Aspers aren't the enemy

Editorial

The recent firing of the publisher of the Ottawa Citizen has provided a new round of hand-wringing over the near-monopoly of Canadian daily media by the Asper family's CanWest Global company.

Russell Mills was fired after the Citizen ran an editorial calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.

Never mind the irony that the publisher was apparently fired for saying something members of Chrétien's own caucus have been saying publicly of late. The matter was immediately viewed in the context of Izzy Asper's known support for the federal Liberal party and his perceived friendship with the prime minister. Issues have again come to the fore about the degree to which Canadian media are free to express themselves.

Unfortunately, complicating this issue is the very basic matter of private personnel issues in a private company. Whenever an issue like this spills into the public realm, the chance that the full truth will emerge is highly unlikely. A fired employee is relatively free to criticize a former employer with little fear of legal ramifications.

A former employer, however, risks a serious breech of ethics and severe legal complications if they are seen to be impugning the reputation of a former employee by releasing details of a personnel matter.

So it may be the case that Mills was fired solely for an editorial calling on the prime minister to resign. Or it may be, as a spokesperson for CanWest seemed to suggest in a CBC interview recently, that there were other issues between the employee and the employer prior to the anti-Chrétien editorial.

Either way, the incident raised again the demonization of Asper as the monster that ate Canadian media. Until Asper purchased controlling interest in the newspapers held by Southam Inc., the public demon of media was Conrad Black.

Both men have been pilloried for what is an unfortunate situation: the control of a massive number of media outlets in the hands of one or a small number of companies.

This demonization makes the firing of Mills all the more complicated because the public and parts of the media are ready to side with anyone who sides against Asper. So there is a predisposition to accept that Mills was fired on solely political grounds.

Yet, one has to wonder, why hasn't Asper fired most or all of the staff of the National Post? Columnists, editors and reporters at the Post have done an exceptionally effective job of unearthing scandal in the federal Liberal government and have, through sheer tenacity, proved more effective at criticizing the government on most issues than have the elected opposition members of the House of Commons. The Post routinely shills for a united right-wing party and editorializes against all range of "sins" by the federal Liberals. Why hasn't Asper
fired them?

The immediate presumption of guilt laid on Asper doesn't wash when taken in the context of the mass of writing in his countless newspapers across
the country. Perhaps there is more to the Mills case than we will ever fully understand.

As corporate citizens go, Asper has been exceptional. He has shown loyalty to his hometown of Winnipeg, maintaining his company's headquarters there when many successful businesspeople would have repaired to Toronto when they gained Asper's level of success. He has been an unstinting philanthropist to Jewish and other causes. Many British Columbians have benefited from his generosity, including the Vancouver Talmud Torah students who recently returned from Washington, D.C., and the countless number of British Columbians who will be able to attend the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on scholarship, thanks to a new fund endowed by Asper.

This does not discount the unfortunate fact that the Asper family has an inordinate hold on Canadian media, but it does belie the image of a media robber baron some people are trying to pin on the man.

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