Sagittarius
It's been really interesting to watch the ways that the press has been struggling with reporting on the trial, because so many of the details of the crimes are really really, grisly and hard to stomach. We're about four weeks into the trial now, and a lot of the initial court reporting has tapered off, due to the intensity for both the reporters and their readers. So far there are about 300 reporters covering the trial. It should be interesting to see what happens to those numbers over the next year.
The two writers I'm most interested in in that pool, though, are two sex workers that citizen journalism website Orato.com has brought on to cover the trial (though they aren't being paid, they get expenses covered). Have a look at the profile pages of Trisha Baptie and Pauline VanKoll, where all their posts on the trial so far as linked.
Their coverage is pretty fascinating - I'm pretty hooked, especially as an editor of a magazine that is trying to make sex worker journalism a real and evolving thing. It's really important that sex workers cover issues important to them, using the perspective that only someone in the industry can have.
There are a number of Canadian publications that have picked up the story of the sex worker writers and are calling into question the value of citizen journalism. Some of this, no doubt is the fear of professional journalists shining through - fear that they are becoming obsolete. Though I don't think professional journalists will be replaced, Web 2.0 definitely calls into question a lot of the ethics and methodology of journalism. But we also have to remember that that isn't an entirely new thing - remember Hunter S. Thompson and the whole gonzo journalism thing?
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Dacia, Do you mind if I ask
By Heather Wallace, February 14, 2007 at 12:31Dacia,
Do you mind if I ask how you heard about this trial? It seems to me that the American media are all but ignoring this incredible story. While 300 journalists may have been accredited to cover this trial, it turns out that only a small handful actually attend each day, and an even smaller handful attend as religiously as Orato's two correspondents Trisha Baptie and Pauline VanKoll. The media that are there are overwhelmingly local and Canadian. It's a very quiet affair.
In your introduction you say that he's accused of grinding the women up and feeding them to his pigs. Certainly there is speculation about his hogs having been fed the women's remains, but investigators don't - to my knowledge - have evidence of that, or else it hasn't come out in trial yet.
However, Pickton did say to an undercover cop planted in his cell that he knows a good way to dispose of bodies: rendering plants. So, that does give us all sorts of images to feed the speculation.
This is not to say there was not grisly evidence discovered. The first day of trial was emotional for all because we learned about the bisected heads and parts of limbs found in freezers on the Pickton property. Some people knew about this before the trial began, as it had come out in the preliminary hearing, but was subsequently under a publication ban.
It seems like a good time to remind anyone who may be reporting on this trial of the "positive responsibility" not to publish anything under publication ban.
Thanks for helping to spread the word down south. The more awareness we can raise about just how far violence against women can go, the better.
Heather Wallace
Senior Editor