‘Fox News North’ nothing for Canadians to fear
News
Posted By Marc Zienkiewicz
Posted 2 months ago
*** 9 of 12 *** - Pierre Karl P ladeau, President and CEO of Quebecor Inc., Quebecor Media Inc. and Sun Media Corporation (front) along with Kory Teneycke, Vice President, Development of Quebecor Media announces that Quebecor Media , through a partnership between it's two subsidiaries TVA Group and Sun Media Corporation, will be challenging the English Canadian TV news establishment by investing in a new hard news/straight talk English specialty channel called SUN TV News. The announcement was made at the Toronto Sun on June 15, 2010. (Toronto Sun/Ernest Doroszuk)
Ernest Doroszuk/Toronto Sun |
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I don't usually use this space to promote the Quebec-based media company that I work for, but I thought I'd depart from tradition and take some time to praise the new Sun TV News network announced this week.
Sun TV News is the moniker that has been given to Quebecor's newest media project. Quebecor, one of Canada's largest media companies, is the parent company of Interlake Publishing, which owns the Lac du Bonnet Leader.
Sun TV News is an all-news English-language TV channel that wants to "shake up the current players of the Canadian broadcasting system," according to Quebecor Media president and CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau.
The goal is to launch Sun TV News on Jan. 1, 2011, pending licence approval.
"Canadians today either are watching CNN or the indistinct specialty news offerings of our Canadian competitors. As a result, far too many Canadians are tuning out completely or changing their dials to American all-news channels," Péladeau said.
"That's not good for Canadian television. It's not good for Canadian democracy. And it's not good for Canada itself. Quebecor sees this as an untapped-market opportunity. It's time for a new choice, a new voice."
The announcement signifies a major change in what is otherwise a bleak Canadian media landscape dominated by CTV and its publicly-funded counterpart, the CBC.
Much has been said this week about Sun TV News. The CBC's Don Newman dubbed it "Fox News North," and portrayed the new network as a dangerous threat to Canadian democracy and the "last thing" Canada needs.
"In the U.S., Fox News has been hugely polarizing. It specializes in drive-by attacks and misrepresentations, and is positively Orwellian at times, claiming to be 'fair and balanced' while implying that its competitors aren't," Newman writes.
"The reality is that it mainly spews out propaganda that is dangerously misleading and often factually wrong."
Newman makes a valid point. Fox News isn't so much a news network as an entertainment channel that uses the news of the day as its vehicle. It may be obnoxious, it may be controversial, it may make a lot of people angry — but the network is simply exercising its democratic right to be all those things, and more.
Sun TV News will no doubt do the same thing.
The fact is, worn-out networks like CTV and CBC have always promoted an agenda that leans more to the left than to the right.
Will Sun TV News generally have a right-of-centre slant?
"There will be a range of opinion," Kory Teneycke said. He's Quebecor's VP of development and the man who will be running Sun TV News on a daily basis. And yes, he also used to be Prime Minister Stephen Harper's director of communications.
"If you're wondering what the presentation (will be), what kind of news stories we will be
interested in, and the flavour of the commentary we'll have, pick up the Sun newspaper and you probably have a pretty good indication. The Sun newspaper has many different voices there. So will this."
Of course, left-leaning Canadians are getting nervous about Sun TV News. It's dangerous, they say, because it will promote a right-wing viewpoint, the assumption of course being that Canadians are too stupid to think for themselves, and Sun TV News might "convert" them to a right-wing belief system the way a religious cult brainwashes new recruits.
Puh-leeze.
Sun TV News will not turn Canada into a nation of Tea Party-style, Tory-worshipping, Bible-thumping extremists. What it will do is give other Canadian news networks, which currently don't have much to offer, a run for their money.
The CBC's recent attempt to re-brand Newsworld as a CNN-style network has failed miserably. Its anchors look uncomfortable. Newsworld's version of an American-style debate show, titled The Lang and O'Leary Exchange, is so bad it's embarrassing to watch.
Surely Sun TV News can do a better job, even if they do model themselves after Fox News. Say what you will about it, but Fox News is anything but boring. It might get a lot of people riled up, but isn't it a good thing to engage the public and make them think about the goings-on in their own country? What better way to bring more vitality to Canadian democracy than to get people talking and debating?
And maybe even yelling once in awhile.
Surely Canadians aren't complacent enough to believe every single opinion they will hear on Sun TV News, just as they're not stupid enough to believe every viewpoint fed to them by the CBC and CTV.
—with files from Bill Harris, QMI Agency
