Slant, Spin or just plain fiction??:
Newspapers accused of misusing word 'terrorist'
Last Updated Fri, 17 Sep 2004 17:19:45 EDT
OTTAWA - Canada's largest newspaper chain, CanWest Global, is being criticized over its use of the word "terrorist" in stories about the Middle East.
The owner of the National Post and dozens of other papers across Canada is being accused of inappropriately inserting the word into newswire copy dealing with the Middle East, thereby changing the meaning of those stories.
One of the world's leading news agencies, Reuters, said CanWest newspapers has been altering words and phrases in its stories dealing with the war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Reuters told CBC News it would complain to CanWest about the issue.
The global managing editor for Reuters, David Schlesinger, called such changes unacceptable. He said CanWest had crossed a line from editing for style to editing the substance and slant of news from the Middle East.
"If they want to put their own judgment into it, they're free to do that, but then they shouldn't say that it's by a Reuters reporter," said Schlesinger.
As an example, Schlesinger cited a recent Reuters story, in which the original copy read: "...the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which has been involved in a four-year-old revolt against Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank."
In the National Post version of the story, printed Tuesday, it became: "...the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a terrorist group that has been involved in a four-year-old campaign of violence against Israel."
Neither the National Post nor CanWest returned calls.
But the Ottawa Citizen, another CanWest paper, has admitted to making erroneous changes in a story about Iraq from another leading news agency.
Last week, the Citizen inserted the word "terrorist" seven times into an Associated Press story on the Iraqi city of Fallujah, where Iraqi insurgents have been battling U.S.-led occupation forces.
In an interview, Ottawa Citizen editor Scott Anderson conceded fighters in Fallujah were not terrorists but said CanWest has a policy of renaming some groups as terrorists.
He added the paper had applied that term primarily to Arab groups, and that mistakes had been made occasionally.
However, Anderson said he did not believe the paper had a duty to inform its readers when it changed words.
"We're editing for style...," he said. "We're editing so that we have clear consistent language to describe what's going on in the world. And if we've made a mistake, we should correct that. And we will."
In response to a letter published Friday about the Fallujah article, the Citizen wrote: "The changes to the Associated Press story do not reflect Citizen policy, which is to use the term 'terrorist' to describe someone who deliberately targets civilians. As such, the changes to the Associated Press story were made in error."
Riad Saloojee, the head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Canada, says the organization wants Canadian press watchdogs to investigate CanWest.
"We're going to be asking the Ontario Press Council to investigate exactly the extent of this policy across the country in other CanWest publications," said Saloojee.
Saturday, September 18, 2004
Friday, September 17, 2004
This little item is from the New York Times. Why is it the very worst kind of News Reporting and Journalism in gerneral?;
On Sept. 17, 1862, Union forces hurled back a Confederate invasion of Maryland in the Civil War Battle of Antietam. During the battle, 23,100 were killed, wounded or captured, making it the bloodiest day in United States military history.
On Sept. 17, 1862, Union forces hurled back a Confederate invasion of Maryland in the Civil War Battle of Antietam. During the battle, 23,100 were killed, wounded or captured, making it the bloodiest day in United States military history.
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Japanese often ask the question "Why don't the Chinese, or the Koreans like us?"
Perhaps here is one of the answers:
Vet refuses to take Unit 731 to his grave
Teen recruit for Japan's atrocity machine airs conscience as time gets short
By ERIC TALMADGE
YOKAICHIBA, Chiba Pref. (AP) Yoshio Shinozuka sits on the wooden steps of an old Buddhist temple just down the road from his home and the place where he will be buried
Yoshio Shinozuka speaks about the Imperial Japanese Army's infamous Unit 731 at a temple near his home in Yokaichiba, Chiba Prefecture.
Surrounded by pine trees and rice paddies, the temple is quiet save for the incessant buzzing of cicadas.
Frail and fast approaching his 83rd birthday, he points to a small cemetery guarded by a statue of the Goddess of Mercy that will be his final resting place. "I've already chosen the plot," he said.
Shinozuka has had a lot of time to reflect on his youth, and his memories of those days are crystal clear. But they are laced with poison.
