| The media often misrepresents these things. I'm not saying it's a conspiracy, they might simply want to make things more interesting than they are. At least this was my experience with the recent student protests in Montreal. I attended a few of these protests and my roommate many more. They were mostly peaceful. The ones that weren't were in response to dubious police behavior such as locking protesters in a street and not letting anyone out for extended periods of time. This happened maybe once or twice over the course of a year. I felt safe moving about Montreal. Now if I looked at the media, especially foreign media, it was another story. Had I not been in Montreal to see things first hand, I would have imagined a warzone. I would have been afraid to visit or live in Montreal. It was amazing to see the students portrayed as violent protesters when they went to incredible lengths to insure everything was done peacefully. I experienced this same phenomenon, but not for protests, living in Toronto during the SARS epidemic. The city was running perfectly, no one was panicking (I think we had something like 22 potential cases). The only noticeable difference was that I saw a few face masks in the subway. If I listened to foreign media, everyone in Toronto was panicking, thousands were infected. Once again, it was represented as a warzone. Having been there, I can say it wasn't in both cases. The media often misrepresents stories to make them more interesting. Having read the stories about Iceland (which are rather mild), if the trends I observed hold, it must have been really peaceful protest. |