Sunday News Magazine - Pickton

Wouldn't a better question to be asked of the coverage of the Pickton trial, is why the media all of a sudden is taking an intense in terest in the matter?

The women involved in the Pickton trial as victims, have been missing for years.

They are someone's daughter, they are someone's mother, they are someone's sister.

I don't think it was because they were female, as there are many males involved in the street drug scene or are involved in the sex trade that also have gone missing. They have been ignored with the same amount of vigour by the media and police.

In fact there is an estimate of more than 50 women that have been missing from the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver that the media and police have ignored.

This I would suggest is on the lower limit of the missing humanity from the streets of the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.

Now that they are dead, the reporters are trying to put the personal touch on the reporting of their deaths?

Where was this kind of sensitivity to the women when they were alive, or had gone missing, or the years between then and now?

That is what I would like the talking heads at the CBC and other media outlets of the Lower Mainland to address, right on the front pages, leading off on the news cast, or lead the National Newscast.

A reporter with a half a brain could have spent five minutes at Main and East Hastings and heard all the rumours about, 'The Killing Fields,' or the reports of someone snatching the women from the street, since the early 80's if not sooner.

My two years as a part-time contract worker with the Vacnovuer Coroner's office gave me a distinct experience in knowing that the police, and media, did not care.

Why?

That is the question I would like answered.

Norm Greenfield