corporate and think-tank researcher

Media bias

New BC Think Tank’s Findings Remarkably Helpful to Clark

22 Aug '14

Resource industry success benefit us all, Resource Works says. Some more than others, I say. Boost production in B.C.’s resource industries and we’ll all be better off — especially those of us in the Lower Mainland. That’s the soothing message emanating from the province’s newest corporate-sponsored think tank, Resource Works. It’s good news for all …

Follow the Money, Part 6 — Obesity: A new role for second-hand-smoke-causes-cancer deniers

21 May '14

Last week I wrote about tobacco industry funding for Fraser Institute research that “proved” second-hand smoke doesn’t cause cancer. You may think that’s ancient history. And in one sense you’re right. The tobacco industry has shifted its doubt-manufacturing operations to countries like Russia, Indonesia and China, where the incidence of smoking—and cancer—continues to rise. But …

How Canada’s corporate media framed the Occupy movement

01 Dec '11

The Occupy movement occupied two parallel, rarely intersecting universes in the corporate media. In one, described frequently in the Toronto Star, occasionally in the Vancouver Sun and Globe and Mail and only once in the National Post, Occupy is a worldwide movement created in response to the growing gap between the one percent at the …

How the media shaped the Vancouver election

17 Nov '11

An Angus Reid poll reported by The Globe and Mail and CTV News a few days before the 2011 Vancouver civic election asked respondents about the issues important to them. Topping the list were: providing good sanitation services, ensuring public safety, enhancing the overall quality of life, protecting the environment, dealing with homelessness and poverty, …

Canada’s right-wing media monopolies move further right

10 Nov '11

Canadian news reporting and commentary is controlled today by a handful of wealthy families and corporations. Let’s call them the Gang of Seven.

Murdoch’s ties to Big Tobacco

23 Jul '11

Rupert Murdoch’s phone-hacking problems have been all over the news in recent days, but it wasn’t too long ago his media properties were providing a supportive environment for Big Tobacco that went largely unreported. Murdoch’s connection to Phillip Morris Co. was revealed through secret industry documents made public as a result of the landmark 1998 …

Big Media’s Sway Will Be Tested at Ballot Box

02 May '11

(This article was first published in The Tyee on May 2, the day of the election.) Most corporate news outlets buttressed Harper’s drive for a majority. But has the game changed? Richard Nixon famously declared “I am not a crook” in his televised defence of his handling of the Watergate affair. After that everyone thought …

Sun News to Shine on Conservatives

12 Apr '11

On April 18, with two weeks left in the federal election, Stephen Harper will receive a boost in his quest to achieve his long-lusted-after majority. That’s the day Sun News, the new conservative channel also known as Fox News North, goes live, as the final cog in the right-wing media machine is lowered into place. …

Will Corporate Media Determine Election Outcome?

27 Mar '11

If most of us still get our information about elections from the corporate media—including the CBC—then the way the media frame the campaign could determine the election’s outcome. Will Harper finally get his long-sought majority, so he can move from incremental change to the blitzkrieg approach perfected by the New Zealand Labour government in the …

Vancouver Sun blanks out bank’s role in Wisconsin government’s attack on unions; alternative media fill in gaps

24 Mar '11

Trust the Vancouver Sun to whitewash corporate shenanigans. Case in point, the annual meeting of the Bank of Montreal in Vancouver on March 22. The bank has become a major target of public hostility in Wisconsin, where last December it bought the Marshall and Ilsley Bank for $4.1 billion. While BMO shareholders listened to CEO …

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Harperism: How Stephen Harper and his think tank colleagues have transformed Canada

harperism cover

Margaret Thatcher transformed British political life forever. So did Ronald Reagan in the United States. Now Canada has experienced a similar, dramatic shift to a new kind of politics, which author Donald Gutstein terms Harperism. Among its key tenets:

A weakened labour movement – and preferably the disappearance of unions – will contribute to Canada’s economic prosperity
Cutting back government scientific research and data collection will improve public policy-making

The success of Harperism is no accident. Donald Gutstein documents the links between the politicians, think tanks, journalists, academics, and researchers who nurture and promote each other’s neo-liberal ideas.

Media bias

Harperism: How Stephen Harper and his think tank colleagues have transformed Canada

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