Canada’s largest newspaper chain, Postmedia, is owned by an American hedge fund headed up by a wealthy donor to Donald Trump.
It doesn’t even need to be specifically targeting the U.S. Canada should require all media operating in Canada with a physical presence to have Canadian majority ownership/controlling interest. That is (I believe) enforceable as well as non-discriminatory and fully justifiable as a matter of national security.
Wouldn’t it be a shame if everyday people went out and spray painted Trump on every conservative sign. That would be vandalism ppl and plain wrong.
And apartment complexes, or department stores.
This, so much this. I literally just went by the bay and it’d just fucking sad. It’s a squeezed out husk
I figured things were at the end when Nespresso pulled out their boutique from the flagship downtown Montreal location last year, or two years ago.
The homeless tents lined up on the West and East sides of the building didn’t help, or the defective escalators.
They say the retail landscape changed too much and passed them by, but downtown there’s Simon’s that has IMO pretty much the same large store with clothes, sheets, bath supplies. No appliances or perfumes though, maybe The Bay was just too big.
If they’re going to be internationally owned, they should have to have a heading of the top of articles when the bias is made away from Canadian interests. We should have choice of news, we should also know where the bias in the reporting is coming from when it’s not Canadian owned.
Similar to a site like ground news that shows the way articles lean and from which publishers.
ive been saying this for years.
we need a bias label, and an ownership label, on the front of every newspaper and published story or “opinion piece article”. we need to know who owns what, and where they come from, and why they own it in the first place, and what their ties are. not a nice little bow on the end that say “the author, larry smith owns a dog and a cat in new york and is married, the end” but completely leaves out the part where “larry smith” donated to the proud boy movement and has been known to spread misinformation.
disclaimers on things like cigarettes and alcohol make sense, so does this. if something can cause harm, we should know about it before we even get involved with it.
I think this is part of a larger issue, in which people, even a lot of journalists I know, see news media as this bastion of neutrality and facts. It’s a noble goal, which I do think journalists should pursue, but in reality any news publication will have biases. Even just which news you decide to highlight can bring up bias, let alone the actual things you write about the news.
Things would be a lot better if every journalist, whether right-wing, left-wing, or centrist, were upfront about their views and how the environment they’re in shapes them. Bias is unavoidable, but being upfront about your biases can at least properly frame your views.
Most people don’t read the news at all, they certainly won’t take the time to read a bio on every single article they’re reading.
Really the problem is media literacy and everyone becoming so meta minded. If a politician says something, they said it, that’s a fact. The constant need to tell people how they should think about everything is where things have gone wrong. What’s the strategy behind the thing the politician said? What impact will this have on the voters? Blah blah blah.
Putting a meta layer on top of the news where people will analyze the bias of the person analyzing the strategy behind what a person said isn’t getting us closer to the truth, it’s building more layers of meta bullshit on top of the other meta bullshit.
Facts aren’t biased. It’s all the crap they package with the facts that has the bias.
Print the quote. Show the speech. Focus on the facts and let people think for themselves about their opinions on those facts.
Facts in and of themselves aren’t biased. Bias is introduced when you consider which facts get broadcast, and which don’t. The context in which facts are stated also adds bias. I think that bias is fundamentally inherent to humanity.
You’re probably right about people ignoring bias markers, but I was thinking more “incorporating your bias consciously, rather than subconsciously, throughout the article” instead of a bio or blurb at the top.
As soon as you tell someone that there is bias in an article they’ll likely ignore any facts in that article.
Really a major issue we have today is people falling down conspiracy rabbit holes. Are the likes of Alex Jones going to be telling people their bias honestly? So if we have all of the responsible journalists telling people their bias while those that peddle conspiracy theories don’t, doesn’t that just make it easier for those that peddle conspiracies? “This article debunking what I’m saying has a liberal bias, of course liberals are going to claim that I’m lying!”
At least the effort diminishes over time. There are a lot fewer mainstream journalists than articles.
I would like to see more non-profit effort into making this information plainer and more accessible, in a way that has wide reach yet doesn’t depend on media cooperation. Heavily promoted robust (and free) browser extensions, for example, that can parse out publication and author and will automatically show terse bios, or autogenerate (or select from a comprehensive bio) author/publication background information relevant to the specific article. The signal-to-noise ratio has to be super high so a tiny amount of additional information is highly informative and also pervasive.
Tools like Ground News or the 3rd-party publication rating systems don’t go nearly far enough and don’t have enough reach nor reduce user effort enough.
It’s important to support Canadian owned news.
You’ll find great quality journalism from The Tyee , the Narwhal, or The Walrus.
I’m sure there are many more - perhaps we should create a list
100% we need to fight oligarchy reach. They’ve already taken so much of our news and journalism we need to reclaim it and never let it go.
