7 H By BRIAN DAVIS The Caplan-Savageau Report on Broad- casting Policy, released last week, slammed private broadcasters for their repeated failure to live up to their promises of broadcast performance, the basis on which they have been granted the use of valuable public assets. The report, commissioned by the Con- servative government following the last round of cuts to CBC, was widely expected to provide the justification for further government erosion of CBC servi- ces. What has appeared, however, is a report generally supportive of public broadcasting and critical of private broad- casters which have used the public air- waves to enrich themselves. The hefty, well-researched report also criticizes private broadcasters for their failure to provide more Canadian child- ren’s programs, documentaries and dra- mas. Though private broadcasters control the lion’s share of resources, the CBC pro- vides 55 per cent of Canadian programs. As one defender of public broadcasting notes in the report: ‘““‘We make the pro- grams. They make the profits.” Noting that almost half of all television viewing in English-speaking Canada is devoted to drama in some form or another — plays, movies, soap operas, police shows or comedies — the report is concerned that only two per cent of these dramas are Canadian. In 1984, the average Canadian had access to 52,000 hours of programming, of which a mere 370 hours was Canadian-produced drama. Canadi- ans living in large cities, the report notes ironically, have more American programs on tap than Americans do. Report slams private TV, boosts CBC ests and is unlikely to change anything. The report is also scathing in its con- demnation of ‘the Canadian Radio- television and Telecommunications Com- mission (CRTC) which it claims has failed to guard the public interest. The CRTC was established in 1968 to regulate the airwaves and ensure this valuable piece of public property was used for the purposes outlined in the Broadcast Act. It was also to ensure the predominance of the public broadcast system. But in spite of decades of broken prom- ises by private broadasters, the CRTC has never revoked a licence. Far from protect- ing the broadcast interests of all Canadi- ans, the CRTC has turned itself into a dogged defender of the narrow economic interests of a few wealthy broadcasters. By refusing to hear competitive bids for licen- ces, and refusing to accept applications for a transfer of licence from anyone but the buyer designated by the vendor, the report claims the CRTC has implicitly turned the public airwaves into private property. The bulk of the research in the report clearly identifies the private broadcasters as the cause of the crisis in Canadian broadcasting, and yet the report’s recom- mendations coddle them. Flying in the face of its own figures, the report con- cludes it is primarily the federal politicians and the CRTC which are to blame. The report ends by giving the private broadcas- ters a slap on the wrist and telling them to behave better in future. A spokesperson for the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, which rep- resents the private broadcasters, said last week they support the report in both prin- ciple and spirit. They recognize the report does not threaten any of their vital inter- recommendations on public broad have now been officially presented by the task force to a government intent on 4 | ‘ for strictly commercial purposes The carefully researched and cost course of privatization, deregulation and continentalism. Far from protecting an expanding public broadcasting, 4S Ws report calls for, the Tory government 0 Brian Mulroney is determined to wreck it, In 1984, it cut the CBC’s budget by $85 million and cut another $48 million earlier this year. These cuts have redu e CBC’s new program production from 1 hours in 1976 to 60 hours in 1985. The report also outlines some of the dangers of deregulation, citing the Unite States, where half the nation’s 9,000 radio stations have abandoned local newscasts as unprofitable since they were deregu- lated in 1981. se of television The report notes that the u ete. tainly ensure the dominance of American programming. If as Canadians, we wanta strong, vital, public broadcasting system to ensure that our ideas, opinions am values are reflected on the airwaves, the report concludes we must build and pay | for it as a matter of public policy. Finding | } the money is the easy part of the problem: } the report shows how it can be raised from a combination of tax revenues and Wir teoffs, advertising revenues and subscrip- tion fees. What is lacking is the political will, pat- ticularly in Ottawa. Only a prolonged pub- lic uproar will keep dust from collecting on the Report of the Task Force on Broad- | cast Policy. : ea IAPA: the ‘contras’ of the media get together / By IVAN BULIC Three hundred and fifty of the most influential publishers and editors from 27 countries in the western hemisphere were in Vancouver this month to be wined, dined, awarded honors and to launch a major media offensive against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. Members