This proposal is advanced by Peter Murdoch, CEP vice-president for Media; John Deverell, past president CEP 87-M Southern Ontario Newspaper Guild; and John Spears, CEP 87-M steward and business reporter for The Toronto Star.

We request comment and support from those who care about the development of democracy and the protection and encouragement of free speech. Our hope is to broaden our base of support far beyond this initiative by the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP).

Izzy Asper and CanWest Global Communications, by drastically centralizing editorial policy in that large newspaper and television corporate empire, have drawn renewed attention to an old conundrum.

How can there be credible democratic discourse in Canada or any country when the major public information channels, television and newspapers, are owned or controlled by a handful of individuals accountable only to themselves?

There cannot.

The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada favours a democratic future. We believe the vast majority of Canadians share our preference.

We support Fair Vote Canada and electoral reform, the campaign to broaden political choices and discussion in this country by making every vote count equally.

We believe that the pursuit of truly democratic representative government will require greater freedom of expression and a higher standard of journalistic professionalism in the mass media.

The present lack of accountability in our major media is inconsistent with the operation and maintenance of a free society, democratic or otherwise. The symptoms of the shortfall are all around us, and our political system has yet to generate correctives.

The democracy and credibility gap between frustrated citizens and the Parliament of Canada is wide and growing wider.

In parallel descent, the mass media are experiencing a credibility gap and attendant decline in popularity. Newspapers in particular have become irrelevant to large sections of the population. To reverse the secular slide in credibility and circulation, they must become more consistent and effective tribunes of democracy and the public interest.

For this to be possible, the standards of journalistic professionalism and integrity must rise. Thousands of working journalists must know that there is an accepted set of journalistic principles upon which they can rely, and a way of upholding them.

The owners of major media must support and fund an organization which articulates and defends principles of public interest journalism.

Working journalists in the monopolized television and newspaper media must know that, where there is conflict between the principles of public interest journalism and the direction set by ownership, there is a channel of appeal where professional standards reign.

Our modest proposals do not pretend to be a panacea for media partisanship, trivialization, sensationalism, misdirected attention and all the other mass media shortcomings. There can be no definitive solution to the permanent tension between the interests and priorities of private media owners and the needs of public interest journalism.

If we are to improve the credibility of mass media and, ultimately, the performance and credibility of our public institutions, however, there must be a better balancing of the interests. That is our aim.

Media reform, and voting reform, are the hopeful path to the greater good for our country and our world. We should all strive for them. May the media reform come first, and may it come soon.

To protect and enhance journalistic standards, our union advocates the creation by federal legislation of Media Advisory Councils at all newspaper and television outlets of significant size, and a National Media Advisory Council to gather, assess, interpret and publicize the insights and findings of the enterprise Councils.

To keep the state at arms length from their operations, the Advisory Councils will rely on the commitment of media owners, working journalists and sympathetic public interest representatives.

Legislation is necessary only to ensure that media owners acknowledge the requirement to share their control of journalistic standards with working journalists and well-informed public interest representatives, and to support the activity of the Councils.

We expect such industry-based Media Councils to bring significant improvements in journalistic practice, and the attendant public benefits, without undue encroachment on the rights of management.

The composition and methods of the proposed Advisory Councils are sketched below.

Wealthy owners of media corporations share many values but the differences among them, and in the cultures of the newsrooms and other content-generators over which they preside, can be significant. The public has an interest in preserving and encouraging competitive diversity in the information and entertainment culture, and particularly in the journalistic culture.

The excessive concentration of media ownership limits diversity in two ways. First, by widening the dominion of a single corporate administration, it exercises a homogenizing influence on what can be published and which sorts of journalistic personalities will be hired.

Second, by burdening media enterprises with takeover debt and the need to repay it, corporate consolidators divert media corporate resources toward debt service and away from the journalistic and operational effort, thus degrading the information environment.

This was the Thomson story, and the same negative results have flowed from the modern consolidations and miscalculations of Hollinger, CanWest Global, Rogers Communications and Quebecor. Most recently Quebecor's expensive sally into cable television has been accompanied by substantial job cuts in the Sun Media newspaper properties, while CanWest Global's acquisition of Hollinger's Southam properties has been followed quickly by a directive to cut $100 million per year from operations budgets.

