Actually, “shocked” probably doesn’t go far enough to accurately describe the emotions I felt.

The experience resensitized me to violence. For years, I couldn’t stand violence in movies and TV shows anymore, especially graphic killing. Portrayal of death in the media nauseated me, literally.

Another thing the experience did was teach me that the media is obsessed with the idea of portraying perpetrators of crime as one-dimensional. They’re interested only in portraying such perpetrators in the worst way possible, because the more sensational the image, the headline, the story, the more views and clicks they get.

The experience helped me realize that every time a local news outlet parrots a Lethbridge Police Service crime release, they feed into the pro-police, anti-criminal narrative. Just like the crime release they copy and paste, they focus on the supposed actions of the accused individual(s) in the release.

And because they want to be the first media outlet to share a link to their regurgitated story onto their social media accounts to get the most comments, likes, and retweets, none of them put in the time to research the history of the accused.

When I was editor-in-chief with Lethbridge News, a citizen journalism website run exclusively by volunteers without funding or ad revenue, we did the same thing. But when someone came to us at a later date and told us that their charges were dropped, we followed up with the court system. And if the charges had indeed been dropped, we updated our story.

No one else did.

There was one time, when a particular story of a crime came across our news desk. I had some time on my hands, and something about the story struck me, so I told the team that I would take it. And I spent some time researching. I discovered that the accused had lived a hard life. Grew up without a father. His mother died when he was young. Lived with his grandmother. Dealt with poverty. Had run ins with the law. I learned that his story was a complex one.

We were the last ones to put out a story about that crime release that day, but ours was the most comprehensive. We didn’t do that all the time. We couldn’t afford to; we were all volunteers with our real jobs. The traditional media outlets, however, could. They had paid staff whose jobs was to investigate news, not simply share what the cops told them to.

Their story begins and ends with that crime release. To the writer and the reader, there is no person before the crime. And the only thing that matters after the release is that the person is put in jail. “Way to go, LPS!” appears over and over in the comments section of the multiple copies of the same story on the many Facebook pages of the local media outlets and the LPS.

In 2017/2018, Alberta had 56,260 court decisions related to Criminal Code violations, as well as violations of other federal statutes. Of those, 417 were acquitted, 917 were found to be not criminally responsible or were waived out of province, and 23,479 were either stayed or withdrawn.

To make the math easy for you, 56% of the total crimes in Alberta that went to court ended up with a guilty verdict.

Do you think that the fact that 44% of the cases ended without a guilty verdict was reflected in the stories published by the local media? Do they ever recant their stories? Do their stories ever reflect the reasons why they weren’t found guilty? Personal history, false charges, lack of evidence, racism and other prejudice, any of that?

No.

Like I said, their story begins and ends with the crime release. The local media can’t be bothered with reporting the truth. Or at least not all of it.

At the time, the Alberta Legislature had recently banned what it had considered non-journalistic sources. The most noteworthy was the right-wing media outlet The Rebel, but other outlets, such as Daveberta, were also restricted from attending government press events.

Historically, media referred to large media outlets (such as TV and radio stations and newspapers). These media outlets were gatekeepers of the information and news we consumed: they decided what information to present and how to present it. Because such media outlets required large amounts of startup capital, they were controlled by a small number of people.

The media outlets grew used to the idea that they were an exclusive club, with exclusive access to exclusive events (such as media scrums and press conferences). That’s changing.

In July 2010, I (along with 6 other volunteers) launched a citizen journalism site called Lethbridge News. It’s defunct now, and I had stepped down (for personal reasons) as editor in chief about six months before it folded. Most of the traditional media outlets were unwelcoming to us; some were hostile even. We were constantly labelled as unaccredited, uncertified, and illegitimate. If you have an extra 20 minutes, you can watch the following presentation I gave toward the end of my tenure on this particular issue:

The problem with labelling citizen journalism as unaccredited, uncertified, and illegitimate is that it implies that a mechanism exists with which to accredit, certify, and legitimize media outlets. This is the stance the Government of Alberta took in February of this year. In reality, such a mechanism does not exist. There is no certifying body for media outlets. Anyone can create one.

And we had. A successful one at that. We had the largest social media following of any local media outlet at the time, and we garnered far more engagement on the stories we published than other outlets. I boldly assert that we changed how local news outlets used social media.

When the government says they are banning a group of journalists from a media event because they aren’t from a legitimate media outlet, they are using an arbitrary measure to do so. It is code for restricting access to information to an elite group of people.

The future of media is in the democratization of it. Putting information in the hands of the people is something any democratically elected government should value. By limiting who receives information and thus who disseminates it and how they disseminate it, we infringe on two basic freedoms: freedom of the press and freedom of speech.

I am far from being one of The Rebel’s target market, but the slant they take in their news stories is irrelevant to me. What is relevant to me on this issue is that any government shouldn’t be silencing the press, whatever form that press should take.