A member of Unit 731 in northeast China in the 1930s and '40s, Shinozuka belonged to perhaps the most advanced biological weapons operation of its time. As a teenager, he participated in atrocities -- vivisections and other experiments on humans -- that for millions of Chinese epitomize Japan's Imperial rampage through Asia.
Conservative estimates place the number of the unit's victims in the thousands -- as many as 250,000, some historians believe.
For many years, Japan's government denied Unit 731 existed.
In a landmark ruling in 2002, a Japanese court finally acknowledged the unit's operations caused "immense" suffering and were "clearly inhumane." But like previous courts, it said the government had no legal obligation to atone to the victims.
As far as many Asians are concerned, Japan has never faced up to its past. The war remains an open wound deeply affecting its relations with its neighbors.
Shinozuka, however, has devoted himself to making amends.
He testified on behalf of his Chinese victims. He has written a book for schoolchildren. In 1998, he tried to speak at peace conferences in the United States and Canada -- but immigration inspectors turned him away as a war criminal.
He accepts that label.
"It took me a long time to get beyond the excuse that I was just following orders," he said. "I was doing what I was told. And I might very well have been killed had I disobeyed. But what we did was so terrible that I should have refused, even if that meant my own death.
"But I didn't do that. And I will never be forgiven."
Teen took recruiter's bait
In February 1939, as Japan's war machine was devouring China, a recruiter came to Shinozuka's rural high school, dressed in an army aviator's uniform and promising a bright future for those who signed up. There would be college scholarships and possible careers in medicine or aviation, lots of travel, the satisfaction of serving the Emperor.
"We were all impressed," Shinozuka recalled. "It seemed like quite an opportunity."
Shinozuka aced the examination. "I think everybody passed that test," he said. "It was very easy."
He was 15 years old.
Two months later, he was ordered to join Unit 731 of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army and was shipped off to its sprawling headquarters in the city of Pingfan, just outside Harbin in Japan-controlled northeast China.
"The idea was that we would be responsible for providing our soldiers with safe drinking water," he said.
As a civilian with the unit's youth corps, Shinozuka spent most of his time in a classroom learning about basic medicine, sanitation and the spread of germs.
In spring 1940, he was given a more hands-on mission.
"Our unit was raising fleas and infecting them with the plague," he said. "My job was to see that they had live rats to grow on."
It was a simple operation -- the rats and their fleas, along with grains of wheat, were kept in small cages in a dark room. When a rat died, the fleas would naturally move away from its corpse and were then corralled by carefully placed red lights through a bathtub into a glass cylinder attached to the drain.
"What happened to the fleas next wasn't our concern," he said.
But soon after Shinozuka got his new assignment, Chinese began dying of the plague.
According to documents filed by a group of Chinese victims with the Tokyo District Court in the 2002 compensation suit, Japanese military planes on the morning of Oct. 4, 1940, dropped wheat with plague-infected fleas over the city of Quxian.
Despite intense efforts by townspeople to burn the infected materials, at least two dozen deaths from bubonic plague were reported there by year's end. A railroader infected by the Quxian strain then spread the disease to Yiwu, where more than 300 died. Hundreds more plague deaths followed in nearby areas.
In November 1941, Unit 731 aircraft also dropped cotton, grains and other flea-infested materials on the town of Changde, causing two outbreaks -- the second beginning the following spring when infected rats became active after surviving the winter. Overall, as many as 7,643 died.
"I never asked why we did what we did," Shinozuka said. "Nobody did. We weren't given any time to think about what we were doing. And there was an unspoken rule to hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. But there is no doubt in my mind that what the Chinese say is true."
Advanced atrocities
Shinozuka's studies continued.
Back in the classroom, he learned about the mass production of typhus, cholera, anthrax, dysentery. Then, in 1942, he was given another task -- prepping plague-infected people to be cut up alive.
Prisoners were infected so that the unit could study the progress and potency of their biological weapons. Samples removed from the prisoners were used to produce more bacteria.
"The first time, my legs were shaking so badly I could hardly stand up," Shinozuka said.
He knew the person on the operating table.
"I'd seen him a few times," he said. "He seemed like an intellectual. He wasn't even 30. But by the time he was brought in to the dissection room, he was so black with the plague that he looked like a different person. He was clearly on the verge of death."
