Read this blog from The New York Times on the recent controversy in BC over The Province newspaper’s decision to pull a cartoon from its website which mocks Enbridge’s new ad campaign – allegedly under pressure from the company. (June 28, 2012)
OTTAWA — Like many political cartoonists, Dan Murphy at The Province, a tabloid daily in Vancouver, British Columbia, supplements his traditional drawings with online animations.
But an online parody of a pipeline company’s television commercial drew an unusual amount of attention in Canada after the decision of the newspaper to remove it, according to Mr. Murphy, because of pressure from Enbridge, the pipeline company.
Enbridge is currently running a advertising campaign to promote a controversial pipeline proposal to move oil from Alberta’s oil sands to ports in British Columbia for shipment to Asia.
After an existing Enbridge pipeline in Alberta developed a leak, Mr. Murphy took an Enbridge commercial that features bucolic watercolor animations of life after the new pipeline and interrupted it with repeated splatters of animated oil. During the parody video, an off-camera voice, a spoof of an Enbridge executive reviewing the commercial, can be heard saying, “It’s O.K., we’ll clean this up; we’ll be as good as new” as an animated hand squeegees away the oil.
But not long after the video was posted last Friday, Mr. Murphy wrote in an e-mail that he and Gordon Clark, the editorial page editor, met with Wayne Moriarty, the editor in chief of The Province, which is owned by PostMedia, a national chain.
Mr. Murphy said that they were told by Mr. Moriarty “that he’d had a call from PostMedia’s chief digital officer, Simon Jennings, and been told that if the Enbridge parody didn’t come down from our Web site, Enbridge was going to pull their ads from our Web site and papers.” In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which first drew attention to the animation’s removal, Mr. Murphy said that he was told that the resulting revenue loss would be measured in “millions” and that he also understood that Mr. Moriarty would be fired if the cartoon remained online.
In an interview, Mr. Moriarty said, “I believe what Dan said is what Dan took out of the conversation.” But he added: “My intentions have been so completely misconstrued in all of this.”
Mr. Moriarty said that he reviewed the animation after being contacted by the newspaper’s advertising sales department. An advertising buying agency working for Enbridge, he said, had contacted the paper to complain that the animation was “a misappropriation” of the pipeline company’s advertisement. Enbridge, he added, did not contact the paper nor did he consult anyone at PostMedia’s head office in Toronto. The newspaper then contacted Enbridge to apologize.
The removal of the video, Mr. Moriarty said, was not related to legal concerns or threats that advertisements would be pulled. Although he added of the meeting with Mr. Murphy: “Did the subject of potential loss of advertising come up? How could it not?”
A earlier animation by Mr. Murphy mocking the pipeline plan and featuring Enbridge’s logo remains on The Province’s site, as does a second one featuring snippets from a television commercial by a pro-oil sands group.