What do you do if you're a news reporter and the biggest story of the day, if not the election, falls right into your lap?
Well, if you work for CBC Winnipeg, the answer appears to be 'news be
damned' if it doesn't fit the narrative being promoted at the moment.
The Black Rod happened to be on the scene when a deranged man smashed out the windows of a clearly marked CBC vehicle on Main Street in broad daylight Monday afternoon.
The female reporter cowered in the front seat,
weeping while speaking to someone on her cell phone. The male camera man
huddled in fear in the back seat as he, also, talked on his phone. Neither of the news crew was using their phone to capture video of
the attack.
The car was parked outside of Our Place/Chez Nous at 676 Main St. just
south of Higgins. The CBC team had obviously just interviewed some of the
directors of the drop-in centre that's closing after 30 years on the Strip
amidst, as their CBC report later that evening put it, "growing safety
concerns for those who staff it."
What better way to illustrate the degeneration of Winnipeg streets
as reflected by the demise of the venerable drop-in than literally showing the
mindless violence that's facing aid workers, bus drivers, transit users, and
pedestrians in downtown Winnipeg?
Somehow, CBC editors didn't think it was worthy of reporting. We
do.
We saw a slim young man, in his early twenties it appeared, smashing a
long metal rod against the windows of the CBC car. Only later did we realize he
was wielding the CBC cameraman's tripod. There was no sign of a television
camera.
The man was standing in a lane of traffic, forcing cars and buses to
stop as he stood beside the CBC vehicle attacking it in a frenzy. After a half
dozen blows, he managed to smash the driver's side windows. One source
told us the female reporter may have been cut by flying glass.
The female driver of a stopped southbound bus honked her horn just after
the car windows caved in. The crazed man stared at the bus as if trying
to decide to turn his fury on it, but chose instead to drop the tripod and
stomp off towards Higgins, shouting and swearing. A small crowd of
onlookers watched the free floor show.
What a story! What a slap in the face of newspaper columnists and
political scientists who have declared that crime is not an issue in this
election, that it's just a distraction trolled out by the Conservatives to win
cheap votes.
The CBC also had a story about a shortage of bus drivers. But the reason for the inability to hire enough drivers---unstable and often violent passengers and, worse, the refusal of management to address the problem--wasn't explored and won't be.
It doesn't fit the narrative--- that crime is a problem
of "addiction and mental health", bloodless language that fails to capture
the terror of the victims.
How could CBC not allow the reporter and camera operator tell their
first-hand accounts of meeting the very violence that's forced the closure of
Chez Nous drop-in, that's forcing bus drivers to quit in droves, that
Manitobans everywhere know exists despite the elitest mainstream media's effort
to brush it under the rug.
Is it any wonder that nobody pays attention to the news media anymore?