  One notoriously difficult problem in perturbative gauge mediation of
supersymmetry breaking via messenger fields is the generic presence of a
phenomenologically unacceptable vacuum with messenger vevs, with a lower energy
than the desired (MSSM) vacuum. We investigate the possibility that quantum
corrections promote the latter to the ground state of the theory, and find that
this is indeed feasible. For this to happen, the couplings of the messengers to
the goldstino superfield must be small, and this implies an additional
suppression of the MSSM soft terms with respect to the supersymmetry breaking
scale. This in turns sets a lower limit on the masses of the messengers and of
the supersymmetry breaking fields, which makes both sectors inaccessible at
colliders. Contrary to other scenarios like direct gauge mediation, gaugino
masses are unsuppressed with respect to scalar masses.
