AVAAZ – Wow – $70,000 raised in 24 hours!

September 14, 2010 by
Wow – $70,000 raised in 24 hours! And not a peep from “Fox News North”… Let’s keep it going!
Dear amazing Avaaz community across Canada,
 

 

Our campaign to keep “Fox News North” from getting special access to our cable fees is working! The media giant behind the project has launched a massive assault on Avaaz in response, including smear pieces and intimidation tactics — threatening a lawsuit with a 24 hour deadline. Let’s give them our answer by raising a large campaign fund to win the fight for Canadian media and democracy:
  

 
In just 6 days, our petition to stop “Fox News North” from getting special access to our cable fees has exploded to over 75,000 signatures!
Together, we can stop Harper and his crony-media — which is why “Fox News North” has launched a full scale attack on Avaaz: with smear pieces attacking us in their own newspapers. They’ve also admitted suspicious insider knowledge of a criminal sabotage of our petition — fraudulently signing up key journalists to discredit us in the press as spammers. And we’ve received a letter from their lawyers threatening to sue us if we don’t change our petition within 24 hours!
This is how big corporate power and their friends work to silence people’s voices, using loads of cash, dirty tricks, expensive lawyers, and a media empire to smear their enemies and sue them into submission. But Avaaz is an online community of hundreds of thousands Canadians — together, we’re far stronger than any crony-corporation. They’ve given us a 24-hour ultimatum: Let’s show them their intimidation tactics will backfire, and send a clear message back by raising a massive campaign fund by their own deadline. The more money we donate, the stronger message we send. Click below to stand up to “Fox News North” in the press and the courts:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/fox_news_north_attacks/?vl

The Stop “Fox News North” campaign fund will be used for:

    a) Investigating the fraudulent attack on Avaaz – potentially leading to a criminal investigation of “Fox News North” (aka Sun TV)
    b) Pressing our message in Canada’s legitimate media, through compelling ads, op-eds and statements
    c) Hiring lawyers, both to fend off Sun TV’s attacks and to represent the views of Canadians to the CRTC as it considers Sun TV’s request for the government to force cable companies to offer them.
    d) Expanding our tiny team to be able to coordinate this campaign and scale it up to a new level, meeting the massive demand we’re hearing from across Canada for a bigger campaign.
This is a fight for our democracy. Sun TV is part of the Quebecor empire, owned by Pierre Karl Peladeau, a radical conservative and the largest media mogul in Canada. After a secret lunch with the president and owner of Fox News, Harper’s top spin doctor, Kory Teneycke, moved to Quebecor to head up Sun TV. So our country’s largest media empire is now spearheaded by the Prime Minister’s former spin doctor, and he wants a government commission (the CRTC) to go against all its policies and force all cable companies to offer his channel. What this means for us is that if we want to watch a range of channels or get the news package of channels, we’ll likely be forced to pay for Harper’s crony-media mouthpiece too. Click below to donate to stop “Fox News North” being added to our cable bills:
 

 

Quebecor’s smear pieces on Avaaz spread a string of desperate falsehoods to try to discredit the voices of tens of thousands of concerned Canadians. Their pieces claimed for example that our petition was a fake, signed mainly by Americans. When we offered to have any reputable audit firm like KPMG audit our petition for authenticity, they didn’t respond. This kind of sleazy exploitation of their media power is just a taste of the kind of Fox News-like subversion that Sun TV is seeking to bring to our democracy.
Even worse, in a criminal attack on democratic expression online, an individual connected to Kory Teneycke tried to discredit our petition by adding people falsely (including journalists), committing identity theft and fraud. In a live debate on CBC between Teneycke and Avaaz’s Executive Director Ricken Patel, it emerged that Teneycke must have known about the fraud virtually as it was happening! The press is asking whether Teneycke himself or SunTV was behind the attack.
This is not the kind of democracy we want to live in, and it’s certainly not the kind we’re going to be forced to pay for. Harper’s thuggish politics has shocked most of us nicer Canadians. But he’s about to find out that we can only be pushed so far. Let’s make the defeat of “Fox News North” the beginning of the end of Harper’s assault on our democracy.

With hope,
Ricken, Emma, Laryn and the rest of the Avaaz team.

PS – some links to more information on this are below.

Ricken debates Kory Teneycke LIVE on CBC:
http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/Featured_Videos/ID=1582123926

Rabble, “Ezra levant vs Reality”
http://www.rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/apicazo/2010/09/ezra-levant-vs-reality-prelude-fox-news-north

Globe and Mail, “Is Harper set to move against the CRTC?”:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/lawrence-martin/is-stephen-harper-set-to-move-against-the-crtc/article1677632/

CBC, “The absolute last thing this country needs”:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/10/f-vp-newman.html#socialcomments#ixzz0r6MC4p46

Globe and Mail, “CRTC refuses Sun TV’s bid for preferred status on dial”:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/crtc-refuses-sun-tvs-bid-for-preferred-status-on-dial/article1641654/

The Star, “Harper’s foxy luncheon”:
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/851510–mcquaig-harper-s-foxy-luncheon

Mediaite, “Canada and Ann Coulter: a volatile relationship”:
http://www.mediaite.com/online/canada-ann-coulter-colleges/

Media Matters, “Glenn Beck smears Obama’s 11 year old daughter”:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201005280025

The Examiner: “Bill O’Reilly again confuses facts about Canadian health care system”:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201005280025

 

Support the Avaaz community! We’re entirely funded by donations and receive no money from governments or corporations. Our dedicated team ensures even the smallest contributions go a long way — donate here

