Race And Diversity In Canada Essay

Diversity is a prominent feature of Canadian society and the mass media – such as broadcasting and print news media. Canadians are not only multicultural and diverse in race, ethnicity, gender, disability, language and age, but are also diverse in terms of viewpoints and perspectives (Dewing 4). In her 2008 chapter, “How Are Immigrants Seen – And What Do They Want to See? Contemporary Research on the Representation of Immigrants in the Canadian English-Language Media,” Minelle Mahtani argues, “Canadian media have the power to create social agendas, construct ideologies, frame social issues, providing the lens through which Canadians view themselves and their fellow citizens” (Mahtani 232). In other words, the mass media shape our identities

and our understanding of other citizens and the world (Mahtani 232). Furthermore, in her 2014 article, “The Colour of Difference: Race, Diversity, and Journalism in Canada,” Faiza Hirji asserts that the mass media, through coverage, have the power to influence what and whose issues become important public issues of concern (Hirji 391).

As a result, the mass media also play a pivotal role in the proper functioning of democracy. In Des Freedman’s 2008 book, The Politics of Media Policy, he asserts that “[i]n a liberal democracy, citizens require free and unfettered access to information and a full range of views if they are to make informed judgements about issues in the public sphere” (Freedman 7). That is, Canadian democracy thrives when citizens have access – through the mass media – to a wide range of diverse viewpoints and information needed to form their own comprehensive conclusions about issues of public concern and unite as a nation to generate possible solutions to these issues (Freedman

7).
Hence, ownership of the mass media is essential for ensuring that there is a diversity of viewpoints in the mass media.

Freedman argues that the individuals and groups who own and finance the mass media control media content – or the information that is available to the public (Freedman 106). One prominent issue that the Canadian media industries encounter is the excessive concentration of ownership in the mass media. In their 2014 article, “Media Ownership, Public Participation, and Democracy in the Canadian Mediascape,” Leslie Regan Shade and Michael Lithrow state that the concentration of ownership occurs when a tiny number of media corporations “end up (through mergers and acquisitions) owning the majority of media [outlets],” thus limiting the amount of information and content the public has exposure to (Shade & Lithrow 177). Moreover, the excessive concentration of ownership results in less competition in the mass media industries; an increase in the political and economic power of these concentrated media corporations; and a lack of diversity of viewpoints in the media content, as marginalized communities have little to no ownership or control of the mass media (Freedman 106; Shtern and Blake 89). Shade and Lithrow assert that Canada has “one of the most consolidated media systems in the world,” with four mass media corporations – BCE Inc. (Bell), Rogers Communications, Shaw Communications and Quebecor – owning and controlling a majority of the media outlets (Shade &

Lithrow 180). Without policy intervention by the national media regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), Robert Armstrong states that these “market failures,” or “weaknesses in the functioning of the competitive market” – such as the excessive concentration of ownership and the dependence on advertising revenue – will continue to plague the mass media industries (Armstrong 77-8; Freedman 8). In other words, without tight controls on the concentration of ownership in the mass media, there will be very little, if any, diversity of viewpoints in the mass media content.
While there are alternative media platforms for marginalized communities, the excessive concentration of ownership in the Canadian mass media industries leads to a lack of diversity of viewpoints in mass media content. The lack of diversity of viewpoints in mass media content results in the undermining of marginalized in Canada through the mass media’s use of sensationalized content, homogenized content, and lastly, biased content.

