Glacier Media (https://www.glaciermedia.ca), is the criminal enterprise you pay for. And it is just one of the big four newspaper groups that Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada are giving $600 million of taxpayer's money to. this is on top of the $75 million already paid out by the Canadian Periodical Fund.
But back to the original sentence, why is Glacier Media a criminal enterprise, you might ask? Well for starters they engage in software piracy, tax fraud, illegal collusion and employ overseas hackers. If they weren't a politically well connected company they'd be the target of multi-national investigations, instead they receive millions of taxpayer dollars. They might not yet escape unscathed, as California takes software piracy very seriously, and will even seek extradition. As well, while the government of Canada turns a blind eye to the overseas hackers illegally working for Glacier Media, shareholders likely won't feel the same. Part of Glacier's business is digital information, do you really want trust digital information that comes from a company who employs hackers in India, and possibly Russia as well? Probably not.
However in the meantime, if you're Canadian, your hard-earned dollars are going to support Glacier, along with Black Press, Torstar, and Postmedia. Those are the big four publishers in Canada, they not only publish 99 percent of all newspapers and magazines in Canada (well, from Ontario west anyway, it's a little different in Quebec and the Maritimes) they publish almost all commercially printed products.
The CBC, doing their part as the Liberal's Ministry of Propaganda, have tried to portray the $600 million as a benefit to local independent newspapers. That is a bald faced lie. There are, perhaps a dozen independent newspapers left in the entire country. And as someone who formally owned and published an independent newspaper, it's unlikely those few independents will receive a dime.
Under the aforementioned Canadian Periodical Fund, I was, for reasons unknown, ineligible for grants. As was every other independent newspaper I consulted on the issue. Independents, base don my research, were uniformly denied grants. The big four received grants, even for publications that were profitable. Considering this new fund will have monies doled out by an industry panel (i.e people employed by the big four) odds of the few remaining independents receiving money are slim to none.
It bears mentioning here that not only do the big four control all print media in Canada, they are also inter-owned. Torstar owns 15 percent of Black Press, and Post Media owns at least 15 percent of Glacier Media. Further more, Black Press and Glacier, which are both headquartered in B.C actually share material. So far from being hardbitten competitors, they basically represent what is effectively an amorphous media blob.
So how much does $600 million mean to these companies, how important is it to their bottom line? Well, in short, it's critical to their bottom line. Ten years ago not so much, but today Torstar and Postmedia are barely hanging on. The smaller partners in the big four, Glacier and Black, are healthier, mostly because they consist almost entirely of weekly community newspapers, as opposed to the big urban broadsheets of Postmedia and Torstar that bleed millions. Still, Glacier and Black are hurting. Glacier's market cap is down to $70 million, from over $250 million ten years ago. So for a fifth of the total of the new fund the government could buy Glacier. Don't think they haven't effectively done just that. Paul Godfrey, CEO of Postmedia, and a man who is infamous for failing up, is the new media fund's biggest cheerleader.
What's unusual about this, is Godfrey has, up until very recently, been among the Liberal party's biggest critics. But now that they're going to be paying his $9 million dollar salary, he thinks they're just the cat's pajamas. Now many of you might say, what difference does it mean, who reads newspapers anymore? Obviously a diminishing number, but the Liberal Party now owns all those eyeballs, especially in smaller communities, where for people there, the local newspaper is still their major source of information. But the control of media information flow doesn't begin and end with newsprint.
Before this nationalization of Canada's newspapers by the Liberals (and let's not pretend it's anything but) these same newspaper companies we're complaining about the CBC's encroachment into their territory. Increasingly offering print articles online. The big four clamored, the CBC is a broadcaster, stick to that. But now that all of their existence is dependent on government largesse, they're all good chums, as I noted above, the CBC doing their bit to paint the massive media fund as supporting those small town newspapers, a little peeve of Canadiana. They know it's a big lie, they're one of the architects of the big lie. And when government gets control, they will use regulation to do what the big four have always dreamed of, eradicate truly independent media found online. They will say, if it's not an approved government source, then it's fake news. The Liberals have always hated the freedom of online media, one Liberal MP famously proclaiming in Commons, "Online people can just publish whatever they want, whenever they want." Gasp, can't have people doing that, can we? And, as government's always do, they will say they're only working in the interest of public safety. They're protecting us all from misinformation, and offensive opinions. Of course offensive opinions are always those they disagree with. Don't forget, our current Prime Minister, Justine Trudeau (I shudder every time I say that) said he admire's China's basic dictatorship. he said that before the election, and he still won, scary thought. We now elect people who proclaim their admiration for dictatorships. If he admires China's dictatorship, then stands to reason he admires their Orwellian social credit system. It's actually beyond Orwellian, since it monitors people in ways Orwell could never have imagined.
We're not there yet. Still, with your tax dollars supporting the media, I'm sure the argument will go thusly, 'we want to protect taxpayer's dollars, so we can't allow competition can we, we're not shutting down free speech, we're just being good fiscal managers.' These are scary times indeed, will citizens wake up in time, or will they go quietly into the societal prison they supported?
