Canada and the World Backgrounder articles from October 2001

Canada and the World Backgrounder archives from October 2001

Information is power. (Media - Comment).(newspaper publishing)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... There's quite a collection of characters among those who own or have owned media empires. Publishing millionaire Robert Maxwell either jumped, or fell, or was pushed off the back of his luxury yacht near the Canary Islands in 1991. Shortly...

Mediasaurus wrecks: as media companies become bigger by taking each other over, the choice they offer diminishes, also, according to the Newspaper Guild of Journalists, the quality of news gathering and presentation has been in a steady decline since the mergers began. (Media - Convergence).
October 1, 2001... A telephone company buys a television network. A cable TV supplier buys a baseball team. A television network buys a newspaper chain. A publisher buys an Internet portal. Transactions such as these have been all the rage among media companies...

Just the facts: ideally, we would like the media to be objective; to report everything with accuracy, balance, and fairness; however, journalists are human with weaknesses and biases just like everyone else. (Media - Credibility).(Statistical Data Included)
October 1, 2001... New has become a commodity; it is now a product that is bought and sold. At the same time that news and information have turned into commercial properties, the public is losing interest. Here's how the French magazine Le Monde Diplomatique put...

Viewing the box: television has become a pervasive part of our lives. Ninqy-nine percent of Canadian households have at least one TV set, and 56% of Canadians now use the Internet. For now, the Internet cannot talk to television; soon, that will change. (Media - Television).(Statistical Data Included)
October 1, 2001... Whatever its limitations, as a television-watching culture, our lives are inevitably influenced by the box. Much of our world is seen through the TV set - from U.S. President John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Texas (1963) to the Moon...

The product is us: it's often not understood that in many areas of the mass media - newspapers, television, magazines - the real product is the audience. It's not the episode of friends that's the product; it's the number of viewers that program attracts, and advertisers spend a bundle to reach them. (Media - Advertising).(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
October 1, 2001... Ads are the fuel that keeps the media machine running, and the marketers are constantly searching for new ways to get the attention of the public. In other words, programs tend to serve the advertisers, not the audience. As communications...

A mind of their own: it's vital in democracies that the media be independent from government; it is the watchdog of the people. Isn't it also important that the media be independent of business in order to be a watchdog over its activities? Of course, both government and business do their best to control what and how the media report; that's why there's so much work for spin-doctors. (Media - Independence).
October 1, 2001... Totalitarian governments work hard to shut down the voice of an independent media; they don't want a version of the truth other than theirs in circulation. An example of this is going on right now in Russia, where there is a concerted attack by...

Pining for cash: we have already entered a world in which the American version of history and cultural identity is so pervasive as to obscure all other views.
October 1, 2001... Pining for cash: we have already entered a world in which the American version of history and cultural identity is so pervasive as to obscure all other views. The AOL Time Warner giant is the largest single media organization on the planet. The...

Quote ... Unquote.
October 1, 2001... "In 10 years, my TV set will talk to me. `Good morning Mark,' it will say. `I have the 6 o'clock news. I have also found three items broadcast today about trends in television.'" CBC executive Mark Starowicz, February 2000 "We have a...

Cold war child. (History).
October 1, 2001... Between the end of World War II (1945) and the Collapse of the Soviet Union (1991), the Western democracies and the communist dictatorships faced each other as sworn enemies. Both sides were armed to the teeth, with many more times the number...

Free thinkers' universe. (Evolution).(the development of the Internet)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... In the early 1970s, the ARPANET users began to create software that enabled them to turn the network into a sort of electronic post office. They could send messages to one another, exchange ideas, ask questions, etc. and both sender and...

Don't mess with the net. (Regulation).(censorship and the Internet)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... The Internet is very difficult to control. Data are sent around the Net in small packets, each of which can take a different route. The flow of information is hard to stop, even if much of the network is destroyed. A favourite motto is "The...

Connections to connections. (Effects).(teens and the Internet)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
October 1, 2001... The Internet has already brought about a revolution. For most teenagers today, there never was a time without the Internet. Many have exchanged telephone conversations for chat rooms; homework research is done in cyberspace rather than...

Bad stuff. (Downside).(offences against the Internet)
October 1, 2001... Unfortunately, the Internet is not without sins. More precisely, it's not the Internet that's the problem it's the dysfunctional folk out there who get their jollies by making mischief on it. These are the people who write programs called...

CyberSchool. (Education).(comuters in the classroom)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
October 1, 2001... In its early days, (that's way, way back in the early 1990s) surfing the Net was an adventure filled with wipe-outs and rogue waves. Users had access to a vast storehouse of knowledge but finding what you wanted was frustrating. It was as...

Unrealized expectations. (Business).(electronic commerce)
October 1, 2001... During the Internet hype of the late 1990s, companies rushed to have a presence on the Web. The Internet, they were told, would have a bigger impact on the world than the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th century. The cool soundbite of the...

Creative protection. (Copyright).(Napster and others)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... Perhaps the thorniest legal issue of all for the Internet is that of copyright, which forbids unauthorized duplication of another's original work. The mere act of viewing a document on the Internet, however, offends against this principle...

Open windows. (Democracy).(the internet and politics)
October 1, 2001... The Internet gives every desktop the potential to be a printing press, a broadcasting station, or a place of assembly. This opens up channels to democracy and freedom that never existed before. In 1991, the old Soviet Union was in its death...

Under cover. (Privacy).(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
October 1, 2001... As citizens perform more social and commercial transactions on the Internet, it becomes easier to track their spending habits, private interests, and political beliefs. Advocacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have called for...

Electronic meeting place. (Virtual Communities).
October 1, 2001... When pundits speak of "community" on the Net, they re referring to the unique power of that medium to bring people together across incredible physical boundaries. This "togetherness" may show up as a Web-based discussion forum, an e-mail...

Digital divide. (Developing World).(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... More than half the world's population has never made nor received a telephone call. It goes without saying, but we'll say it anyway, that a larger proportion has never accessed the Internet. Technologies we take for granted in Canada and...

What next? (The Future).(Industry Overview)
October 1, 2001... Only a fool would attempt to predict where the Internet will be five or ten years down the road. With the jester's hat firmly in place let's look into the crystal ball. Until the bubble burst in March 2000, money was pouring into Internet...