(Back in 2005, I was traveling through Eastern Europe and stopped in a beach town on the border of Albania and Montenegro. There were these kids performing some crazy dance/acrobatic moves. This boy ran until the edge of wall, did a one-handed hand stand, flipped, and then landed on the sand below… no fear!)
Geez… answering emails is hard-work! Who would’ve thought my Saturday afternoon would be consumed by looking through and answering emails. I have about 5 different email accounts. Even though I make an effort to check all of them regularly, one or two slip through and when I do remember to check them, I regret having so many email addresses. The one I just checked had over 150 emails, of which all or most were e-newsletters, job announcements, and all those emails you get when you sign up for mailing lists.
While having a few different emails is good for organizing personal and not-so personal emails, it’s also a bit of a headache to keep up-to-date with them. There are probably better ways, but I’m a bit stubborn to change… If you’re reading this, let me know how many email addresses you have by commenting below. Maybe it’ll help me think of myself as less of a freak!
In case you’re interested in how the media affects the way we live, there’s a lawsuit going on right now in Canada that is trying to address how much influence the media, especially corporate media, has on our lives and if people have the right to have access to more diverse views and perspective when we watch TV, read a newspaper, or even listen to radio. Check it out below.
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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 www.mediacarta.org and www.adbusters.org.
[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: <www.democraticmedia.ca> <www.mediareform.ca> <www.mediademocracy.ca>
I have so many e-mail addresses. Like, eight.
My brother has something like ten, but he forwards them all to his main account and then uses forwarding and receipt rules to automatically sort them into different folders. So he’s essentially got one main account with ten inboxes. It’s a good idea, but I’m too lazy to implement it.