Tag: Postmedia

The media in this country is a fickle beast of sorts.

I realize that media consolidation is a major factor. Back in the good ol’ days, every newspaper practically had it’s own editorial board that would decide what stories to investigate and what stories to pass on. But now with media consolidation, one editor can determine the editorial content of a hundred or so newspapers all in one go.

And that type of control also affects competition. If you know that your competitors aren’t going to run a particular story, then why should you. If your job is to push “infotainment” and to give the readers / viewers what they want, then give ’em lots of tits and ass. The public loves T&A. T&A moves newspapers. If your competitors are giving the public T&A stories and all of the other hollywood fluff, then why shouldn’t you?

Besides, most news rooms in this country run on skeleton crews. It’s no longer like it was back in the ’70s or ’80s, or even as recently at the ’00s. News wire services are where it’s at now. That’s one of the reason why American celebrity coverage has become so abundant in Canadian media. It’s what the news wire services are running. Why spend money on an investigative team, when you can simply buy pre-formatted news articles from a wire service?

If I were to call up the media and tell them that I was the bastard love child of some rich hollywood actor, the media would jump all over this in a heart beat with the absolute minimal requirement for proof.

Yet, when it comes to the Canadian Armed Forces, the media in this country love to run protective defence for the military.

No matter how many scandals the Canadian Forces are involved with, the media won’t touch the Canadian Forces when it comes to the topic of child sexual abuse. It’s like the Canadian Forces get a free pass from the media.

We’ve known since the mid ’90s that the Canadian Armed Forces had a major problem with sexual assaults against women.

We’ve known since the mid ’90s that the Canadian Armed Forces disciplinary system has had major issues that required an Act to be passed in Parliament to partially remedy.

We know that the 3-year-time-bar and the Summary-Investigation-Flaw still affect victims of military child sexual abuse to this day.

We’ve known since the early ’80s that the Catholic Church was having significant problems with kiddie diddling priests. According to Court Martial Appeal Court records and other public documents, the Canadian Armed Forces also seem to have been having a problem with their catholic clergy.

We’ve know since 2010 that according to the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal that the Canadian Forces have a “disturbingly higher incidence of sexual crimes involving children”.

We’ve know since 2014 that according to the findings of the External Review conducted by retired Supreme Court justice Madame Marie Deschamps, that the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service didn’t have the training or the experience to properly investigate sexual assaults.

We’ve also know since the release of the findings of the Fynnes Inquiry that the CFNIS investigators are not independent of the chain of command and that the CFNIS investigators do not own their own investigations and that every step that a CFNIS investigator takes must be vetted by the chain of command and that this chain of command often does not have any legal training or any experience with the topic at hand.

We’ve known since May of 2000 that the Canadian Forces have acknowledged that the military community had a significant problem with the abuse of female spouses by serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

We’ve even known since 2011 that the Canadian Forces willingly denied benefits and compensation to a group of 13 to 18 year old army cadets who were killed and injured due to the negligence of a member of the Canadian Armed Forces. In fact, according to news reports, the Canadian Forces seemed hellbent on blaming the kids for sneaking the grenade into the barracks.

And yet the media shows absolutely no interest in child sexual abuse within the defence community.

The media seem to think that because I was a military dependant, that I have every other military dependant on speed dial and therefore I can just get 20 or 30 other people to call in with their tales of abuse.

The media seems to think that there is some sort of agency that tracks and looks after former military dependants.

With the CFNIS grabbing all of the investigations from the various civilian agencies and the RCMP, there’s going to be no independent agency that can say they’ve noticed a problem.

I wish I had more time to dedicate to this matter, but with work and my social life keeping me occupied, I just don’t have the time to “pitch” this to the media.

Maybe one of the issues that I’m running into is that I don’t fit the preconceived notion of what the media believes that a victim of military child sexual abuse and conversion therapy should look like. I guess the fact that I’m not an alcoholic, that I don’t have a crack problem, and that I don’t have an unstable employment history means that there is no way that I could have endured what I said that I endured. And this obviously sets off the B.S. alarms in the media. Because everyone knows that a victim of military child sexual abuse and military conversion therapy could never have a functional life, right?

I’m also well aware that the media suffer from “Major Dad” syndrome. Most reporters these days grew up watching Major Dad back in the ’80s and use that TV show to form their thoughts on what life was like on a military base for a military dependant.