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Poverty and the Press Panel - From The Expositor

Feb 8/06

What's the media's role in highlighting poverty?: Laurier Brantford forum hears there are other ways to get the message out
The Expositor (Brantford)
Wednesday, February 8, 2006

Richard Beales

Social values can't be changed if activists depend on the
media for approval, the founder of an anti-poverty group told a
small gathering at Brant Community Church on Tuesday.

John Clarke, of the Toronto-based Ontario Coalition Against
Poverty, said active change can be achieved only by remaining true
to one's own cause.

"To merely comment on the existence of poverty is inadequate," said
Clarke, one of three panelists at a *Laurier* *Brantford* discussion on
media and poverty. "The power of the poor has been to organize
collectively and disrupt the process."

If that leads to "staggeringly negative" press, as it did for his
group during the so-called "Queen's Park riot" of 2000, so be it,
said Clarke.

Though he and other group leaders were "demonized thoroughly and
roundly" for their confrontational tactics outside Queen's Park
against social cuts by the then-Mike Harris government, Clarke said
that protesters had the support of the people.

He said groups such as his must look beyond the media for support
because enough credit is never given to "the capacity of people to
draw their own conclusions."

Nonetheless, he acknowledged disappointment that little media
attention initially followed another of his group's initiatives --
making welfare recipients aware of the Ontario government's
so-called "special diet" provision.

Under terms of that provision, people would qualify for an extra
$250 a month if a medical practitioner agreed they needed special
diets for medical conditions. The group arranged 25 community
clinics, which eventually led to 10,000 people getting the subsidy
-- most on the basis that malnutrition is a medical condition. Only
2,000 had been receiving the benefit before then.

Hamilton Spectator reporter Bill Dunphy, another member of the
panel, called the campaign "brilliant," but added that its success
was actually helped by public inattention.

"They (the recipients) were probably far better off without any
media coverage," Dunphy said.

Once the effects of the initiative became apparent through news
reports, the Liberal government moved quickly to close what it saw
as a loophole.

Last fall, Dunphy was installed as the Spectator's poverty
reporter, in response to that newspaper's desire to bring attention
to the stories of some of Hamilton's less fortunate individuals.

COMFORT ZONES

This has led to a series of sensitive feature stories designed to
give the reader a perspective rarely seen in mainstream media --
that of the urban poor.

Dunphy acknowledged that he isn't sure where the newspaper's
commitment to poverty reporting will lead, other than to raising the
awareness of people's problems. Individual stories are compelling,
he said, but the underlying causes of poverty are systemic and
complex, and make for a less-than-gripping read.

Six Nations media relations officer Dan David, the panel's third
member, reflected on a career interest in the issues of poverty that
began during his days as a CBC Radio reporter in Whitehorse.

David knew there was a ghetto of poverty in the city, but couldn't
find the well-hidden neighbourhood for three days. When he found it,
he was appalled.

"What I saw was basically a cesspool hidden from view from the rest
of Whitehorse."

He learned a lesson then: people don't like to go out of their
comfort zones, and that includes news media. That lesson led him
years later, as a journalism instructor at Ryerson University in
Toronto, to encourage students to take a chance on finding stories
in less-travelled spots, such as the gay village, multicultural
neighbourhoods and social assistance areas.

As far as Six Nations is concerned, he said, it's a community of
contrasts, with expensive Hummers driving past dilapidated shacks.

"There is something wrong with our values," he said, "that leads to
this kind of endemic poverty that you can't get out of."

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