Every time I turn on my television, my screen seems to be bombarded with images of ruins, blood and burning furniture being used as barricades. We’re into the third year of protest for Egypt and a second year for Ukraine, just to name two countries facing such turmoil. Citizens all over the world are taking up arms against the very states that should be protecting them, but what is the media, a medium of communication with such great power doing to help stop such violence?

Living in a country whose history has little experience with deadly protest, we often cannot relate to the men and women covered in ash and blood we see on our televisions. We have no understanding as to what would force a schoolteacher, university student or dentist to leave their comfortable lives to hurl homemade firebombs over makeshift barricades at their government. The media is not doing its part to help relate the rest of the world to the individuals in these situations. The public needs to be informed as to why these events are happening, rather than just being shown that they are happening.

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Ask a passerby if they know about the protests happening around the world and they will most likely say yes. With Facebook posts and newspaper headlines stating gruesome facts such as, “Three children dead in Thailand protests,” it’s hard to avoid.

Then ask them why these protests are happening; most will draw to a blank. The media is focusing more on the esthetically catching aspects of these protests around the world, rather than informing the public as to why these things are happening. As outside observers, the only way in which we can help is by knowing why such circumstances have resulted in the first place. Knowledge is in fact power.

Students in San Cristobal, Venezuela started protesting at the beginning of February. Less than a month later protests have spread across the country leaving more than a dozen dead and more than 500 arrested. Venezuela is now on the brink of a civil war.

This was the basis of the first five articles I read when looking up “Venezuela protests”. No mention of why anywhere. The reasons I finally found in the sixth article I read. Citizens are protesting for higher security, against basic food shortages and the record inflation. This should be the headline, the first sentence of an article. Inform and action will follow.

The visuals and hard facts are just as important, however are incomplete as attempts to influence the rest of the world to step in.

HAMILTON (CUP) — After being held captive for seven weeks in Egypt under no formal charges, Canadians Tarek Loubani and John Greyson were released on Saturday, Oct. 5. However, when they tried to board a plane to Frankfurt, Germany on Sunday, Oct. 6, the two were told they could not fly out because they were on a “stop-list” issued by Egyptian prosecutors.

The stop-list is yet another roadblock in the Canadians’ two-month struggle to get home safely.

Loubani is an emergency doctor at Western University in London, Ont. and Greyson is a filmmaker and professor at York University in Toronto. Both were on their way to a Gaza hospital in mid-August when they were detained by Cairo officials. Egyptian officials arrested them, along with other perceived protestors at the site, for threatening national security. No charges were ever laid.

In Canada, news of their captivity prompted nearly 150,000 people to sign a petition for their release. Their plight was also a popular topic at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Canadian filmmakers held a press conference. Friends and family told the media the men were simply “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

After 31 days in detention, Loubani and Greyson resolved to go on a hunger strike. On Sept. 28, their twelfth day on hunger strike, the two released a statement confirming that they had been living in dire conditions: “no phone calls, little to no exercise, sharing a 3m x 10m cell with 36 other political prisoners, sleeping like sardines on concrete with the cockroaches; sharing a single tap of earthy Nile water.”

Despite the public outcry against their detainment, the Canadians were told by Egyptian officials on Sept. 29 that their detainment would be extended by 45 days.

On Sept. 29, Prime Minister Harper issued a statement calling for their immediate release. The two men were officially released on Oct. 5. Three days prior to their release, Loubani and Greyson had begun eating again and saw a doctor.

Canadian Minister of State Lynne Yelich released a statement on Oct. 5 saying, “We are facilitating Dr. Loubani and Mr. Greyson’s departure from Egypt, and Canadian officials will continue to offer consular services to them and their families as needed.”