roundtable: ADBUSTERS website: Media Bias and Buy Nothing Day

roundtable: ADBUSTERS website: Media Bias and Buy Nothing Day

ADBUSTERS website: Media Bias and Buy Nothing Day

Rick Crawford (crawford@cs.ucdavis.edu)
Wed, 20 Sep 1995 20:04:08 -0700 

Date: Wed, 20 Sep 1995 20:04:08 -0700
From: crawford@cs.ucdavis.edu (Rick Crawford)
Message-Id: <9509210304.AA18926@ivy.cs.ucdavis.edu>
To: biosph-l@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU, cemnet@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu,
Subject: ADBUSTERS website: Media Bias and Buy Nothing Day


Adbusters Magazine    adbuster@wimsey.com    http://hoshi.cic.sfu.ca/adbusters

[ FYI: Adbusters' website is *fantastic*, but don't use old Mosaic browsers.
  Below is an example of the textual content.  You'll have to see the visual
  culture jamming to believe its impact.      -rick  crawford@cs.ucdavis.edu ]


                BUY NOTHING DAY POINTS TO MEDIA BIAS

"The issue of First World overconsumption is systematically ignored by 
the media," says Kalle Lasn, one of the organizers of the Buy Nothing 
Day campaign, "because our  society's information delivery systems are 
largely controlled by commercial interests and they want us to consume 
more, not less."

On September 24, thousands of people around the world will say "bye-bye" 
to buying as part of International Buy Nothing Day.

The event, in its fourth year, is an attempt to draw attention to what 
many groups and individuals believe is the primary environmental problem 
in the world: overconsumption by people in the affluent, industrialized 
west.

Lasn, publisher and editor of Adbusters magazine, has first-hand 
experience with the mass-media's commercial bias: he has repeatedly 
been denied the right to purchase advertising time on American and 
Canadian TV networks for "uncommercials" that question North America's 
consumer culture.

International Buy Nothing Day is the brainchild of Vancouver, B.C.
artist/activist Ted Dave.  He started it as a "gesture of protest for 
those of us who feel as if our lives and dreams have been marketed back 
to us."  The concept has spread worldwide - first to the U.S., then 
Ireland and England, and recently the Netherlands and beyond.

"We want people to think about how they spend their money,"  explains 
Allan MacDonald, a campaign organizer at the Media Foundation.  "We 
also want them to think about the way products are advertised."

"Shouldn't we be concerned about the effects of alcohol and tobacco
advertising? Shouldn't we be concerned about ads that continue to 
objectify women?  If so," MacDonald says, "this day is about reminding 
people that they have the power, as consumers, to make change."

"The people living in the industrialized G-7 countries (roughly 20% of
the world's population) consume 70% of the world's resources; pump out
two-thirds of the greenhouse gases; release 80% of the CFCs and 65% of 
the sulphur and nitrogen gases," Lasn says.  "Our consumptive way of 
life is poisoning the air and water, sucking the life out of oceans and 
forests and draining the spirit out of our personal and cultural lives.  
And yet, our TVs, radios, magazines and indeed our whole business 
culture keeps urging us to buy more."

"We challenge the world's wealthiest people to jump off the consumer
treadmill on September 24 ... to snub their noses at the $200-billion a 
year advertising industry and the forces that urge us to consume beyond 
our needs," Lasn says.  "We invite them to take a trip inside themselves 
and face the anxieties and inner emptiness that often drives consumptive 
lifestyles."


BUY NOTHING DAY GOES INTERNATIONAL

In Canada, Buy Nothing Day will kick off the week of September 18 with a
nationwide TV campaign airing on CBC Newsworld.  The campaign will urge
Canadians to "Give It a Rest" on September 24, because the average 
Canadian already consumes twice as much as a Japanese person, five times 
more than a Mexican, 15 times more than a Nigerian and thirty times more 
than a person from Bangladesh (World Resources Report 1994-95).

In the U.S. the campaign will be taken to the shopping malls (or, as they
put it, "the meccas of over-consumption where the First Worlders pray")
by Wetlands Preserve.
* Contact: James Hansen, Tel: (212) 966-4225, Fax: (212) 925-8715.

Earthwatch in Ireland and a group in Manchester, England calling itself
Enough, will celebrate Buy Nothing Day by taking to the streets and
launching a new soft drink called HAPPINESS TM.
* Contact: Paul Fitzgerald, Tel: (44)161 237 1630; Fax: (44)161 228 2347.

In the Netherlands Buy Nothing Day will be organized by Omslag (Breaking
Point) a Workshop for Sustainable Development.  Their celebration will
include clowns, artists, and  guerrilla theatre at the biggest shopping
mall in the country.
* Contact: Dick Verheul, Tel. +31-4194-1622; E-mail omslag@aps.n1


The Culture Jammer's Campaign Headquarters, Adbusters' new web site, is
http://hoshi.cic.sfu.ca/adbusters, and has a downloadable version of the
Buy Nothing Day poster, as well as information on how to order broadcast
quality video for public access/community airing.

For more information, camera-ready artwork, or a VHS copy of the TV
campaign call:
Allan MacDonald, Media Foundation (604) 736-9401 (fax 737-6021)

Visit http://hoshi.cic.sfu.ca/adbusters and check out our Culture Jammer's
Campaign Headquarters.  We're mostly operational, but we're looking for
feedback and ways to get it publicised...

Jim Munroe
(Managing Ed.)

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