Driving The Porcelain Bus: Victory for Canadians and Avaaz

Friday, 15 October 2010

Victory for Canadians and Avaaz - No Fox News North!

From Avaaz:

We did it! "Fox News North" has dropped their bid for forced access to our cable fees!

83,000 of us signed the petition, 25,000 sent letters to the CRTC and 4,000 donated over $115,000 - and last week SunTV, seeing they could not win, dropped their request to the government to force cable companies to carry them. A huge congrats to everyone on this amazing victory for Canada!

It wasn't easy -- the Sun media empire threw everything they had at us - smear pieces, legal threats, even insider knowledge of sabotage of our campaigns -- but our united voices proved more powerful than even a Harper-allied corporate giant.

Let's take a moment to celebrate this, and share thoughts for what we do next. Click below to join a nation-wide live-chat:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/crtc_report_back/?vl

Just 3 weeks ago, our campaign caused the resignation in disgrace of SunTV chief and former Harper spin doctor Kory Teneycke (after we pressed for an RCMP investigation into the sabotage of our petition by people linked to Teneycke). While significant, Teneycke was just replaced by another scandal-ridden spin doctor for another conservative Prime Minister.

But the decision to abandon the forced access to our fees is a huge deal. "Fox News North" (SunTV) has admitted that, if given a free choice, Canadians won't watch it enough to make it profitable - that's why they sought a special licence from the CRTC that would force cable companies to carry them, and why the press warned that the CRTC was under pressure from the Harper government to grant this licence. So, the success of our people-powered campaign could mean the end of this attempt to bring a poisonous brand of crony-media to Canada. Hooray!

Harper's radical-right clique has launched a full scale assault on our democracy - forcing out top civil servants for refusing to be politicized, controlling press access to government like never before, even shutting down our Parliament when it suited them. A 24 hour propaganda news channel that backed their every move, no matter how outrageous, could have been a headshot to our country's democratic character. This victory is Canadian democracy's resilient response, and it's beautiful. Thank you!!

With gratitude and excitement for all we can achieve together in the future,
Ricken, Emma, Laryn and the whole Avaaz team