Documenting the Media Circus Outside of Raed Jaser's Court Appearance

I woke up this morning and went straight down to Toronto’s Old City Hall to see what was going on with Raed Jaser—one of two suspects in the foiled Canadian terrorist plot to blow up a Via Rail train—who was scheduled to make his first court appearance at 10.am.

When I got there I saw crowds of media already lined-up outside of the front and back entrances. Evidently, everyone was there to hopefully get the best photograph of Raed Jaser being dragged into the court.

Shortly after 10:30a.m, Raed’s father Mohammad was accompanied by two police escorts and made his first appearance outside Old City Hall. This is when the media went absolutely fucking insane.

Reporters immediately bombarded Mr. Jaser, forming a huddle around him. They pushed their microphones and cameras aggressively in his face while he tried to walk to his car. Each news agency was trying desperately to get some sort of revealing comment—including me, but he basically told me to go away and stop talking to him. Fair enough.

It was at this point that I turned my camera on the mass media itself—who were all acting like a bunch of crazy psychopaths. For the moment, they had become a better story.  It should be noted however, that I was probably the most crazy psychopath there. I staked out the back door, the front entrance and the courtroom. I bought right into the hype—and NEEDED to know some answers. As I should, after all, I'm media too. It's our job to get the story and bring it to the people. It was truly an impressive spectacle to see how much the mass media did care about this responsibility. It was actually pretty fucking awesome.

But, things did devolve into unfortunate territory when at one point a media representative yelled out to the herd, “There is a homeless man sleeping on the sidewalk!” to warn everyone they were about to walk over a sleeping man. Almost everyone ignored him, and nearly trampled the guy in the process. Luckily they stopped themselves before they actually stomped him out.

Previously:

What Does This Blocked Terrorist Attack Mean for Canada?