The News Forum is a Canadian English news media company owned by The News Forum Incorporated, the company whose directors have not been publicly revealed. The founder, Tore Stautland, is also the president of Trillennium Media Group, a company that runs and owns the News Forum. Trillie Media, a sister company, has the same ownership, and also operates the popular MySpace/Vevo websites.
The company is an Internet news channel. It provides information to its readers in relation to Canadian economy, politics, health, business, sports, and pop culture. Their website says that they are “news consumers first”. They are eager to share the latest information and share it with their subscribers. Their motto is “You’ll never see an old horse.” They would like their readers to stay up-to-date with the most recent developments in industry, politics, and pop culture. They want Canadians to be engaged by providing them with relevant information.
The News Forum is a unique hybrid of traditional “news” media organization with an information service. Although this is a very positive thing for Canadian citizens, since they have something they can rely on for information, but the fact that they’ve had success also means they have some brain drain on the people who are taking part. In other words, the News Forum has been successfully achieving their goals of providing content without having the participants actually think, talk about or even gain knowledge. However many of the flaws of the News Forum have been revealed.
First, Canadians have come to depend on their Information Service providers to provide them with a counterbalance to the information they are seeing on the News Forum. They rely on the knowledge and expertise of the Forum administrator to neutralize the biased information given to forum members. This means that even though the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC), has a reputation for providing balanced coverage throughout the day, and the Globe and Mail newspaper does better at being more impartial than the two national news organizations (NWSO and CBC) but they rely on one person (the writer) to provide a counterbalance to the biased information that is posted on their websites. Canadians receive more thorough and diverse information from their News forums than ever before, but they are often provided with information that isn’t as accurate or precise as they expected. It is a pity that Canadian citizens must depend on one source of information, which has in the majority of cases been their government, in order to counter the biased information on their government websites.
John Lindsay, the current Canadian conservative news channel Tueday TV writer, does not mention that Hindi is his mother tongue. However Mr. Lindsay purports to be able to speak and understand Punjabi and Hindi despite not being able read or write in either of these languages. This obviously begs the question, if he cannot speak or understand either of these languages, why does he believe he can present news items on the Canadian conservative news channel Tueday that are slanted and filled with incorrect or inaccurate information? Does this mean that he doesn’t know his own heritage and background? Surely not, especially given that he graduated from an American university (averaging just above an 3.0 GPA) and has worked in broadcast media in the U.S. state of Texas for the last 15 years.
This isn’t the only instance of a news feature discussion that isn’t not addressing the topic in a way that is appropriate. Stephen Lewis interviewed Jennifer Paget who is a Canadian Justice reporter in the same segment. Ms. Paget uncorked a wonderful speech about women’s empowerment, including what it means to be a mother, a daughter, sister, wife or friend (and of course, a human being). She did not mention employment opportunities, or the fact that many women who find themselves in similar situations do not have a lucrative job. The segment also had a brief exchange between Ms. Paget and one of the guests in the studio where the moderator mentioned that Ms. Paget was often criticized for being too friendly and never blaming the various people in the interview room that she felt made remarks to her about the manner in which she presented and discussed issues that surrounded work-related violence and employment.
The positive aspect of the story has been the focus of a large portion of the audience for news and news focus at the Canadian Broadcast Corporation. These two examples of news stories that are in-depth are but two examples of how a news platform may be able to help provide a more balanced and accurate reporting on subjects of interest to a wider audience. These forums also permit a variety of political figures, experts and experts to offer their opinions and perspectives on specific issues. Canadians can benefit from both the positive and negative aspects of this forum by getting the information they require from one source.
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