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May 23, 2008
CanWest not amused
Legal ramifications of fake Sun discussed.
RON FRIEDMAN
An organization called the Seriously Free Speech Committee hosted an event last week offering support and solidarity to local political activist Mordecai Briemberg. Briemberg is facing a lawsuit by media conglomerate CanWest, for his alleged involvement in the production and distribution of a fake copy of the Vancouver Sun.
Roughly 200 people came to the event called CanWest: Media Bully, which took place at Simon Fraser University, Harbor Centre, in downtown Vancouver. A panel discussion focused on media concentration, political satire, censorship and SLAPP, or strategic lawsuit against public participation, which is how the event organizers characterized CanWest's legal action.
The suit was filed in December 2007, six months after 12,000 copies of the fake Vancouver Sun four-page broadsheet were printed and distributed to several locations around Vancouver and in Victoria. The satire was a carefully made replicate of the daily, virtually indistinguishable from the real paper graphically: it had the same fonts and scales, its layout was similar, its coloring the same. Content-wise, it was clearly a fake.
The mock paper contained material that was sharply critical of things like Israel's presence in the Palestinian territories, Canada's Middle East policy, Chapters/Indigo CEO Heather Reisman, companies that do business in Israel and, especially, CanWest's coverage of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the company's major shareholders, the Asper family. The parody's creators identified themselves only as the Palestine Media Collective and claimed to have created the paper "to point out the extreme anti-Palestinian bias of CanWest publications, particularly the Vancouver Sun."
CanWest's lawyers submitted a writ of summons to the Supreme Court of British Columbia identifying Briemberg, Horizon Publications Ltd. (the printer) and six John and Jane Does, as the people responsible for producing and distributing the fake paper. CanWest is seeking damages and cost for the defendant's alleged transgression of Section 7 of the Canadian Trade Marks Act. The writ also pointed to Briemberg's involvement in anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian media activities and of harboring antagonistic views towards CanWest and conspiring to injure its reputation.
Briemberg is a longtime advocate of Palestinian rights and is a founding member of the Canada Palestine Support Network (CanPalNet). He recently won the Power of Peace Award from the YMCA of Greater Vancouver for his international peace work.
Briemberg was the first to speak at last week's event. He acknowledged that he distributed copies of the fake paper after finding them at the Vancouver Public Library while attending an event commemorating 40 years of Israeli "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza, but denied having anything to do with its production. "This was the first time I saw the parody and, after briefly scanning it, I picked up a small handful of copies and delivered them to commuters in Burnaby – where I live – the next morning. I did so because it would stimulate them to think anew about the reliability of the information and commentary regularly published in the authentic Vancouver Sun," he said.
Briemberg described CanWest's lawsuit as an act taken out of fear. According to him, they fear that their control over the public debate is waning and, instead of engaging in open discussion, they are resorting to lawsuits.
The second member of the panel to speak was Leo McGrady, Briemberg's lawyer. According to McGrady, the civil wrongs filed against Briemberg are rarely used outside of commercial law. "I am not aware of any case where these torts have been used in a pure free speech/parody context," he said.
The charges sought to be brought against Briemberg include conspiracy, injurious falsehood, passing off and violation of trademark law. "All seem wildly inappropriate," said McGrady.
McGrady also read out examples of the type of information that Briemberg was required to submit, including information about the June commemoration event and the names and contact details of all the people involved with the Seriously Free Speech Committee. "There is no question that this is a SLAPP suit," said McGrady. "A SLAPP suit seeks to chill or punish a party's exercise of constitutional rights to free speech and to use the court for redress of this apparent grievance."
The two other speakers were Murray Dobbin, a veteran journalist and commentator, and Martha Roth a feminist activist. Both discussed what they considered to be CanWest's wrongdoings in terms of broad social changes.
Dobbin spoke about the dangers of media conglomeration: "The ultimate goal of our quibbling elite is to have us integrate into the United States." He later added, "When we let things like this go by without a fight, it is for them a signal to unleash similar assaults on other freedoms and other people."
Roth said, "The Vancouver Sun invites ridicule when it takes extreme, pro-Zionist, anti-Palestinian positions under the guise of reporting news.... The publication that Mordecai [Briemberg] and others distributed ... unmasked the hypocritical political bias of the Sun by ridiculing it, exaggerating it and punning on it." She concluded by calling for support of Briemberg: "CanWest has money, but they don't have something that we do have – and that's solidarity."
Following the speakers was a question period. Most of the comments were about how better to attack CanWest, including counter lawsuits, independent complaints, consumer boycotts and letters to the editor. Donations raised to help finance Briemberg's legal defence totalled slightly more than $2,500.
When asked whether he had called out to the producers of the fake paper to take responsibility for their actions, Briemberg said, "I'm neither a priest, nor a rabbi nor a policeman. You ask me what I would do in the circumstance – if I did something and you were nailed for it? – I would come forward and say: 'I did it and I think I am right to have done it,' but that's only my personal opinion."
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