In a tiled operating room, Shinozuka cleaned the victim with a scrub brush, front then back, then dried him off. Another man used a stethoscope to make sure the victim was still alive and then assisted a third man who quickly but methodically cut the victim open and removed his organs.
"We were told that it was crucial to extract the specimens before putrefaction had time to set in and contaminate our research," Shinozuka said. "The room didn't have a clock, but I guess the operations took about four hours. I will never forget the feeling of being there."
Shinozuka personally participated in three more vivisections.
"We called the victims 'logs,' " he said. "We didn't want to think of them as people. We didn't want to admit that we were taking lives. So we convinced ourselves that what we were doing was like cutting down a tree. When you see someone in that state, you just can't move. Your mind goes blank. The fear is overwhelming."
Shinozuka was now 20 years old.
The next year, he was formally drafted into the army.
When the war ended in August 1945, Shinozuka was a lance corporal with a medical unit near the Korean border.
'Re-educated' by China
Separated from his superiors in the chaos of defeat, he was caught up in the Chinese civil war and imprisoned for a year by Mao Zedong's communists. When he got out, many of his countrymen had been repatriated. Alone and forgotten, he had nowhere to go.
"But the People's Liberation Army took me in," he said. "They treated me well, and I enjoyed serving with them."
After six years, his past with Unit 731 was discovered. He was sent to a re-education camp, where he remained until 1956. Oddly enough, he said, he has fond memories of his detention there.
"The camp was built by the Japanese, and it was quite spacious and comfortable," he said. "We ate better than the guards. They showed us movies and played music for us. We were allowed to play sports. It was much better than life in Pingfan."
In the camp, Shinozuka began to reflect on his actions with Unit 731.
"I began to be a human again," he said. "Had they been harsh with me, I might have gone into my shell. But they treated me as a person, and I had to think of them as people. I began to think of the victims as people, too."
Shinozuka said that although he initially lied about his Unit 731 activities, saying he was researching new vaccines, he gradually began confessing the truth.
"I don't think they had much use for what I was telling them," he said. "But they sent me home with a pardon. I was never charged."
Every May, a couple dozen of Shinozuka's comrades from the re-education camp join him at the temple in Yokaichiba, about 100 km east of Tokyo. Near the Shinozuka family plot, they have built a simple stone monument to Japan's Chinese victims.
"We express our bottomless gratitude to the Chinese people, and our deepest apologies," the monument says.
Some rose to prominence
Of the 1,109 prisoners returned from the camp in 1956, few if any were Unit 731 members. Those unit leaders who made it back to Japan were spared prosecution in exchange for turning over information to the U.S. One rose to prominence in Japan's pharmaceutical industry. Others went to work for the health ministry.
Back in Japan, but with no home to return to, Shinozuka worked a local government job until retirement.
Though he often wanted to tell his story, "No one wanted to hear what I was saying," he said. "The Japanese prefer to think of themselves as victims in the war. Even the peace movement people told me that talking about Japan's role as an aggressor wasn't constructive.
"But I couldn't let this piece of history remain in the dark."
In 1997, the year he raised the monument, he testified on behalf of the 180 Chinese suing Japan for redress. The court denied their claim and they appealed on Sept. 2. Shinozuka hopes to be healthy enough to attend the hearings.
In recent years he has visited China often and has been back to Unit 731's former headquarters -- now a museum.
"The Chinese have been very generous with me," he said. "They tell me that I, too, am a victim."
The Japan Times: Sept. 17, 2004
Perhaps here is one of the answers:
Vet refuses to take Unit 731 to his grave
Teen recruit for Japan's atrocity machine airs conscience as time gets short
By ERIC TALMADGE
YOKAICHIBA, Chiba Pref. (AP) Yoshio Shinozuka sits on the wooden steps of an old Buddhist temple just down the road from his home and the place where he will be buried
Yoshio Shinozuka speaks about the Imperial Japanese Army's infamous Unit 731 at a temple near his home in Yokaichiba, Chiba Prefecture.
Surrounded by pine trees and rice paddies, the temple is quiet save for the incessant buzzing of cicadas.
Frail and fast approaching his 83rd birthday, he points to a small cemetery guarded by a statue of the Goddess of Mercy that will be his final resting place. "I've already chosen the plot," he said.
