Local couple's case puts Air Canada's treatment of people with disabilities in the spotlight
And what would it be like if Mr. Beast set up in town?
I saw a post on Facebook yesterday from a perosn who had recently moved from Grande Prairie to Prince George. They were confused about the time change — from what I could tell, it’s because they believed that Prince George had joined with Fort St. John, Dawson Creek and the rest of northeast B.C. in not switching clocks in the fall. Which is where I point my semi-annual reminder that the decision to change or not change clocks is actually a municipal one and mayor and council could vote to do away with the time switch whenever they want.
A version of Prince George with a YouTube millionaire
I read this profile of Mr. Beast’s hometown with great interest. For those of you who don’t know, Mr. Beast is one YouTube’s biggest stars, a multi-millionaire known for stunts like living in a bunker for 24 hours, paying for people’s cataract surgeries and creating a real-life version of Squid Games. The part that caught my attention is that he does all of this in the same town he grew up in, a place called Greenville that has 88,000 people — basically the exact same size as greater Prince George. And the impact is wild:
The mysterious structures appear on the outskirts of town with strange frequency: a re-creation of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, a 10-story video game monster, giant dominoes. And then there are the earthshaking explosions, which have become so common that county officials distribute “planned pyrotechnics” notices over email and Facebook instructing homeowners not to call the police.
But living in the same town as YouTube mega-celebrity Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson does have its perks. His company is always hiring — for artists, cleaners, accountants, even construction workers with experience in building a haunted house. And he and his crew sometimes drop into local spots to perform their signature acts of stunt philanthropy. One waitress at a hot-dog joint won a private island.
Since posting his first YouTube from his bedroom as a child, he has become a one-man driver of the local economy. One regional development official now ranks YouTube content creation among the town’s biggest businesses, alongside pharmaceutical manufacturing and the local forklift plant.
Can you imagine? One kid with a creative YouTube channel and this whole city would change.
On local news
I also read with interest a letter to the editor in the Prince George Citizen from a UNBC professor informing readers that much of my career has been fake. The basic premise is that because not every single newscast and interview is locally produced, the notion that it is local is “misleading” and “phony.”
I have explained the work that goes into producing local radio programming to people who ask, so I’m happy to do so here: Every day, a local team is tasked with creating the next day’s programming. The majority of this is done through booking their own original guests, primarily people from the northern B.C. region, and going out and producing tape pieces, also in the region. This is supplemented by working with other local newsrooms across the province and country to share programming and guests who may be on interest to local listeners. Sometimes this is tape that is shared around, and sometimes this in the form of a guest speaking on a topic that may interest multiple regions, which is why you may hear similar things on different local programs.
As for scripts — yes, there are question lines written in advance — but with some big asterisks. Writing these was my job for a long time, and it was meant as a roadmap for the host to have a sence of what the interview structure could be. However, they are not pre-approved by guests, sometimes to their dismay and hosts often don’t follow them, which was sometimes to my dismay if I wrote them, but which I understood when I was a host — because you want to follow the conversation where it goes naturally.
This formula is one shared by many, many newsrooms. In the United States, local programs run by city or state-based public radio stations take in content from other public radio stations through a network of affiliates, the backbone of which is National Public Radio (to the extent that many people often get confused and think NPR is the same thing as WNYC in New York or KCRR in Los Angeles. The Prince George Citizen runs news stories from other outlets based in Kelowna and Vancouver — and sometimes, you’ll see a report from the Citizen in places like the Vancouver Sun. I’ve also seen people mistake this for some sort of proof of some sort of conspiracy — why are all these news outlets runing the same headline at the same time??? The answer is benign: Because they pay for a wire service to report on things the local newsroom can’t, often because it’s in different cities, and when a story of interest is provided, they run it.
One thing that is notable is that reliance on non-local reporting by all outlets is increasing as local newsrooms collapse. To the extent that there’s a story to be uncovered by learning that not all of your local news programming is coming from local reporters, it’s this: There are far, far fewer local reporters working today than there were a decade or two ago, and the fewer local reporters there are, the more your news is going to be produced somewhere else.
Prince George couple makes change
As for the role local newsrooms can have, let’s look at the case of Rodney and Deanna Hodgins. Their story was first shared with the CBC Prince George newsroom before becoming the subject of national attention:
Rodney and Deanna Hodgins flew from Vancouver to Las Vegas in late August, in a much-anticipated trip to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. Rodney, who is 49, has spastic cerebral palsy, and uses a motorized wheelchair.
The Prince George, B.C. couple travels every year, and is accustomed to the standard process to help him exit the plane. Usually, after the rest of the passengers have exited, an airline employee will bring an aisle chair — an extremely narrow version of a wheelchair controlled by handles.
But after landing in Las Vegas, an Air Canada flight attendant told the Hodgins no help, and no aisle seat, was coming — and said Rodney would need to get to the front of the plane by himself.
The couple said the suggestion was so absurd, they laughed, thinking it was a joke.
"How am I supposed to get to the front of my plane when I can't walk? If I didn't need a wheelchair, I wouldn't have been sitting there," said Rodney.
The Hodgins' said they eventually felt they had no choice, didn't want to be rude, and didn't want to hold up the plane. Rodney lifted himself down to the floor and used his arms to drag himself from row 12 to the front of the plane, while in excruciating pain. Deanna crawled in the aisle behind him to help.
This story was soon picked up by other Canadian outlets, then international ones. It prompted other people with similar experiences to reach out and now the federal government is summoning Air Canada executives to Ottawa to answer questions about how they plan to make systemic change to improve travel for all people with disabiltiies. And it started by talking to the local newsroom.
More local news
A few more stories from me and the local CBC team:
Poet Barry McKinnon, who brought printing press and Margaret Atwood to pulp mill boom town, mourned. It was really something listening to old interviews with McKinnon talking about what Prince George was like in the early 1970s when the college was in its early days. The city’s population had just doubled ina single decade and the extraction economy ruled. To this, he and others built up a literary and arts community, sometimes with very little support and active hostility.
Canada's best beer winner is brewed by a pair of bat biologists in northern B.C. Even though news of Deadfall’s win has been out for a while, I wanted to tell the bigger story of how they came to be but also the wider community of craft brewing across northern B.C. for a national audience. Also, I tried it and: The beeer is that good.
Saik'uz First Nation calls for help after 2 people disappear in matter of months. It’s sad to say but this echoes the Highway of Tears cases of decades past — a point made by leaders quoted in this story.
Quick news:
Food bank a lifeline, Prince George single mom of four says.
Increased overdoses in Prince George linked to substance sold as ‘down’.
Nechako Valley wins Prince George Bowl for first time in 12 years.
Moccasin Flats tiny home project exceeds fundraising goal ten times over.
2:00 a.m. ’11K on Remembrance Day’ run returns for third year.
Northern Capital News is a free, daily newsletter about life in Prince George. Please consider subscribing or, if you have, sharing with someone else.
Send feedback by replying to this email. Find me online at akurjata.ca.
if that is the best that Dr Boris can offer for "evidence" of "fake local news", then I think someone needs to do a refresher on research methods. Oof.