Did Rafe Mair Just Call For A Boycott?

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Update: The Tyee has pulled the story by Mr. Mair referred to below because it appears that the cartoonists have just been 'reassigned', or some such thing. If this is really the case, we actually think the situation is worse than Mr. Mair originally described as it would indicate that this was much, much more than just a cost cutting measure - our take on the situation is here.
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Consolidations'RUs
The(notso)MagnificentAspersSonsVille


We believe, in a piece about how the Vancouver Province has just fired local cartoonists Bob Krieger and Dan Murphy, the Rafeinator did just that:

What can we do?

Don't buy The Province.

If you have a subscription, cancel it. That's the only message the Aspers --- who reported $509 million in profit last year, much of it from B.C. pockets --- will understand.

And we couldn't agree more.

Except, of course, that we might also seriously consider extending the boycott to include all of CanWest's Lotuslandian fishwrap, with the possible exception of the Victoria Times-Colonist which still appears to have a rather bizarre (in the current monopolistic climate, at least) streak of editorial independence.


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Mr. Mair's entire piece is worth reading, both for his examples of the evils that 'consolidation' has wrought and for his suggestion that the (notso)Magnificent AsperSons are soft on all things Liberal. One thing Mr. Mair does not mention, however, is the fact that CanWest, which is supposed to cover local governments, not shake pom-pom's for them, gave the B.C. Liberal Party of Gordon Campbell $50,000 in the last election cycle. Why might something like that matter? Well, here's one example that has absolutely nothing to do with cartooning....... a large donation like that just might make it difficult for a so-called unbiased 'news' organization to make a fuss about the fact that CN Rail actually made an even larger donation (ie. some $11,000 more) to the very same political party a year-and-a-half AFTER they won the big BC Rail prize from Mr. Gordon Campbell's B.C. Liberal government.
OK?

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