Shinozuka has had a lot of time to reflect on his youth, and his memories of those days are crystal clear. But they are laced with poison.
A member of Unit 731 in northeast China in the 1930s and '40s, Shinozuka belonged to perhaps the most advanced biological weapons operation of its time. As a teenager, he participated in atrocities -- vivisections and other experiments on humans -- that for millions of Chinese epitomize Japan's Imperial rampage through Asia.
Conservative estimates place the number of the unit's victims in the thousands -- as many as 250,000, some historians believe.
For many years, Japan's government denied Unit 731 existed.
In a landmark ruling in 2002, a Japanese court finally acknowledged the unit's operations caused "immense" suffering and were "clearly inhumane." But like previous courts, it said the government had no legal obligation to atone to the victims.
As far as many Asians are concerned, Japan has never faced up to its past. The war remains an open wound deeply affecting its relations with its neighbors.
Shinozuka, however, has devoted himself to making amends.
He testified on behalf of his Chinese victims. He has written a book for schoolchildren. In 1998, he tried to speak at peace conferences in the United States and Canada -- but immigration inspectors turned him away as a war criminal.
He accepts that label.
"It took me a long time to get beyond the excuse that I was just following orders," he said. "I was doing what I was told. And I might very well have been killed had I disobeyed. But what we did was so terrible that I should have refused, even if that meant my own death.
"But I didn't do that. And I will never be forgiven."
Teen took recruiter's bait
In February 1939, as Japan's war machine was devouring China, a recruiter came to Shinozuka's rural high school, dressed in an army aviator's uniform and promising a bright future for those who signed up. There would be college scholarships and possible careers in medicine or aviation, lots of travel, the satisfaction of serving the Emperor.
"We were all impressed," Shinozuka recalled. "It seemed like quite an opportunity."
Shinozuka aced the examination. "I think everybody passed that test," he said. "It was very easy."
He was 15 years old.
Two months later, he was ordered to join Unit 731 of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army and was shipped off to its sprawling headquarters in the city of Pingfan, just outside Harbin in Japan-controlled northeast China.
"The idea was that we would be responsible for providing our soldiers with safe drinking water," he said.
As a civilian with the unit's youth corps, Shinozuka spent most of his time in a classroom learning about basic medicine, sanitation and the spread of germs.
In spring 1940, he was given a more hands-on mission.
"Our unit was raising fleas and infecting them with the plague," he said. "My job was to see that they had live rats to grow on."
It was a simple operation -- the rats and their fleas, along with grains of wheat, were kept in small cages in a dark room. When a rat died, the fleas would naturally move away from its corpse and were then corralled by carefully placed red lights through a bathtub into a glass cylinder attached to the drain.
"What happened to the fleas next wasn't our concern," he said.
But soon after Shinozuka got his new assignment, Chinese began dying of the plague.
According to documents filed by a group of Chinese victims with the Tokyo District Court in the 2002 compensation suit, Japanese military planes on the morning of Oct. 4, 1940, dropped wheat with plague-infected fleas over the city of Quxian.
Despite intense efforts by townspeople to burn the infected materials, at least two dozen deaths from bubonic plague were reported there by year's end. A railroader infected by the Quxian strain then spread the disease to Yiwu, where more than 300 died. Hundreds more plague deaths followed in nearby areas.
In November 1941, Unit 731 aircraft also dropped cotton, grains and other flea-infested materials on the town of Changde, causing two outbreaks -- the second beginning the following spring when infected rats became active after surviving the winter. Overall, as many as 7,643 died.
"I never asked why we did what we did," Shinozuka said. "Nobody did. We weren't given any time to think about what we were doing. And there was an unspoken rule to hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. But there is no doubt in my mind that what the Chinese say is true."
Advanced atrocities
Shinozuka's studies continued.
Back in the classroom, he learned about the mass production of typhus, cholera, anthrax, dysentery. Then, in 1942, he was given another task -- prepping plague-infected people to be cut up alive.
Prisoners were infected so that the unit could study the progress and potency of their biological weapons. Samples removed from the prisoners were used to produce more bacteria.
"The first time, my legs were shaking so badly I could hardly stand up," Shinozuka said.