Absolutely. I hope Carney has the cojones to make this happen. Can’t have a foreign country threatening to annex us, masquerading as Canadian media.
Carney is a former central banker, he will not do anything to upset the flow of money. Realistically, every single career politician in the world is complicit in this. Why can we build no more, houses? Why is everything so expensive? Why is the American party of “progressiveness” running Kamala Harris whose brother is CEO at Uber? It’s an illusion, they are all compromised, they are all bought, that’s just the nature of Capitalism. We have bring back the death penalty, but only for corporate person-hood. If you commit global terroristic acts like Meta, Muskrat and Amazon, we should be able to kill these things. We have to stop putting the 1%'s property rights over the lives of the 99%. It’s our planet, why do we need elected individuals whose sole purpose is to make decisions detrimental to everyone but themselves. We need to make Fight Club a documentary.
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I block everything Meta so I don’t know what that is, but why would you link to centralised social media from the fediverse. We come here to avoid the tracking.
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Repeating this statement:
Now is the time to be getting information from Canadian Owned and Operated media.
There will be disinformation campaigns unlike any other election.
Now’s also the time to admonish your friends and family for consuming enemy state media about their own country. Uncomfortable family talks.
I’ve already had one with my dad. He would’ve supported P.P and was asking my opinion.
Retired boomer with no imagination so he took up a part time job as a driver in a plumbing shop. His conservative coworkers poison his aging grey matter, and I have to deprogram him now and then. Thankfully my dad’s not a reactive dick and will read sources I provide him that he’s not read and change his mind. Begrudgingly. That old boy conservative mindset is ingrained in him deep. He always has a look on his face like he’s betraying his community voting against cons. I don’t get it, but he’s not as bad as he could be.
My point is, people have to fucking try with family if there’s a chance they can be reasoned with. Don’t be cowards/doormats.
Those uncomfortable conversations are essential, and I appreciate that you’re putting in the work. It’s not about “deprogramming” so much as encouraging critical evaluation of news sources.
Media literacy is becoming increasingly vital as we approach the election. The challenge is that many people don’t realize how their media consumption shapes their political views—they just see it as “the news.”
What’s worked for me is asking questions rather than making statements. “Where did you hear that?” followed by “Have you verified that information with a Canadian source?” opens the door without creating immediate defensiveness.
Your dad’s willingness to engage with alternative sources shows he values truth over tribal politics, even if reluctantly. That’s actually quite rare these days and worth appreciating.
The “betraying the community” feeling is something I’ve noticed with older conservatives too. There’s this sense that changing one’s mind is somehow disloyal, when really it’s just part of being an informed citizen. Democracy depends on people who can evolve their thinking based on new information.
Well said!
Your dad’s willingness to engage with alternative sources shows he values truth over tribal politics, even if reluctantly. That’s actually quite rare these days and worth appreciating.
For sure I appreciate this more than it seems. I focused on the negatives to try and empathize with anyone reading with more difficult relationships. I can’t be fully myself around mine due to their religion that I rejected long ago for example.
American companies shouldn’t be allowed to own or operate anything in Canada, period
Hedge funds shouldn’t be allowed to own any company, period
American companies shouldn’t be allowed to own or operate anything in Canada, period
NAFTA is going to make that downright impossible sadly.
If you want your information to be basically unpolluted - keep the American propaganda machines out of your country.
They are being used as part of a major foreign influence campaign (Wild guesses as to who they are supporting) so yeah, we should put a stop to that bullshit
I highly recommend reading Manufacturing Consent[wiki]. It’s easy to find free online. It explains how mass media is systematically filtered by five major factors, the first being ownership, which is more and more relevant every year as media outlets consolidate under the ownership of billionaires like Murdoch, Bezos, Musk and Bloomberg, who have very different material class interests to the other 99.99999[…]% of the population.
How about banned from owning any Canadian business? Yes, that includes the hedge fund that owns your org’s parent company too
They did a smash up job with Hudson’s Bay. Financial terrorists is what they are.
They’re vultures and parasites. They get a friendly CEO into a company who then sells off useful assets and changes to renting/leasing.
Does your org own property/offices. Sell those of to another company under the hedge to show high numbers for the first numbers. Then the company needs to rent - often from those same funds and possibly that exact same property they’re still in - which then makes the business less and less profitable as supply chain is also replaced with whatever profits the hedge most.
Finally, declare bankruptcy, fire-sale any remaining assets (probably to hedge-fund buddies), close up shop and let all the workers go
A tale as old as capitalism
How about banning them from majority share in any major Canadian business. I’m tired of the buy, drain, dismantle cycle perpetuated but these vultures
