Frances Bula header image 2

The media storm over homelessness and Downtown Eastside never happened. What now?

March 5th, 2010 · 33 Comments

For years before the Olympics arrived, we routinely saw commentators warning that when the media arrived here and saw the scene on the Downtown Eastside and the homelessness situation, there would be a firestorm of negative coverage.

That never happened. There was the odd piece here and there in the bigger newspapers, but it never really picked up steam. It just became one of the deck of predictable stories that media outlets did about Vancouver. The great restaurants? Check. Vancouverism? Check. Downtown Eastside and homelessness? Check.

There was coverage of the tent city camp and the various protests, but except for the window-smashing at the Bay on the Saturday after opening ceremonies, it was pretty perfunctory.

I talked to some of the usual suspects about why they think that was and what that means for the future.

Categories: Uncategorized

  • Urbanismo

    “That never happened.” Oh yes it did!

    http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4881&updaterx=2010-03-04+17%3A20%3A29

  • Megaphone

    It may not have been the flood that many predicted, but there was a pretty steady stream of confused and shocked European journalists wandering around the neighbourhood the week before the Games started.

    Once the Games started, the media lost all interest in all things Vancouver, including the DTES. But the quality of the reports about the neighbourhood, especially in the big papers, was extremely disappointing.

    Here was Megaphone’s take:

    It’s an oddly disconcerting experience to read an outsider’s impression of your city. In the days leading up to the Olympics, there’s been plenty of opportunity to do just that, as international reporters have descended upon Vancouver to file reports on the state of the Games’ host city.

    What’s very encouraging is that these journalists, rather than simply relying on pro-Olympics stories, have made an effort to explore the complex issues of poverty and homelessness that plague Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

    Less encouraging has been the quality of journalism from those same reporters. Disappointingly, many have resorted to two-dimensional portrayals of the people living in the neighbourhood, unfairly depicting them as little more than thieves, addicts, and degenerates.

    A recent New York Times story described “junkies from the Downtown Eastside sometimes run through there [the alleys], sometimes naked, at all hours”; an L.A. Times writer referred to the neighbourhood as “a netherworld of open-air drug-dealing, makeshift sidewalk shelters, public drunkenness, and prostitution”; and a BBC story describing the area as “teeming with pushers, pimps and prostitutes.”

    And so the Downtown Eastside streets have turned into a parade route for foreign journalists on the prowl for a cheap quote or iconic photograph, all too willing to rely on a single voice or image to speak to the experiences and opinions of the entire community.

    There’s no denying that Vancouver has a homeless crisis. There are real and serious problems here that need to be confronted. But there is far too much lazy journalism—too little research and too little care. The news is full of images and stories that are exploitative and self-righteous, a tsk-tsking at Vancouver’s homelessness and poverty, but they do little to add to the public discourse on solving the very serious issues faced by this neighbourhood.

    There’s a truth in this neighbourhood that people are ignoring. Go beyond the surface, dig just a little deeper. If you take time to listen to the people that are building and supporting this community—creating opportunities, building partnerships, working to lift one another up— you’ll see a neighbourhood that is full of spirit, determination, and compassion.

    Megaphone Magazine tries to do just that. As Vancouver’s street paper, Megaphone provides a voice for homeless and low income vendors and the communities they live in. Knowing that the Olympics would draw global attention to the Downtown Eastside, Megaphone published a special issue, entitled “Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside: A People’s History”, with the intention of dispelling the many negative perceptions. It’s not about whitewashing the problems, it’s about truthfully reporting without resorting to hyperbole. The stories are about the Downtown Eastside, by the Downtown Eastside.

    The issues of homelessness, poverty, addiction, and illness facing this community need to be reported. Badly. But it requires thoughtful, balanced, and truthful journalism, because long after those newspapers have been sold and the Games have come and gone, the problems and the people will still be here.

  • spartikus

    Hi Frances,

    The link goes to your story on the art gallery. I think you meant to go to this one.

  • Warren

    I think the media saw the demonstrations for what they were: attention whoring. All major cities around the world have homeless problems. The media, local and international, was here to focus on the games and their home athletes.

    To the vast disappointment of many protesters, the media simply wasn’t interested in covering their story when the games were packed into 2 extremely busy weeks.

