Media Hegemonies

Torstar is one of the largest corporations in Canada, owning a variety of print media and websites, and having a stake in television and radio stations nationally, as well as a few television stations. The list of companies either fully- or partially-owned by Torstar is quite impressive and surprising at the same time. Torstar owns:

• The Toronto Star newspaper
• Metro newspaper
• Sing Tao Daily, a Chinese language newspaper which is also involved in printing, outdoor advertising, Chinese telephone directories and weekly magazine publishing
• Eye Weekly, an entertainment publication
• Real Estate News
• Sway, a quarterly magazine that celebrates the power of Canada’s black community
• The Canadian Immigrant magazine
• Desi-Life magazine created for the South Asian community in the Greater Toronto Area
• Torstar Syndication Services, which provides value-added services by collecting, packaging, marketing, licensing and distributing text, photos and graphics
• InsuranceHotline.com, an online quoting service
• Workopolis, Canada’s leading provider of online recruitment and job search solutions, which Torstar jointly owns with Gesca Ltd.
• Olivecanadanetwork, an advertising network of premium websites, also jointly owned with Gesca Ltd.
• Toronto.com, Canada’s most popular search site
• Wheels.ca, an informative website for car buyers
• Shopalot.ca, e-commerce site to find the best deals in the GTA
• Ourfaves, a website where people share what they think is great in Toronto
• Metroland Media Group, which owns over 100 community newspapers across Ontario, as well as many advertising venues, distribution networks and web publishing
• Harlequin Enterprises Limited, the global leader in series romance and one of the world’s leading publishers of women’s fiction
• Black Press Ltd., which publishes more than 150 newspapers and had 17 press centers in Canada and the U.S.; Torstar owns 19.35% of this company
• Transit Television network, which develops, installs, services and manages digital out-of-home advertising networks on various forms of mass transit
• CTVglobemedia, Canada’s premier multi-media company which owns CTV Inc. and The Globe and Mail and invests in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, and in Dome Productions; Torstar owns 20% of CTVglobemedia

I find this list to be quite impressive. Torstar owns or has a stake in some of the largest companies in Toronto, and possibly in Canada, as well as some companies I have never even heard of. I had never heard of shopalot.ca or ourfaves before reading the Torstar website.

I also found it quite surprising to learn that Torstar owns both the Toronto Star and has a sizeable stake in The Globe and Mail. I have read both these newspapers and I will admit that they seem to have similar viewpoints in terms of the issues that are presented. Then again, perhaps that is the point of this blog pot assignment. One company owns (partially or in wholly) two different newspapers that are supposed providing unbiased facts on the issues at hand; however, we all know that newspapers, like all media outlets, do print biases and formulate stories to fit with their views and goals. It can then be assumed that, if the Toronto Star is printing a certain story and depicting it in a certain way, The Globe and Mail will probably print a story on the same topic, and depicting it in the same way. The people who own both these newspapers have certain goals and opinions and will ‘report’ the news in the way that suits their company best. Therefore, it can be assumed that the people who own both these newspapers are using two largely popular forms of media not only to provide us with news, but to get us to believe what they want and support their company.

This is the issue I have with cross-media ownership. I think that it is difficult to find objective, unbiased news when the majority of publications and broadcasts in our society and owned by a select few large media moguls. For example, let’s say that the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail are both publishing a story about new restaurants around Toronto and they feature a restaurant in Etobicoke. Then, that restaurant starts to grow in popularity because readers of those papers are visiting it to try its food. Then, that restaurant appears on Toronto.com as a recommended restaurant and, therefore, more people eat there. So then, people submit that restaurant to OurFaves and it is recommended even further. Maybe at some point, that restaurant is also mentioned in Torstar’s other publications and broadcasts. If Torstar wants this restaurant to be successful and popular, it will happen through all of the channels that Torstar has to use.

Perhaps this is somewhat of a simple example, but it illustrates some of the problems with cross-media ownership. Whatever a large media mogul like Torstar decides that we will see, read or hear will be disseminated to us through as many channels as Torstar decides are appropriate to use. We may be bombarded with a particular message, think that it is coming from different sources but, in actually, it is just Torstar feeding us the same information over and over. Maybe we think that the restaurant in Etobicoke is really great because it is recommended by different newspapers, magazines, website and programs in the GTA but, in actually, Torstar would have manufactured the popularity of that restaurant by using the resources that they have available to them.

I guess that using an example like a restaurant takes away from my point in that it really doesn’t seem like an important problem. Imagine instead a political message that is being used to either promote or put down a particular candidate or political party. By disseminating a certain political message, Torstar is trying to sway people to vote for the political party that they support, probably because it will benefit Torstar in some capacity.

We believe that we have all these different sources of media that offer us semi-objective facts. What’s really happening is that we do have a variety of media sources, but they are owned by a relatively small number of large media companies and this enables them to put their messages out over a variety of media sources, promoting their messages and ideas even further. I don’t think that cross-media ownership is beneficial to the public because we are lead to believe that we are receiving a variety of viewpoints in the media but, really, we are only receiving a select few over and over again.

Works Cited

"About Torstar - Businesses." Torstar. 2007. 5 Nov. 2008. www.torstar.com/about_business.php .