He knew the person on the operating table.
"I'd seen him a few times," he said. "He seemed like an intellectual. He wasn't even 30. But by the time he was brought in to the dissection room, he was so black with the plague that he looked like a different person. He was clearly on the verge of death."
In a tiled operating room, Shinozuka cleaned the victim with a scrub brush, front then back, then dried him off. Another man used a stethoscope to make sure the victim was still alive and then assisted a third man who quickly but methodically cut the victim open and removed his organs.
"We were told that it was crucial to extract the specimens before putrefaction had time to set in and contaminate our research," Shinozuka said. "The room didn't have a clock, but I guess the operations took about four hours. I will never forget the feeling of being there."
Shinozuka personally participated in three more vivisections.
"We called the victims 'logs,' " he said. "We didn't want to think of them as people. We didn't want to admit that we were taking lives. So we convinced ourselves that what we were doing was like cutting down a tree. When you see someone in that state, you just can't move. Your mind goes blank. The fear is overwhelming."
Shinozuka was now 20 years old.
The next year, he was formally drafted into the army.
When the war ended in August 1945, Shinozuka was a lance corporal with a medical unit near the Korean border.
'Re-educated' by China
Separated from his superiors in the chaos of defeat, he was caught up in the Chinese civil war and imprisoned for a year by Mao Zedong's communists. When he got out, many of his countrymen had been repatriated. Alone and forgotten, he had nowhere to go.
"But the People's Liberation Army took me in," he said. "They treated me well, and I enjoyed serving with them."
After six years, his past with Unit 731 was discovered. He was sent to a re-education camp, where he remained until 1956. Oddly enough, he said, he has fond memories of his detention there.
"The camp was built by the Japanese, and it was quite spacious and comfortable," he said. "We ate better than the guards. They showed us movies and played music for us. We were allowed to play sports. It was much better than life in Pingfan."
In the camp, Shinozuka began to reflect on his actions with Unit 731.
"I began to be a human again," he said. "Had they been harsh with me, I might have gone into my shell. But they treated me as a person, and I had to think of them as people. I began to think of the victims as people, too."
Shinozuka said that although he initially lied about his Unit 731 activities, saying he was researching new vaccines, he gradually began confessing the truth.
"I don't think they had much use for what I was telling them," he said. "But they sent me home with a pardon. I was never charged."
Every May, a couple dozen of Shinozuka's comrades from the re-education camp join him at the temple in Yokaichiba, about 100 km east of Tokyo. Near the Shinozuka family plot, they have built a simple stone monument to Japan's Chinese victims.
"We express our bottomless gratitude to the Chinese people, and our deepest apologies," the monument says.
Some rose to prominence
Of the 1,109 prisoners returned from the camp in 1956, few if any were Unit 731 members. Those unit leaders who made it back to Japan were spared prosecution in exchange for turning over information to the U.S. One rose to prominence in Japan's pharmaceutical industry. Others went to work for the health ministry.
Back in Japan, but with no home to return to, Shinozuka worked a local government job until retirement.
Though he often wanted to tell his story, "No one wanted to hear what I was saying," he said. "The Japanese prefer to think of themselves as victims in the war. Even the peace movement people told me that talking about Japan's role as an aggressor wasn't constructive.
"But I couldn't let this piece of history remain in the dark."
In 1997, the year he raised the monument, he testified on behalf of the 180 Chinese suing Japan for redress. The court denied their claim and they appealed on Sept. 2. Shinozuka hopes to be healthy enough to attend the hearings.
In recent years he has visited China often and has been back to Unit 731's former headquarters -- now a museum.
"The Chinese have been very generous with me," he said. "They tell me that I, too, am a victim."
The Japan Times: Sept. 17, 2004
Those who fight the truth and the real news:
. NUTRI-WASHING JUNK FOOD
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/09/08/EDGLE8JMHR1.DTL
"Years ago, the environmental movement coined the term
"greenwashing" to describe how corporations use public relations to
make themselves appear environmentally friendly. Now, nutrition
advocates need their own moniker for a similar trend among major
food companies - call it 'nutri-washing,'" writes Michele Simon, a
public health lawyer and director of the Center for Informed Food
Choices. "Some nutrition advocates have applauded such efforts as
an attempt by industry to make improvements, however minor. But to
praise companies for such 'reforms' too easily rewards them with
the positive public-relations spin they seek. Also, these voluntary
actions deliberately attempt to deflect any mandatory government
regulations - for, as we are starting to learn, voluntary acts can
easily be rescinded. ... Moreover, these PR efforts don't tell the
whole story. Behind the scenes, industry is lobbying hard to
undermine public-health advocacy, especially that aimed at
improving the nutrition environment of public schools."
SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, September 8, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2004.html#1094616003
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1094616003
. NUTRI-WASHING JUNK FOOD
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/09/08/EDGLE8JMHR1.DTL
"Years ago, the environmental movement coined the term
"greenwashing" to describe how corporations use public relations to
make themselves appear environmentally friendly. Now, nutrition
advocates need their own moniker for a similar trend among major
food companies - call it 'nutri-washing,'" writes Michele Simon, a
public health lawyer and director of the Center for Informed Food
Choices. "Some nutrition advocates have applauded such efforts as
an attempt by industry to make improvements, however minor. But to
praise companies for such 'reforms' too easily rewards them with
the positive public-relations spin they seek. Also, these voluntary
actions deliberately attempt to deflect any mandatory government
regulations - for, as we are starting to learn, voluntary acts can
easily be rescinded. ... Moreover, these PR efforts don't tell the
whole story. Behind the scenes, industry is lobbying hard to
undermine public-health advocacy, especially that aimed at
improving the nutrition environment of public schools."
SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, September 8, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2004.html#1094616003
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1094616003
What is freedom of speech? How free are you to speak what you think and believe? Of course the first step is knowing what you think and believe. Do you know what you think? Or are you just following the lemmings? At any rate read this and think about it:
POSTED AT 5:30 AM EDT
Wednesday, Sep 15, 2004
By JOE FRIESEN
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Adbusters, the Vancouver-based alternative media organization, is suing Canada's major television networks for refusing to broadcast advertisements that criticize consumerism.
It has hired prominent civil-rights lawyer Clayton Ruby to act as counsel in this case, which it describes as the opening salvo in a war for greater media democracy.
"For the last 10 years I've been trying to buy air time and by and large I've been unable to do that," said Kalle Lasn, editor-in-chief of Adbusters magazine.
"I think it's a violation of my right to freedom of speech."
The lawsuit, which was filed in Ontario Superior Court, names the CBC, CanWest Global, Bell Globemedia and CHUM Ltd. as respondents.
It also names the Government of Canada in its role as regulator of the airwaves.
Adbusters is seeking a declaration from the courts under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that the broadcasters have infringed on its right to freedom of expression.
It hopes the court will force the networks to accept its ads.
The 10 ads, or "social marketing spots," submitted to the networks were all approved by Telecaster Services, a branch of the Television Bureau of Canada that acts as a guardian of good taste.
They include a spot promoting Buy Nothing Day, one that criticizes violence on TV, and one that points out how much fat is contained in a McDonald's Big Mac.
A CBC spokeswoman said its lawyers are considering their legal options.
In an e-mail, a CTV spokesman said the network told Mr. Lasn in April that it was prepared to air three of his commercials, but that it reserved the right to refuse the others on the grounds that they were bad for business.
"The idea of a TV executive lording it over me and telling me what I can and cannot say, it violates my democratic principles," Mr. Lasn said.
Transcripts of Adbusters' conversations with TV executives are included in the legal filing. In one case, a CHUM representative is quoted as saying the ads "were so blatantly against television and that is our entire core business. . . . You know we can't be selling our airtime and then telling people to turn their TVs off."
Another executive at CTV said the idea of Buy Nothing Day would go over "like a lead balloon" with major retail advertisers.
Adbusters first launched a legal challenge to get its television spots on the air in 1995. The suit wound its way through the British Columbia courts after the CBC terminated an advertising contract because an anti-car ad caused automobile advertisers to complain. The case eventually fizzled out when the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear it.
But this time, with Mr. Ruby as counsel, Mr. Lasn believes his group has a better case.
Mr. Ruby cites as precedent a Supreme Court ruling from 2002 in which the court protected the right to counter-advertising that criticizes a product or service.
