Commentary/Letters

The Trib: in the samizdat tradition

The global media is homogenizing and
monopolizing itself at a rapid and acceler-
ating pace. It has been estimated that
within 10 years perhaps as few as five

corporate mega-giants will dominate the

world’s mass media and will control —
through vast multi-tentacled bureaucratic
information filtering machines that already
begin to make Pravda and Izvestia look
like small fry — the commanding share
of book, newspaper and magazine pub-
lishing, electronic broadcasting of all
types, filmmaking and video-cassette dis-
tribution. :

In the spaces between these jugger-
naughts, finding it increasingly difficult to
breathe, there will undoubtedly continue
to exist tiny organisms whose goals and
methods are different. This is the alternate
press, which deals in dissenting opinion,
grassroots political and counter-culture
news, alternative analysis and, yes, anti-

establishment struggle. The Russian lan-
guage has given the world a precise and
highly evocative term to describe these
underground voices: samizdat.

The word means literally. “self-pub-
lished”. During the 1970s in the USSR tiny
dissident newsletters, journals and mono-
graphs sought to create a counter-network
of news and debate by circumventing the
official censor and percolating beneath the
blank wall of the state-controlled press.
The difficulties they faced are well-known,
and their tradition deserves to be recog-
nized as one of courage, honesty and res-
istance. In many ways, they were the
harbingers and true pioneers of glasnost.

It strikes me as a tragic irony that the
corporate western media—which so hypo-
critically lauded, and exploited, Soviet dis-

sidents and theirtiny- samizdatendeavours.

in the past — is flinging itself into a frenzy

of centralization, bureaucratization and
monopolization at precisely the moment
the Soviet media is reaching out, trying to
assimilate the ideals of pluralism, integrity
and commitment embodied in the samiz-
dat tradition. Even as the Soviets grope for
a new model of the press that would place
self-governing collectives of journalists at
the centre of information processing and
distribution, the Western media seems
well on its way to creating a nightmare
global landscape of competing Orwellian
empires.

So, as the cold war evaporates, stereo-
types dissolve and the new world begins to
emerge before our eyes, it seems that the
samizdat mantle falls to us. Publications
like the Tribune, which speak for the dif-
ferent point of view, communicate the
vital but un-marketable news of social
fightback and stimulate creative ferment
on the political fringes — where the
future is usually made — have always
represented the samizdat tradition among
us.

How can I say that? After all, although
Canada does have an active political secret
police force it does not have official cen-
sors nor, at the moment, overt persecution
of dissidents. Everyone is allowed to pub-

lish what they,.wish.and.the. marketplace
decides, isn’t that right?

The myth here has always been that the
market creates equal conditions for the
competition of ideas. Information consu-
mers are supposed to vote democratically
in the marketplace for the ideas of their
choice, rewarding the winners with profit-
able success and punishing the losers with
obscurity. According to this view, alterna-
tive newspapers like the Tribune can’t
make a commercial success of themselves
and must find unorthodox ways of fund-
ing themselves, maninly through reader
contributions.

I have had this logic expressed to me
more than once by big-media colleagues
and others as the reason why the Tribune
cannot be seriously regarded as a “real”
newspaper and why I can’t be regarded as
a bona fide journalist. We are an “artificial
creation” — political rather than whole-
somely and objectively commercial.

However, the market is neither demo-
cratic nor politically colour-blind. Through
its fundamental, intimate workings it
warps the political spectrum to the right
and limits available choice. If a demo-
cratically-calculated readership index were
the criterion of a publication’s success,
then how can we explain the fact that
many small specialized publications in

Canada.which. have. even less. circulation
than the Tribune are able to flourish on

the advertising outlays of business? Con-
versely, why must many huge communist
newspapers in the capitalist world, such as
France’s Il’Humanite, Japan’s Akahata
and Italy’s L’Unita, turn to their readers
every year for donations to keep the paper
going?

I recently asked the Moscow corres-
pondent of L’Unita — which sells over
one million copies per day, an enormous
market-share by any standards — how
the paper financed itself. His answer was
the same one the Tribune editor would
give: “We have a big festival every year,”
he said, ‘‘and we appeal to our readers to
make up the newspaper’s operating
deficit”.

Big, but still samizdat it seems.

