By David P. Ball

Two journalists who report on issues in the Downtown Eastside and of people who use drugs are encouraging their peers to reflect carefully on how they cover the community, and whose voices they are offering a platform to.

Podcaster Sam Fenn, co-executive producer of Cited Media — which produces Crackdown podcast by and about drug policy advocates — and The Tyee's DTES reporter Jen St. Denis held a discussion with The Pulse on CFRO after a spate of incidents on mainstream news outlets related to public safety in Vancouver's core.

Some in the DTES community felt coverage by several media publications crossed a line into vilifying longtime residents of the neighbourhood, which has long faced high levels of poverty, substandard housing and public drug use.

Harder questions need to be asked of homeowners and upscale renters who complain about safety incidents, Fenn said, and media should be held accountable when reporting falls short of journalistic standards — for instance in using anonymous sources to make criminal allegations of fellow neighbourhood residents.

"I think that there does not appear to have been enough context in some of the reporting," Fenn said. "There's been some good reporting in this city … but there needs to be a reckoning as a journalist if you don't have enough context in your reporting when more information comes forward."

Some of the reporting "falls well below the standard we should set for journalism in the city," however, particular when it comes to anonymous allegations made against homeless people or those who use drugs in public view.

And St. Denis urged people to consider the root causes of problems they may be seeing, and how abnormal the current pandemic situation has made long-existing public health crises — and to ask how to help rather than simply calling the police or posting photographs of people on the street to social media.

"There's a deep fear of what's going on," St. Denis said. "A lot of the stuff we're seeing is getting really toxic with social media."

She agreed a lot of media reporting on those allegations and incidents could have been stronger and more balanced.

But she urged people to focus on the systemic issues behind the incidents, and not the individuals involved, on either side of the conflicts.

"Asking 'What can I do to help with this situation?' rather than a knee-jerk calling the police all the time, I don't see that being an actual solution," St. Denis said. "I'd like to see people take a step back and ask, 'Why is this happening and what can I do?'"

Listen to Part 2 of our conversation with two Downtown Eastside journalists — The Tyee's Jen St. Denis and Cited Media's Sam Fenn, with Crackdown Podcast — about how media are covering drug use and homelessness debates in the city. Part 1 is also available here.