News Media & The Public Interest in Canada

Deciding whether or not the news media serves the public interest in Canada requires a degree of consensus on the meaning of the public interest. We can take it that the public interest in a democratic society can be defined at a minimum in terms of informing the public sufficiently so the citizenry can make informed choices at the ballot box. Based on this view, we can say that the news media overall does a poor job of protecting the public interest, though print journalism does a better job than electronic journalism.

The Canadian media is much affected by its proximity to the American media, and one of the responses to this has been the development of government solutions to the struggle to maintain Canada's economic and cultural integrity. The government thus takes a strong protective stance and intervenes in the affairs of the media. While this might seem a situation leading to a reduction in the ability of the media to serve the public, since a democratic media should not be too tightly controlled by the government entity on which it reports, the situation may be less problematic than that given the fact that newspapers have "been left generally untouched by the mixed blessings of government involvement in their affairs" (Osler 164) and because newspapers are linked more directly with news and public affairs (Osler 165).

This issue has been much analyzed in the American press because of concerns that the news media is not serving the public interest at all.

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rs a meager amount of information and yet is influential out of all proportion to the news value presented The basic media forces cited by American commentators exist in Canada as well, from the power of the electronic media over print journalism to star news-readers on television. Osler also points out the necessity of an editing function in selecting what news will be presented, and yet both television media operators and print publishers are today using methods to ascertain what different target groups want and then to give it to them, in effect making selections not on,the basis of what is newsworthy but what is popular. Osler states that "publishers no longer trust the journalistic instincts and traditions of the newsroom" (Osler 206). Osler says that news is being sold like a product, and the art of editing has been replaced by business management methods (Osler 208). This is not a situation that bodes well for the public interest or the public good. Works Cited Bennett, W. Lance. News: The Politics of Illusion. New York: Longman, 1988. Osler, Andrew M. News: The Evolution of Journalism in Canada. Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1993. There are three major models of journalism, all of which exist in some form

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