Saturday, July 22, 2006

Fighting for Better Journalism - a movement yet?

Two Freelancers for the Can West Victoria Times Colonist have resigned in protest after a Tourism writer was fired for the crime - in the eyes of the local tourism industry - of high-lighting free attractions in Victoria.

South of the border the public responded in fury to the owner of a local paper firing staff for reporting unflattering news about her friends:
500 people, apparently citizens, protested this week outside the Santa Barbara News-Press against control of the news room and alleged manipulation of news stories by new owner billionaire Wendy McCaw.
Here in Canada Adbusters has started a campaign to challenge the domination of the Media by a cartel of interests represented by CanWest:
One of the biggest challenges in the battle for media democracy is winning the legal right to walk into our local TV station, put down our money and say, “Give me 30 seconds of airtime, I’ve got something to say.” Right now, regular people can’t do it. Why? Because the private networks controlling our publicly owned airwaves won’t let us. They decide what gets on and what doesn’t; if your message doesn’t fit their political or commercial interests, they’ll simply refuse to air it. They're the world’s most powerful censors.One of the biggest challenges in the battle for media democracy is winning the legal right to walk into our local TV station, put down our money and say, “Give me 30 seconds of airtime, I’ve got something to say.” Right now, regular people can’t do it. Why? Because the private networks controlling our publicly owned airwaves won’t let us. They decide what gets on and what doesn’t; if your message doesn’t fit their political or commercial interests, they’ll simply refuse to air it. They're the world’s most powerful censors. Adbusters readers know that this is why we’ve launched the Media Carta Legal Battle in Canada’s courts.
Richard Littlemore relentlessly counters the desperate spin from the energy industry and it's apologists in the press with the real facts about the global scientific consensus about the human causes and true extent of global warming at DeSmogBlog.

The National Post appears to be on it's last legs as disgusted readers desert it in droves.

At some point here, it might be time to start calling this a movement.

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