Category Archives: Art

The Province Newspaper Flexes its Fear-Mongering Muscle Again

In their tradition of tabloid, sensationalist pseudo-journalism, The Province newspaper in Vancouver, pablum flagship of the CanWest media domination in town, described the Pemberton rock festival as “Rock ‘N’ Roll ‘N’ Chaos.”

Astonishing, this chaos. CTV news tonight said the RCMP kicked out a small number of people from the event over the weekend, considering there were 40,000 people there each day.

Chaos makes me think of terrorist attacks, total violent anarchy and a tone of unruliness that merits bringing in the riot squad.

As it turns out, it was just a rock show. No real news there for a paper that panders in fear when slow summer news weekends emerge. No carnage at the fireworks last night, I’ll assume, since no blood showed up on the cover this morning, just this photo of concert fans.

And it’s hard to see The Province as a legitimate media source when we read their own entertainment columnist end his last blog post tonight with this:

“Thanks are in order for all the concert-goers who kept it on the up and up, not turning any of the minor inconveniences into cause for misbehaviour and to all the hard-working volunteers on site. And, most of all, to Pemberton for letting us all come up and, admittedly, make a real mess all over someone’s farm and have a ball.”

Alas, no mass arrests there tonight either. Too bad because tomorrow’s headlines will have no gore to lead with.