Front Page

We received a package in the mail from Vancouver titled "Trial by Media", which claimed that a group known as "The Squamish Five", accused of various acts of urban guerilla action causing extensive damage, were being pre-judged by the media so that their chance of a fair trial was being jeopardized.

Two-colour artwork of a facsimile of the front page of the Calgary Sun, a local sensation-mongering newspaper owned by a right-wing national chain. It was produced and handed over to an ad hoc group for distribution in newspaper boxes. An unknown number of people walked the streets of Calgary early one morning, armed with posters and about ten dollars' worth of coins... (1983)

(Herald, Tues. Feb. 22)
FAKE PAPER PRANKSTERS SOUGHT

City police are looking for whoever inserted pamphlets in about 20,000 editions of Monday's edition of the Calgary Sun.

A mock-up front page of the Sun was stuck inside the glass windows of about 500 Sun newspaper boxes. A photocopied "scaled-down version of the mock-up" was also inserted inside about 20,000 papers, said editor-in-chief Lester Pyette.

Pyette said the mock-up appears to be the work of "a group of people sympathetic to five people arrested in connection with the October bombing at Litton Industries in Toronto."

"It's just a nuisance to us more than anything," Pyette said.

The mock front page was headlined in bold type, "Bomb Suspects Uncovered." An article beneath told of a "sinister international plot involving Litton Industries and other high-ranking members of the nuclear conspiracy."

(Sun, Tues, Feb.22)
VANDALS HIT SUN

Large-scale tampering with Calgary Sun street vending boxes sparked an investigation by city police yesterday.

More than 500 boxes were flooded with pamphlets protesting police harassment of peace movements and media coverage of five people accused in the bombing of a B.C. Hydro substation.

The authors are a self-styled "Calgary Support Committee For The Five Charged in B.C."

In each case, a tabloid-sized dummy front page was placed over genuine editions displayed in the box windows, says Sun circulation director Derrick McWilliams.

The page mock-up featured a spoof story on the Litton Industries bombing in Ontario.

City police Supt. Phil Crosby-Jones says detectives are actively investigating the tampering.

Sun publisher Hartley Steward says the newspaper apologizes to its readers for any inconvenience caused by "this vandalism."