Israel Asper heads the Manitoba Liberal Party.

Israel Asper buys 45 per cent of distressed Global Ontario TV network; moves television station KCND from Pembina, N.D., to Winnipeg, renames it CKND and establishes its formula of profiting off cheap U.S. imports.

Following deals between major chains to shut down competing newspapers in Ottawa, Montreal and Winnipeg, the federal government sets up a Royal Commission to examine the newspaper industry. Headed by former Winnipeg Free Press editor Tom Kent, it concludes that corporate concentration of media is "clearly and directly contrary to the public interest." The report and its recommendations are shelved.

After buying out his Global Ontario partners, Israel Asper founds CanWest Global.

Company is listed on Toronto Stock Exchange.

Broadcasting holdings expand to Australia, New Zealand and Northern Ireland.

August: Begins acquisition of the Canadian newspaper and Internet assets of Hollinger Inc., including the Southam dailies in nearly every large city in Canada and a 50-per-cent stake in the National Post.

November: Sale closes, following a three-month review by the federal Competition Bureau. Price is $3.2 billion.

Mark Steyn, writing in the National Post (at the time still 50-per-cent owned by Conrad Black's Hollinger Inc.), takes David Asper to task:

"... If Mr. Asper wishes to defend what Mr. Chrétien did, if he feels it's entirely appropriate behaviour for our head of government, then he's welcome to make that argument. But he didn't do that. Instead, he launched an attack on the Post and our Southam stablemates for 'scandal-mongering,' accusing us of the crime of 'public mischief' and of 'parroting the single tune of a desperate-for-attention Joe Clark.'

"... the time is overdue for Mr. Asper to put up or shut up – with facts and hard evidence, not just 'adjective-driven innuendo.' I quote at random: 'unfounded ... ill-founded ... scandal-hungry ... unsubstantiated ... irresponsible ... mischievous, unfair scandal-mongering ... ' To which I say to learned counsel: in what way, exactly?

"... what specifically did the National Post and the Charlottetown Guardian and the rest of your newspapers get wrong? C'mon, Mr. Asper. Put up or shut up."

Friends of Canadian Broadcasting maintains an archive of other media reaction to David Asper's indictments and condemnation of coverage of the "Shawinigate" affair:

Joe Clark, Leader of the Conservative Party, commentary in Toronto Sun.

Peter Worthington, column in Toronto Sun, headlined 'Asper essay crushing to morale at Southam'.

Hugh Winsor, Globe & Mail, in an article headlined 'Journalism 101: Currying favour in the new world of convergence', writes: "What need for a (prime minister's) communications chief when the man who sets the editorial direction of newspapers with 60 per cent of the total readership in the country is such a fan that he will not only take on your enemies, such as Conservative Leader Joe Clark, but be prepared to flagellate your tormenters in his own newsrooms as well?"

CanWest fires Southam News national affairs columnist Lawrence Martin, a persistent critic of Chrétien. No public explanation is offered, and Martin's keeping mum, but tongues are set wagging in the satirical press as well as on Parliament Hill.

Martin, who becomes a regular contributor to the Globe and Mail's Comment page, refers obliquely to the firing in a Feb. 12, 2004 column about former prime minister Jean Chrétien, Liberal Party ethics and the sponsorship program scandal:

"Equipped with so much power, those close to Mr. Chrétien could bend the system to his will, knowing he would approve. If someone got in his way he could take them out, whether it was journalists reporting on Shawinigate (his office, I'm told, pushed for my dismissal from one job) or public officials who sought to challenge him."

Salam Elmenyawi, chairman of the Muslim Council of Montreal, is informed that The Montreal Gazette’s board of editorial contributors, to which he belonged, is being disbanded.

"Elmenyawi received a letter from then Editorial Page editor Peter Hadekel informing him the Board of Contributors had been terminated, but he'd be welcome to contribute 'two or three' pieces a year," the Globe and Mail reported in a Dec. 21, 2001 story on the CanWest tempests. "Elmenyawi recently asked the Gazette if he could write on the new anti-terrorist Bill C36. His letter has gone unanswered.

" 'I don't expect I'll be writing anything for the Gazette anymore,' he said in an interview. 'I suspect the Muslim approach and point of view is no longer welcome.' "

Montreal Gazette publisher Michael Goldbloom quits, cryptically citing differences with CanWest over the direction the chain is taking.

Fifty-four journalists and other staff at The Montreal Gazette publish an open letter denouncing the national editorial policy as an infringement on freedom of expression. The text runs in Toronto and French-language Montreal newspapers but is not carried, much less mentioned, in any CanWest publication. The protest is covered by Canoe, a web site owned by a rival media operation, Quebecor. Other journalists add their signatures after the fact, bringing the total to 77.

An “advisory” to unionized staff from Montreal Gazette management warns employees that working there is a privilege, not a right. The gag order warns that employees risk disciplinary action, up to and including dismissal, for sharing the internal goings-on at CanWest with rival media or publicly questioning the motives of management. The Montreal Newspaper Guild (a Local of TNG Canada/CWA) files a grievance but, under pressure, a web site independently set up by Gazette employees to voice their concerns is taken off-line. The Federation of Professional Journalists of Quebec soon re-posts the material on its Web server.

(The fugitive web site contains a compilation of local, national and international media coverage of the controversial CanWest policies, as well as letters to the editor at newspapers coast-to-coast. Although many of the links no longer work, it remains an impressive list that serves as proof that this was not – as the Aspers would have it – somewhat of a tempest in a teapot.)