On this clear evidence, corporate media ownership combinations under convergence or any other name should be presumed to be against the public interest. This is why our union has long advocated, albeit vainly, limits on the extent of ownership or control of any medium of mass communication by a single individual or corporate group.

In principle, and in the name of diversity, we favour divestiture orders to break up the largest media empires. As pragmatists, we do not expect this to happen quickly.

We regard the regulation of ownership as a secondary tool in relation to journalistic standards. The primary tool, which can function quite independently of shifting ownership patterns, is legislation to mandate genuine industry self-regulation through Media Advisory Councils.

The United States still has FCC rules against cross ownership of newspapers and broadcast stations in the same local market, although those rules are under pressure. Otherwise, the U.S. mass media have already been grouped into what the Nation magazine recently described as "the perfect oligopoly."

In Canada the CRTC, with the tacit consent of cabinet, recently relaxed the ban on cross-ownership of media. Canadian media owners have thus been encouraged to achieve the complete oligopoly of which U.S. media owners dream.

CanWest Global, BCE , Torstar and Quebecor have all taken advantage of the regulatory lapse to dabble in cross ownership of newspaper and television properties. On the evidence so far, and setting aside the unusual question of the National Post, CanWest Global and Quebecor in the name of synergy have done damage to themselves and to the newspaper properties they control.

Convergence is a synonym for monopolization or concentration of ownership. To serve the public interest through diversity of journalistic voice, our union advocates restoration of the strict boundary between the two traditional mass media channels. Newspapers and television stations in the same market do not belong under common ownership or control and the separation should be restored by divestiture orders if necessary.

The federal government should remove this question from the discretion of the CRTC by legislating accordingly.

Media Accountability: The Modern History

Canada's private media owners and managers and especially newspaper publishers long have insisted that they serve the public interest. CBC management makes the same claim. How can Canadians help them live up to it?

This essential question was answered 20 years ago by the Royal Commission on Newspapers, commonly referred to as the Kent commission. Unfortunately, Ottawa buried the report and as a consequence, media ownership and control in Canada have become vastly more concentrated over the ensuing two decades.. The accountability of the media owners and their managers to the public interest remains largely hypothetical.

The Kent commission's transgression was to recommend creation of a federal agency with power to block any newspaper corporate combination it deemed undesirable. Publishers counter-attacked strenuously, arguing that Big Brother was being invited to control Canadian newsrooms. They killed the Kent report in its entirety.

The deficiency in Canadian law and policy which the Kent Commission was trying to address still requires remedy.

The Kent Report Revived
Genuine Media Self Regulation

The Kent Commission's most creative and interesting proposals were aimed at using institutionalized suasion, free of government influence, to improve journalistic standards and conduct so newspapers would better serve the public interest.

Our union now urges that these proposals for genuine media self-regulation be revisited, adapted to encompass television newsrooms as well as newspaper editorial departments, and adopted as law by the federal government.

Following are the key components of our proposal for Media Advisory Councils.

Editor Contract. The editor-in-chief of every newspaper and the news/editorial director of every broadcast outlet should have a published contract, negotiated with the media employer, which sets out his or her goals, authorities, objectives, responsibilities and commitments. The contract should make clear that the editor, and only the editor, bears ultimate responsibility for the news content of the media enterprise.

The flavour of such contracts will vary with the market positioning of the media outlet and temperament of owner, but we expect some basic principles will be shared by all.

Non-interference. In Kent commission words, the contract should "express the proprietor's undertaking not to attempt to override the judgment of the editor-in-chief as to what to publish or not to publish."

Editor's Annual Report. The editor-in-chief or news director should submit an annual report assessing the media outlet's performance against its stated objectives, the report to be published by the outlet.

Media Enterprise Advisory Councils.
The Councils in their operation are to be free of government influence and to express the industry's best possible effort to regulate itself.