But back to the original sentence, why is Glacier Media a criminal enterprise, you might ask? Well for starters they engage in software piracy, tax fraud, illegal collusion and employ overseas hackers. If they weren't a politically well connected company they'd be the target of multi-national investigations, instead they receive millions of taxpayer dollars. They might not yet escape unscathed, as California takes software piracy very seriously, and will even seek extradition. As well, while the government of Canada turns a blind eye to the overseas hackers illegally working for Glacier Media, shareholders likely won't feel the same. Part of Glacier's business is digital information, do you really want trust digital information that comes from a company who employs hackers in India, and possibly Russia as well? Probably not.
However in the meantime, if you're Canadian, your hard-earned dollars are going to support Glacier, along with Black Press, Torstar, and Postmedia. Those are the big four publishers in Canada, they not only publish 99 percent of all newspapers and magazines in Canada (well, from Ontario west anyway, it's a little different in Quebec and the Maritimes) they publish almost all commercially printed products.
The CBC, doing their part as the Liberal's Ministry of Propaganda, have tried to portray the $600 million as a benefit to local independent newspapers. That is a bald faced lie. There are, perhaps a dozen independent newspapers left in the entire country. And as someone who formally owned and published an independent newspaper, it's unlikely those few independents will receive a dime.
Under the aforementioned Canadian Periodical Fund, I was, for reasons unknown, ineligible for grants. As was every other independent newspaper I consulted on the issue. Independents, base don my research, were uniformly denied grants. The big four received grants, even for publications that were profitable. Considering this new fund will have monies doled out by an industry panel (i.e people employed by the big four) odds of the few remaining independents receiving money are slim to none.
It bears mentioning here that not only do the big four control all print media in Canada, they are also inter-owned. Torstar owns 15 percent of Black Press, and Post Media owns at least 15 percent of Glacier Media. Further more, Black Press and Glacier, which are both headquartered in B.C actually share material. So far from being hardbitten competitors, they basically represent what is effectively an amorphous media blob.
So how much does $600 million mean to these companies, how important is it to their bottom line? Well, in short, it's critical to their bottom line. Ten years ago not so much, but today Torstar and Postmedia are barely hanging on. The smaller partners in the big four, Glacier and Black, are healthier, mostly because they consist almost entirely of weekly community newspapers, as opposed to the big urban broadsheets of Postmedia and Torstar that bleed millions. Still, Glacier and Black are hurting. Glacier's market cap is down to $70 million, from over $250 million ten years ago. So for a fifth of the total of the new fund the government could buy Glacier. Don't think they haven't effectively done just that. Paul Godfrey, CEO of Postmedia, and a man who is infamous for failing up, is the new media fund's biggest cheerleader.
What's unusual about this, is Godfrey has, up until very recently, been among the Liberal party's biggest critics. But now that they're going to be paying his $9 million dollar salary, he thinks they're just the cat's pajamas. Now many of you might say, what difference does it mean, who reads newspapers anymore? Obviously a diminishing number, but the Liberal Party now owns all those eyeballs, especially in smaller communities, where for people there, the local newspaper is still their major source of information. But the control of media information flow doesn't begin and end with newsprint.
Before this nationalization of Canada's newspapers by the Liberals (and let's not pretend it's anything but) these same newspaper companies we're complaining about the CBC's encroachment into their territory. Increasingly offering print articles online. The big four clamored, the CBC is a broadcaster, stick to that. But now that all of their existence is dependent on government largesse, they're all good chums, as I noted above, the CBC doing their bit to paint the massive media fund as supporting those small town newspapers, a little peeve of Canadiana. They know it's a big lie, they're one of the architects of the big lie. And when government gets control, they will use regulation to do what the big four have always dreamed of, eradicate truly independent media found online. They will say, if it's not an approved government source, then it's fake news. The Liberals have always hated the freedom of online media, one Liberal MP famously proclaiming in Commons, "Online people can just publish whatever they want, whenever they want." Gasp, can't have people doing that, can we? And, as government's always do, they will say they're only working in the interest of public safety. They're protecting us all from misinformation, and offensive opinions. Of course offensive opinions are always those they disagree with. Don't forget, our current Prime Minister, Justine Trudeau (I shudder every time I say that) said he admire's China's basic dictatorship. he said that before the election, and he still won, scary thought. We now elect people who proclaim their admiration for dictatorships. If he admires China's dictatorship, then stands to reason he admires their Orwellian social credit system. It's actually beyond Orwellian, since it monitors people in ways Orwell could never have imagined.
We're not there yet. Still, with your tax dollars supporting the media, I'm sure the argument will go thusly, 'we want to protect taxpayer's dollars, so we can't allow competition can we, we're not shutting down free speech, we're just being good fiscal managers.' These are scary times indeed, will citizens wake up in time, or will they go quietly into the societal prison they supported?
I am not sure if you can correctly label Glacier media as "criminal". All they do is apply for and receive government largesse in exchange for being the mouthpiece of government. Similarly, you cannot accuse government of being criminal because it extracts funds by force since it is deemed to be doing that for the public good.
ReplyDeleteNow when you combine the two actions, things get a bit more "swampy". You have one entity taking things at gunpoint (just try and not pay the imposed taxes or worse, just try and oppose the people who come to collect it and you will see the guns coming out) and bribing another entity to act as its propaganda agent.
But it is not "criminal" since it was done under cover of law.
Under cover of law makes all the difference. What is murder for me (unlawful killing) becomes an execution (lawful killing when done by the state). That they are both homicide makes no difference as to follow on consequences.
The "swamp" is what you are really complaining about. If I can coin a phrase ... "slime under cover of grime is not a crime".