Media Democracy Day is here! Truth in Media anyone?

The roots of Media Democracy Day lie in the mid-'90s, with Conrad Black's purchase of the Southam newspaper chain, a move that left Black with control of more than 40 per cent of Canadian daily newspaper circulation.

The Vancouver group that formed to fight Black's media control lived on to host the first Media Democracy Day, in 2001. A similar group in Toronto held a similar event in the same year.

This year, there'll be MDD gatherings in Vancouver, Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa, and Montreal.

Anderson says the event is gaining steam.

"I think there's more of a movement maybe than a year ago," he said.

Net neutrality seizing attention

Anderson said the idea of Net neutrality, which turned into a surprise political issue earlier this year, got a lot of people interested in media democracy issues.

The concept of Net neutrality is simple: all traffic on the Internet should be treated equally. It is, to the supporters of Net neutrality, a question of free speech.

So when big Internet service providers began shaping, or "throttling" Internet content last spring, there was an uproar that reached into Parliament and the mainstream media.

"I think we woke a lot of people up to these issues," says Anderson. "I spoke at a Net neutrality rally on Parliament Hill and, first of all, who would have thought that would ever happen?

"There were young people who skipped school just to go. For sure there are people who never really thought of these issues who are now kind of engaged and are probably learning a bit about the political process -- the way big business affects policy."