The Canadian Press and the Problem of Responsible Journalism: An Olympic Case Study *

The following paper examines Canadian newspaper coverage of the Olympic Games boycotts of 1976, 1980, and 1984. It contrasts the coverage of a corporate owned, business dominated paper (The Globe and Mail), with an independently owned and directed paper (The Kingston Whig-Standard). The findings reveal that the independently owned paper was consistently more objective in contrast with the corporate dominated paper which consistently sought to adhere to the interests of the Cana-dian corporate elite. This study reveals the value of the independent paper in assessing the na-tional and international news when that paper’s interests are more local in nature. Other studies may find independents that are even more one-sided than the Globe but in this case study the ad-vantages of the independent become readily apparent. These findings lead to the question of howmuch corporate domination has damaged the Canadian news media? Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to totalitar-ianism. The techniques have been honed to a fine art, far beyond anything Orwell dreamt of. The device of feigned dissent, incorporating the doctrines of the State religion and eliminating rational critical discussion, is one of the most subtle means, though more crude techniques are also widely used an