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Vancouver Woman Takes Issue With Recent Column |
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Written by Eleonore Schramm
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Saturday, 27 January 2007 |
Dear Madame or Sir,
I am writing to you in response to the article written by DL McCraken [sic] on Friday January 26th, 2007 entitled 'Are CTV and Global National Sanitizing News from the Robert Pickton trial? '. I am shocked, dismayed and horrified at the stance that your writer and your paper has taken on the trial coverage of this case.
As a Vancouver resident who wakes up to the most minute horrifying details being graphically illustrated and discussed at length in the daily city journals I can assure you that I am not alone in my disgust for the sensationalism that this case is receiving locally. We are inundated with the physical evidence and procedural information to such a degree that it is over shadowing the reality of the heinous and monstrous crime which has been perpetrated against the women who so savagely and brutally lost their lives in this way.
The case has been handled in such a way that the public is given so much detail that we will be faced with an alternate set of issues should the trial be unsuccessful, most specifically that it will taint a prospective jury pool who will be unable to hear a new or secondary case should it be brought or necessary because of the amount of information which is being published about the what you so aptly describe as the 'Pig Man... and one more missing whore'.
Further to this, the simple connection that all these women had is being lost in the procedural relay of this case in the day to day - that is that they were all marginalized and systematically disadvantaged women forced to into horrific life conditions by a city ill prepared and too often unwilling to deal with the ongoing endemic poverty and drug issues which ravage the lower east side of Vancouver's downtown area.
These women deserve a voice and respect, not to be over shadowed by a short-sighted public campaign for blood lust sensational details. Perhaps you are failing to consider that by minimising the details, what you call 'Big Brother' collusion which you seemed so concerned of in the television media, may actually be providing a better public service by ensuring that these 49 deceased women - and Pickton isn't even being tried for half of their deaths - get a fair shake in the fractured justice system which was complacent in their deaths?
Why are we not engaging in a National discource on the status of women in our culture and the ongoing sexist, classist, and racial problems that prevent a concrete step forward in ending this sort of endemic violence?
Before you scearm for more blood, perhaps you should think before hiding behind the CABCE and ask for more coverage...
Regards,
Eleonore Schramm,
A Vancouver Woman |
