Adbusters wins appeal, can carry on with suit against Global, CBC

Adbusters Media Foundation, which operates Adbusters magazine, has won the right to continue its lawsuit against Global Television Network Inc. and Global Communications Limited. and won the right to add the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a defendant to a lawsuit. This, according to a story published by the Georgia Straight.

In a unanimous three-member decision released at the end of last week, the B.C. Court of Appeal overturned a previous B.C. Supreme Court ruling. That ruling had thrown out the foundation’s case against Global. The appeals court ruling allows the case to carry on in B.C. Supreme Court.

The foundation launched the suit originally because Global and CBC refused to broadcast its paid anti-commercial ads, thereby violating its right to freedom of expression under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

... Adbusters prepared 10 broadcast-quality ads focusing on fast food, fashion, the beauty industry, the use of sex and violence on television, and the commercialization of society.

Global refused to run nine of them; CBC accepted some ads for restricted airing, but wouldn’t put them on CBC Newsworld or the main CBC network during news or current-affairs programming.

The appeals court disagreed with B.C. Supreme Court Justice William Ehrcke's 2008 ruling tossing out the action because it was “bound to fail”; he also had refused an application to add CBC as a defendant.

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