Monopoly media in Canada has resulted in a situation where we are left with generic news content in which contextualized and critical discussions of important social and economic issues that affect the lives and livelihoods of Canadians are addressed in a skewed and self-serving manner. Large media corporations have an unparalleled venue to promote their own interests as well as insulate themselves from inquiries and criticism. The Dominion is a much needed free and independent press that expands the diversity of voices and reconnects people to the civic life of their communities.
As much as I can, I translate whatever I can from the Dominion, or at least I inform people in our communities in Colombia... I translate [stories] verbally so I can present them at assemblies throughout Southwest Colombia.
After working as a journalist for the Irving empire in New Brunswick, the Dominion represents a breath of fresh air: editors who actually check the facts, readers who have a basic understanding of current events and writers who dare to hold the powerful to account. The Dominion is easily the best thing on the web for east coast readers.
At a time of war, Canada's major media institutions have failed to provide the critical and investigative reporting that is a necessary front of defense to the violence of state-driven military power. As state powers in Canada continue to promote and participate in a war of terror that has taken the lives of untold thousands in Afghanistan, critical and independent media such as the Dominion, rooted in principles of social justice, is a necessity in the face of mainstream media complicity in terror. Support the Dominion; stand for social justice and media democracy.
The Dominion is an excellent example of an independent publication that maintains rigorous standards for factual accuracy while providing ground-breaking information and analysis for social movements to reflect, strategize, and strengthen themselves. With the increasing power of corporate media to serve the interests of a powerful elite by upholding ideological and factual lies and inaccuracies, publications like the Dominion have been vital to bringing forward the voices of those most impacted by these lies, both locally and globally.
I sincerely believe that we now live in a time that a new collective awareness is beginning to dawn on a new generation of Canadians; savvy and alert Canadians, willing to risk independent thinking. These Canadians are willing to question and challenge the watered-down information fodder being fed to them by the consumer driven media that panders to the advertising dollar and is so prevalent today. These thinking Canadians want real information, real facts, and real insight. They enjoy thought provoking and critical candour regarding the events that affect their lives and their decisions. An adequately informed polity is the foundation of any genuine democracy. The Dominion provides an indispensable vehicle for the expression of unadulterated examination and dialogue regarding critical issues of our time, contributing to insights beyond those available within the confines of the status quo. I am very appreciative of the opportunity the Dominion makes available to us.
Independent newspapers such as The Dominion are vital if democracy and true citizenship are to be saved in this age of awful concentration of corporate medias bent on formatting our opinion to serve the powerful interests which control such media. We as Haitians are especially grateful to independent media for having helped disentangle the web of lies in which the corporate media are still trying to smother our struggle for freedom and self-determination.
Frankly oppositional and delicious in its rigour, The Dominion is something I look forward to every month.
The best old school journalism understood that its purpose was to challenge power with unassailable facts; the best activist journalism knows that constructive resistance is fueled by media we can actually use. The Dominion represents the vital fusion of these two traditions: it deserves massive support.
Whether it's the Alberta tar sands or our role in Haiti, The Dominion has the guts to look at Canada without the fairytales about our national virtue that comfort and blind us. Our country is at a crucial turning point and we need the brave writers at The Dominion to tell us the truth about where we are heading. Truth telling shouldn't be such a radical act, but it always is. Only readers like you can keep this crucial voice alive and growing louder. Please, pitch in!
Having worked closely with the victims of oppression in Palestine and Haiti, having seen and heard for myself the ways in which powerful nations have inflicted violence and poverty upon millions of people, and having compared mainstream and independent media accounts of these crucial realities, I can affirm that it is only through independent media like The Dominion that the public will acquire the information and analysis they need in order to work toward intelligent and constructive solutions.
Je vous invite a supporter le Dominion pour le bon service rendu a des milliers lecteurs et journalistes indépendants dans le mondes. Il est l'un des sites qui publie plus de nouvelles venant de la masse. Le Dominion est la reference des medias indépendants. Supporter ou aider le Dominion, c'est aider a faire entendre les voix les plus pauvres du monde, comme Haiti mon pays.
I invite you to support the Dominion for the good service it has delivered to thousands of readers and independent journalists in the world, like myself. It is a site that publishes news that comes from the masses. The Dominion is the reference point for independent media. Supporting or helping the Dominion, it is helping to make the voices of the poor people of the world heard, like those in my country, Haiti.
As an active member of the Atlantic Regional Solidarity Network and the Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking the Silence Network, I find the Dominion invaluable. I find news and analyses that I cannot find elsewhere without spending hours on the Internet. In particular, I pore through every issue to develop a critical understanding of Canadian foreign policy. As well, I find invaluable information regarding the environmental, social, cultural and political implications of resource extraction in Latin America and Canada. I nver come away disappointed.
In my efforts to support independent journalism and keep abreast of progressive perspectives on national and global issues, I also subscribe to This Magazine, Canadian Dimension and the Walrus. More often than not it is the Dominion that offers me the most up-to-date information and the most concise analysis. I urge anyone seeking an alternative and informed voice on critical issues facing us as Canadians and as global citizens to subscribe to the Dominion.
The greatest contribution that I appreciate from the Dominion is that one feels the energies, the focus of a new generation of Canadians taking stock of Canadian reality as it is. Instead of coming with formulae from the left, from the right, et cetera, and then trying to make the reality fit into their plans, I appreciate the approach of the Dominion because it first wants to know a survey of the reality, and that is the beginning of--if you want to go somewhere, you have to learn to read the map, and the Dominion is giving us the map.
In this time of war independent media is more important than ever. While working in Afghanistan I have rarely seen any reports in the mainstream press that truly reflect the situation here. For journalists keen on spreading the truth, newspapers like the Dominion are essential. They give us hope.
There is a crisis in the media in the West. The Murdoch wannabes are swallowing more and more of what we used to call the free press. There are honourable exceptions, and a beacon among them is The Dominion which, in its coverage of its community, of Canada and the wider world, is a rare, authentic independent voice -- of people not of power. I salute The Dominion.
Who owns the media in Canada? Who do they answer to? What every Canadian gets to see, hear, and read is determined by the answer to those questions. And the answers are, for the biggest media with the widest reach, pretty grim. The promise of the Dominion is of a mass media with a massive audience that is owned by that audience and that answers to that audience. That will happen if it's supported and if not, we will have to settle for corporate media that answer to the powerful and lie and deceive in their service.
The Dominion Paper is the best example of a serious national alternative newssource in Canada, breaking stories and carrying in-depth reports that often get picked up and watered down by the mainstream media weeks or months later. Over the last few years, the Dominion's foundations have been carefully laid through the dedicated work of editors, writers and volunteers. Now is the time for the Dominion Paper to grow and reach a wider public, and with your help, it can.
As media monopoly extends, and doctrinal rigidity in what remains becomes ever more intense, it would be a major contribution for the functioning of a free society to have independent news sources, free from corporate or state control, internally organized in ways that exemplify what a truly participatory and democratic society would be. I was therefore delighted to learn of the Dominion Paper project, an ambitious and impressive effort to fulfill this urgent need. I know of nothing like it, and wish it the greatest success, for the benefit of all of us.
Who owns the media in Canada? Who do they answer to? What every Canadian gets to see, hear, and read is determined by the answer to those questions. And the answers are, for the biggest media with the widest reach, pretty grim. The promise of the Dominion is of a mass media with a massive audience that is owned by that audience and that answers to that audience. That will happen if it's supported and if not, we will have to settle for corporate media that answer to the powerful and lie and deceive in their service.
