Hysteria
The Sydney Morning Herald has a secret page. I can’t find a link to it anywhere on their site, but it does it exist, as I look at it several times a week. The link is here . If you clicked on this link, then you’ll see that it is quite unremarkable- just a list of all the stories in today’s newspaper. And here’s the important bit- with no ads! No banners. No Flash. No flash. No fluff.
[Err, in 2009 it does have ads. Not sure when the change was made]
I first came across this page when I used to subscribe to the SMH “channel” on my PDA. I was delighted to find that it could also be accessed from a normal computer. At the time, RSS didn’t really exist in the mainstream, so this link of “text articles” was my only option to get a stripped down version of the news (the whole news, and nothing but the news).
Since I have been television-free for about 5 or 6 years now, I really depend on the internet to tell me what’s going on in the world. Also, and I think this is an important point, since I am television-free, and since I rely on 5 different text-based news sources, and because I am essentially the news presenter, presenting the news to myself, “my” news becomes stripped of emotion. The SMH link I give you above is about as close as you can get to impartial news. Not completely, however. After all, it is written by a private company which like all businesses, has to make money and certainly has vested interests. And it writes for its readership, which is also a pretty compelling point. But if you understand that, and keep that in mind, then you can probably agree with me that it’s a fairly “clean” source of news.
Anyway, the point I wanted to make: A story of two men trapped in a mine, is just that. When they are freed they are just two men who survived a particularly grueling ordeal. Heck, one of their colleagues died, so they certainly weren’t on a picnic. And while it’s fantastic that they survived, that’s the key point: they are survivors. Not heroes. Not national icons. Not puppets to be manipulated by the Prime Minister as example of “Australian courage and mateship”, they are just survivors of a terrible accident. They were rescued, they didn’t escape. It’s easy to get caught up in the euphoria of survival, but it’s important to stay balanced.
I leave you with a few lines from a story on the SMH which talked about the same story, and even offered this example of an hysterical, biased media. How many people knew about this story?
Besides, it’s all so arbitrary. Webb and Russell were trapped down a mineshaft for 14 days while, at the other extremity of the country, three men were trapped much longer – 22 days, more than enough time to starve to death – in a five-metre boat out of fuel in stormy, sharky seas in the Torres Strait.
John Tabo, 38, John jnr, 20, and nephew Tom, just 16, were found drifting last Tuesday, starving, dangerously dehydrated and severely sunburnt. The search had been called off. They survived by collecting seawater, raw squid and shellfish.
Compelling story. But three remote blackfellas with no union powerbase just don’t rate.