Each newspaper and broadcast outlet should have a seven-member council (e.g. Toronto Star Advisory Council, Vancouver Sun Advisory Council, CHCH Advisory Council) composed of two representatives appointed by the proprietor or management, two elected by union-level editorial staff, and three from the general public.

The four from within the enterprise would together choose two members of the public with no direct interest in the enterprise, and they in turn would choose a third public member as committee chair.

The Advisory Council annually would review the outlet's performance in light of the goals and objectives set out in the contract of the editor-in-chief, the editor's annual report, proposals and complaints received by the council, and a meeting with the editor. It would issue an annual report for required publication.

The Advisory Council for each enterprise should meet quarterly or more often if it deems necessary, to entertain and dispose of proposals and complaints from readers and working journalists on journalistic matters, referring them to provincial Press Councils or issuing reports as appropriate. The Councils could designate reports for mandatory publication.

Our union believes that the more systematic scrutiny of media behavior which would result from the operation of the Advisory Councils, including the public airing of some of the more interesting disputes among the practitioners of journalism, would alter climate and practice, help keep the media enterprise on its stated mission, and in doing so greatly advance the public interest.

Until common ownership of television and newspaper outlets in a community is disallowed, the Advisory Councils of each should meet jointly at least once a year and should be free to combine as they deem necessary to evaluate the performance of the television and newspaper enterprises.

The Kent commission distinguished single newspapers that are genuinely the property of a natural person or single family from those which are units in a larger corporation. The distinction remains useful.

Our union says newspapers with daily circulation under 5,000 should be exempt from the requirement to participate in a Media Advisory Council, as should television stations which mount no local newscast.

National Media Advisory Council

Overseeing Canada's far-flung web of television and newspaper newsrooms are the owners and professional managers of a handful of highly influential corporate chains and networks.

Monitoring the performance of these corporate entities in relation to the public interest requires the creation by legislation of a National Media Advisory Council.

An essential piece of the mandated exercise in industry self-regulation, the National Media Advisory Council will mirror the local Advisory Councils in structure. Its two employer and two employee representatives will be elected from among the local Advisory Council representatives from each group. They in turn will choose the national public interest representatives.

The National Council will draw on the reports of local Advisory Councils, and its own hearings of proposals and complaints, to prepare an annual report evaluating the performance of the major mass media corporations. All outlets of member media organizations will be required to publish the National report and recommendations.

Source of Standards
Employer association statements now issued for purposes of voluntary self-regulation may well be sufficient for the public purpose.

Extent of Hearings
We favour complaint hearing limits and limits to report length similar in style to those now practiced by publisher-controlled organizations such as the Ontario Press Council. The Advisory Councils we propose are to be swiftly advisory, not ponderously adjudicative.

Finances
The local Advisory Councils should be financed by the employer. The National Media Advisory Council should be similarly financed on a formula based on corporate size and ability to pay. Media corporations which fail to participate in and encourage the Councils and pay the assessed dues in timely fashion would lose their status as tax deductible advertising vehicles.

Conclusion

Our union's policy package - public editor's contracts, media advisory councils, limits on the concentration of ownership within each medium, and a ban on cross-ownership between newspapers and television - strike the necessary balance between legitimate private interests and the public interest.

The issues of concentration and cross-ownership are likely to involve study, investigation and legal proceedings before any state action occurs.

There is no reason, however, to delay creating the Media Advisory Councils. They are urgently needed to speak to mounting concerns about the abuse of media corporate power and to begin to raise journalistic standards and restore media credibility.

The Advisory Councils will subject media owners, managers and working journalists alike to organized public scrutiny and accountability.

Working journalists in the newspaper and broadcast industries will gladly accept this democratic challenge. Media owners too should agree that being required to listen to regular reminders about their stated journalistic standards is not an unreasonable infringement of freedom in a country that aspires to be democratic.

Please address comments, suggestions and or consent to public support to Peter Murdoch c/o Martine Pratte at mpratte@cep.ca or phone (613) 230-5200, Ext. 228 with copy to CEP 87-M SONG President Martin Mittelstaedt at martin@song.on.ca or phone (416) 461-2461 ext.