How much do we need to know?

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Warning – this post discusses sexual violence.

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How much do we need to know about what Adrian Bayley did to Jill Meagher? (Please note: Bayley has pleaded guilty to one count of rape, and not guilty to murder. The first sentence is about what he has pleaded guilty to.)

How much do we need to know about her personal life, in order to know that she was a real person who could be happy, sad, complicated, simple, hard-working and slacking-off, who made plans for her future, just like everyone else?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. But I do know that the level of detail being reported makes me uneasy. There is a line somewhere between humanising someone by reporting the details of their life, and slobbering over the details of their life. And I think the MSM is jumping back and forth over that line with each story.

I’ve often criticised the MSM for forgetting that they are reporting about real people. This is a particular problem in online newsrooms where the person putting the story into the CMS, giving it a “catchy” headline and adding photos, usually isn’t the person who wrote the story. The further you are away from conducting the interviews, from witnessing the grief, the more likely you are to see the story as just a bunch of words to dress up to attract readers. Hence the online headlines that list the brutal details of what Bayley did and is alleged to have done.

This post is about stories I’ve seen on abc.net.au, heraldsun.com.au and theage.com.au, and the photos in them. I am not going to link to any of these stories. If you want to see the photos I’m talking about, you know how to use the internet.

Do we need to see a close-up photo of a bin in the laneway where Adrian Bayley raped Jill Meagher? Of course there is value in marking a place, in saying “this is where something horrible happened” so that people know it. But a close-up of something as impermanent as a garbage bin? What purpose does it serve, other than to say “check it out, this is the exact spot, is that red stuff on the bin blood, did he put that dent in the fence?”. I don’t pretend to be a good person who doesn’t think these things – I am just as guilty of rubbernecking as everyone else.

Do we need to see a photo gallery of what Jill Meagher had in her handbag? No, we really don’t. Yet there are galleries of the contents of her bag on abc.net.au, theage.com.au and heraldsun.com.au. And probably more news sites around Australia, but I didn’t want to look.

Do we need to see a police photo of the boot of Bayley’s car? Do we need to see a police photo of the shovel he allegedly used? Both heraldsun.com.au and theage.com.au ran those photos. According to the story on theage.com.au, “Deputy Chief Magistrate Felicity Broughton agreed to allow media access to the police brief of evidence against Mr Bayley”. We all know what a shovel looks like. We all know what the boot of a car looks like. Readers are not being asked to weigh up the evidence and decide Bayley’s fate. So why publish them, other than to give those readers the opportunity to examine them for gory details?

Do we need to know how many times he may have raped her? Shouldn’t that be one of those details that, out of respect, is left inside the courtroom? Most journalists will answer, “it was said in court, so that’s a public place”. But there is a HUGE difference between the small audience in a courtroom – mostly family and friends of the victim and the accused – and the massive audience of a major masthead. Particularly once you put it on the internet, where it will be there for years and years.

Do Tom Meagher and the McKeon family need to have a dozen cameras shoved in their faces as they leave court? Of course they don’t. They aren’t on trial, they’re just trying to get somewhere they can grieve in private after hearing the details in court.

The Media Alliance Code of Ethics says:

11. Respect private grief and personal privacy. Journalists have the right to resist compulsion to intrude.

The News Ltd Code of Conduct says:

Reporters and photographers must always behave with sensitivity and courtesy toward the public, and in particular towards those involved in tragic events. No one should be put under pressure to be photographed or interviewed.

The Age Code of Ethics says:

14. People should be treated with sensitivity during periods of grief and trauma and wherever possible, be approached through an intermediary.

16. Photographs of victims or grieving people should not be published unless due consideration has been given to issues of sensitivity and privacy. Any restrictions placed on the use of photographs supplied by family or friends should be honored.

17. Gratuitous references to the state of a victim’s body or body parts should not be published.

The footage I’ve seen of Tom Meagher and the McKeons having to push past a bunch of journalists, camera crews, and photographers, all snapping away, shouting questions and filming, goes against all of these codes.

There’s a wider discussion to be had here, about what should be shown and what shouldn’t be shown. Particularly as these stories get reported all around the world. When someone takes a gun into a school and starts shooting children, should the media make him famous? On the other hand, if his identity is just a minor part of the story, it removes him from his crime. Should we just have a special rule for media reporting of gun massacres? What about suicide bombings? I’m convinced that if newsrooms showed what a suicide bomb looks like, if they showed the most gut-wrenching scenes of swollen bodies with their clothes burned off, there’d be a lot more public noise about peace. But I can’t reconcile that complete intrusion into the privacy of death, with my belief that reporting is often gratuitous.

