s par-
ticipation in the distribution of news and ideas” (GMC 744–45). Not surprisingly,
Chafee’s thinking did not encompass the possibility that Canadian nationalist aspira-
tions might need some protection from the perpetual threat of submergence in a sea
of US media outputs.
Grierson wholly supported government information initiatives to prepare for
public acceptance of government policies. This could reasonably be described as gov-
ernment propaganda. Grierson himself was discredited later for his involvement in
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the Gouzenko affair,55 but the problem for democracies in combatting propaganda from private and extra-territorial sources still remains. His views are expressed in the
following passage, reproduced by Chafee:
We claim certain rights in carrying out a plan of government or national man-
agement which has been in general agreed to by Parliament. We try to make that
national plan successful. We claim the right to give information that is news, and
also information that is pre-news, in order to prepare people for a situation so that
th
ey are not caught. We also claim the right to create civic interest and therefore to
promote healthy discussion. We also claim the right to motivate actions... We would
be very foolish if we confused that large educational duty with the party in power....
If we feel that we are secure on general consent, then we go ahead. (GMC 746)
Chafee’s reaction to this was surprisingly similar to that which followed a
Canadian information initiative with the founding of Information Canada in the
1970s: “You are putting a professional group of a very special kind between the gov-
ernment and the media. You are refusing direct access to the government more and
more. The government’s statements of policy are all gone over before they are issued.
They are interpreted by this specialized group before they hit the media proper”
(GMC 748).
Evidently, such an arrangement could undermine the power of the media to
criticize government effectively. The Commission rejected such a proposal, because
it was concerned to see the media improve through self-regulation rather than from
government-imposed sanctions or manipulative actions. But the nub of the “residu-
ary legatee” theory is that, failing such self-regulation, some government action was
necessary, and the Canadian experience was sufficiently unappealing to the media as
to encourage self-regulating steps on their part.
The Royal Commission on newspapers (Kent Commission, 1981)
Unlike the US Hutchins Commission, the 1981 Canadian Royal Commission on
Newspapers (hereafter referred to as the Kent Commission after its chairman, Thomas
Kent) was not afraid to recommend immediate government action to deal with con-
centration in the media. There were numerous allegations of abuse of power by the
owners of newspaper chains and an especially glaring case of self-censorship by the
Toronto Star at the very time the Kent Commission held hearings in Toronto. There
was public support for the institution of a “CBC in print,” the newspaper equivalent
of the public broadcaster, but the Commission declined to make such a recommen-
dation, reasoning that the newspaper industry could soon be in decline and that the
effect of starting a competing government newspaper might be to put some out of
business. There could also be a constitutional problem: radio and television are federal
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licensing responsibilities, but how would the initiative in print be regarded constitutionally? Further, there would always be the suspicion that politics was influencing
the newspaper even when it was not. The Commission felt that, faced with the con-
stant threat of criticism concerning motivations against a history of newspapers with
identifiable political points of view and readers’ expectancy of such, such a govern-
ment-sponsored newspaper would be bland.56
The Commission’s primary recommendation—at least the one that excited the
most violent reaction from Thomson Newspapers, one of the two biggest chains at the
time—was a limitation placed on existing chains to prevent expansion and a sugges-
tion that the existing Thomson empire be dismantled. The Commission proposed the
enactment of a Canada Newspaper Act, which would stipulate that “a company own-
ing or control ing a daily newspaper which is printed in two or more distinct locations
in separate provinces of Canada shall not, either directly or through associated compa-
nies, own or control any other daily newspaper in Canada.”57 Thomson would have to
divest itself of either the Globe and Mail or its 40-odd other newspapers, constituting a third of the Canadian total of daily newspapers. Such legislation would have forced
Izzy Asper (since deceased) to choose between owning the National Post or what were
then the extensive chain of Southam newspapers that he had acquired. The recom-
mendation was made not on the basis of proven decline of newspapers under chain
ownership but primarily because the Commission felt that such ownership put too
much power into the hands of a very few people and was, therefore, undemocratic.
