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Last August Canadians woke up one day to
find that the biggest media empire in
the country had been created and was
under Jewish ownership. Not that anyone
quite put it that way, but it was so. As
the headline in the National Post put
it, "Asper becomes nation's media
king."
"Izzy" Asper, already a TV
mogul, had bought Hollinger/Southam's 13
daily newspapers, 126 community
newspapers, Canadian Internet
operations, and fifty per cent of the
National Post itself. In British
Columbia, it meant that the Aspers and
their CanWest empire controlled every
media outlet that really counted,
including The Vancouver Sun, The
Province, and the Victoria
Times-Colonist Subsequently, they were
also to own BCTV, the biggest TV
station, and were already owners of CKVU-TV
(now to be sold).
Fast forward to April 12, when a
column appeared in The Outlook, a small
newspaper on Vancouver's North Shore
under the headline "Welcome to
Izzy's World". The piece showed
that the Aspers had fired the publisher
of the North Shore News, Mr. Peter
Speck, plus Executive Editor Timothy
Renshaw. It was also stated that when
those firings took place, three weeks
previously, a notice had been posted in
the newsroom to the effect that my name
=97 known to everyone as a former
columnist of the News =97 should never
appear in the paper's pages again. Not
even in a letter to the editor.
The fiction before that had been that
Mr. Speck had "retired". Which
he had, in the same sense as saying that
a man who has been killed has
"died". He had been told by
the Asper messenger that his 32-year
role as publisher and previous owner of
the News was over and that he was to
leave immediately. Mr. Renshaw,
meanwhile, was given some nonsense about
the paper having to reduce costs.
It was clear from the Outlook piece
that Messrs Speck and Renshaw were
paying the price for having supported me
through thick and thin against
"human rights" complaints made
against me by the Canadian Jewish
Congress and B'Nai Brith. I was of that
opinion the moment they left, although
no-one in the Asper Shadowland is going
to admit to such a thing. But what else
could it be?
Under Mr. Speck the North Shore News
won dozens of awards and was the most
financially successful community
newspaper in the country. In 1999 it won
the Canadian Community Newspapers
Association award as "the best all-
round community newspaper in
Canada". Two years before that it
was designated in the U.S. as being one
of the top three in North America. Mr.
Renshaw, for two years running, won the
Association's award for outstanding
column writing.
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The
Asper excesses in editorial control have
not been confined to Vancouver's North
Shore. A couple of weeks ago the Toronto
Sun reported that CanWest had instructed
all its newspapers to run an article by
Liberal flack Warren Kinsella attacking
the Canadian Alliance for going after
Jean Chretien. "Must appear in all
CanWest newspapers", was the order.
There's more. According to Frank
magazine, CanWest's editors have been
told not to criticize the CRTC, Canada's
radio and television supposed watchdog
that hands out and can cancel
broadcasting licences. Not surprising,
seeing that the CRTC had approved
CanWest's $800,000,000 bid to buy a
string of TV stations from Vancouver's
Western International Communications
Ltd.
Mine is not the only monicker that is
unpopular with Izzy and Co., and I'm in
pretty good company. Big-time newspaper
writers Richard Gwyn and Gwynne Dyer are
also reported to be on Izzy's shit-list.
Why? Perhaps they haven't been one
hundred per cent in favor of Israel. For
the same reason, Jewish pressure got The
Vancouver Courier to drop the great Greg
Felton, although the Aspers didn't own
the paper at that time.
Quite apart from Jewish control and
its editorial biases, we have here
monopoly control of a vast section of
the media that in former days would have
been the subject of severe inquiry. When
the Vancouver Sun and Province joined
together as Pacific Press in the late
1950s, for instance, the Monopolies
Commission took years to approve the
deal and then laid down certain
conditions. When Hollinger/Southam
bought the North Shore News the
arrangement was again many years in the
making. Now, all is silence, in
Parliament and elsewhere. What are they
afraid of? Getting on the wrong side of
Izzy?
One might have expected the remaining
media to utter a groan or two, but
silence has been the rule. Or happy
consent. When the news of CanWest's
takeover of Hollinger/Southam broke,
Maclean's magazine had a virtual orgasm
spread over six pages, complete with
pictures of a grinning Izzy and son
Leonard. Peter Newman, another member of
that fraternity, also sang a song of
praise. Would he have been so keen if
the Gentiles had made such a grab?
When it happened, Asper Jr. said that
the deal would create "exciting
changes in the media scene". True.
Welcome to Izzy's world! |