I’m not suggesting that journalists shouldn’t report the details of someone’s crime. What I am suggesting is that with every detail, journalists need to ask themselves: am I crossing that line? Is this relevant, or is it gratuitous? In my experience as a journalist – admittedly a few years ago now – when questions are raised in the newsroom, the answer is always, “just fucking do it now, and we can talk about it later”. But there never is a later because there’s always another story that needs to be done, always another earthquake near a Pacific island so you have to call resorts to ask if anyone is dead as though they don’t have more important things to be doing than talking to a journalist in Australia, and there’s always another gallery of a crime victim’s belongings that needs to be created.

I don’t have the answers. But I think it’s something we need to talk about. And journalists need to be a part of this discussion.

An open letter to Mark Scott

Dear Mark Scott,
I’m sure you’re aware of what “Liberal strategist” Grahame Morris said to Linda Mottram on ABC702 this morning. But in case you missed it, here it is:

Linda Mottram: We saw Tony Abbott in this past week do that interview with Leigh Sales about the Roxby Downs mine issue and stumbled, and that was really quite poor. I was very struck, Grahame. Were you surprised that he didn’t handle that well?

Grahame Morris: Well, Leigh can be a real cow sometimes when she’s doing her interviews.

So, instead of answering the question about Abbott’s dud performance, Morris called a female journalist who was just doing her job, a cow.

He was back on the air shortly afterwards:

LM: Grahame, we’ve had a lot of sms’s and calls offended at your comments. Your response?

GM: [In a condescending tone] Poor little sensitive souls.

LM: You think that calling Leigh a cow is appropriate?

GM: No, no, I probably should have said ‘can be a tough interviewer when she wants to be’.

Wait. Probably?

LM: That’s what you would have said if it was a male interviewer, isn’t it?

GM: That’s silly. No, no, no, no, it’s a phrase that I have used a million times, you know, that somebody can be a real cow when they want to be.

Ah, I see. Because he’s called women cows “a million times” it means he’s not sexist. It’s good that someone who makes such an important contribution to public discussion is a regular guest on ABC radio and television.

GM: But [sighs] look, look, I apologise, it really should be something like, um, ‘having known most of the senior journalists, particularly the political journalists, over the last 30 years, there is a mixture there of people who can be tough, they can be straight up and down, they can be a mixture, they can be soft, and there’s no doubt Leigh at times can be tough’. That would have been a much better expression than being a cow at times.

I don’t know about you, Mark, but I’m not convinced that is an apology. (I’m also not convinced that Grahame Morris understands that radio isn’t print. When you tell a journalist to change your quote, everyone can hear it.)

I’m sure you remember that in April, Morris said people should be “kicking [Julia Gillard] to death”.

In case you missed it, Grahame Morris said people should kill the Prime Minister. In a violent way. Yet he’s a regular guest on the ABC. Why is that? And, since I’ve got you here, why wasn’t it reported by your newsroom? Telling people they should attack and kill a Prime Minister seems pretty newsworthy to me.

Anyhoo, you’ll notice from this tweet from SkyNews journalist David Speers that it’s the second time Morris has used this “oh, I always say that, it’s fine” excuse:

@David_Speers Grahame says it’s a phrase he has used in the past on different issues, but shouldn’t have on this occasion

Oh, well, since he says that lots of people should be kicked to death, that’s ok then.

Morris has also called Gillard “bitchy“. It’s not an insult he would use against a man. Shouldn’t the national broadcaster be looking for guests who are able to talk about politics in an intelligent manner, without using childish insults?

Now Mark, I’m willing to overlook the fact that the vast majority of guests on QandA and The Drum are current and current-until-recently-politicians whose only contribution to public discussion is to push the party line that we’ve already heard over and over again in the news.

I’m also willing to overlook the misogynist and racist comments that are regularly published on The Drum website. (We can talk about those later.)

But what I am not willing to overlook is the national platform given to a man who thinks that calling for violence against women, and calling women names, is an acceptable part of public discussion. Because when you continue to get Grahame Morris on as a guest, what you are telling Australian women and men is that you have no problem with what he says.

Four days ago, Julia Gillard said there were “misogynists and nutjobs on the internet“. She’s right. There’s loads of ’em on here. They’re also, very clearly, on the ABC.

I look forward to your public statement saying that because of his misogynist, sexist and violent attitudes and language, Grahame Morris is no longer welcome on the ABC.

Yours sincerely,
Kim Powell
ABC watcher.

