The News Forum is a Canadian English news media company that is owned by The News Forum Incorporated. The directors of the company have not been publicly disclosed. The founder, Tore Stautland, is also the president of Trillennium Media Group, a company that operates and owns the News Forum. The sister companies, Trillie Media (ownership is the same), also own and operate the popular MySpace and Vevo web sites.
This company is an Internet news channel. It provides information to its subscribers that are based on Canadian economy, politics, education, business, health and sports, as well as pop culture. Their website states that they are “news consumers first”. They are keen to provide their customers with the most current information and discussions. Their motto is “You won’t see an old horse.” In other words, they want their readers to be up-to-date with the latest happenings in industry, politics economy, as well as in pop culture. They also want Canadians to participate by providing them with relevant information.
The News Forum has become a unique hybrid between a traditional “news” media organization and an information service. Although this is a very positive thing for Canadian citizens, because they have something to rely on for information, but the fact that they have been successful in their work also implies that they are causing a bit of a brain drain on the people who are participating. In other terms, the News Forum has been successfully achieving their goals of providing content without having the participants actually think, discuss or even gain knowledge. However some of the weaknesses of the News Forum have been revealed.
First, Canadians have come relying on their Information Service providers for a counterbalance of the news they see on the News Forum. They rely on the knowledge and skills of the Forum administrator to provide a counterbalance to the biased information provided to members of the forum. This means that, even though the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) has a reputation for having fairly balanced coverage throughout the day, and while the Globe and Mail newspaper often performs better in being more fair than the two national news media but they still rely on a single person (the writer) to provide a counterbalance to the biased information they present on their websites. Canadians receive more precise and varied information from their News forums than ever before, yet they are often receiving information that is not as precise or thorough as they believed. It’s frustrating for Canadian citizens to rely on a single source of information that for the most part is their own government to give a different perspective to the biased information portrayed on their government websites.
The current writer for the Canadian conservative news channel Tueday TV, John Lindsay for instance, does not mention that his mother language is Hindi. Despite being unable to write or read either Punjabi or Hindi, Lindsay claims to be able to speak and understand Hindi and Punjabi. This begs the question: Given that he cannot understand or speak either of these languages, how is it possible that he present news items on Tueday, a conservative Canadian news channel, that are biased and filled with inaccurate, incorrect or out-of-date information? Does this mean he doesn’t know his own heritage and background? Surely not, especially given that he graduated from an American university (averaging just over 3.0 GPA) 3.0 GPA) and worked in broadcast media in the U.S. state of Texas for the last 15 years.
This isn’t the only example of a news program that did not have its time or its topic adequately explained or discussed. In the same episode, The Canadian Justice reporter Jennifer Paget was interviewed by Stephen Lewis. Ms. Paget gave a beautiful speech on women’s empowerment. She spoke about being a mother and sister, friend, and a wife, and what it is to be a woman. But she didn’t discuss the possibility of employment or the fact that many women in similar situations do not have a job that is highly paid. 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 comments to her regarding the manner she presented and discussed issues pertaining to work-related violence and employment.
The good side of the story is the main focus of a large part of the news media and the news coverage at the Canadian Broadcast Corporation. These are two examples of in-depth reports that demonstrate how news forums can help deliver balanced and honest reports on subjects that are of interest to a larger audience. Additionally, these forums can provide a venue in which a range of experts, celebrities, politicians, artists and other individuals can offer their perspectives and opinions on particular issues. Canadians can benefit from both the positive and bad sides of this forum by obtaining the information they need from one source.
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