The Nameless Newsmakers

The two cross-border truckers who sparked the Freedom Convoy are disappeared by the Canadian Press wire service.

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When the Canadian Press wire service (CP) announced on December 19th that the Freedom Convoy had been voted 2022’s news story of the year it did something very strange.

That story is 800 words long - which is substantial - and consists of 24 paragraphs. The fourth paragraph tells us:

The protest began with two truck drivers who felt angry and frightened about a proposed vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers. They connected on TikTok and began gathering support for a cross-country convoy to Ottawa.

That would be Ontario cross-border trucker Brigitte Belton - who feared she was about to be pushed into bankruptcy by the vaccine mandate.

Brigitte Belton, testifying at the Emergencies Act hearing.

And Saskatchewan cross-border trucker Chris Barber - the owner of a small trucking company who got vaccinated in order to keep afloat a business he’d spent the previous 16 years building.

Christ Barber, testifying at the Emergencies Act hearing.

I think it’s terribly interesting - and terribly relevant - that these two individuals are

1. a woman and a man

2. one vaccinated, one not

3. from two different parts of the country

But CP doesn’t tell us any of this. In fact, it neglects to identify these people period. They’re un-personed. Dismissed. Disappeared. Reduced merely to “two truck drivers who felt angry and frightened.”

Why are Brigitte and Chris not identified? Why doesn’t CP tell us their names and show us their faces? These people kick-started the news story of the year.

Later, both of them traveled to Ottawa and spent hours testifying at an Emergencies Act hearing. Locating photographs of them isn’t hard. Needless to say, CP doesn’t quote them, either. It’s almost as though journalists deliberately avoid giving working class people an opportunity to speak for themselves, to be heard in their own words.

I’ll tell you what that CP story does contain, though. The thoughts of five journalists, four of whom are quoted verbatim.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold the mainstream media. A pack of self-absorbed wretches far more interested in telling you what journalists think than in identifying Canada’s actual newsmakers of the year.