Donald Gutstein

Donald Gutstein has studied the media, neoliberal think tanks and corporate power for several decades. His concern has been to understand how and why the Right has been winning the war of ideas and how the Left can successfully oppose this.

He’s written six books that document corporate efforts to bend public policy to its advantage. The most recent is Harperism: How Stephen Harper and His Think Tank Colleagues Have Transformed Canada. Before that were books on propaganda-managed democracy (Not a Conspiracy Theory: How Business Propaganda Hijacks Democracy), the commercialization of the Internet (e.con: How the Internet Undermines Democracy), foreign investment in Canadian real estate (The New Landlords: Asian Investment in Canadian Real Estate) and Vancouver planning and politics (Vancouver Ltd).

Gutstein taught in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University for three decades, teaching courses in documentary research (which gave students the skills and confidence to find out for themselves), an introduction to journalism in Canada, information policy and propaganda analysis.

He was co-director of NewsWatch Canada, a media-monitoring project in the School of Communication at SFU, which led to the publication of The Missing News: Filters and Blindspots in Canada’s Press.