Journalist Marc Edge, author of the forthcoming Asper Nation: Canada's Most Dangerous Media Company, did some digging in the documents available through the Conrad Black trial and found some interesting archival stuff.
Thanks to the openness of the U.S. justice system, much of Black's back room dealings with the late Izzy Asper have been uploaded for all to see. In contrast to the Canadian courts, where getting a look at an exhibit at trial usually requires retaining a lawyer to argue for its release, the U.S. Department of Justice has posted on its website documents entered into evidence in the case of U.S. v. Black, et al.
Thus we can read how, after doing their $3.2 billion deal in July 2000 for Southam Newspapers, Canada's oldest and largest chain of dailies, Black and Asper set their sights on the next largest, Thomson Newspapers.
Thomson had already declared its intention to get out of traditional print-on-paper in favour of online information. Under plans outlined by Asper, consolidation of Canada's media would have grown even tighter than it did in 2000.
"This isn't the end of a deal, it is only the beginning of the real deal," Asper enthused in a fax to Black days after his CanWest Global Communications bought Southam. "The possibilities are truly awesome and infinite."
'Bulletproof media position'
Asper told Black he was discussing a "strategic alliance" with the Rogers and Shaw broadcasting empires. "Ted [Rogers] has offered us a proposal which would give us a meaningful position in Sportsnet if we would join him in a joint venture on certain sports franchises." Asper wrote. "You can appreciate that a strategic relationship between CanWest and Rogers, and possibly Shaw, would give us the most bulletproof media position in Canada -- radio, cable, television, print, magazines, Internet, direct-to-home satellite, multilingual broadcasting." ...
Under Asper's plan, press competition in Canada would have been even more severely curtailed, but even he questioned whether Canadians would have stood for such tight news media control. "I certainly agree that there should only be one national newspaper," he wrote to Black. "In order to gain all the synergies of the merger, in effect, you might turn the Globe and Mail into merely a Toronto edition of the National Post."
Asper anticipated that regulatory alarm bells might go off in Ottawa under that scenario, however. "Although we claim no expertise in the newspaper business, we do have a concern, perhaps ill-founded, that there would be an enormous public reaction, and possibly political repercussions, if the two papers simply merged and one disappeared, causing regulators to complain about a lack of diversity and choice, even though none existed a mere two years ago." ...
Black noted he had told the Aspers "many times" that ownership influence on news coverage had to be accomplished in a more subtle manner. "If he [David Asper] wished to alter the tenor of the coverage, this should be done, at least initially, in comprehensive discussions with the individual metropolitan editors," wrote the British lord, whose Hollinger International also owned the conservative Telegraph in London.
Aspers 'tinker recklessly'
Black argued it was not he who had violated their partnership agreement, but instead the Aspers. Another letter entered into evidence at Black's trial showed that he had complained about David Asper attempting to influence news coverage earlier in 2001. "I am aware that considerable pressure has been exerted by David on National Post editorial personnel on behalf of Chrétien," he wrote to Izzy Asper on Jan. 5. "This is not reconcilable with our agreement."
Black's letter of March 14 made it clear Black felt the Aspers were shooting themselves in the foot by interfering so obviously in political coverage. "I believe it is, in fact, contrary to the spirit of our arrangement and to CanWest's corporate interests for you people to tinker so recklessly by these interferences with the credibility and therefore the value of these franchises which my associates and I so swiftly built up."
The National Post partnership agreement required advance notice to the Aspers of "any editorial position which could reasonably be viewed as embarrassing, damaging or adverse in the interest of CanWest or affiliates." If anything adverse to CanWest was printed, it required the National Post to publish a reply "in the op-ed or editorial pages of such other prominent location as CanWest shall reasonably request."
The partnership agreement became moot a year later when CanWest bought Black's remaining half of the National Post.