There’s no mystery in any of this. No
secret police conspiracy ensures the politi-
cal purity of the press in Western coun-
tries. A corporate community of interests
is what defines the acceptable limits of
debate. Corporate managers — who pre-
side over the billions of dollars of privately
accumulated social wealth spent each year
on advertising — are the ones who decide
with far more efficiency than any Stalinist
censor which publications are worthy and
which aren’t. They may bring many com-
plex criteria to bear on this task, but one
bottom line shared by them all may be
understood this way: they don’t feed the
mouth that bites them.

So, as the Tribune moves into yet
another annual fund drive, let’s not mum-
ble apologies. It’s time to recognize who
we are and celebrate the fact. The Tribune
is Canada’s oldest and in many ways its
bravest experiment in samizdat.

Please continue to support it not only

for what it has been but.also, in the hard
days ahead, for what it will be.

Nuclear-free province the next step

Five weeks ago today, between 10,000
and 15,000 walked for peace in Victoria.
Like the estimated 40-100,000 attending in
Vancouver, people were saying with their
feet that many global problems are
connected — peace, a healthy environ-
ment, and justice for all creatures and
humans of this small planet.

The Greater Victoria Disarmament
Group wants to than k you and yours read-
ers for helping make this year’s Peace Walk
the most successful ever. Together, 30 co-
- ordinators, 150 volunteers and thousands of
walkers made a clear statement for peace.

But what has changed in the ensuing
weeks?

We're used to exciting, democratic
developments happening daily in Eastern
Europe and the Soviet Union. It’s old news,
and we barely notice any more.

It’s past time for the West and Canada to
follow their lead! Instead we were “treated”
to a nuclear sub in Nanoose Bay the very
next week.

In Victoria the Peace Walk’s theme was
“Arms Cost the Earth.” The head banner
proclaimed: ‘“‘Declare B.C. Nuclear Free.”
People were walking because they want
action on the problems that threaten planet
earth. They want money currently being

squandered on the nuclear arms race to be
used cleaning up the planet.

Walkers were calling on all Members of
the Legislative Assembly to declare beauti-
ful B.C. nuclear-free, without delay, and to
take steps now to ensure that all nuclear
violations cease by 1994 for the arrival of
the Commonwealth Games.

Nuclear-free in ’93 is our rallying cry. We
don’t want irradiated athletes. From New
Zealand to Victoria, let the Commonwealth
Games stay nuclear-free.

Al Rycroft, Co-ordinator,
Greater Victoria Disarmament Group

solutions for street kids come up short

Although I usually agree with Harry
Rankin’s opinions, I have to take exception
to the suggestion he makes in his column of
April 23 (“We need to do more for city’s
street kids,” Tribune April 23). He pro-
posed that we take kids out of the unhealthy
environment of street life and put them into
special correction centres. I don’t think we
can put people into correction centres, even
for their own good, unless they have been

convicted of some crime. —

Rankin goes on to say that “their whole
attitude to life needs to be changed.” Again,
Ihave always thought a free society allowed
us to have whatever attitudes we wanted.
For the state to decide what kind of think-
ing is correct is dangerous. Wasn’t this why
Indian children were sent to residential
schools? Perhaps some kind of wilderness

facility should be available for young (or ~

old) people to go to on a voluntary basis.
And if counselling and skill training was
available, there may be some real benefits.
My biggest objection to this solution,
however, is that it only deals with the vic-
tims of dysfunctional system. In the long
run, any real solutions will require united
action by all of us in recognizing the prob-

lem and creating a healthier society.
» Richard Tarnoff,. North Vancouver

Piece on
Green
politics
valued

I am sending you $20 for one year
renewal of my subscription. Thirty
dollars can go to your sustaining fund
campaign in appreciation of the mar-
vellous May Day issue.

Your article “The changing land-
scape of Green Politics” (Tribune
April 30, 1990) was, in my humble
opinion, a masterpiece. I have read it
a half a dozen times, and every time I
find something new in terms of
opportunities everywhere to advance
left politics. All I can say is: keep up
the good work. | am beginning to see
some more light at the end of the
tunnel on our way to peace and social
justice by means of taking more
seriously the need for us, as Commu-

“nists, to get really concerned about the
all-around deepening of our ecologi-
cal and environmental crisis. We liter-
ally are on the edge of the abyss.

Bruce Magnuson,
Toronto

Pacific Tribune, May 28, 1990 « 5