    There is an industry around protest in this city, and it has more to do with getting on camera than solving problems.

  • WW

    At the end of the day, these journalists were largely sent here, by their employers, to cover “the Olympic Games” not the various urban challenges that Vancouver faces (like every other city on the planet).

    The Olympics offered a new story every day for them to cover, whether street life, an athlete overcoming challenges, cauldron-gate, etc. And each day offered myriad story options under the umbrella of topics they were sent here to cover.

    The DTES, as diverse and complex as it is, couldn’t really offer these foreign newspapers the new day-to-day content that their readership wanted from Olympic Games reporting.

  • CV

    I can see how journalists didn’t find much of a story on homelessness and the DTES:

    1. The sheer volume of people on the streets downtown watered down the usual number of beggars/homeless. I noticed the odd person begging but they were easily lost in the crowd.

    2. Woodwards has reclaimed part of Hastings; so it doesn’t feel as seedy around there now.

    3. Every town has it’s dodgy parts.

  • Mick

    If your editor sends you to Vancouver to cover the Olympics and you send back stories about the homeless, I can assure you that is the last Olympics that reporter will ever be sent to cover.

    The public at home in Bratislava or Dallas or Manchester simply doesn’t care.

  • david hadaway

    Returning home last night I noticed there’s been an upturn in the number of working girls on Hastings Street. They had almost vanished about two weeks before the games. Coincidence no doubt.

  • Mira

    First, the MSM never covers the truth of the matter. It doesn’t sell well with the imbibed ones!
    Second, the advertisers that keep them afloat are not homeless, on the contrary they are in most of the cases the root of the problem. Think of the Olympic sponsors: Major retail chain that manufactured all its Olympic merchandise in China, greedy corrupt bankers, teeth rotting pop drink makers, alcohol pushers, for the love of dying young, let the cigarette makers back in the sack!
    Anything else you want for why there is no “in your face Canada” news on the homeless?
    The world have become a sad place to live. Now let’s talk about the Oscars!

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    You mean the same media that got the Iraq War wrong?

    We had a discussioin right here on your blog, Frances, and I hope the insights it provided will prove to be of the kind that burns slow, and burns long. The quality of the debate was top notch. A cultural shift in paradigm, and putting City policy into a 21st century crucible, were among the things I got out of the discussion.

  • Derek Weiss

    My experience, as someone who handled media requests for a DTES charity, is that it seemed like many international journalists were sent to file a story on the DTES as one of many assignments they had to cover the week before the Olympics started. They talked to one party on the far left, one charity or housing non-profit in the middle, and then the government. Then they filed the story and moved on.

    The journalists I dealt with (all from major international networks, one with the highest circulation newspaper in the world) seemed genuinely interested, driven, and professional as journalists, and quite concerned and compassionate as human beings. But when the story was filed, they had other assignments to do.

    The protests on the opening Friday provided a little more coverage, but the story there was the protesters themselves, not DTES issues.

  • Hoarse Whisperer

    I agree with WW and David Weiss.

    In my own experince I had a chance to talk to Salt Lake about their media experiences.

    They told me that journalsits would be filing quickly and often, and be very focused on athletes and events. The best one could hope for, if they were actually following anything civic, was the need for “fast facts” and stats.

    As Rich Coleman’s noted, all jurisdictions have the problem—and struggle to figure out how best to solve it.

    And really, if we were initially so offended by the early references to the “Glitch Games”—so called, because up to that point there were no Games stories to tell—would we not have been more offended to get that kind of facile, superficial coverage on something as important as the DTES?

    People in town for 2 weeks should not throw stones. Including protesters.

  • JCobb

    Notice the local media also focussed on the positive aspects of the games. After the Saturday morning thugs hijacked the “legitamate” protestors’ headlines, the entire movement lost credibility for column inches.

    In the end, the world was swept up by the good will of the games.

  • jon

    I spoke to the reporter Bishop who did the bit for the New York Times to see if he would do a follow up on our Burns Block Micro-Lofts but he had moved on the the Super Bowl. I wondered,would they look for more than just the expected story? As others have implied, sports reporters doing a side job. Maybe if it had been pitched as Ecotentsity it would have got more pick up.

