4 - Wednesday, March 19, 1986 ~ North Shore News Bob Hunter ® strictly personal ® I GOT to the Centre for Investigative Journalism con- vention at the Pan Pacific Hotel last week too late to encounter any protesters over the Africa. At several levels, life suddenly became a lot simpler for me .... but Doug Collins must have already covered this aspect of the convention, because | ran into him there, and Doug did not look pleased with events. I was there, however, not to talk about apartheid — and don't get me going on Canadian forms of it vis-a-vis our native people — but to address the morally less loaded question of the media and the environment, an interesting topic if for no other reason than the fact that both words must have a conmon root. The environment has always been the medium, and the media today are an entire environment. You just can't get away from that. How well they serve each other was the question. Uve seen this from both sides: as a newsman and as an ecological activist. On the practical side, what is infuriating is how hard it is to get a coherent message through the system without it being misinter- preted, misconstrued, twisted, confused, bent backwards or just plain intellectually mangled into gibberish. I hated to say this io a roomful of professional journalists, but in the days when I was advising young eco-freaks how to deal with the media, | stressed over f'and over again the need to | spoon-feed the media at every turn. Of course, they're busy ... When I stopped being a jour- nalist for a while, and became a full-time activist, I was shocked | by just how bloody rude the media often are. As an aide to John Turner learned in the last federal elec- tion, it is astonishing how hard you have to ‘‘suck up’’ to the media if you are trying to get a message across. Smali organizations with a f good cause, but no advertising budget, are entirely dependent on the media for exposure without which they are dead meat floating in the water. Knowing this, reporters are often unbearably condescending. On the whole, this attitude stems, I believe, from a kind of emotional bottom line mentality. lt amounts to a feeling that goes like this: Pll give you that precious thing you're begging for — publicity — but you’ve got to dance for me. Whenever I hear about the en- vironmental movement “manipulating the media’’ I cr- 1-3 IVE ra as you wish for Ww) Ji Expires April 9/86 YiN@i\ North Vancouver SU NOZNONGLNONONOING | 5th Anniversary Special & Rent as many movi3s | ¢ only : § 1240 Marine Dr. (Pemberton Plaza) issue of South inge. The charge is, often enough, totally accurate, yet the reality is that the media by its very nature sets the rules of what shall be deemed news and what shall be cast into the waste basket of day-to-day history. The media, as a whole, sits there like a voracious informa- tion beast, like Jabba the Hutt, saying ‘'Feed me, teed me,"’ and his faithful media minions shovel in the ‘tnews.*' In order to earn the privilege of being chewed up and spat out on hundreds of | thousands or millions of news pages and TV screens, modern crusaders have to tura themselves into *‘media fodder.”’ Speaking as a freelancer who has tried to do investigative teporting from time to time, especially in relation to en- vironmental stories, only to discover, in Canada, that my family would have starved to death a long time ago if I tried to survive strictly that way, it was my dismal task to tell the bud- ding young ecological journal- ist/crusaders that the same fate probably awaited them. The dark side of an informa- } tion-heavy media environment is | that people are so overloaded with data that they would just as soon stare at the rhododendrons, thank you, as contemplate the horror. A while ago, I wrote a series of columns in the North Shore News | about the amazing voyage of Canadian uranium through Rus- sian reprocessing plants as well as those of several other countries | until the left-over plutonium fi- nally arrived at a high-tech facili- ty in France, where, I presume, it is shipped off to Moruroa Atoll to be used in nuclear tests, or is slapped into the warheads of French nuclear missiles. When I tried to interest Cana- dian magazines in this subject, they all shook their heads. Who cares? ¥t wasn't until I hired a small Los Angeles magazine distribu- tion organization to flog the story that it finally landed in This | Magazine, an Ontario-based publication whose only concern was that the writer’s slant was “too American.”’ I corrected that in the rewrite. So my message to the youug investigative journalists who dared to show up at the Pan Pacific Hotel was this: hustle your butts off to write en- vironmental exposes and thus save the universe. Go for it! (with this coupon —- Mon.-Thurs. only) Free Popcorn — Free a palloone 984-6900 iz Not WANA will? Ni tags or other in-store VANS Water billing less frequent SEWER AND water bills will now arrive on North Vancouver District doorsteps every three months in- stead of once a month, "27th year of service to tens of thousands of domestic & foreign car & light truck owners Council made the switch to quarterly billing from) monthly billing, to reduce the cost of meter readings and of processing about 355 customer accounts in’ the district. |.C.B.C. vendor BCAA approved A.R.A. certified Quality workmanship -— Trustworthy setvice No changes have been made to 374 Pemberton Ave N Van 985-7455 the busie rate, " ° meal On the North Shore since 1955 Sil] DEURNITURE & APPLIANCES BIG LOAD DRYERS Maytag is the No. 1 Preferred Dryer over any other brand. MODEL D412 KEAUY DUTY WASHERS Maytag is the No. 1 Preferred Washer over any other brand. MODEL A212 STACK PAIR FULL SIZE WASHER/DRYER Speciat 75th Anniversary Savings off the new Stacked Full-Size Maytag Washer/Dryer. JETCLEAN™ DISHWASHERS . Maytag is the No. 1 Preferred Dishwasher over any other brand. . MODEL WU202 ‘| WC202:wus02 - #1 Preferred 1 Washer - Dryer ' Dishwasher over any other Brand tected the Number 4 trand they would hae to own, Maytag # er the Numer t pre MODEL S-1000 preterred wasner the Number 7 preferre 6 month supply oj soap with every. washer or dishwasher ferred Cishwasher over any ofmer brand? eon COMBINED FURNITURE & APPLIANCES UNDER THE BRIGHT YELLOW AWNING 1580 MARINE DRIVE, NORTH VANCOUVER 987-2251 BANK CARDS WELCOME. TERMS AVAILABLE.