In this global economic environment, business is not conducted through competition, quality of services and cost. Business is conducted for the purpose to make money for the people who have already money. As fair competition has been replaced by an oligopolistic market, the bottom line of the new global business is market share rather than quality of service and costs. Once you have a sizable market share for your goods or services, you manufacture profits by cutting people's lives.

And this is happening with the takeover of the National Post by the Asper's family. In fact, the National Post has lost close to $200 million since its launch in 1998, and it is expecting to lose some $50 million this year. You would think that a business losing money should be a liability, oh no, we are in the global economy now and there is speculation that CanWest paid between $50 and $100 million for Black's 50% share. Further, not happy of the current share of the market, CanWest has been flooding our campuses with free of charge newspapers. This would appear to be a bonus for the students, but whenever you reflect a minute about it, you realize that this is just another strategic plan of our CanWest to become ever bigger.

The global business game has become the bigger the better. And what about journalistic freedom? I tell you about CanWest's journalistic freedom, there is less and less as the Aspers interfere with the politics of the country, and as they tell their editors to be soft with the Israelis' assassinations and be hard with the Palestinian's. There are more than two perspectives to any story, and this is called journalistic freedom.

Some references

Related social and economic articles published by Ensign

CanWest Global http://www.canwestglobal.com/overview/index.html

Scalpel hangs over Post, by Keith Damsell, The Globe and Mail, August 31, 2001

Campus newspapers turn protectionist, Aidan Johnson, National Post, August 30, 2001 http://www.nationalpost.com/commentary/story.html?f=/stories/20010830/673981.html

David Asper's put up or shut up: from defending David Milgaard to insulting Joe Clark and our journalists, by Mario deSantis, March 7, 2001 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/desantisArticles/2001_300/desantis342/asper.html

Gazette publisher steps down. Differences with daily's new owners, CanWest Global, cited for Oct. 1 resignation, by Bertrand Marotte and Ingrid Peritz, The Globe and Mail, September 1, 2001 ­ Page A8