Startin the Star. Part Two by Dave Jaffe.
Monica Startin and her boyfriend came to Vancouver, B.C. together. Yet they soon went their separate ways. Monica became interested in journalism. She enrolled in a journalism course at a local community college. After graduating from the course, she ended up reporting for a radio station. Startin didn't spend much time worrying about feminism. Yet this new movement opened doors for her and many other women.
"I think she was the first female radio reporter in B.C.," one of her former workmates said. "And she was good."
The radio station was soon merged with another broadcasting company. The new company needed broadcasters, reporters and technicians to set up a modern television station and television newscasts. Soon Startin made the switch to television. She was hired to be a reporter on the evening six o'clock news hour program. "Television is the most conservative of all media," the very conservative journalist and cultural critic Robert Fulford once wrote. Startin was now working for a very conservative t.v. station.
The station's politics didn't bother Startin. Her parents both voted for the Republican party in the United States. "I've got no time for the Democrats or Democratic presidents like Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson," Startin's father once said. "These people just didn't understand the needs of business people." Startin readily bought in to her parents' politics and so had no problem with the right wing slant of the t.v. station's news.
Startin had quickly learned through experience and the courses she'd taken that news had one of three main ingredients namely sex, violence or money. If you could combine these three parts then the news story had even more appeal to viewers. At first, she was assigned to cover crime stories and she did her job well. Though sometimes the men whose crimes she covered, did scare her. She also developed contacts and sources to back up her stories. For in the t.v. station she was working for, the news director insisted that every news story had to be backed up or include three talking heads who were experts or sources.
Then the news director who was a gruff tough English-born journalist switched Startin over to cover the political scene. Startin may or not have been told to "Stick it to the N.D.P. and the unions." Yet that's what she did. She once went into a meeting of the BC. Teachers Federation and asked some of the teachers there if they supported the union in its conflict with the ruling Social Credit Party.
"Why are you causing us problems here?" the head of the B.C.T.F asked her in the room. While Startin's cameraman filmed all this, Startin coolly replied, "I'm just doing my job."
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