SURPRISING CONCLUSION

I was a bit surprised by the wrap-up to the article entitled "Pemberton drug
busts up" in the July 14 edition of Pique Newsmagazine.

After speaking about drug busts and marijuana grow-ops, Filipenko concludes
by stating that Staff Sgt. "McPhail sees drugs and substance abuse as
the primary issue in the community and he sees working as a community
towards a closer relationship with the First Nations as essential to
developing strategies on the social issues that challenge both
communities."

Immediately, with no explanation, Filipenko links the First Nations
community with Pemberton's drug problems. There is no other mention of
the First Nation community in this "drug" article, it just is dropped
in at the end. At best this is lazy reporting, for if this community
is to blame for the majority of these problems, an article of this
kind should provide relevant statistics to back up such a claim.
Otherwise such an unexplained leap is perpetuating ignorance and
reinforcing negative stereotypes of First Nation people. This
conclusion also suggests that theirs is a community to be dealt with
by the community at large, which presumably is the white community as
suggested by the term "both communities".

I think that the Pique is a respectable paper and was thus shocked by
what I thought was a slippage in the usual level of journalistic integrity.

Julia Summers

Via e-mail