Sensationalized Content
First, the lack of diversity of viewpoints in mass media content is demonstrated by the mass media’s use of sensationalized content. Because media corporations – both private and occasionally public – rely on advertising revenue to support their expensive endeavours, advertisers have a substantial influence over media content (Armstrong 8; Johnston 150; McChesney 29). In his 2014 article, “Advertising in Canada,” Russell Johnston states that advertisers “want to reach the highest number of potential consumers at the lowest possible cost,” therefore, to appeal to advertisers, mass media content must attract the “largest audiences possible by appealing to all demographic categories” (Johnston 150-1). In other words, highly valuable media content is content that appeals to the greatest amount of people from all backgrounds – differing in race, ethnicity, gender, disability, language, age, and so on – with little to no cost (Johnston 150). However, as the mass media focuses on profit and audience maximization, content quality declines. That is, the media content quality decreases because it relies on shocking headlines, brief and oversimplified stories, along with stories filled with “violence, sex, gossip and scandal,” and the promotion of commercialism to attract a sizeable audience, without much consideration of whether the content is truthful or accurate (Freedman 130). While sensationalized content can bring much needed attention to stories involving marginalized communities, there are concerns over accurate portrayal and misrepresentation (Hirji 401). For example, within days of the April 1994 case of Georgia Leimonis, a young woman who was “shot and killed” in a downtown Toronto café by one of three male robbers attempting to rob the café that night, newspaper headlines and articles in Toronto generated a “moral panic” which emphasized the killer’s Jamaican ethnicity as a threat to Canadian values – in fact, directly referring to him as the “Jamaican criminal” (D’Arcy 241-2). However, the criminal was a Canadian citizen who “immigrated to Canada from Jamaica during his early childhood” (D’Arcy 241). Furthermore, in his 2007 article, “The ‘Jamaican Criminal’ in Toronto, 1994: A Critical Ontology,” Stephen D’Arcy describes the mass media’s response as a “simplistic misperception of social reality” and the “reactivation of […] [a] problematization of ‘Jamaican crime’” in Toronto (D’Arcy 243; 255-6). In other words, the media’s framing of this case and fixation on the criminal’s Afro-Jamaican background – though it played no role in his actions or the story itself – perpetuates, as opposed to challenging, many existing stereotypes in Canadian society which vilify non-Canadian born minority citizens and visible minority immigrants as inherently violent, abnormal, foreign and threatening to Canadian values (D’Arcy 248-250; Hirji 402; Mahtani, “Representing Minorities” 9). Furthermore, retired professor in the Department of Anthropology at York University, Frances Henry argues that the dissemination of stereotypes of marginalized communities in sensationalized mass media content threatens “the development […] of a healthy democratic society” because it divides, rather than uniting, Canadians of all backgrounds (qtd. in Mahtani, “Representing Minorities” 9).
Nevertheless, there are regulatory policy initiatives to combat the harmful and inaccurate portrayals of marginalized communities in Canadian mass media content. For example, in 2008, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) gained authorisation from the CRTC for the Equitable Portrayal Code, which was “created to ensure the equitable portrayal of all persons in television and radio programming” (“Equitable Portrayal Code (2008)”; Armstrong 167). Also, the code focused primarily on negative and inaccurate portal and stereotyping of marginalized groups, especially with Aboriginal and disabled communities (CBSC). Furthermore, this code established self-regulation in broadcasting, where the CRTC trusts the industry to regulate itself and “to address the social policy concerns raised by the Broadcasting Act with regard to programming content” (Armstrong 160). However, in his 2016 book, Broadcasting Policy in Canada, Robert Armstrong argues that the simple existence of self-regulation, this code and “its acceptance […] by broadcasters does not mean that discrimination or even defamation, based on gender [in particular] has disappeared from Canadian broadcasting” (Armstrong 167-8). For example, in the 1999-2004 case of the Québec radio station CHOI-FM, whose numerous broadcasting license violations and offensive content fuelled by shock-jock host Jean-François (Jeff) Fillon, led to a slew of public complaints and ultimately, the cancelation of their licence by the CRTC (Armstrong 88-91). This case demonstrates some limitations with the code and the practice of self-regulation by the mass media industries. For instance, the CRTC only responds to – after formal complaints – rather than counteracting, the incidences of misrepresentations of marginalized communities in the mass media content (“How to make a broadcasting complaint”). In fact, the CRTC asserts that the Commission is “not a board of censors, and can't tell broadcasters what they can air” (“How to make a broadcasting complaint”). Moreover, in her 2016 article, “Commentary: Instrumentalities of Ethic Media,” Sherry Yu argues that despite the implementation of the code, the misrepresentation of marginalized groups in media content is still an ongoing concern (Yu 345). For instance, Hirji identifies the ongoing misrepresentations of Islam and the comparisons with Islamist terrorism (Hirji 402). Without clear and firm policies that aim to prevent and eliminate further occurrences of the misrepresentation of marginalized groups in through sensationalized content, this form of content will continue to undermine the diversity of viewpoints in the media.