corporate and think-tank researcher

Donald Gutstein

26 Sep '05

The Clout of an Advertiser

Canwest publisher wrings hands over loss of Telus ads Ask a Vancouver Sun manager what business her paper is in and she’ll likely tell you it’s delivering news and information to readers. The product the newspaper has for sale to its readers is the news. This might be true if readers actually paid for the

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31 Aug '05

The Sun’s Unfair Slant On the Telus Dispute

Union sources get short shrift by BC’s paper of record This is a media war,” Telecommunications Workers Union president Bruce Bell declared after his members were locked out of their Telus workplaces. But it’s a war his side will have a hard time winning. He faces the well-resourced telephone company and its highly paid ‘war-room’

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13 Jun '05

Building a Left-Wing CNN

Canadian Paul Jay’s drive to create Independent World Television. Independent World Television will go public on June 15. The goal, as bold as it is big, is to create an alternative news and current affairs network that is, as its name implies, global in reach and free from corporate or government pressures. The network’s success

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06 Jun '05

How CanWest Helped Elect Campbell and Company

Unlike the dubious ‘strike vote’ story, a report bad for Libs lay buried until after election day. Four days after the provincial election, the Vancouver Sun analyzed the campaign strategies of the BC Liberals and New Democrats. This was interesting but because a key player was missing, the analysis is incomplete. The key player is

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08 Apr '05

Fazil Mihlar’s Monday Morning Sermons

The Sun’s opinions editor has his sources, way to the right. 8 Apr 2005 Most Mondays, Vancouver Sun editorial page editor Fazil Mihlar lectures us on the wonders of capitalism but if he’s going to be credible he needs to be more candid about some of the sources he uses. In an October 2004 column,

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17 Mar '05

Fox News Format Infiltrates Canada

CanWest’s television talk show. Fair? Balanced? You decide. CanWest’s ‘Global Sunday’ bills itself as “Canada’s number one current affairs talk show.” But a lot of Canadians won’t find their views reflected in the talk. Take the show that aired on February 20, featuring a panel discussion on equalization. The purpose of equalization is to ensure

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21 Feb '05

Budget Coverage Out of Balance

Sun treatment of the last two NDP budgets and the current Liberal effort was vastly different, despite some similar numbers. The Vancouver Sun was blatantly biased towards the B.C. Liberals in its coverage of the recent Campbell government budget. Such bias cannot be assessed by simply examining the Sun’s reporting on the start of the

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10 Feb '05

U.S.-Style Media Monitor Comes North

How the Fraser Institute’s U.S.-inspired CanStats targets the media and distorts science reporting. The Vancouver Sun has framed the debate over fish farming as “a case of duelling science.” Beneath the surface of this story is a shadowy organization working to discredit any science critical of the industry. CanStats is short for the Canadian Statistical

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28 Jan '05

Senate Comes to Scrutinize Big Media in BC

What’s it like to live in Canada’s media concentration capital? Just fine, a senate committee has already been told. They’ll hear other views next week. Vancouver has the dubious honour of being Canada’s media concentration capital. So when the Senate Committee on Transport and Communications decided two years ago to hold hearings on the state

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20 Dec '04

What the Sun Calls an ‘Exclusive':

And other concerns as B.C.’s paper of record ‘converges’ its news. TheTyee.ca CanWest Global, the Asper corporate vehicle, is the largest owner of newspapers in B.C. In the Lower Mainland it owns the Sun and Province, twelve community papers, plus papers in Nanaimo and other centres. It’s safe to say that in B.C., news is

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22 Nov '04

George Bush’s Real Agenda

Hoover Institute channels neocon demands through Condi Rice. Ronald Reagan obtained most of his ideas from the big business-backed Heritage Foundation. Ten days after Reagan’s 1980 victory, the foundation delivered a 3000-page, 20-volume report entitled Mandate for Leadership to the Reagan transition team – whose ranks included 11 Heritage staff and fellows. The mandate contained

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17 Nov '04

A Sun Columnist’s Change of Heart

The Vancouver Sun’s Don Cayo’s first heart attack was treated in Florida and he trashed the care he might have received here. Now he’s changed his tune. Sometimes it takes a life-threatening situation to make someone see the truth – Medicare works. That’s apparently what happened to Vancouver Sun columnist Don Cayo, judging from the

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23 Oct '04

Who Funds the Fraser?

The Fraser Institute’s 30th anniversary a good time to review its financing, influence. Aspiring reporters are taught in journalism school to “follow the money” when doing business or government stories. Who’s financing the project? Who will benefit from the rezoning or tax break? Who will lose out? This year the Fraser Institute celebrates its 30th

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08 Mar '04

The Fraser institute’s Plan to Undercut Public Schools

Its ‘report cards’ in The Province are divisive propaganda — and more about helping privatizers than the poor. St. George’s School sits among the Mercedes-Benz’s and Japanese Maples of west side Dunbar, just steps away from the forest trails of Pacific Spirit Park. The two buildings of the private, boys-only school — one for Grades

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Where School Choicers Got Started

The idea’s roots reach deep into U.S. Christian and libertarian politics. The roots of the Fraser Institute’s report card, issued last week, lie buried in the American Deep South and at the Chicago School, where racist conservatives and radically individualistic libertarians made common cause to undermine public education. In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court ended

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