Media...

Media failure.

Last night I attended a gathering of media professionals hosted by the Canadian Journalism Foundation, at the U of T’s Robert Gill theatre. The event was billed as “The greatest Canadian Media failure of the century: Reporting on Aboriginal issues” The panel consisted of two Toronto Star reporters and the Toronto aboriginal legal services director. The Moderator was a journalist and a filmmaker.

The crowd was very knowledgeable and brought up some good questions. The writers suggested that they need to be better story tellers and I agree. There seemed to be consensus on the issue of media failure by all the people there. We hope the media will actually start doing their job of accurately informing the public instead of towing the corporate line.

I reminded Peter Edwards (Toronto Star) of the April /06 raid by the OPP on our women and children. I saw him there when I brought the first cameraman behind the lines. When we returned to the line all of the media people were talking with us and I asked “why are none of you covering the real story here?” One of the reporters asked me what was the real story and I pointed at the line of military style police and said “how Canada has become a police state and when they are done with us it‘s the rest of you next, this is the bigger story here”.

The Canadian media is owned by a few corporations, it is not for the people. The reporters were struggling with the issue of the media failure, but for their corporate masters this is a huge success. Canada was registered as a corporation in Washington, D.C. July 1st 1867. Corporatism is the proper word for fascism according to Mussolini. That makes Canada the first fascist state in the modern world. Duncan Campbell Scott wrote the Indian Advancement Act in 1924 which introduced the reserve system and blood quantum legislation. South Africa implemented this legislation but the world called it what it is “apartheid”. Canada still follows this “apartheid” with their Indian Act. We think these are very serious issues that the reporters have been turning a blind eye too. The corporate overlords will never print anything that does not go with the business plan to, as Scott boasted, get rid of the Indian problem in 100 years.

We hope some journalists do write about real issues like the ones I mention above. But in a fascist state the media is nothing more than the ministry of propaganda. This is the real failure of the media in this country . As long as the people avoid law of the land and continue practicing law of the sea, we are all slaves to the corporate elite. It is the true journalists that we are waiting for, the ones that believe in freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of the people.

Peace
thahoketoteh of Kanekota

www.myspace.com/thahoketoteh