In the judgment, Mr. Justice Louis LeBel wrote that "this type of communication may be of considerable importance even beyond the merely commercial sphere. It is a form of expression of opinion that has an important effect on the social and economic life of a society. It is a right not only of consumers, but of citizens."
Mr. Ruby said Adbusters merely wants to present the other side of the argument on airwaves that are inundated with messages promoting consumerism.
"This is a public space which the government regulates," Mr. Ruby said. "Given that [the government] have monopolized it, they have an obligation to guarantee freedom of expression."
Most major networks in the United States have rejected Adbusters spots. But CNN has aired several over the past five years, which were paid for by donations made through the Adbusters website.
Mr. Lasn said he plans a court challenge later this year if U.S. networks continue to refuse his business.
But first, Canada has a historic opportunity to become the first country that "opens its airwaves and gives citizens the right to communicate," he said.
POSTED AT 5:30 AM EDT
Wednesday, Sep 15, 2004
By JOE FRIESEN
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Adbusters, the Vancouver-based alternative media organization, is suing Canada's major television networks for refusing to broadcast advertisements that criticize consumerism.
It has hired prominent civil-rights lawyer Clayton Ruby to act as counsel in this case, which it describes as the opening salvo in a war for greater media democracy.
"For the last 10 years I've been trying to buy air time and by and large I've been unable to do that," said Kalle Lasn, editor-in-chief of Adbusters magazine.
"I think it's a violation of my right to freedom of speech."
The lawsuit, which was filed in Ontario Superior Court, names the CBC, CanWest Global, Bell Globemedia and CHUM Ltd. as respondents.
It also names the Government of Canada in its role as regulator of the airwaves.
Adbusters is seeking a declaration from the courts under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that the broadcasters have infringed on its right to freedom of expression.
It hopes the court will force the networks to accept its ads.
The 10 ads, or "social marketing spots," submitted to the networks were all approved by Telecaster Services, a branch of the Television Bureau of Canada that acts as a guardian of good taste.
They include a spot promoting Buy Nothing Day, one that criticizes violence on TV, and one that points out how much fat is contained in a McDonald's Big Mac.
A CBC spokeswoman said its lawyers are considering their legal options.
In an e-mail, a CTV spokesman said the network told Mr. Lasn in April that it was prepared to air three of his commercials, but that it reserved the right to refuse the others on the grounds that they were bad for business.
"The idea of a TV executive lording it over me and telling me what I can and cannot say, it violates my democratic principles," Mr. Lasn said.
Transcripts of Adbusters' conversations with TV executives are included in the legal filing. In one case, a CHUM representative is quoted as saying the ads "were so blatantly against television and that is our entire core business. . . . You know we can't be selling our airtime and then telling people to turn their TVs off."
Another executive at CTV said the idea of Buy Nothing Day would go over "like a lead balloon" with major retail advertisers.
Adbusters first launched a legal challenge to get its television spots on the air in 1995. The suit wound its way through the British Columbia courts after the CBC terminated an advertising contract because an anti-car ad caused automobile advertisers to complain. The case eventually fizzled out when the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear it.
But this time, with Mr. Ruby as counsel, Mr. Lasn believes his group has a better case.
Mr. Ruby cites as precedent a Supreme Court ruling from 2002 in which the court protected the right to counter-advertising that criticizes a product or service.
In the judgment, Mr. Justice Louis LeBel wrote that "this type of communication may be of considerable importance even beyond the merely commercial sphere. It is a form of expression of opinion that has an important effect on the social and economic life of a society. It is a right not only of consumers, but of citizens."
Mr. Ruby said Adbusters merely wants to present the other side of the argument on airwaves that are inundated with messages promoting consumerism.
"This is a public space which the government regulates," Mr. Ruby said. "Given that [the government] have monopolized it, they have an obligation to guarantee freedom of expression."
Most major networks in the United States have rejected Adbusters spots. But CNN has aired several over the past five years, which were paid for by donations made through the Adbusters website.
Mr. Lasn said he plans a court challenge later this year if U.S. networks continue to refuse his business.
But first, Canada has a historic opportunity to become the first country that "opens its airwaves and gives citizens the right to communicate," he said.
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