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For Immediate Release: April 16, 1997
Guerrilla Media quarantines Conrad Black's newspapers
Today, three dozen members of Guerrilla Media's (GM) Media Health Protection Branch placed Health Canada contamination bags over 1,000 Vancouver Sun and Province newspaper boxes in Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, North Vancouver, West Vancouver and Courtenay. Attached to each bag was a warning about the dangers of "Black Contaminated Ink." and the deadly e-conrad blackterium infecting the pages of BC's two largest dailies.
"We felt that the public needed a reminder about the long-term effects of having more than half of Canada's daily newspapers under the fat thumb of one single owner," said GM's Chief Health Officer Noam de Plöm. "After all, if Conrad Black believes that Southam papers were 'feminist, socialist, envious anti-American' publications before his takeover, than he obviously hadn't read the columns of Vaughn Palmer or Trevor Lautens."
Of course, without Conrad Black's exacting control of the Southam chain of newspapers, these publications would not be that much better. After all, publishers are in the business of selling advertising space, not serving the public good. Creating uniform, non-controversial and shallow media products palatable to advertisers is the norm. However, GM feels that having an owner – who is so rabidly to the right of most Reform Party MPs – calling the shots at Southam can't be a good thing for Canadian democracy.
"Everyone recognizes the important role that the media plays in shaping debate in the world today," said de Plöm, "Nevertheless, nothing is being done to assure that this power is being used in the best interests of society. That has to change."
Quotes For The Record
"This country should no longer tolerate a situation where the public interest in so vital a field of information is dependent on the greed or goodwill of an extremely privileged group of businessmen."
- Special Senate Committee on Mass Media, 1970 - Most Fundamental Conclusion
"We're going to...separate news from comment, assuring a reasonable variety of comment, and not just the overwhelming avalanche of soft, left, bland, envious pap which has poured like sludge through the centre pages of most of the Southam papers for some time."
- Conrad Black, 1996
Guerrilla
Media is a Vancouver-based group of cultural critics who
routinely poke fun at corporations, and generally, deride
governing elites that carry out their business at society's
expense. Notwithstanding, we also find excessively
disagreeable the hyper-inflated verbal eructations of
certain corpulent captains of industry. 'Nuff
said.
l
