Recently reports have surfaced of wallabes chowing down on opium and then acting strangely. This begs the question of how secure the world's medicinal opium supply is (although industry reports suggest everything is fine), not to mention the future of these poor wallabes.
Additional sources show this type of animal drug use is not isolated to wallabes - deer and sheep have both also been known to wander in slow-moving circles after contact with the poppy fields.
Elephants have been known to raid villages in India and elsewhere searching for moonshine rice beer. These destructive pachyderms have killed hundreds of villagers while looking for a good time, and many have met their own end in their lust for a good stiff drink, including some which were electrocuted.
Reports of UK sheep chowing down on psilocybin - magic mushrooms - have surfaced, although there remain questions of what has caused these isolated incidents from being more prevalent.
A recent decision by the BC Human Rights Council ruled that Dr. Gerald Korn, an ob/gyn practicing in the province for several decades, contravened the human rights of a lesbian couple to whom he denied access to artificial insemination based on their sexual orientation.
His claim was that by providing the service he was opening himself up to risks to his practice, of an efficient/economic nature. Luckily the BC Human Rights Council ruled against him, and this ruling was in essence backed by the BC Supreme Court. This kind of discrimination is clearly in contravention of the Canadian Federal Assisted Human Reproduction Act (esp. section 2e), as well as common sense. It brings up interesting issues surrounding the role of medical practitioners in society, and what rights they have to deny services on moral/ethical/financial grounds. In my opinion, there is very little room for a doctor's personal moral/ethical beliefs in diagnosing or treating patients, especially as they relate to areas protected by the Canadian Human Rights Act.
A recent California case has mirrored the Canadian case. In it, a lesbian couple has claimed that they were discriminated against by a clinic which refused to treat them because of their sexual orientation. The clinic however has blamed communication problems and denies that the couple's sexuality was at issue, instead stating that the treatment was denied because the prospective patient was single. This case is drawing interest from conservative religious and gay activist groups, many of whom have been granted an audience before the court. Pharmacists in the US have been increasingly granted the right to refuse to fill certain prescriptions based on moral grounds (manifesting as denials to provide contraceptives - and, sometimes illegally, to even transfer prescriptions to another pharmacist), which has combined with the lack of acceptance of the morning after pill (which is often not kept in stock at certain chemists) to add up to a barrier to choice of crisis proportions. However, discriminating against services or treatments is far different from discriminating against people.
In both of these instances, the morals of the doctor were pitted against the rights of the patients to receive care. This is a sticky human rights issue pitting freedom of religion against freedom from discrimination and issues of universal access to health care (at least in Canada, where lip service is generally backed up - despite notable inequalities in access to reproductive services experienced in rural, eastern, and aboriginal communities). While "No one can force me to carry a child" has a long tradition of acceptence, "No one can keep me from having a child" deserves just as much sway.
Understanding that media has become more concentrated is an abstract mental construction - time to break things down, especially in light of the fact that a 2006 BBC poll found that residents of many nations trust their media more than their governments.
As of 2001, there were 14 players in Canada`s daily newspaper industry. That`s a remarkably small number for a diverse and dispersed nation of over 33 million. Of the 103 papers owned by these 14 corporations, 70 were owned by the top four (Southern Publications, Quebecor Inc., Osprey media, Hollinger Cdn. N.L.P.). Since 2001, concentration has increased even further. Since newspapers are such an integral part of the information distribution network for Canadians, this is a frightening series of events. However, scarier still is how the same companies which control the flow of news through their paper chains also own local and national television channels and radio channels.
Other worrying recent events are summarized nicely in the following excerpt:
Astral Media owns 29 radio stations in Quebec and the Maritimes and 17 pay television stations (including The Movie Network, Mpix and Family Channel, and half of Teletoon). In April 2007, Astral Media announced it had struck a cash and stock deal to acquire 52 radio stations and two TV stations from Standard Broadcasting.
CanWest Global owns the Global Television Network's 11 stations as well as the three TV stations in the CH-branded network. In January 2007, in partnership with a group from Goldman Sachs, CanWest bought Alliance Atlantis, which added 13 specialty channels including Showcase, HGTV Canada, Food Network Canada and History Television. CanWest owns 11 of Canada's biggest dailies (including the National Post, The Gazette in Montreal, the Ottawa Citizen and both of Vancouver's dailies, the Vancouver Sun and The Province).
CTVglobemedia owns the CTV network and its 24 affiliates, and has full or partial ownership of 17 specialty television stations, The Globe and Mail and 35 radio stations across the country. CTVglobemedia's other conventional television assets include A-Channel, a second system that operates in major markets of Ontario and British Columbia: CKX-TV, a CBC television affiliate in Brandon, Man.; TQS; and ASN, a cable channel in Atlantic Canada.
Osprey Media owns 21 dailies in Ontario (including the Kingston Whig-Standard and Peterborough Examiner) and 36 other papers. In 2001, Osprey bought 16 dailies and 12 other papers from Hollinger International. In 2002, Osprey acquired 30 more newspapers (including four dailies) from CanWest Global.
