G20 journalists garner support from Canada and abroad

It's comforting to know that groups far and wide are coming to the support of the media who were roughed up and/or arrested during the G20 weekend.

The latest is a release issued in Vienna from the International Press Insitute, a global network of media executives, editors and journalists. The IPI Press Freedom Manager says journalists "have a right to cover such events, including any protests that accompany them, without interference or harassment from police".

We at the Canadian Media Guild are asking members to tell us about what happened to them, to make sure that the whole story affecting media employees is heard, in all the right places. Julian Falconer and four journalists have filed complaints with the Office of the Independent Police Review Director in Toronto. That complaint is important. But it's not all that should be done. If and when any other inquries are called, the way the police handled all members of the media ("mainstream" and independent alike) must be documented and included.

The Canadian Journalists for Free Expression is doing what it can to make sure what happened is properly documented. It's doing a survey of journalists who believe "their freedom of expression was compromised by police/security personnel".

Now that we've had almost a week to hear from people, it's clear that the range of interference and harsh treatment directed at media workers was unprecedented. The cases of the independent journalists that Falconer is handling are the most publicized. But going largely unreported is the way the "mainstream" accredited employees were prevented from doing their jobs, in varying degrees. Read this account by Colin Perkel, long-time Canadian Press reporter who's done several tours in Kandahar (and yes, at one point he was a CMG executive member). He tells of the police operation that trapped hundreds of regular citizens and media personnel at a city block (Queen-Spadina) for five hours on Sunday. What I had not heard before is the degree to which equipment owned by Canadian Press was ruined by this operation, as police kept these people trapped in a torrential downpour in an operation now known as "kettling". I understand the cost to replace the damaged gear may be higher than $20,000.

Gear can be replaced, of course. It's the disregard for professional news gathering during public events like these that's cause for concern.

Celebrating the survival of CHEK in Victoria

A big note of congratulations to employees of CHEK in Victoria for surviving Week One after leading the effort to buy the station and rescue it from closure.

CHEK’s story of survival against all odds is another glaring example of how the media is doing a lousy job of covering its own crisis. And this one needs to be told, because there are lessons in it for many of us.

CHEK is one of five E! stations that Canwest put up for sale in February. By July, Canwest claimed it couldn’t find a buyer and CHEK would go off the air by the end of August.

While Canada’s media owners spent the spring and summer complaining that local news was no longer viable, we know a lot of prospective buyers weren’t listening. They knew they could improve on the E! model for local TV, which we know is deadly. For example, the E! station in Hamilton, CHCH, was charged more than $51M by Canwest for airing a package of mostly American shows. Compare that to the $8M spent on local news and sports. Revenue for 2009 was projected to be $44M. That’s respectable but not if you’re footing the bill for expensive Hollywood stuff. (Those figures were gleaned from Channel Zero’s successful application to the CRTC to buy CHCH.)

You can bet the figures for CHEK were similarly onerous.

Investors who thought they could improve on the model couldn’t get negotiations going with Canwest, and the competing groups of U.S. bondholders that appear to be running it. Things looked like they were going to stall.

So a group of employees dug in and began their rescue. Station manager John Pollard was the first to get the ball rolling and work on an employee purchase. “If he had put the Canwest corporate interest in front of the station’s interest, we would not be here today,” says assignment editor Richard Konwick who’s also president of CEP local 815M. Lesson #1.

“Virtually all” of CHEK’s 45 employees bought shares worth $15K each. CEP put up $105K in interest-free loans which worked out to $3,500 per employee to offset their cost of buying the shares.

Strings were pulled – by local MP Gary Lunn, who happens to be Sports Minister in the Harper cabinet. Levi Sampson, president of the Harmac pulp mill in Nanaimo, which was saved from closing by a similar model, helped rally local investors raise more money. Lesson #2. It's good to have friends in high places.

Many twists and turns later, the deal got done a week ago today. The employee group and local investors raised about $2.5 million to cover the first bit of operating costs and Canwest announced it was selling the station for $2.

The employees make up the 2nd largest single investor group and while the corporate structure of the new station hasn’t been worked out, Konwick says the intent is to have an employee representative on the Board of Directors.

Further, he says the deal would have been impossible if the station had not been unionized, because “you need some kind of structure to be able to pull this off”. Lesson #3.

Who says local news is dead? CHEK is a proof that people in communities know there’s real value in local news – as long as it’s freed from conglomerate structures that make no sense.

Free TV: CTV gets it wrong

I shouldn't be, but I am surprised at how badly some journalists cover our own industry. I know some are "edited" by their corporate bosses. On Friday night, CTV got the story of the U-S transition from analog to digital TV all wrong. And in this case, you have to wonder if there's a reason why.

