Written by: Sritharan Sivapalan
One of the things I find interesting is that my friends have different beliefs than I do. They usually watch the news and think it’s all nonsense. When I watch the news, I believe it’s the truth most of the time. The argument was over City News and how they described the Tamil protest that took place downtown in front of Union Station forming a human chain to show that there is genocide going on in Sri Lanka. I was arguing with my friends that CP 24 would put this as a big heading on the news. My friends were telling me that the media was just saying the protest was tying up commuters and traffic downtown. I thought to myself and realized that media doesn’t always give positive feedback about protests. My friends and I were discussing this.
The Canadian government would not do much to help out the people in northern Sri Lankan where the Tamil people were being killed. I was arguing that the government would take some action because Canada is the home to three hundred thousand Tamil Diaspora. One of the things I found interesting is that at the protest, people were walking around and protesting and some people were just talking as if it was another protest. I thought to myself, if there was a Tamil person working as a CP 24 editor, the comments about the protest wouldn’t be so biased. I also argued with my friends that the majority of people in the protest were middle-class laborers and wealthy higher class. This is one of the facts that maybe the media didn’t have a good impression about the protest.
I thought these guys were just crazy. Thinking logically, I think the Canadian economy is in a recession. The last topic on their minds is Sri Lanka, especially when their morally focused on budgets, job losses and other issues. The Tamil peoples issue has been going on for 60 years and it always brings negative thoughts for Canadians. The Tamil people in Toronto don’t really understand how to approach certain matters so they seem to protest. In other words, if you scream at someone’s door, they are more likely to report you because you’re crazy. If you knock on the door and tell them the problem and give evidence then there is a reason for someone to help you out. These are some of my ideologies how the media gives out information.
Tags: Speak Out
