FT2020

Danny | 27.03.2009 17:19 | Other Press

10,000 copies of a spoof version of the Financial Times were distributed today, with a 'Yes Men' style website to back it up at FT2020.com. It was the brainchild of a former journalist who has contributed a lot of good advice to various activist groups. I'm going to include the PDF here as the website keeps crashing presumably due to unexpectedly great demand.

Generic media FT2020 ( 1071kb pdf ) - application/pdf 1.0M

Fake FT wakes up London to radical action

Concerned Londoners today handed out copies of a spoof Financial Times, urging journalists and big business to make the future possible by putting people first.

Set in 2020, the 12-page paper revealed how action in 2009 reined in climate change, saving billions from extinction. Carbon rationing didn’t kill us, it explained, despite the inconvenience to multinational companies. But we couldn’t have endless growth with
finite resources. Editors even apologised for suggesting otherwise.

“We live on financial crimes,” the paper confessed in a front-page advert, which satirised a recent Financial Times billboard. “In a world of cold harsh truths,” it said, beside a panting St Bernard atop a mountain, “we rescue stories from the facts.”

Launched at dawn from behind Waterloo station, this coup was aimed at everyone’s excuses for apathy. Unless we change the way we live radically, we’ll make our world uninhabitable within decades. It’s time for drastic action, and if governments won’t take it, we have to do something ourselves.

“Journalists frame public debate, and the City frames public policy,” said Raoul Djukanovic, who edited today’s fake FT. “If they reframed their thinking, they could help build a different world instead of conning us with lifestyle porn and bubbles.”

The paper was a full-colour replica of the iconic pink ‘un, including news from Britain and abroad, and editorials and comment, poking fun at FT columnists. It was funded by donations on the Internet, and given away for free by volunteers. Tens of thousands of copies were printed – almost as many as the FT sells here daily.

Why bother, some commuters asked. “Newspapers won’t change the world, but they do spread words that can make people think,” said Marcos Marcuse, who handed out papers near London Bridge. “What are we going to tell our children? That we thought about trying to save ourselves, but it wasn’t ‘good business’ or ‘objective reporting’?”

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