Media Concentration Controversy
Brunswick News Inc. is the largest owner of media in New Brunswick. It is privately owned by J.K. Irving, who is also co-owner of the "Irving Group of Companies," one of the largest industrial conglomerates in eastern Canada. It owns all of the English-language daily newspapers in New Brunswick and 29 other publications. In light of this affiliation, many citizens accuse newspapers owned by Brunswick News of bias, and of failing to cover stories that depict subsidiaries in the Irving Group of Companies in a negative light.
The Irving media concentration of New Brunswick was investigated in the Davey report (1970) and the Davey Committee on combines and the Kent commission (1981) during an era before extensive media concentration took place across Canada in the 1990s; at that time, the Irving concentration in New Brunswick was considered unique in the country's media landscape. The Davey Report recommended (in section 2.a) the creation of new legislation that would "require the break-up of regional monopolies, such as that of the Irving family in New Brunswick, by prohibiting the ownership of two or more newspapers having 75% or more of the circulation, in one language, in a defined geographical area".
In 2005, with a donation of $2 million, the Irving family endowed two chairs of journalism in New Brunswick: the Irving Chair in Journalism at St. Thomas University in Fredericton and the Roméo LeBlanc Chair in Journalism sponsored by Brunswick News at Universite de Moncton. An advisory board at each university makes the selections for the chairs.
Read more about this topic: Brunswick News
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