Rogers Media owns several over-the-air and specialty TV channels (including OMNI, Rogers Sportsnet, the Shopping Channel and the Biography Channel), 44 radio stations in six provinces and magazines such as Maclean's, Chatelaine and Canadian Business. In June 2007, Rogers Media bought five Citytv stations, in Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver.
Torstar Corp. publishes the Toronto Star, The Record in Kitchener-Waterloo, the Hamilton Spectator, and the Guelph Mercury. The company also publishes 95 community newspapers in the southern Ontario marketplace.
Quebecor Media owns eight dailies and 200 other local and community newspapers. In 2000, Quebecor bought Quebec's largest cable company, Videotron, and its French-language TV network, TVA.
Some proponents of media concentration suggest that fewer players mean that the industry is more competitive globally. They also point to the role played by the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) in permitting the changes that have occurred over the past decades. However, the CRTC has been criticized for lacking the political willpower, oversight, or enforcing powers to actually resist consolidation. In fact, the history of the CRTC shows the body often reverses a previous decision, is ordered to reconsider a decision (as has happened multiple times), or simply rules according to a market-oriented values system. This commission has not earned the trust of Canadians, especially in light of the further media consolidation that is occurring each year. Please contact the CRTC, your MP, your mom and your neighbour, and help to shine a light on the issue of media concentration and the biased approach taken by the CRTC.
If you are Canadian, then chances are you are getting your information about your community, nation, and the world from one of a small handful of media conglomerates. This is true for newspapers, television, radio, and increasingly internet, and these various forms of media are often all under the control of one company. This kind of oligarchical control over the information that Canadians receive is unacceptable - there have been a plethora of stories (usually printed by a rival conglomerate) about the centralized owners of a media chain interfering in the editorial independence of journalists. This has taken the form of everything from issuing stories 'of national interest' that local papers must run, a relatively benign event, to killing stories attempting to expose Jean Chretien's involvement in corruption, and subsequently firing the journalist responsible for the story, for supposedly unrelated reasons. This type of undemocratic influence rips at the very heart of journalism's supposed role as an unbiased source of information.
In a democracy, the principle of an informed citizenry is key to allowing elected officials to be held accountable for their actions, and for keeping important and unresolved issues at the forefront of the social imagination. The concentration of media ownership which has occurred over the past three decades has served to limit the number of choices Canadians can make for their news. In addition, those sources that remain are increasingly accountable to anonymous shareholders, forced to prioritize a profit above their responsibility to report in an unbiased and accurate manner. This is not suggesting that media companies have were not interested in profit in the past - rather, it seems that the balance of power has swung away from principled editors and toward amoral owners and investors, to the detriment of the wider public.
Coupled with the shifts toward fewer news sources presenting fewer opinions, and the power shift toward self-interested capital at the expense of principles, has come the misguided belief that the public should in some way be consulted about what news is presented to them. This misguided notion has resulted in the extensive use of polls and ratings micromanagement. This is especially unfortunate in light of the fact that polling reliability is being called into question. Again, by no means have media ever operated in a vacuum, separate from the wants of the public they serve. However, an unfortunate side effect of the modern media corporation's propensity to worship at the altar of public opinion is the distortion of news media into a new breed of "info-tainment". This new species of media passing itself off as news is more likely to dedicate air-time or page-length to celebrity gossip and prolonged scandals than it is to less popular, though still vital, issues such as campaign finance reform.
Another problem facing the profit-driven, consumer-generated media choices being presented is that they are invariably the most violent and sensationalized stories from around the world, selected more for their shock value (and subsequently their ratings value, and subsequently their advertising dollar pull) than for their intrinsic worth as news. While unfortunate that humans are drawn to extreme violence, it is more unfortunate how modern media cater to these tastes like never before. This can help explain why heavy media consumers overestimate their likelihood of being involved in violence, why they experience higher levels of anxiety, and why they are more likely to behave in antisocial ways toward others. There are, of course, other studies which deny that violent media have a negative effect on viewers. Since there are fewer voices presenting fewer issues, focusing increasingly on titillating our basest fascinations, there is a dearth of stories Canadians need to hear - such as the issue of media concentration.
Welcome to my blog. This is my space to rant about the important issues of our day, with a focus toward those that aren't getting their fair share in the mainstream media. And yeah, I may occassionally delve into the muddy cesspool of entertainment news, but hey, I'm only human. Check this space for a list of past and future topics. Feel free to comment on entries or email me suggestions. Cheers! Wes Kellar
Past Issues: Media Concentration 1 and 2 Access to Reproductive Technology 1 Drugged Animals 1 Alberta Tar Sands 1 Stephen Harper's War on Gay Pride 1 Stephen Harper Visits The Pope 1 Sherlock Holmes (2009) 1 The Secret Homosexual Handshake 1 Alice In Wonderland (2010) 1
Future Issues: RFID MSG and Aspartame Age Discrimination for Tubal Ligation The Fight for Fair Copyright Canadian Blood Services Discrimination
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