What has happened to journalism? This is NOT it.

A response to Allen Abel's National Post article about Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

I read Allen Abel's October 8 article, updated October 13, 2026, about Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

I understand that the situation is serious. I live in Vancouver. I don't need someone to convince me that homelessness, addiction, overdoses, unsafe housing and the toxic drug crisis are real. People are suffering. Families are grieving. Businesses and neighbourhoods are struggling. Emergency responders are overwhelmed.

But I have a question for Allen Abel:

What happened to journalism? Because this is NOT it.

There is a difference between documenting a humanitarian crisis and turning vulnerable human beings into characters in a horror story.

Let's look at the language you chose.

You describe the Downtown Eastside using expressions including:

• "Canada's most appalling intersection"
• "Armageddon"
• "SRO hellholes"
• "a garden of horrors"
• "the Western Front of Canada's half-assed war"
• "the cancer"
• "plague"
• "the crucifix of Hastings and Main"
• "Ground Zero"
• "the highway to hell"
• "the catacomb"
• "a breathtaking panoply of desperation"

You describe people as:

• "derelict users"
• "half-alive drug users"
• "initiates and old-timers"
• "the pale shell of yet another once-young, once-virile, once-dreaming soul"
• people who are "mute as clouds" and "deaf as trees."

And you compare the neighbourhood to a medieval plague scene, a battlefield and even Hell.

Why?

What purpose does this language serve?

Does it help readers understand addiction? Does it explain the housing crisis? Does it investigate decades of political decisions, inadequate treatment capacity, poverty, displacement, or the failures of our social support systems?

Or does it encourage readers to look at their fellow human beings with horror and revulsion?

You have photographs of people in distress, descriptions of open wounds, unconscious patients, people sleeping rough and families desperately searching for missing loved ones.

These are not props.

They are people.

You interviewed India, who sleeps outside with his dogs. He told you:

"I don't see myself any different from them. I'm still human. They're still human."

Perhaps that was the most important sentence in your entire article.

You interviewed Deanna Piché, who has experienced addiction herself and now cares about the people still struggling.

You interviewed Gerardo Ávila, who brings music, laughter and a Day of the Dead celebration to people who are too often forgotten.

You spoke to families who have lost loved ones.

Yet these moments of humanity are surrounded by language that repeatedly portrays the entire neighbourhood as a landscape of death and decay.

And what about the people who are not using drugs? The people living in SROs, the people trying to get to work, the people caring for friends, the people who have nowhere else to go?

Do they deserve to have their neighbourhood described as a horror show?

Let's turn the question around.

What happened to the housing policy?

What happened to affordable accommodation?

What happened to mental health services?

What happened to accessible treatment and long-term recovery support?

What happened to the people who were displaced when Vancouver transformed itself for Expo 86?

What happened to the promises made by successive governments?

And what happened to the responsibility of journalism to investigate those questions?

A journalist can write about the smell of an alley, the condition of a building, an overdose, an emergency response and the fear experienced by local businesses.

But a journalist also has a responsibility to examine the systems, decisions and circumstances behind those conditions.

Shock is not the same as investigation.

Graphic descriptions are not the same as understanding.

And dehumanizing language is not the same as telling the truth.

We can want safer streets. We can want treatment, housing, accountability and meaningful solutions. We can acknowledge the suffering of residents and business owners without treating people experiencing homelessness as the enemy.

There is a very real humanitarian crisis in Vancouver.

It deserves serious reporting, not theatrical descriptions designed to make readers recoil.

Journalism should make us look closer, ask harder questions and understand more. It should not teach us to look away from people because their suffering makes us uncomfortable.

Allen Abel, you had an opportunity to tell an important story about Vancouver.

But somewhere between the photographs, the interviews and the dramatic descriptions, the people at the centre of this story became the scenery.

And that is what I find so troubling.

What has happened to journalism?

Because exposing suffering should never require stripping people of their dignity.

This is NOT it.

#Journalism #MediaEthics #DowntownEastside #Vancouver #Homelessness #AddictionCrisis #HumanDignity #HousingCrisis #InvestigativeJournalism #PeopleNotStatistics