The Quebec National Assembly unanimously denounces CanWest’s bid to centralize opinion. Quebec's highest legislative body “requests that the directors of Southam News publish a declaration of principles and commitments to the quality and diversity of information for the purpose of maintaining and preserving the unique character and editorial autonomy of its daily newspaper in Quebec." The story gets only eight inches on an inside page of the Gazette. Most other CanWest papers give it even less coverage. The limited copy that does run is from the Canadian Press. CanWest reporters who propose to cover the story are told they are in a conflict of interest.

The national editorials become the subject of a major article in Liberation, a French left-wing publication.

CanWest extends the corporate gag order imposed in Montreal and Regina to other CanWest newspapers and Global Television reporters. Once again, TNG Canada appeals to the company to ungag its journalists.

Full-page ads appear in the Globe and Mail, the Winnipeg Free Press and Halifax’s Chronicle-Herald – three of the few major Canadian newspapers not controlled by CanWest – denouncing the company’s stifling of debate and dissent. The signatories are a Who’s Who of Canadian journalism, including former publishers and executives of the newspapers now owned by CanWest. The ad was refused for publication in any CanWest paper.

Ottawa Citizen publisher Russell Mills, who had held that post since 1986, is fired by David Asper after the newspaper runs a series of articles criticizing Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and an editorial calling on him to resign. The official explanation is that Mills repeatedly disobeyed orders from CanWest to avoid ‘one-sided’ coverage, and to clear editorials like this one with head office.

A local, national and international uproar ensues. Citizen journalists withhold their bylines to protest the firing. Thousands of readers cancel their subscriptions to the Citizen. (Eventually, Mills sues and settles for an undisclosed sum. In August, Mills is awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University.)

Coverage and Reaction:

CBC | Rex Murphy (Point of View Commentary)

TNG Canada

Media magazine (Canadian Association of Journalists)

Leonard Asper issues memo to all CanWest employees regarding the Mills firing, in which he admits that "This week has not been an easy one for our company. A personnel decision of management has, unfortunately, become a public issue ..."

Although the CanWest CEO acknowledges that the "general public and our readers and viewers have also engaged in the debate, and expressed their concerns to us in no uncertain terms," he looks "forward to moving beyond the current controversy to re-focus on the essential business of our company ... We want our readers to have full confidence in the editorial integrity and independence of our newspapers."

Astonishingly, CanWest is not contrite. Nor does it intend to change those policies the public and employees find so odious. Says Mr. Asper: "If there is a lesson to be learned from all this, it is that we must be clear about what we stand for."

Unionized employees of the Victoria Times-Colonist go on strike over huge concessions being demanded by employer and, in part, because company had threatened to transfer customer-service and other jobs to CanWest HQ in Winnipeg.

Journalism students at Concordia University put Montreal Gazette publisher Larry Smith on the hotseat over the CanWest controversy. He declines to discuss the paper's Middle East coverage, deferring to the Gazette's Editor. But he does admit that the Aspers made an error in judgment regarding the national editorials. The Link student newspaper covered the confrontation.

In one fell swoop, CanWest announces it is dropping the 126-year-old Southam Newspapers name, ditching two senior executives, and shuffling upper management — in order to pursue its convergence agenda.

"We couldn't find any reason to keep the name and we wanted to put our stamp (CanWest Publications) on the company," Leonard Asper said in an interview with the Toronto Star.

Gone are Gerry Noble, president of Global TV, and Don Babick, president of Southam Newspapers.

"That has at least one veteran Toronto employee worried CanWest is redoubling efforts to save money and squeeze more efficiencies out of its newspaper and broadcasting empire," reports the Star. " 'I would think there's going to be cuts across the system,' said the employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity."

"Heads rolled at the money-losing National Post yesterday as owner CanWest Global Communications Corp. dumped two founding editors and axed the position of publisher," the Toronto Star reports in an article that carries the subheading: "Asper labels opposition 'axis of snivel'."

"CanWest chief executive Leonard Asper named his older brother – David, a lawyer – as chairman of the Post. ... "

"Gone are: editor-in-chief Ken Whyte, a former editor of Saturday Night magazine hand-picked for the job by (Conrad) Black five years ago; deputy editor Martin Newland from Black's Daily Telegraph in London, England; publisher Peter Viner, a long-time CanWest executive who will now shepherd the company's efforts to launch more radio stations in Canada. Viner took the publisher's job at the Post 16 months ago in hopes of making it profitable within a year."

Parliament's Committee on Canadian Heritage, after two years of work, issues an 872-page report intended to be a two-step blueprint to protect diversity of voices and democratic values in Canadian news media and attempt to arrest the convergence of content across print and broadcast outlets.

"How do we keep bad things from happening to the news media? The studies continue, as do the bad things." So begins Charles Gordon's prescient column in The Ottawa Citizen, in which he wonders whether the Heritage Committee's report will make a whit of a difference.

A Quebec arbitrator rules that the withdrawal of bylines by Montreal Gazette reporters almost two years earlier, in protest against national editorials, was legal and conforms with their union contract. The ruling restored the right of protest stripped from Gazette staff by management Dec. 7, 2001. The arbitrator found reporters, photographers, artists and others at the paper, not local management or Winnipeg-based CanWest Global, have the absolute right to control use of their bylines and credit lines. Arbitrator Jean-Pierre Lussier said staff cannot be threatened or subjected to discipline when using this right to protest Gazette or CanWest Global policies or for any other reason.

Your Media web site makes its public debut.

TNG Canada/CWA issues news release about new media watchdog that is unique in North America. The only coverage by a daily newspaper appears as a mention at the end of a Toronto Star column by Antonia Zerbisias, on March 28.