The Common Media Hatch a New Yawner

A free paper arrived in Vancouver “hot off the press” (at least according to its editor, Gordon Kurenov). This new daily featured newswire stories from the usual international associations and its parent companies, the David Black Group, Canwest, and Torstar. Make a big splash with St Paddy’s Day coverage, add a couple of human interest local pieces and lightweight newsie items, throw in some movies and celebrity 'gossip' and voila, another vehicle to sanction corporate advertising.

What is curious to this writer is why the executives at Canwest, having strategized themselves into a 3.35 billion debtload are counting on this same bland formula to somehow bail them out of their desperate position. Could it be that Scotiabank’s proposal to underwrite their current fiscal dilemma has provided them this new impetus to do the same old, same old, all over again?

Independent editor’s voices in this country are being swallowed by these corporate machines who penetrate the local marketplaces and kneecap the traditional paper’s advertising rates until they put the independently established standard-bearer out of business. These tactics are well known to anyone who had dealings with Conrad Black’s Hollinger Publishing enterprises during his newspaper expansion in Canada’s cities and towns throughout the ‘90’s. The crass bullying of this disgraced megalomaniac has now been adopted by the rest of the mega-publishers who appear now willing to invite the faceless chartered bankers into the inner sanctums of the editorial boards of this country. So now we can expect "news" from those same strategists who contrived to invent hidden fees and other diabolical ways to grope into your pockets.

THE "REAL" DAVINCI CODE?
This week the History Channel showcased a thinly veiled promotion of The Davinci Code under the guise of critiquing it. (Notice the ads from Random House for special deals on the book?) In its entire two hours of really not saying anything it managed also not to mention the book that Brown likely usurped in the first place for his material - The Dead Sea Revelation, by our very own Vancouver author R Harry Langen, (see "http://www.deadsearevelation.com" for details).

30 million sales later and D Brown continues to sail on taking credit for Langen's ideas because nobody in the common media can be bothered to investigate Langen's claims and challenge Brown.

No Canadian lawyers will take his case on contingency (no champions there - no surprise) and Ron Howard of Opie fame has managed to misplace his Mayberry morals by not responding to Langen's letter asking him to do the right thing and not proceed with the movie until he investigates Langen's claim. No surprise there either, really, when one considers that Hollywood is apparently immune to charges of immorality. Even the award winning director Peter Jackson of The Lord of the Rings is currently embroiled suing the movie producer New Line Cinema for not paying him his share of DVD royalties.

Looks to this writer like the dark forces are winning after all.