of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), they were holding their 42nd annual convention at the invita- tion of, among others, British Columbia’s three major forest companies and produc- ers of export newsprint. Wealthy, powerful, highly educated and almost exclusively male — most are from traditional publishing families — they form a politically crucial elite. And they were treated as such when Prime Minister Brian Mulroney addressed them and recommitted his government “‘to the stabil- ity of the hemisphere, (and) to the vouch- safing of our democratic and western values against the menace of terrorism.” Since its inception in Havana by U.S. publishers in 1943, the IAPA has been preoccupied with the “menace that revolu- tionary terrorism” poses to its conception of the freedom of the press in the Americas. Although most members are from Latin America, [APA headquarters are in Miami, Florida, and are run by the U.S. members who play what they like to call a “big brother role to our Latino colleagues.” The IAPA says it is “devoted to the pro- tection and promotion of freedom of the press and the people’s right to know in the New World.” In that capacity, [APA dele- gates deplored a growing trend towards vio- lence directed at journalists and the closure of newspapers in Paraguay, Chile and Nica- ragua. They chastised Chile’s Pincohet govern- ment for censorship and restricting “‘free press competition,” but those noble senti- ments didn’t prevent Augusto Edwards, the 10 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 1, 1986 pro-Pincohet publisher of El Mercurio, a daily paper friendly to the government and based in Santiago,Chile, from taking his seat on the IAPA committee on the free- dom of the press. . The IAPA saved its big guns for Nicara- gua. Violeta Chamorro, publisher of La Prensa, a Managua daily closed this June for its open support of U.S. financial and political assistance to the counter- revolutionary U.S.-backed Contras’ bloody war against Nicaragua, called the paper’s closure “brutal.” Rodrigo Madrigal Nieto, Costa Rican foreign minister, was less diplomatic, receiv- ing a standing ovation when: he accused Nicaragua of “refusing to yield in favor of democracy and regional peace.” Suitably indignant, the IAPA then appointed a committee to raise funds for La Prensa to establish a “campaign of interna- tional pressure” on Managua to re-open the Managua daily. The committee members, however, wouldn’t be specific about who would be using those funds or about how “international pressure” would differ from the current Contra attacks against Nicara- gua. With that bit of nastiness aside, the dele- gates settled back and enjoyed the presenta- tion of awards “for meritorious public service on behalf of the community and in the defence of freedom of the press.” Abandoning objectivity, a member of the awards committee itself, Eduardo Ulibarri, editor of Costa Rica’s La Nacion, gave him- self an award for his editorials criticizing the Pentagon for not being tough enough in “maintaining the kind of military pressure on the Sandinistas that the contras have posed. “In Costa Rica and Honduras,” he said, “there is widespread opposition to the San- dinista regime and substantial support for the Contras.” Other IAPA honors went to Wall Street Emboscade © Comitiva WROTE A I TT TI TA RET RI on EL MERCURIO, ELMIAMIHERALD... political elite. Journal editor Suzanne Garment for her series on Cuba, entitled, ‘“‘Castro’s Havana: Seductive and Sad.” 3 Essentially paraphrasing existing White House policy, Garment said Cuba’s achievement “in educating the population, or in health seem less extraordinarily admirable,” while “the threat they post to us in trying to extend their influence in the world seems more concrete and credible.” Miami-based Diario Las Americas pub- lisher Horacio Aguirre’s editorials, how- ever, stretch the credulity of even the staunchest Reaganite. He was touted for warning of “the international communist conspiracy” and for proposing that Pinochet would be able to easily suppress “commu- nist subversion in Chile if the western media were not so preoccupied with his so-called poor record on human rights.” The IAPA’s idea of objective journalism was best summed up by Alejandro Cisneros freedom of the press for the economic and of Lima’s El Commercio, who deplored the use of the terms “liberated zones” and “people’s executions” when referring to the activities of leftist guerillas. It is giving SPUr ious legitimacy to what he calls “terrorists” and their criminal acts.” Were it not for the delegates obvious _ power in manipulating and controlling pub- lic opinion and access to information, IAPA conference could be shrugged off as” an expression of the fanciful wishes another group of wealthy conservative bus- inessmen on a junket away from home. But the IAPA, and it highly placed government connections in both the US. and Latin America, has a greater effect on North America and the world’s perception of Latin America than most jou ‘want to admit or the [APA cares to reveal. Ivan Bulic is a Vancouver freelance jou nalist. =