After a tumultous period as vice-president of development for Quebecor, Kory Teneycke has announced his resignation. You should be familiar with him for being the main face promoting Sun TV News AKA 'Fox News North'. I'm not going to go into the battle from Avaaz against Sun TV news, but I would like to take the time to go over what this resignation means, politically speaking.
In a nutshell, this resignation means little to nothing, despite Avaaz' exectuive director and co-founder Ricken Patel's claim that it meant "a battle won in a longer fight against crony-media in Canada." I disagree with this statement. As soon as Teneycke stepped down, Luc Lavoie was appointed to the position. Whereas Teneycke was a former Harper spokesman, Lavoie is the former spokesman of former Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney spokesman. You say to-maht-o I say to-mate-o.
That being said, I do understand the significance of Teneycke being the former director of communications of the current Prime Minister. The political history was too recent for many people to feel comfortable with him heading up a news channel, which was applying for some special permits (such as the status of "must-carry" on cable channels, which means cable companies in Canada would have to carry the channel as part of their broadcasting). It is quite possible he was using some of his political power to lobby for this status, but is that really the important, bigger-picture question? No, it is not.
The important question is: How will this resignation affect the values of Sun TV News, and the Conservative view-point it is bringing? The simple answer is that it won't, which is evidenced by the hiring of Lavoie. At the end of the day, Sun TV News is still coming to Canada, and will likely be granted must-carry status, despite Avaaz' petition against it.
It is worth nothing the way that 'democracy' has been thrown around lately. Some people, such as Patel, claim biased news, such as Fox, or by induction, Sun TV News, "poisons American democracy." This claim is absurd. Democracy is best served by having a full-range of political opinion. While the opinion of the right is well-served in print media in this country, some would argue it is lacking in broadcast (some would argue differently, due to national stations like Global).
To be clear, I am not a fan of Fox News, or a person of right-wing political persuasion. In fact, I despise Fox, and have done a lot of research into the network, and many of their failings. However, diversification of the Canadian media, and more capital being put into journalism, can only be a positive step for media in this country. In a time where news coverage is shrinking due to under-funding and cost-cutting, journalists and citizens of democracy should welcome new investment in media and new political viewpoints in the media.
Andy Veilleux 
As soon as I posted this I received an email from Friends of Canadian Broadcasting (http://www.friends.ca/) discussing the issue of Harper’s staff lobbying the CRTC on behalf of Sun TV News (http://www.friends.ca/news-item/966). This would be an obvious over-stepping of boundaries for a Prime Minister, if the allegations are true. I encourage everyone to continue following this story as it twists and turns over the next few months.
I’m truly surprised by your comment that the claim ‘FOX News poisons America democracy’ is ‘absurd’. Most mainstream media is toxic for American ‘democracy’ but Fox News does standout for its blatant disinformation.
To give one of the worst examples, a 2003 poll showed that FOX News viewers were the most misinformed viewers of any television network about the invasion of Iraq. They had the highest number of factually wrong opinions: 67% believed that Iraq was linked to 911 and 33% believed WMD had been found in Iraq.
But was that poll finding correlation or causational? Examples such as FOX News changing an AP story headlined “Saddam, al-Qaida Would Be Unusual Allies,” to read “Nightmare Scenario: Iraq, Al Qaeda Linked”, or when they posted headlines like “HUGE CHEMICAL WEAPONS FACTORY FOUND IN SO IRAQ…. REPORTS: 30 IRAQIS SURRENDER AT CHEM WEAPONS PLANT” and “Weapons-Grade Plutonium Possibly Found at Iraqi Nuke Complex” make a strong case for the latter. Disinformation works.
Or how about when FOX’s Bill O’Reilly told viewers that a CNN-Gallup poll showed “66% of Americans support going into Iraq, even without UN mandates” when the poll stated that only 37% did.
This is why I strongly disagreed with the CRTC’s decision to allow FOX News into Canada as their own regulations state: “5(1)(d) A licensee shall not broadcast any false or misleading news.” This is a complex topic but some basic moral standard must be upheld.
Fox NEWS was set up by a major Republican spin doctor for the Nixon & Regan campaign. FOX hired mostly Republicans – Andrew Kirtzman, a cable news reporter, said, “all employment discussion ended” when he refused to state what political party he supported. And they gave airtime almost exclusively to Republicans – 89% percent of guests with a party affiliation were Republicans on FOX News’ flagship political program.
Fox News is the TV propaganda arm of the Republican party. In 2003 it pumped out clear disinformation to support an illegal invasion which would kill 100,000’s of Iraqis. Their disinformation was successful in misinforming public opinion & debate.
If this does not reach your threshold of ‘poisoning democracy’ what does?
PAX
Footnotes
Click to access IraqMedia_Oct03_rpt.pdf
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3062
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1067
[PS – The friends.ca link goes to the wrong article]
That’s extremely odd (that the friends article link is wrong, and appears to be gone).
As for them not poisoning democracy, I’m still of that believe. I agree Fox News is terrible for their misinformation, but ideally, other journalists and members of the public should be dealing with these errors, as should those who they are reporting wrongly about. The minute you limit a media outlet from reporting what they want to, so long as it is not slanderous or libelous, is the moment you forfeit democracy. Freedom of the press is one of the core values of democracy, moreso than any other freedom (Thomas Jefferson stated as much). So yes I absolutely agree with you about the terrible things they do in their reporting, and I dislike their media station more than any others I’m aware of, but you can not silence them democratically. Range of opinion is good, despite their opinion being absurd and ridiculous at best most of the time.
They deserve to be taken to task for their misinformation, by other journalists (if they can be referred to as journalists), academics, and members of the public.
I do not believe they poison democracy, despite their failing as a news source. They do not hurt the democratic process, or infringe on anyone’s freedom. They may poison some Americans’ view-points on the world, but that is not democracy they are poisoning. The word democracy is being misused in this case.
Sun TV News must be new, as I have never heard of them. Are you sure they have a conservative bias? If they are new then it would be difficult to determine that since they haven’t built up much momentum in that department.
I agree with Andy, they do not poison democracy, what they poison is journalism. Journalism is meant to be unbiased. But when you have a station that is so overtly bias against half of the political landscape, it hurts the industry as a whole, and unfortunately, journalism is an essential element of a democracy. But in a free market, you can get your information from anywhere. If you think Sun or Fox is poisoning democracy or journalism, don’t watch it, because that’s really all you can do. You can’t order the government to shut them down or anything, that’s simply not an option. Not in a free society at least.
Though I like Jon Stewart’s take on this same issue.
“Fox proved that a point of view can work, I’m just saying that the point of view doesn’t necessarily have to be partisan. That you can create a network with passion that is interesting. I’m not talking about a guy sitting in front of a wall. Everyone thinks that the way to copy Fox is to make it louder and flashier, that’s not what they’re doing, that’s not why it’s working. It’s working because they know where they’re coming from, and these other networks don’t.”
If anyone wants to kill Fox News or Sun TV, the best way to do that is to create a competing station with the same passion, but instead of that passion being for conservatism, make it for journalistic integrity.
Thanks for the comment and the link. Sun Tv News is not yet in existence, technically. I’m writing an editorial about Sun TV News in the newest Lambda (which will be available Thursday). Jon Stewart is a lot more intelligent than most people give him credit for.