Paper call-out: Press freedom in Canada
The Ryerson Journalism Research Centre and the Ryerson Law Research Centre have teamed up to put out a call for paper/panel proposals for its 2012 Press Freedom in Canada conference.
The Ryerson Journalism Research Centre and the Ryerson Law Research Centre have teamed up to put out a call for paper/panel proposals for its 2012 Press Freedom in Canada conference.
The conference, designed as a status report on the 30th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, is set for March. Papers, theoretical or empirical, should explore the intersection between Canada's legal system, press freedom, and all incarnations of journalistic practice.
According to the release, themes may include (but aren't limited to):
The impact of technology; legislative initiatives including anti-terrorism laws; court processes; privacy concerns; political strategies; evolving media business models; and legal rulings related to libel and defamation as they affect press freedom.
Abstracts are due November 2011, and should be no longer than 250 words. Decisions will be made by December 15.
For more information visit the Ryerson Journalism Research site.
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October 13, 2011
Press ‘freedom’ is hardly the
Press 'freedom' is hardly the problem – this kind of conference seems designed to do the classic 'make a lot of noise about something you can pretend is related to people's unhappiness, but is actually irrelevant, to avoid the real problem' strategy – classic stuff these days, as the capitalists point fingers everywhere except at themselves to get people distracted from looking where they ought to be looking about various very important things going on in the world today (as talked about in a bit more detail here Democratic Revolution – now or never http://www.rudemacedon.ca/vgi/backgrounders/revolution.html ).
The problem is press *responsibility* – in a 'democracy' the job of the 'free press' is to provide the citizens with the information they need to make intelligent decisions – but when the press – no question about being free to write pretty much as they want – are controlled by a certain small interest group (wealthy elite AKA new feudalists), and spins what is told the citizens to favor that interest group (continual pro-corporate screw-the-little-people framing), and lies to incite citizens to support policies favorable to that group or that they wish to pursue (i.e. justifying 'democracy-bringing' invasions around the world (AKA looting etc)), and gatekeeps as necessary to prevent the citizens hearing contradictory ideas (i.e. the money supply scam explained in What Happened? http://www.rudemacedon.ca/what-happened.html ) – we have a problem. And the problem is magnified when the citizens are indoctrinated through years of propaganda to trust in and believe their media, based on ancient times when media ownership was much more diversified, and thus offered a much greater range of opinion than is available today, and actually was much more reliable. So although we have a very 'free' press in Canada, when they use that 'freedom' to support, pretty much as one voice, one particular interest group, which is a quite small minority in the country, and there is no national media at all speaking for the majority beyond the odd voice-in-the-wilderness column buried under the pro-corporate monologue, the issue of 'responsibility' becomes rather important – where is the Canadian media actually responsible to the people, and telling them what they need to know to effectively fight this corporate deluge, rather than their elite wouldbe-new-feudalist owners?
Perhaps someone will ask Nick Fillmore, whose article very much talking about what I am talking about here appears elsewhere on this site concurrently, to offer some words about the difference between 'freedom' and 'responsibility' at the conference.
Perhaps. I won't be holding my breath.
(I suppose 3 refs to my own writing in one post would be frowned upon, but in case it gets through, I have a longer analysis of the role of the Canadian media in the 08 election – Canadian Media: Reporting on or Managing the 2008 Election? http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/media-narrative.html . )