Our whole business culture will heave. The case wound its way through the courts until the Supreme Court of Canada threw it out in 1998. Earlier eras had their critical human rights battles. In our information age, we have to fight for a new human right one many of us assumed we already had the right to communicate. We must fight for potent, practical mechanisms for citizen access to the airwaves.
Antitrust lawsuits can also be an effective way to break up media megacorporations.
If enough fedup citizens demanded a freer, more diverse cultural environment, our governments could be pressured to go after companies like AOL Time Warner, News Corporation and Disney and limit the number of TV stations, newspapers and radio stations each is allowed to own. At stake is our ability to create a democratic culture from the bottom up, instead of having it spoonfed to us topdown by a corporateowned and corporateoperated media. Progressive economists and the activist left continue to push for various 'eco' and 'carbon' taxes that would punish polluters by hitting them in the wallet. In my opinion, this approach is short-sighted. I say, let's have an acrosstheboard pricing system that tells the ecological truth and let the marketplace sort things out.