Ownerships exist in all types of businesses, including the newspaper industry. Concentrated ownership in the field of newspapers can be defined as the extreme control of a newspaper firm by the insiders (manager, BOD, etc.). Ownerships have been changing significantly for more than 60 years in Canada and have been affecting Canadian society as a whole. The journals and articles by Kelly Blidook, Joseph Jackson, Minelle Mahtani, David Skinner, and Walter Soderlund are relevant and useful to the research question since they all discuss the different effects of concentrated ownership on the contemporary newspaper industry. The general concepts of ownerships, the history of concentrated ownership, and the specific effects of concentrated ownership
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Between the 1970’s and 1980’s, the Canadian senate created the Davey Report and was then reviewed by the Kent Commission. The studies questioned the bias that is produced in concentrated newspapers and then examined whether the restriction of including different opinions into newspapers on national issues would be a threat to journalism and valid Canadian evidence. The Davey report contained several key recommendations, including creating a Press Ownership Review Board (PORB) which would simply support or reject ownership of newspapers. The creation of the PORB was supported because unless it is proven otherwise, anything that expands concentration of ownership in newspapers are adverse and unattractive to the public interest. The Kent report studied how the owner reacts to the public’s view, how the owner of the newspaper worked, such as his perspective, and what is done with the profit that is received. The report came to the conclusion that only tiny amounts of the profits are put into editorial content where the rest is mainly kept with the owner. The commission from there had to propose legislation to ban any chain from owning more than four newspapers, prohibit ownership of a newspaper in a different province (for example Thomson was forced to sell Globe and Mail or all of the other newspapers they owned) as well as other …show more content…
Blidook explained how it is a fact that owners enforce their own political views into their newspapers, however, he wonders if it is applied in commenting on events in newspapers or even reporting the news. A survey was conducted from the perspective of journalists and the results showed that ownership does affect newspapers, including the output and not just the editorial content. The journalists claimed that the newspapers basically reflect the owner’s point of view and that “greater concentration of newspaper ownership decreases the quality of newspaper content” (Blidook, 2009). Blidook suggested parts of the newspaper that are not written by the journalists is where most of the ownership has the highest impact. The results of the survey showed that only 6% believe that owners should include their views into the news content where 13% believed that it should be in opinion content rather than being input into the
Between the 1970’s and 1980’s, the Canadian senate created the Davey Report and was then reviewed by the Kent Commission. The studies questioned the bias that is produced in concentrated newspapers and then examined whether the restriction of including different opinions into newspapers on national issues would be a threat to journalism and valid Canadian evidence. The Davey report contained several key recommendations, including creating a Press Ownership Review Board (PORB) which would simply support or reject ownership of newspapers. The creation of the PORB was supported because unless it is proven otherwise, anything that expands concentration of ownership in newspapers are adverse and unattractive to the public interest. The Kent report studied how the owner reacts to the public’s view, how the owner of the newspaper worked, such as his perspective, and what is done with the profit that is received. The report came to the conclusion that only tiny amounts of the profits are put into editorial content where the rest is mainly kept with the owner. The commission from there had to propose legislation to ban any chain from owning more than four newspapers, prohibit ownership of a newspaper in a different province (for example Thomson was forced to sell Globe and Mail or all of the other newspapers they owned) as well as other …show more content…
Blidook explained how it is a fact that owners enforce their own political views into their newspapers, however, he wonders if it is applied in commenting on events in newspapers or even reporting the news. A survey was conducted from the perspective of journalists and the results showed that ownership does affect newspapers, including the output and not just the editorial content. The journalists claimed that the newspapers basically reflect the owner’s point of view and that “greater concentration of newspaper ownership decreases the quality of newspaper content” (Blidook, 2009). Blidook suggested parts of the newspaper that are not written by the journalists is where most of the ownership has the highest impact. The results of the survey showed that only 6% believe that owners should include their views into the news content where 13% believed that it should be in opinion content rather than being input into the