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2 5 - Orono Weekly Times, Wednesday, June 25,2003 > i> >i n r. o p 5 Subscriptions $29.91 + $2.09 GST = $32.00 per year. Publications Mail Registration No. 09301 • Agreement No. 40012366 Publishing 48 issues annually at the office of publication. "We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Publications Assistance Program (PAP) toward our mailing costs. " Orono Weekly Times 5310 Main Street, P.O. Box 209, Orono, Ontario LOB 1M0 Email: oronotimes@speedline.ca • Phone/Fax 905-983-5301 Publisher/Editor Margaret Zwart The Orono Weekly Times welcomes letters to the editor on subjects of interest to our readers. Opinions expressed to the editor and articles are those of the writers and do not necessarily necessarily reflect the opinions of the Orono Weekly times. Letters must be signed and contain the address and phone number of the writer. Any letter considered unsmtaMeJ^ not be acknowledged or returned. We reserve the right to edit for length, libel and slander. If your retail or classified ad appears for the first time, please check carefully. Notice of an error must be given before the next issue goes to print. The Orono Weekly Times will not be responsible for the loss or damage of such items. An identity worth preserving Last Wednesday's Town Hall meeting on the future of Orono left most participants with a positive feeling for the future of the downtown. Though this village has gone through its economic ups and downs as indicated by Bill Tomlinson, Orono does fight back. It was thought when the forestry closed in the 1980's, it would be the end of Orono. However, as Tomlinson pointed pointed out, Orono just wouldn't let that happen. "We're just facing our next set of problems" he said. After Professor Shipley dispelled the myth about how wonderful it would be to live in a village that was a tourist destination, the group came up with some practical suggestions on how to improve the look of our downtown. Suggestions ranged from the obvious i.e. clean shop windows and empty garbage recepticals to the desire for a farmers market and a white linen restaurant. There were practical suggestions about better signage in town. Visiting sports teams often have difficulty finding the arena and thé soccer fields. Passing motorists are always stopping pedestrians downtown downtown looking for the IGA and the liquor store. It wouldn't take too many signs to make this town more user friendly. Also there are some downtown businesses they could do some practical facade improvements to make the downtown streetscape more appealing. This village and surrounding area has a lot to offer, at any given time. It would be a big mistake to try and pattern pattern this community after some other tourist trap, selling our identity for a tourist dollar. ...IWEVMUB in. w.otiighaii.cem "bt CBC newspaper--a confused idea A Senate Committee has been struck in order to investigate investigate a host of media-related issues. Part of the mandate of this Senate Committee is to address the issue of convergence--one convergence--one company or group having holdings in different different media outlets--as well as the influence that advertisers advertisers and owners of media outlets outlets have over the content of the news. One of the suggestions to these two problems (and most people view these things as problems) is to expand the CBC's mandate to include a newspaper edition. This idea, trumpeted by Patrick Watson, a former CBC chairman, received some marked kudos from Senator LaPierre. "He is a genius," proclaimed proclaimed the Senator referring to Watson. I was there for this particular Committee meeting held a few weeks ago-biting my tongue as the Senator continued continued wondering aloud whether or not advertisers and owners have too much sway over the media, and suggesting suggesting to the Committee that, really, what is needed is a CBC-like newspaper, funded by the government in order to avoid all of those commercial necessities. Contrary to the good Senator's proclamation, the idea isn't "genius" it is, instead, well, "confused." And for a number of reasons. The first confusion is philo- sophical-if the problem with, contemporary media outlets is due to convergence, then the same problem should exist whether it's an independent or government-funded newspaper. If it's such a bad idea for Izzy Asper to control a host of television television and print news outlets, what, pray tell, would make it such a good idea for the CBC to do the same? Which rolls us into the second second confusion: the idea that a government-funded institution will be free of influence. Whoever funds the paper gets a say in the process. Hoopla about all of us being the funders since it's a public institution and so on ignores the fact that it isn't us who make the decisions, but the politicians who we elect as our representatives. This CBC newspaper won't be responsible to you or me, but to the department, department, bureaucracy, or committee committee that decides its funding levels. levels. Ultimately that means a few noliticians. or high-level bureau crate, will have input. That's influence. And the fact that they will have access to the decisionmakers decisionmakers on this sort of newspaper newspaper means that they will have similar opportunities to bias the news as private media moguls do. Except if s worse because, in the case of the latter, we don't have to participate in the sham--we can choose not to buy the Toronto Star or Globe and Mail, or tune out Global and CTV-whereas with government-funded enterprises enterprises we have no choice about participation. After all, govem- ment-ftinded means tax-funded, and taxes are hardly optional. Nebulous notions like "public "public interest" don't do much from the standpoint of policy either since everyone, from Jack Layton on down to David Ahcnakew, can claim it as their motivation. It is notoriously devoid of content, able to cap ture under its tent all types of people with vastly differing ideas of where this country should go from here. And lets not forget that just because you call something "public interest" doesn't make it so, what Thomas Sowell dubbed the fallacy of defining something something by its hoped-for results. Hopefully this newspaper will be in the public interest, but calling calling it a 'newspaper for the public interesf does not thereby make it any such thing. A short Chomskyan lesson in semantic tomfoolery should straighten anyone out about this. As 1 see it, what we are left with is the idea of a publicly- funded newspaper which is no better than a privately-funded one and possibly substantially worse. After all, every dollar spent on this venture is a dollar that could have been spent on something else. And we simply simply have bigger fish to fry.