Down with “sensational” crime coverage

Dear Nunatsiaq News journalists and editors, I find myself concerned by your paper’s continued zeal in reporting the drug busts and booze raids around Nunavut and your enthusiastic support of law enforcement’s war against recreational drug and alcohol consumption.

I presume, after the many decades your paper has been publishing this type of casually dramatic law and order related story (Jan. 27, 2012,) that a demonstrably constructive effect on northern residents’ consumption and habits should be apparent.

I question though if these sensational stories with full blown pictures of confiscated drugs (18 grams of marijuana) and the alleged proceeds of crime ($260) serve to diminish both the public’s taste for the illicit substances or the urge on the part of some less-than-privileged community members to make a profit, by any means available, in a hamlet like Hall Beach.

There, the median after tax income is $15,872 with an employment rate of only 40.5 per cent, the total number of residents employed full time is 95, excluding RCMP members, and a 355 ml can of soda pop can sell for up to $10 during the winter months?

Are you sure that this is a case deserving of the full, unrestrained power of the press, given the recently revealed, rapidly declining national crime statistics and will you be sending a journalist to research the full costs of this particular investigation, arrest and prosecution and report on the eventual disposition of the charges and will you publish the court’s findings against the accused in an equally public-spirited, open manner?

Respectfully, Philthy.

Philip Marsh
Iqaluit

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