Skip to content

Media's focus makes no sense

Dear Editor: Perhaps now that the righteous authorities are cracking down on the terrifying presence of little Occupy movement tent camps on public lands, the people can get back to what our current system demands: spending buckets of money on Christ

Dear Editor:

Perhaps now that the righteous authorities are cracking down on the terrifying presence of little Occupy movement tent camps on public lands, the people can get back to what our current system demands: spending buckets of money on Christmas gewgaws.

Considering how smoothly world affairs are going these days - one fiscal crisis after another, growing unemployment, the gap between rich and poor expanding, millions of people facing famines, floods and disease, more threats of war rising in the Middle East - there surely is no reason to call for the system to be fixed.

It's amazing that so many media outlets and their columnists, who invariably know everything, are proudly claiming that they don't have a clue why the Occupy movement is spreading through thousands of cities around the world.

Instead of trying to find out, our mainstream media concentrate instead on the tent camps. They tend to be untidy, and in Vancouver have interfered with the right of righteous citizens to gather on the art gallery lawn in the cold November rain.

If you talk with the protesters you will be told that for decades the establishment of big corporations, individual billionaires and right-wing politicians have worked to create a climate in which grassroots democracy, livable wages and general concern for the well-being of the majority of the people are things to be attacked.

Many will say that the people themselves should have more power than the tiny minority of the greedy rich.

The corporate media, however, are not allowed to report such things, and so they sputter with rage over "hippies" daring to poke the system in the eye.

If today's reporters had covered the epic fundraising journey of paraplegic Rick Hansen and his Man in Motion world tour, they would have ignored his purpose and concentrated on his wheelchair.

Tony Eberts, New Westminster