  • Megaphone

    Some of the reporters I spoke with in the DTES were not sports reporters, but they seemed more interested in “drugs and prostitutes” as one Norwegian reporter kept asking me about, or “violent protests” as an AP tv crew kept going on about (not much different than our own media, I suppose).

    Another possible explanation: It seemed like a lot of these reporters covered the Beijing Games, which was still fresh in their minds. There, they saw a whole other level of poverty and oppression. Vancouver seemed incredibly tame and open in comparison, obviously.

  • Agua Flor

    Why would you expect the MSM to be interested in anything other than the usual yellow journalism . . . they are all shaved in the same sheep dip . . .

    Try The Real News link above . . .

  • Agua Flor

    PS @ Warren . . . “All major cities around the world have homeless problems. ”

    Absolutely true but does that not magnify the tragedy?

  • Charlie Harper

    The fact of the matter is the majority of people don’t give a damn about the homeless.

  • A. G. Tsakumis

    I can’t even believe you wrote a story about this.

    With respect, much like the rest of the mainstream press, YOu didn’t spend a second covering ANY of those kinds of stories because your bosses had already sold your integrity. Forget the Sun as they’re useless, but the Mop and Pail are CTV Globemedia property. So how can I expect you to faiely cover the Olumpics, instead of telling us where we might find the next great latte.

    The only media property that covered some good stories was the Province.

    So my answer to your question is simple: The media were too busy selling their integrity in photo ops and carrying the torch to write serious stories.

    Ever hear about something called the ‘Hope Bus’ that routinely took folks from the DTES from there and under the guise of “a sandwich and hot coffee” dropped them off in PoCo?

    Never heard about the myriad of problems with the Olympic Village? Nah. That’s rough work and might make your pal Bobby with the gallery mad.

    I only wrote about that here thrice. But you were busy, I understand.

  • Bill Lee

    It depends if you are looking in English language or not.
    Journal de Montreal is on lockout (Quebecor), but had their Sun chain file a bit.
    The New York Times came in early and then forgot about it. “In the Shadow of the Olympics
    By GREG BISHOP
    Published: February 4, 2010
    VANCOUVER, British Columbia — In this urban oasis widely considered one of the most livable places in the world, the Downtown Eastside is about 15 square blocks of something else.
    At the corner of Main and Hastings, …

    I had expected to see some text from Thomas Roth, senior correspondent of ZDF, national German TV who was interviewing in the Eastside, but I wasn’t following every taggesschau broadcast. They have an Olympia page but nothing other than their triumphs in sports of course.
    [ Did anyone notice that our vaunted alpine skiers that use to win medals were generally ignored this time in favour of other sports? ]

    ARD, another German network posted http://olympia.ard.de/olympia/nachrichten/land-und-leute/obdachloseinvancouver100.html
    “Obdachlose in Vancouver”
    150 Dollar für Dosen und Flaschen
    von Susanne Rohlfing

    So they came early, or didn’t have time, or ignored it. Even Gastown merchants found that there was little foot traffic during the Games time.

  • spartikus

    The media were too busy selling their integrity in photo ops and carrying the torch to write serious stories.

    This is actually a very good point. VANOC borrowed the Pentagon embed strategy – consciously or unconsciously you’re less inclined to write a negative story if you’re part of the story or team.

    Unfortunately Alex, this very valid observation was almost hidden in the white noise of unrelated and unnecessary vitriole.

    Not, of course, that you care what I think.

  • Frances Bula

    Just to chime in here.

    My story was about the stories everyone expected the out-of-town media to do. It was great to hear Megaphone’s on-the-ground observations of how the foreign media behaved and what they were (and weren’t) interested in.

    The thread seemed to have digresssed to trashing the in-town media for not covering the Downtown Eastside/homelessness because they were allegedly compromised by their owners’ sponsorships or their own participation in the torch relay. I’ve commented on this in other forums (or fora, for the Latin-grammar specialists out there) but I have not yet heard anyone make a really credible case that the media outlets that were sponsors did any different a job than those that were not sponsors. Can someone show me a major story that was persistently covered by a non-sponsor media outlet and ignored by a sponsor media outlet. In fact, if you look at alternative media here, they also had a lot of positive coverage of the Olympics.

