“If ‘the word’ was not so concentrated, more would question prevalent inequalities.” The owners of the word: access, structure and concentration of the media in the 21st century Latin America, a new book by the Argentinean researchers Marín Becerrra and Guillermo Mastrini, confirms and explores the high levels of media concentration in Latin America in the hands of a few economic conglomerates.

Participants at the UNESCO World Press Freedom Day conference held 3 May 2010 in Brisbane, Australia, issued a declaration calling on journalists to promote and support investigative journalism and to raise awareness about the role played by the right to information in journalism.

Communication Rights and the Right to Communicate in Canada edited by Marc Raboy and Jeremy Shtern has been published by University of British Columbia Press.

The following text is from the publisher's description of the book.

Media Divides offers a report card, or democratic audit, on communications law and policy by leading analysts and writers. The authors introduce the concept of communications rights as a framework for analysis in five key domains -- media, access, the Internet, privacy, and copyright -- and situate debates about rights in the context of Canadian history and the emerging global media and communications environment. Their analysis reveals that because law and policy in Canada has failed to respond adequately to a host of pressures and developments, citizens have unequal access to the nation’s communications system and the freedom of expression it promises.

Media Divides not only provides the first comprehensive, up-to-date overview of democratic deficits in Canada’s communications policy, it formulates recommendations -- including the establishment of a Canadian right to communicate -- for the future. It is mandatory reading for students and scholars of communications and law and for policy-makers and citizens who want to understand or influence the course of public policy.

Marc Raboy is professor and Beaverbrook Chair in Ethics, Media and Communications in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. Jeremy Shtern is a Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC) postdoctoral fellow in the Faculty of Communication and Design at Ryerson University.

Published:     April 2010, 408pp. ISBN:     9780774817745

Publisher's website. 

* La concentración de frecuencias y mercados en manos de pocos grupos económicos sigue siendo una realidad negativa en buena parte de los países de la región.