We have come to rely on the media to keep us informed of local and world events-with an unprejudiced, unjaundiced eye. It behooves them to investigate before they pontificate. No simple task.
I write a great deal about media bias because it’s dangerous. The Fourth Estate plays a pivotal role in maintaining democracy by keeping all levels of government on their toes and informing the citizenry.
Today more than ever we need ethical journalists prepared to fact check in a world where social media brings world events into our lives within seconds of occurring; where facts are fast and loose –or totally missing. I accept that in social media-but not the Fourth Estate and certainly not in Canada.
I can’t imagine Marshall McLuhan’s response to media messaging, today.
Yet, today, we have Canadian journalists who write without over-site-no ombudsman, no outside organization to insure that complaints about content and context will be answered in a timely manner. This is happening at the National Post; much to my surprise and dismay.
The National Post has published articles about the mentally ill-connecting us to terrorists, criminals and suggesting that the mentally ill need pity. Their articles are fact-free with opinions based on feelings or singular anecdotes that universalize the particular.
I previously shared my concerns with Matt Gurney, with no background in mental illness as far as I am aware, regarding his comment that we need a snitch hot-line to report on people we think may be mentally ill, thus turning our community into criminals and increasing the fears of others toward us. Re-stigmatizing. It was his opinion that families won’t report family members. Yet, how many mentally ill people have committed murder the past two years? How many instead committed suicide? How many were treated like Sammy Yatir?
How many people were killed just because-these past two years?
Then came the deaths of two of our soldiers, murdered by terrorists-so the facts declare. But the National Post didn’t let facts get in the way of their worldview. Couldn’t be a terrorist! No, instead these people are mentally ill. And how did they know? Well, regarding the murder of Corporal Cirillo by Zehaf Bibeau, his mother told us on October 25th.
And that was the foundation upon which the National Post editorial board wrote their “opinion.”
It seems the editorial board came to their conclusion based on the mother’s letter published in the paper. I didn’t see any studies or experts to whom the board referred in the article to back their feelings or the statement that he was:
"unstable, untrained and engulfed in personal turmoil that blurred the line between religiously inspired terrorism and purelypsychotic acts of violence."
I would give you the link to the editorial "Zehaf-Bibeau's rampage, in perspective" but I can no longer access it. Perhaps dear reader, you can find it on line. Despite all the facts that were “discovered” after this editorial, not once was there an apology for conflating terrorists with the mentally ill, in particular this terrorist and mental illness
Even the National Post had published articles that demolish their mental illness theory. But the connection has been made. The damage has been done.
In my humble opinion, the paper chose to plant a seed of fear for the mentally ill in order not to cast aspersions on Muslims and Islam, or be accused of Islamophobia. To deflect, to pivot away. To be politically correct in a time when we should demand that facts prevail over feelings. Or more disconcerting, not trusting their readership with the ability to deduct that two lone-wolf terrorist attacks do not make for “a deluge of mass-casualty Islamist terrorism.”
I’d like to say that this was the end of psychiatric diagnoses by the staff of the National Post. But no. Matt Gurney gave his opinion on Mr. Gervais, the man who pretended to be a soldier on Remembrance Day and was interviewed so that all of us got to know him. According to Matt Gurney, Gervais didn't act this way out of a desire to be a soldier without going through the training. No, he's not a fake, fooling people with a false identity like so many do. He's mentally ill. This was Gurney’s diagnosis based on a woman whom he knew way back who acted sort of like Gervais. That's almost as good as calling the terrorists mentally ill based on a mother's musings.
He demeans those of us with mental illness with his glib talk. He puts us in harm’s way when he compares us with criminals and now declares from on high:
"There is a very very good chance that Gervais is a sick man, not an evil one… a deeply troubled one…Some are delusional."
So terrorists and charlatans are really just mentally ill people?
Then to add salt to the wound he suggested that we pity people like Gervais. Pity? As one with a mental illness, once suicidal, I don't want pity. None of us want pity. We just want to work at participating in the world, as productive members of society-who happen to have a mental illness, not to be confused with those who are immoral and unethical.
Sadly, there is no recourse for me at the National Post. Don McCurdy of the Ontario Press Council told me the Post is not under their umbrella. I have to assume when I sent my complaint to Gillian Akai in the legal department and then followed up with complaints to all the editors who may have been contributors to the piece that they all laughed. They knew from the beginning they weren’t obligated to respond to my concerns. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the person finally responding to my complaint was Anne Marie Owens, Editor of the National Post. She offered to have the editor of letters help me write a letter.
Speechless.
