The Canadian press has often impressed me with their analyses of issues that the American electorate either didn’t know about or didn’t know enough about to care. The Canadian press has yet to let me down on this front, as last week I saw the headline: “On media convergence, Conservatives need a wake-up call.”
When do you last recall the American mainstream media mentioning convergence of media? Never? That is not surprising. It seems that one of the many issues the mainstream press is reticent to discuss is its own failure to cover current events.
There is a faulty logic that says that non-traditional journalists can cover any current event and the coverage will be as good or better than could be expected by amateur journalists. The hopeful belief is that, if mainstream journalists don’t cover it, than surely bloggers and other newcomers to the reporting scene can cover it.
The article I mention is from The Star.com, a Toronto-centric news outlet. So naturally the conservatives mentioned in the headline is not in reference to the conservatives of the American news cycle (i.e. Mitt Romney, etc.), but is in reference to the Canadian conservative politicians.
So then let us focus on the media convergence aspect: just what are the reporters referring to in the headline? The writer points out that a media company that is seeking a merger is foolishly overlooking the overall Canadian media ecology.
This must be why the writer focuses on the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunication Commission. The CRTC is facing a possible takeover by a rival media company. Although it is easy to imagine that in an American context the press would be writing about the joys of media convergence.
The Toronto Star article displays a fundamental understanding of media convergence that I believe is missing in the American press. Issues regarding conglomeration and consolidation should be covered by the American media, but more often than not they are relegated to coverage by foreign media outlets.