    Again, as I’ve been saying elsewhere, journalists have to negotiate all kinds of conflicts because of the beats they cover or what their organizations sponsor all the time. (Anyone ever looked at how many arts performances are sponsored by local media and what impact that has on the coverage?)

    Happy to hear comments on this, but it seems to me that the reason that all of knew about the negatives of the Games — fears about evictions, failure to meet commitments to build the 3,200 units promised through the bid book, concerns about infringements of civil rights, Olympic village financial messes, secrecy at VANOC meetings, free tickets being given out to various groups — is because the local mainstream media covered those stories.

    You can argue they could have covered them more, but it’s not as those issues were covered only by the alternative media. I broke the story three years ago that the bid-book promises meant the provincial government was on the hook to create 3,200 units of social housing — a commitment that I and many others have referred to many times in the dozens of stories done on this issue since then.

    This is not to say that I think all kinds of media, MSM and others, don’t make horrid mistakes or have unbalanced coverage for various reasons ranging from a kind of small-town mentality (oh, we can’t phone up a big outfit like Fortress Investment in New York and ask them any questions) to narrow perceptions of what the public wants.

    But casually hurling accusations at MSM because of sponsorships or torch relays is as sloppy journalism as anything the MSM practices.

  • david hadaway

    Spartikus;

    I think it’s a good idea to be restrained in the use of terms like vitriol. When people write forcefully on a subject they care about it’s all too easy to use such terms to diminish their argument.

    I’m not going to quote any examples of real vitriol here but the term is clearly hyperbole in relation to Alex’s comment.

  • spartikus

    I disagree David. I think comments like:

    instead of telling us where we might find the next great latte.

    and

    That’s rough work and might make your pal Bobby with the gallery mad.

    …veered unnecessarily into the personal, were without basis (given the subject of this very blog post…not to mention past posts), and were ultimately distracting from an otherwise legitimate point. Based on this and AGT’s past commentary here, I think the term vitriol is fair.

    Again, he doesn’t care…and I probably shouldn’t either. Nevertheless it was a good point and I wish it had been given the chance to stand on it’s own.

  • spartikus

    But casually hurling accusations at MSM because of sponsorships or torch relays is as sloppy journalism as anything the MSM practices.

    I disagree with this too. I think it’s quite obvious it was a VANOC strategy to get journalists involved in things like the torch relay in order to a) generate positive press and/or b) blunt potential negative press.

    I won’t go so far to say it was unethical, but I don’t think any working journalist had any business participating in the torch run.

    That’s not to say any given journalist isn’t capable of seeing through this and filing a good story – and in the Globe’s defence I noted a few critical stories there.

    There were a multiple of reasons why the homelessness issue didn’t garner more attention, most of which have been noted above. The only thing I would add was the Feb 13 protest was a PR debacle that turned off most of the public and quite likely even those members of the press who might have been sympathetic as well. Ex. Geoff Dembicki at the Tyee.

  • Richard

    I’m really not sure why people expected more coverage on the DTES. It is not exactly an original idea to try and tell the world about problems when a big event is in town. And is is not like Vancouver is the only city that has ever held an Olympics that has had major issues at the time. Looking back at other Games and to be honest, I can’t really remember any stories about problems.

    The other reason is likely the over the top negative articles in some of the British press. I think that this caused a lot of locals, Canadians and even the international press to start focusing on the positive stories in reaction to these “attacks”.

  • Frances Bula

    Spartikus

    Thanks for your comments. Just a point of clarification: VANOC didn’t actually encourage or invite journalists to participate in the torch relay, as far as I know. The media organizations with sponsorships got a certain number of spots that they could distribute as they wished, and so some journalists chose to take those up. It did create a bit of debate among journalists, as some chose to run and others said it was inappropriate. CP reporter Stephanie Levitz, who does great journalism work, did run and wrote a piece about running in which she felt that it was a mistake as she hadn’t really learned anything or told her readers anything she couldn’t have done as an observer.

  • david hadaway

    Another factor is probably that this story has already been reported widely for some time in the rest of the world, much as we might like to think otherwise. Here’s the headline from one Guardian story that says it all;

    “If the girls had been dogs the police would have done more.” Feb 27 2002.

    There are plenty more and I know from experience that any tourist who encounters “Vancouver’s dirty secret” will be talking about it back home.

