[news] Adbusters goes to the B.C. Supreme Court

Tue Jan 8 23:17:06 PST 2008

PRESS RELEASE: THE RIGHT TO COMMUNICATE

On Monday, January 7th, the British Columbia Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on whether or not Adbusters' lawsuit against Global Television, the CBC, and the CRTC, should go forward. If the Adbusters lawsuit clears this hurdle, media rights advocates will celebrate an important victory in the battle against censorship.

For more than a decade, Adbusters, a magazine and media foundation, has  
been trying to pay major commercial broadcasters to air its  
public-service TV spots, but these attempts have been routinely blocked  
by network executives, often with little or no explanation. In 2004,  
Adbusters finally turned to the courts. It filed a lawsuit against the  
government of Canada and some of the country's biggest media barons,  
arguing that the public has a constitutionally protected freedom of  
expression over the public airwaves.

At issue is the right of all Canadian citizens to have (as stipulated by  
the Canadian Broadcasting Act) "a reasonable opportunity...to be exposed  
to the expression of differing views on matters of public concern."

"This case will decide if Canadians have the right to walk into their  
local TV stations and buy thirty seconds of airtime for a message they  
want to air," says Kalle Lasn, editor-in-chief of Adbusters.

Ryan Dalziel of Bull, Housser & Tupper LLP, who is representing  
Adbusters, explains the special nature of this suit.

"This is not," he says, "a bare-knuckle family law dispute, nor is it a  
Bay Street-style war of attrition between commercial entities. It is  
public interest litigation, brought by a not-for-profit organization  
with no chance of any monetary return."

Adbusters is hoping Canadians will pay close attention to a landmark  
case that pits ordinary citizens and consumers against powerful special  
interests. The outcome will determine the future role of television in  
Canada.

EDITOR'S NOTES

For more information about Adbusters and the global media democracy  
movement visit and .

[1] Canadian Media facts:  
* Four corporations (CanWest, Quebecor, Torstar and Gesca) control 72  
per cent of the country's daily newspaper circulation.  
* Five major media acquisitions in Canada have occurred or are  
currently in the making in the past two years: CHUM was purchased by  
CTVglobemedia for $1.4 billion, which then sold five CityTV stations to  
Rogers for $375 million; CanWest purchased Alliance Atlantis for $2.3  
billion; Astral Media bought Standard Broadcasting for $1.2 billion; and  
Black Press and Quebecor are vying for the Osprey Media newspaper chain  
in a deal that will be worth more than $400 million.

[2] Facts about Media Democracy: 

* More than 30,000 people have signed the Media Carta  
to voice their concerns about the way information  
is distributed in our society.  
* In the past year a growing number of grassroots media activist  
groups have been formed in Canada to express their dissatisfaction with  
the continued consolidation of the country's media:  

The Media's New Aesthetic: Why TV is about to have a major mood swing by  
Clayton Dach

The last few years have been hard on poor old television.

Viewership has fallen across the board as core audiences -- guys aged 18  
to 34 in particular - are abandoning the device that raised them, opting  
instead for game controllers and the internet. Meanwhile, those who have  
remained loyal to TV are failing to remain similarly loyal to the  
advertising that makes it profitable, increasingly choosing to get their  
tube fix via commercial-annihilating digital video recorders,  
advertising-light DVDs, and (horror of horrors) pirate downloads.

With viewers putting up blinders to the ad-program-ad rhythm of  
for-profit television, the desirability of conventional 30-second  
commercial spot is tanking. For the first time in decades, a number of  
key markets have witnessed decreases in the amount spent on traditional  
ads, as marketers demand the ever-elusive bigger bang with in-program  
product placements and full-on brand integration within storylines. The  
result: as much as 15 full minutes of every hour of programming in North  
America is now dedicated to thinly veiled product placements, with shows  
like American Idol topping out at over 4,000 placements per season --  
all of this in addition to the average of 14 to 22 minutes out of 60  
still set aside for traditional spots.

Given televisions' incredible shrinking credibility, especially in the  
case of broadcast journalism, it is little wonder that we have suffered  
through the ceaseless debate over whether we live under the thumb of a  
"liberal media" or a "conservative media." Luckily, we can safely  
disregard the question of television's political affiliation, since we  
are rapidly approaching a sort of McLuhan-esque implosion which will  
render the answer irrelevant. It's that moment when the specifics of the  
rock 'em sock 'em, talking-head debates may be school massacres or  
missing pageant queens, but the message itself always remains the same.  
That message is television, an ingenious device for the capturing of  
eyeballs. Increasingly, this device is being pressed into the service of  
a singular purpose. While this purpose could hardly be called a  
philosophy in the proper sense, as a system of narrow values it does  
require the exclusion of dissonant ideas to efficiently function.

Adbusters began, in large part, as a product of outrage over just how  
destructive, self-serving, and at times downright insane the deliberate  
exclusions of this system have become. We've learned, for example, that  
the keepers of the airwaves will permit you to expose the perils of  
cardiovascular disease; you may not, however, tell the truth about a  
major advertiser's fat-laden products. Similarly, you are allowed to  
tell kids to get more exercise, but you can't tell them to turn off  
their TVs in order to do so. You may encourage women to ignore the  
images produced by the beauty industry and to feel good about their own  
bodies, no matter the shape or size -- but only if you're selling soap  
in the process. And, most gallingly, you can pay lip service to the  
urgency of tackling climate change, and yet you can't challenge people  
to buy less stuff as a way to actually go for it.

But it's possible that you don't care. Maybe you gave up on television a  
long time ago. Maybe you don't even own a TV set anymore. For your  
personal peace of mind, that was probably a good move; with an estimated  
112 million television households in the United States alone, however,  
we ignore the stirrings of TV at our own peril. The last couple of  
decades have seen unprecedented levels of consolidation in the realm of  
mass media. Today, the movers and shakers of TV are the very same people  
and corporate entities who control the majority of newspapers, of radio  
stations, of book publishing, of outdoor advertising, of music  
distribution, of film production, and of your favorite social networking  
sites. The dirty tricks and the sleights of hand that are used to keep  
urgent, dissonant messages off the air aren't in any way specific to  
that TV. They are the natural consequences of corporate rule, and they  
will be brought to bear whenever we are too distracted to stand in the  
way.

Not by accident, more and more people are doing just that -- stepping up  
to join the ongoing battle against a media system that has left civil  
society out in the cold and in the dark, a media system that has been  
busily propagating itself at the expense of our social, cultural,  
political and environmental health. It's a battle that Adbusters has  
proudly taken up with its ongoing lawsuit against CanWest, Canada's  
biggest media conglomerate.

What's at stake in this struggle is not just access, but the creation of  
a whole new media aesthetic: a messier one, more spontaneous and  
unpredictable, one that fosters participation and social relevance, a  
genuine engine for the positive change. If Adbusters' lawsuit is a  
success, one of the first manifestations of this aesthetic will be a  
strange new mood - exciting, challenging, even slightly dangerous --  
every time you switch on the box in your living room, where previously  
there was only a moribund device completely sewn-up by private,  
for-profit interests. This strange new mood will prove once and for all  
that television (just like newspapers, magazines and radio before it,  
and just like the internet after it) has the capacity to perform  
services other than selling us on the idea of buying, services of vital  
importance to the health of our species and its democracies. And like  
with all exciting, challenging, and slightly dangerous new moods, we're  
betting it will prove to be pretty damned infectious.

URL: http://mostlywater.org/adbusters_goes_bc_supreme_court