They Made Me Look Like a Psycho
What happened when a trucker talked to the media.
Nova Scotia trucker Jeff has his own stories about Canada’s mainstream media. He participated in two lengthy interviews while protesting in Ottawa, he says, but he may as well not have bothered:
CBC come along about day five, wanted to do an interview. I had a beard and greasy clothes on cuz I’d worked on the truck all night. Looked like a redneck trucker. Anyway, they come along. ‘Do you wanna do an interview with us?’
I said, ‘What are you gonna make me look like - a terrorist or a racist?’
‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘my interviews are blah, blah, blah.’
I said, ‘I'll tell you what, I will do your interview. Because believe it or not, I'm actually quite well educated. And I can speak very nicely, too.’
Every question, I answered it properly. It was a good 20-minute interview.
Advised that he’d appear on the six o'clock news that evening, Jeff tuned in. But not one word of what he’s said made it on air. It was as though the interview had never happened. Articulate, reasonable-sounding truckers apparently weren’t newsworthy.
Two or three days later, CTV News comes along. They asked a bunch of different guys. Nobody would, nobody would. I said the same thing, ‘So you can spin it and make me look bad?’ Then I said okay.
Did the interview, answered everything. 20-25 minute interview. That one did make the news. Eight seconds of it. The one part that made it onto the news was ‘Well, they're saying two years in jail and your truck's forfeited, and this big fine and everything. Doesn't that scare you?’
And I smiled, and I said, ‘Not even a little bit. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers fought for the freedoms of this country. Two years in jail is nothing compared to what they sacrificed, especially the ones that never came back.’
Out of the entire 25-minute interview, Jeff says bitterly, the only part that was broadcast was “me smiling and saying ‘Not even a little bit.’ That's it. None of the explanation. They made me look like a f**king psycho because I smiled and said, I'm not scared of going to jail.”
He shakes his head, “I don't want to go to jail, obviously. But seriously, I was willing to - for those reasons. I was there for my kids, my grandkids.”
During his stay in Ottawa, supporters wrote messages on Jeff’s truck. “I wouldn’t read them when people signed it,” he says. “I’d get out in the middle of the night, when I wanted to go home, and read them then.”
He points to a message. “That one brought me to tears - ‘Our fighting dead would be proud.’”
I am so ashamed of today's mainstream journalists.