    It wasn’t news because it wasn’t news.

  • A. G. Tsakumis

    Frances says:

    “…fears about evictions, failure to meet commitments to build the 3,200 units promised through the bid book, concerns about infringements of civil rights, Olympic village financial messes, secrecy at VANOC meetings, free tickets being given out to various groups — is because the local mainstream media covered those stories”

    That’s an incredibly misleading statement. Most of those stories were broken by non-mainstream press well before the MSM awoke to the realities. The Tyee, 24 Hours and several blogs were responsible for the heavy lifting, not the MSM–as you seem to imply.

    Additionally, it isn’t irresponsible to comment on the MSM predisposition for being sycophantic through the Games. I don’t care about your story from three years ago. What hogwash! But if you are going to wear the mantle of the “go-to” locally, then do the work! There were a TON of local stories that you ignored, like mine on Ark Tsisserev, the fired City Electrical Chief. Why? Tell us. I have broad shoulders. Could it be that your pals in Silly Hall wouldn’t approve of you joining me to show that Penny Ballem OUTRIGHT LIED about why she and her staff clearly destroyed a man’s career and made Vancouver less safe. It’s exactly the kind of Bula story that made you a household name, that inspired the rest of us when we read you, but alas, the horizon line seems a little closer and sundown might be faster approaching than you’d like to admit, so who cares if a little personal bias seeps out from the office door nearing the end of the career, right?

    You would be all over such stories…if council were made up of an NPA majority and you know it. I did a send up of Suzanne Anton and you ran it immediately. Bet you a year’s worth of dim sum that if I ran such a story on Gregor, you’d have dismissed it.

    Penny Ballem has clearly politicized City Hall and there are ample examples, the wrongful dismissal of the City’s chief electrical inspector for purely political reasons (the homework isn’t very tough) is a MAJOR story that is still brewing.

    The Olympic Village deficiencies are unending and troubling, so where is your perspective there? Oh, you didn’t hesitate a soft ball last week on your pal Rennie’s mindless pontificating about how the OV will sell, but to cover the very reasons buyers should beware, nah…why bother?

    As for stories the foreign press did or didn’t cover, I couldn’t give flying damn.

    For when the denizens of the MSM cannot take the heat of legitimate criticism, without whining about three year old (good) work, then you know something is wrong right here in Vancouver.

    I don’t give a shit about what’s happening in London of Copenhagen. That’s for the airy-fairy set of blue-sky dreamers in the MSM to navel-gaze about, over fried basil gnocchi and a glass of chianti.

    Vancouver is less safe today than it was sixty days ago, and you’re off wondering why someone in Oslo didn’t cover Main and Hastings??? That’s funny.

    It’s not a surprise, but maybe your question is what prompted people to ask, through their own observations, why you weren’t covering 12th and Cambie.

    I know, they were too polite to challenge you.

    I don’t have that problem.

  • spartikus

    VANOC didn’t actually encourage or invite journalists to participate in the torch relay, as far as I know.

    Reading one of Stephanie Levitz’s stories, it certainly sounds like they did:

    “My spot came as an invitation from the International Olympic Committee. They asked Vancouver reporters who have devoted the last several years of their professional lives to covering the Games if they’d like a chance to run.”

    Apparently 3 dozen did, including journalists from non-sponsors like Peter Mansbridge, Chris Gailus, etc.

    I certainly don’t think this was the only reason why a media storm didn’t happen. It’s just a data point.

    I’d also like to clarify that I don’t think Geoff Dembicki pulled any punches from his reporting as a result of Feb 13. I’m not a mind reader, but his writing did seem to indicate a certain bewilderment with those folks.

  • Frances Bula

    Spartikus

    Oops, you’re right. All the ones I knew about got the spots from their employers.

  • MB

    @ AGT,

    I’ll bet this is about the time your family members and guests make excuses and leave the dinner table.

  • A. G. Tsakumis

    MB, I’m sorry you feel that serious life safety issues in the city are something to be joked about, but I don’t.

    You can come at me all you like. Commenting like an idiot has lots of currency for you, you’ve proved that here time and again.

    Fact remains: Frances cannot ask such absurd questions and expect to get a free ride because she’s Frances.