Reporter Tom Walters’ piece left people with the impression that the switch from analog to digital TV broadcasting in the United States means the end of antennas and over-the-air television. He called it the End of an Era.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth – at least in the United States. There, all the major broadcasters have invested in making the switch to digital, and signals are still being beamed to TV sets right across the country, for free. The only difference is they’re digital signals now, which means they’re clearer and sharper signals. All you need is a converter box to receive them (which the U-S government helped people buy, by handing out millions of dollars worth of coupons), or a new TV. And a good antenna really helps.

So, in the United States, you can still get a wide range of TV signals in most places, for free.

In this country, broadcasters are refusing to make the transition, which is due to take place officially in 2011. Only the biggest cities west of New Brunswick can get digital TV over the air. And broadcasters have no plans to change that.

There’s a great story on cbc.ca that gives an overview of the transition in the U-S and the lack of transition in this country. Now, any wonder why CTV, which has already written off the idea of providing free over-the-air digital TV, would air such an incomplete story?

By the way, my union, the Canadian Media Guild, thinks all Canadians should have access to free TV, even after the digital conversion in 2011 and has provided original research about this to the CRTC. It’s been an uphill struggle.

Walters ended his piece with the Canadian broadcasters’ line (read: excuse): that only 10% of Canadians rely on over-the-air signals for their television, while the rest get cable and satellite, so the digital conversion will mean nothing. He didn’t mention that up to 10 million Canadians will be cut off from having the option of getting free TV in Canada after 2011, because of decisions that CTV and other broadcasters are making now. Would have been a better story, don’t you think?

Another layoff day at CBC: so sad and so inconclusive

It all seems so familiar. Waiting for the CBC job cut announcement that’s been looming for weeks, and then hearing it, for yet another time, another year. But this year's version somehow seems so ... hollow.

We know that taking 800 jobs out of the CBC will have immense consequences, yet we have no faces or programs to attach to those job losses. In most cases, people are going home tonight not knowing how or if their own show or their own workplace will be affected. At Radio-Canada, we did learn that weekend news shows are being scrapped except for the one in Ottawa, the TV noon shows in Ottawa, Quebec and Moncton are gone, and the morning radio show in Windsor is being cancelled. But the details are coming out painfully, one piece at a time.

We don’t who will leave or even whether it will be by their choice or by layoff. Will the CBC be permitted to offer voluntary incentive packages to people who have the so-called 85 formula (years of service plus the years of age equaling 85 or more)? It’s up to the Heritage Minister to grant permission for that, according to CBC CEO Hubert Lacroix. And we don’t know when that permission may or may not come.

It was a day all about numbers; the $171 million needed to balance the budget, the $125 million that may come from a sale of assets, TV’s share of the cut (83%), radio’s share of the cut (17%). A lot of numbers, dissected many ways.

Yet at the end of the day, we know very little except the CBC is once again not being supported by the government, for no reason other than straight politics being played by Harper’s PMO. Stephen Harper mused about privatizing English TV as far back as 2004 and we all know about last year’s culture cuts. He’s been able to defend not providing the bridge financing by calling the base $1.1B allocation “record financing”, when even his Heritage Minister James Moore has acknowledged it’s not actually the most ever. On Friday, Moore more properly used the word “straight financing”. (As far back as 1990-91, the CBC was getting just under $1.1B which in today’s dollars would be $1.5B. So much for record financing.)

The numbers obfuscate so much. Tomorrow, we will learn details about program cuts. We are sad tonight, but I know we'll get mad tomorrow.

Take a cue from Obama and get organized

In honour of today’s inauguration of Barack Obama, I’d like to celebrate his past as an organizer. The new president of the United States made his mark by showing people that when they get together, they have more power and more chance to really change things.

It’s amazing to me that CNN repeatedly shows a short film, From MLK to Today, in which Obama points to the picket line as he traces the history of the civil rights movement. Images that at one time seemed almost heretical are now lauded because of Obama’s personal story.

We who work in the media should take this narrative to heart. If you’re working for a troubled company right now, your best hope is to work with your colleagues to find out what’s going on, get smart about it, and then make sure you’re part of the solution. Fast. Because – in the vast majority of cases – employees have the on-the-ground knowledge that a workable strategy needs.

And to be honest, it’s much better if you’re part of a certified union. Don’t have one? It’s not too late and you can call mine or another one. Just take it from Obama. It’s what organizing is all about.

“We employees are now the adults in the room,” Bernie Lunzer, president of The Newspaper Guild, is fond of saying. We tend to be in it for the long haul, unlike the owners. We are the ones that know what our audience or readers want. The business has been our career, not a step on the corporate ladder.

Can employees really save some of these companies? At a minimum, they can inject some new ideas that save money. But more importantly, employee interests can be completely over-run in a meltdown or bankruptcy proceeding unless there’s a union in place. Unions can ensure pensions are intact or, in the case of the Tribune Co., they can be on the creditor committee to speak up for employee assets. More on that in a future post.

In the meantime, let’s hear from you. Have you got any stories that illustrate people power on the job? Seems trite – but if you don’t have some functional group in place, you’re on your own in this troubled economic time.