Calling the Media to Task
Please take a few minutes to contact Ottawa's mainstream media to let them know
what you think about the war show, the Festival of Peace and their coverage (or
lack thereof) of these events. The media tried very hard, and succeeded,
in almost completely ignoring the obvious connections between the use of the
world's most advanced war-fighting technology as children's entertainment and
many peace, human rights, development and environment issues.
Your phone call, email or letter does not have to be long or detailed. Neither
does not have to be highly polished. Any sincere expression of concern
would be great. (Contact info. for the CBC and Citizen are listed below.)
Many mainstream media outlets (radio, TV and print) actively promoted this
weekend's so called "National Capital Air Show." They happily
gave out all of the necessary details well in advance of the war show. In
this way, they acted as promoters of the event rather than reporters covering
it. They told their audiences where and when it was going to happen and they
told them exactly how to get there. They even brought up the
"air" show during weather reports. Reporters and news anchors
actually raved about the "air" show, talking enthusiastically about
how great it was for children. For example, early Saturdays morning a CBC
reporter told listeners that he was at the air show with his 5 year old.
He talked about how fun it was for kids and encouraged others to bring their
children along for a great time.
Thus throwing all pretense of objectivity aside, the corporate and
government-sponsored media excitedly encouraged people to attend Ottawa's
biggest military propaganda event of the year. (Thank goodness for
community media like the XPress, CKCU, and the university newspapers, that were
open to public criticisms of the war show raised by peace, human rights,
development, religious, labour and youth groups.)
A couple of the mainstream media (CJOH TV and CBC french TV) did mention our
Festival of Peace in passing, but only after it was already over.
Blatant media support for Ottawa's highly militarized war show may not come as
much of a surprise to many of us because we know that numerous local media
corporations are official "partners" of this military propaganda
event. This year, the war show web site <ncas.ottawa.com> lists the
following local newspaper, radio, TV and electronic media as official
"partners" of their event: CFRA 580, CHOT 40, CJOH/CTV, E Press, KOOL
93.9, Le Droit, Majic 100, Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa.com and The Team 1200.
In previous years, media "partners" have included: The Bear, Young
Country, CHOT, the Ottawa Sun and CHEZ 106.
At the same time as they promote the war show, the mainstream media succeeded in
almost completely ignoring all of our criticisms about the event. Although
there was an interview with COAT's coordinator on CFRA AM radio (on Wednesday)
and CBC local news (on Friday), these resulted in only very brief news items.
CBC's interview focused on opposition to the distribution of air show
fundraising materials to Ottawa's schools, rather than on our reasons for
opposing the war show. Of course, they never mentioned our Festival of
Peace.
This lack of coverage did not result from our lack of trying. Over the
past few weeks, we sent posters, pamphlets and media releases to about 150 media
outlets in Ottawa. We used fax, email and hand delivered 150 copies of our
materials to all 150 members of the National Press Club. All of the main media
outlets were phoned to encourage them to cover our event. But to no avail.
Now is perhaps our last chance to get our message out through the mainstream
media on this important subject. Please call, fax or email your thoughts
and feelings to our local media. I suggest that we focus on the Ottawa
Citizen and CBC radio. The sooner this is done the better are our chances
that they'll use what we send. Even if they don't bother to print or
broadcast our comments, they will at least know that people care about peace,
human rights and environmental issues related to the war show and that we
objected to their biased coverage.
Letters to the Editor,
Ottawa Citizen
1101 Baxter Rd.
Ottawa ON K2C 3M4
fax: 596-8458
letters@thecitizen.southam.ca
Letters editor: Brian Sargeant 596-3785
CBO Morning Talkback line: 562-8666
Newsroom: 562-8457
On a very positive note, regardless of the media's complicity in promoting
public revelry in war technology (and in war itself), our Festival of Peace was a fantastic success! We took a big step in the process of
building Ottawa's peace community. We had a great time, we learned lots
from our speakers, we used our banners and picket signs to expose our messages
of peace to literally thousands of war show attendees. There was a strong
consensus amongst those who attended that this should be Ottawa's first annual
Festival of Peace!
Here is a letter which was published by the Ottawa
Citizen on Wednesday, Sept. 20. You can either choose to respond to it or
you can respond to the Citizen's promotion of the war show and their negligence
in covering our Festival of Peace.