A trial unfolding in a B.C. courtroom shows journalists are more important than ever |
Carol Linnitt, acting editor-in-chief of The Narwhal, reads a statement alongside photojournalist Amber Bracken outside the B.C. Supreme Court on Jan. 12.Jennifer Gauthier/Reuters
In one particularly gory scene in the Golden Globe-winning and Oscar-contending Brazilian film The Secret Agent, a human leg is retrieved from a shark’s belly. As the police chief walks toward the university lab where the discovery has been made, he asks: “Any journalists?” Later, he arranges a secret deposition on another matter, inviting a single journalist for a highly orchestrated news photo that will present a police-controlled narrative to the public.
This weekend the world was witness to the critical importance of documenting the actions of police, evidenced through ICE agents bearing down on Minneapolis. If it wasn’t for video footage of the killing of Alex Pretti, the public could be more easily convinced to buy what the U.S. government is selling: that it was Mr. Pretti’s fault. As they tried to do with the ICE killing of Renee Nicole Macklin Good.
Even in a city teeming with observers armed with cellphones, government forces can kill an innocent man and then try to spin it and tell us that we didn’t see what we all could see. So just imagine what can happen when there is no one around to take pictures or videos.
A man is........