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For Immediate Release: November 19, 1997
Guerrilla Media offers the Province some editorial direction on APEC
Going back to their media monkey-wrenching roots, early this morning Vancouver's Guerrilla Media (GM) distributed 20,000 copies of a Province APEC parody edition to commuters.
"We wanted to raise public debate around APEC and its impact at home and abroad," says GM spokesperson Beau Gus Monniker. "Too much print space and air time has been wasted on superficial issues like traffic jams and motorcade protocol."
Carefully produced to look like the real thing, over two thousand copies of the bogus daily were placed in Province newspaper boxes and wrapped around the newspaper's very own APEC special edition issue. As well, another 18,000 copies were handed out to passersby on their way to work.
"The kind of globalism that APEC preaches allows corporations and governments to act against the public interest," says Monniker. "At APEC, no business or political leader is talking about fair trade. Instead, all we hear about is free trade - a socially bankrupt economic arrangement that ignores human rights and the environment."
In GM's parody edition, the front page announces that Nike CEO Phil Knight has signed APEC dictators to a high-profile endorsement contract - the Nike Dictator Dream Team. On its roster, the team has such star players as the "Sultan of Sweat" President Suharto of Indonesia, China's Jiang "Tiananmen Squasher" Zemin and Mexico's Ernesto "Zap-a-Peasant" Zedillo. Knight explains why he wanted these APEC strongmen on Nike's payroll: "Everyone knows that APEC is the NBA of sweatshop leagues, that's why we came HERE to find the Cream of the Coups who deserve to wear the Swoosh."
Other satire pieces feature Southam columnist Barbara Amiel defending dictatorships and an article on Conrad Black's new automated newspaper editing system called "News Gatekeeper." As well, a back page, full-colour advertisement depicts Indonesian President Suharto starring in a new film called "Canadian Armed Killers" - a parody of the "Natural Born Killers" movie poster. Plus, Nike and Disney fall victim to some truth in advertising over their use of sweatshops to produce consumer goods.
"We also provide readers with a two-page backgrounder that delves into some of the myths of corporately-correct globalism that trade arrangements like APEC promote," says Monniker. "Government leaders defend APEC publicly as an economic program that works for the common good of all peoples, but they are deluding themselves and citizens. As US Undersecretary of the State of Economic Affairs Joan Spero noted, 'APEC has a customer. APEC is not for governments, it is for business.'"
Guerrilla Media is a Vancouver-based group of corporate and governmental critics who really enjoy taking the piss out of the mainstream media over its coverage of issues like APEC and globalism. As long as the majority of news outlets keep up the bad work, we'll never run out of satirical opportunities. Thanks, guys!
A Province Parody Sampler
As usual, GM reserves special treatment for media baron Conrad Black. In GM's story featuring the country's most repugnant CEO, we report that Black has developed a device for newspaper publishers called the "News Gatekeeper."
According to the story, this new technology allows the "busy CEO to program his news and opinion preferences into its expert system cyber-editor. All copy is automatically filtered and sanitized to his specifications prior to printing and distribution."
Here's just a sample of how "News Gatekeeper" works:
Suspect
Phrase Corrected
Phrase corporate
agenda common
sense child
labour youth
self-reliance programs corporate
greed entrepreneurial
energy megalomaniac
corpulent executives economic
elder statesman sweatshop profit
centre right-wing
thinktank celebrated
academics layoffs resource
upward-reallocation far-right
editorial writer award-winning
journalist award-winning
left-wing journalist credibility-challenged
hack
l