.
Wow – $70,000 raised in 24 hours! And not a peep from “Fox News North”… Let’s keep it going!
Dear amazing Avaaz community across Canada,
 

 

Our campaign to keep “Fox News North” from getting special access to our cable fees is working! The media giant behind the project has launched a massive assault on Avaaz in response, including smear pieces and intimidation tactics — threatening a lawsuit with a 24 hour deadline. Let’s give them our answer by raising a large campaign fund to win the fight for Canadian media and democracy:
  
In just 6 days, our petition to stop “Fox News North” from getting special access to our cable fees has exploded to over 75,000 signatures!
Together, we can stop Harper and his crony-media — which is why “Fox News North” has launched a full scale attack on Avaaz: with smear pieces attacking us in their own newspapers. They’ve also admitted suspicious insider knowledge of a criminal sabotage of our petition — fraudulently signing up key journalists to discredit us in the press as spammers. And we’ve received a letter from their lawyers threatening to sue us if we don’t change our petition within 24 hours!
This is how big corporate power and their friends work to silence people’s voices, using loads of cash, dirty tricks, expensive lawyers, and a media empire to smear their enemies and sue them into submission. But Avaaz is an online community of hundreds of thousands Canadians — together, we’re far stronger than any crony-corporation. They’ve given us a 24-hour ultimatum: Let’s show them their intimidation tactics will backfire, and send a clear message back by raising a massive campaign fund by their own deadline. The more money we donate, the stronger message we send. Click below to stand up to “Fox News North” in the press and the courts:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/fox_news_north_attacks/?vl

The Stop “Fox News North” campaign fund will be used for:

    a) Investigating the fraudulent attack on Avaaz – potentially leading to a criminal investigation of “Fox News North” (aka Sun TV)
    b) Pressing our message in Canada’s legitimate media, through compelling ads, op-eds and statements
    c) Hiring lawyers, both to fend off Sun TV’s attacks and to represent the views of Canadians to the CRTC as it considers Sun TV’s request for the government to force cable companies to offer them.
    d) Expanding our tiny team to be able to coordinate this campaign and scale it up to a new level, meeting the massive demand we’re hearing from across Canada for a bigger campaign.
This is a fight for our democracy. Sun TV is part of the Quebecor empire, owned by Pierre Karl Peladeau, a radical conservative and the largest media mogul in Canada. After a secret lunch with the president and owner of Fox News, Harper’s top spin doctor, Kory Teneycke, moved to Quebecor to head up Sun TV. So our country’s largest media empire is now spearheaded by the Prime Minister’s former spin doctor, and he wants a government commission (the CRTC) to go against all its policies and force all cable companies to offer his channel. What this means for us is that if we want to watch a range of channels or get the news package of channels, we’ll likely be forced to pay for Harper’s crony-media mouthpiece too. Click below to donate to stop “Fox News North” being added to our cable bills:
 

 

Quebecor’s smear pieces on Avaaz spread a string of desperate falsehoods to try to discredit the voices of tens of thousands of concerned Canadians. Their pieces claimed for example that our petition was a fake, signed mainly by Americans. When we offered to have any reputable audit firm like KPMG audit our petition for authenticity, they didn’t respond. This kind of sleazy exploitation of their media power is just a taste of the kind of Fox News-like subversion that Sun TV is seeking to bring to our democracy.
Even worse, in a criminal attack on democratic expression online, an individual connected to Kory Teneycke tried to discredit our petition by adding people falsely (including journalists), committing identity theft and fraud. In a live debate on CBC between Teneycke and Avaaz’s Executive Director Ricken Patel, it emerged that Teneycke must have known about the fraud virtually as it was happening! The press is asking whether Teneycke himself or SunTV was behind the attack.
This is not the kind of democracy we want to live in, and it’s certainly not the kind we’re going to be forced to pay for. Harper’s thuggish politics has shocked most of us nicer Canadians. But he’s about to find out that we can only be pushed so far. Let’s make the defeat of “Fox News North” the beginning of the end of Harper’s assault on our democracy.

With hope,
Ricken, Emma, Laryn and the rest of the Avaaz team.

PS – some links to more information on this are below.

Ricken debates Kory Teneycke LIVE on CBC:
http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/Featured_Videos/ID=1582123926

Rabble, “Ezra levant vs Reality”
http://www.rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/apicazo/2010/09/ezra-levant-vs-reality-prelude-fox-news-north

Globe and Mail, “Is Harper set to move against the CRTC?”:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/lawrence-martin/is-stephen-harper-set-to-move-against-the-crtc/article1677632/

CBC, “The absolute last thing this country needs”:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/10/f-vp-newman.html#socialcomments#ixzz0r6MC4p46

Globe and Mail, “CRTC refuses Sun TV’s bid for preferred status on dial”:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/crtc-refuses-sun-tvs-bid-for-preferred-status-on-dial/article1641654/

The Star, “Harper’s foxy luncheon”:
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/851510–mcquaig-harper-s-foxy-luncheon

Mediaite, “Canada and Ann Coulter: a volatile relationship”:
http://www.mediaite.com/online/canada-ann-coulter-colleges/

Media Matters, “Glenn Beck smears Obama’s 11 year old daughter”:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201005280025

The Examiner: “Bill O’Reilly again confuses facts about Canadian health care system”:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201005280025

 

Support the Avaaz community! We’re entirely funded by donations and receive no money from governments or corporations. Our dedicated team ensures even the smallest contributions go a long way — donate here.
 

 

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