The Commission did not concede that there had been no decline in the qual-
ity of newspapers under chain ownership, although its own commissioned research
failed to establish any such decline. Numerous anecdotes in testimony covered in
over 7,000 pages of transcripts give useful material to anyone who wants to make
such a case, however. For example, Frank Withers, New Brunswick Chairman of
the Media Club of Canada, testified that the Irving brothers’ industrial empire
combined with control over the media led to soft-pedalling negative stories about
the former in his province. “Never does it seem to occur to the man on the street
that never in the Irving press has there been an editorial attacking or criticizing any
face of an industrial combination which owns or controls a huge proportion of the
New Brunswick economy, and also the principal means of telling the people what to
think about it.” Julian Walker, editor of the St. Croix Courier, testified that he had made critical remarks about the Irving press in a Maclean’s article and the “St. John News truck, which carried all copies of Maclean’s magazine and every other magazine that week to Charlotte County, our home area, caught fire.” The delivery truck was
owned by Irving. Reporters in the Irving press, he said, were kept busy in the “rubber
chicken circuit” and did not have time to do in-depth reporting on an Irving com-
pany. “An editor at the Evening Times-Globe is simply not going to direct a reporter, for example, to dig into why the province recently granted a major tax concession to
the Irvings for oil pipeline and oil storage facilities.”58
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Recommendations
The Kent Commission proposed a Canada Newspaper Act, whose features we will
now discuss.59
1. Significant further concentration of the ownership and control of daily newspa-
pers and of the common ownership of these newspapers and other media would be
prohibited.
The Commission suggested that the same person, company, or associates should
not be allowed to acquire more than five daily newspapers, that the combined circu-
lation owned not exceed 5 per cent of total daily newspaper circulation in Canada,
and that the point of publication be not less than 500 kilometres distance from any
other paper under the same ownership. Some flexibility in the rules might be obtained
through the Press Rights Panel (described below under point 5). As for cross-media
ownership between radio, television, and print media, the Commission proposed
that the proprietor not own a television, radio, or cable system if 50 per cent or more
of the population within good reception lived in the circulation area of the news-
paper. Again, doubtful cases would be decided by the Press Rights Panel. Southam,
the Commission said explicitly, would have to sell its 30 per cent interest in Selkirk
Communications, a major television and radio company, which had 11 radio stations
and two television stations in British Columbia (BC) and Alberta and large interests
in three other BC tel
evision stations; Southam also had six daily papers in the two
provinces. In New Brunswick, the Irving interests would have to divest themselves of
either of their two-in-one papers in Saint John or their similar Moncton papers. Other
cases were also mentioned.
2. The very worst cases of concentration of media then existing would be corrected.
The recommendations applied only to conglomerates and chains, where there was
reason to feel that editorial integrity might be compromised by other interests. The
Commission supported the freedom of the proprietor to do what he liked with his
products “provided that newspaper is his principal property” (italics in original).60 The justification for legal controls was squarely based on the social responsibility theory of
the press. The Commission felt that where proprietors had other media interests, or
stores or oil wells or pulp mills or suchlike, their power should not be accepted uncon-
ditionally. The Commission pointed to the Canadian Daily Newspaper Publishers
Association’s own declaration:
The newspaper must hold itself free of any obligation save that of fidelity to the pub-
lic good. . Conflicts of interest, and the appearance of conflicts of interest, must be
avoided. Outside interests that could affect, or appear to effect, the newspaper’s freedom to report the news impartially should be avoided. (Italics added.)61
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The reader can smile on reading this. In 1995, at a safe distance from any political pressures to enact any of the Kent Commission proposals, the Canadian Daily
Newspaper Association changed its Statement of Principles on precisely this point,
so that it now reads:
The newspaper’s primary obligation is fidelity to the public good. It should pay the costs of gathering the news. Conflicts of interest, real or apparent, should be declared.
The newspaper should guard its independence from government, commercial and
other interests seeking to subvert content for their own purposes. (Italics added)62
3. An incentive to widen the ownership of newspapers and to establish new newspa-
pers and magazines would be offered.
The act would provide a special inducement, through tax haven provisions, for
the purchase of shares in companies that acquired newspapers in consequence of the