Gerard Henderson’s ‘diverse’ views

Oh, this is really just too funny. Gerard Henderson has dressed up his public ASIO blow-job as a call for Mark Scott to “exert editorial control” over the ABC and ensure it “portrays a diversity of views”: Scott needs to take control to ensure ABC represents diverse views.

By “diversity”, I’m assuming Henderson means the ABC must contain more of the views of conservative, middle-to-upper-class, old white men. Because, as we all know, the views of this group are scandalously under-represented in Australia’s media.

Henderson’s opinion piece is really about how wonderful ASIO is, and how lefty-pinko the ABC is for showing I, Spry, a documentary about Sir Charles Spry, ASIO’s director-general from 1950-1969, that shows him to be a drunk with anti-democratic views. I thought that second part was a job requirement for the head of ASIO, an organisation that exists to “gather information and produce intelligence that will enable it to warn the government about activities or situations that might endanger Australia’s national security” (that’s from the ASIO website).

Anyway, Henderson goes on to talk about how ASIO saved us from the evil communists in the 1950s who would have “executed people if they had come to power”. Considering the death penalty wasn’t abolished until 1973, Australia had a lot of people in power who wanted to execute people, but I guess Henderson is ok with that because they’re not, you know, dirty commies.

But, back to the issue of diversity of views on the ABC. As Gans & Leigh (2009) found, ABC TV was the only news outlet that was significantly pro-Coalition during the 2004 election campaign. I imagine the 2010 election would reveal the same thing, what with all the media carry-on about the BER program being a complete failure (complaints from 2.7 per cent of all schools involved), and the home insulation scheme being a death-trap (207 fires, compared to the 1000 caused by insulation before the scheme – ABS data). Still, if we’re talking about diversity of views during the election, there was Labor and the Coalition. Two viewpoints. Which is why the Greens got the shits that the ABC didn’t give them any sugar.

And what about diversity of faces? The ABC is the whitest channel among all the white Australian channels: Media Watch, Q&A, QI, The 7.30 Report, Lateline, The Gruen Transfer, Insiders, Offsiders, Last Chance to See, Agatha Christie’s Poirot (yes, I am flicking through the tv guide). White, white, white. And the news isn’t any better. As Gail Phillips found in her study of Australian news in 2005 and 2007:

“…instead of a range of peoples and cultures, we see mainly Anglo faces, projecting an archetypal image of a “white Australia” that is more applicable to the 1950s than it is today. More disturbingly, when we do encounter people from manifestly different racial, cultural or religious backgrounds, they tend to be featured as victims, or as social deviants, or as in some way “unAustralian”,” (Phillips, 2009, p. 19).

In his call for more diversity of views on the ABC, Henderson doesn’t want any more of that “angry leftist” Hungry Beast – which can be hit and miss because it’s really two shows in one, but when it hits, it is very good – and, presumably, he wants more repeats of The Great Global Warming Swindle and Dick Smith’s Population Puzzle, in which footage of Asian cities was used to stoke xenophobia. And more period dramas (because back then women knew their place) and shows that prove that Muslims/immigrants/Hugo Chavez are truly evil and out to destroy our way of life.

Or is that being too mean? Perhaps Henderson really is calling for more foreign-language films on the ABC to cater for the 21 per cent of Australians who speak a language other than English at home. Maybe he wants more Buddhist programs, since Buddhism is the largest non-Christian religion in Australia. Nah, I doubt it.

More diversity of views on the ABC? That would be great.

References:
Gans, J., & Leigh, A. (2009), How Partisan is the Press? Multiple Measures of Media Slant.

Phillips, G. (2009), ‘Ethnic minorities on Australia’s television news: a second snapshot’, Australian Journalism Review, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 19-32.

Paul Sheehan’s bodice ripper

Paul Sheehan’s piece in the Sydney Morning Herald – The ABC of seduction: how Mr Darcy depends on damsels – made me feel dirty. And not in the good way. He compares the “seduction of Annabel Crabb” to a Jane Austen heroine, as though she was defenceless against Mark Scott’s advances, and makes her move from Fairfax to the ABC rather tawdry, as though maybe they were even shagging and it’s his baby she’s about to have:

At first Crabb ignored the advances of this would-be tempter, this modern Mr Darcy. She was non-responsive to offers of greater wealth. She pointed out she was pregnant, and that she loved to write for a living. None of this dissuaded Mr Darcy, who offered still greater blandishments. The pressure began to build.

I’ve never been a fan of Paul Sheehan’s opinion pieces. He has a way of writing about women that he thinks will put us in our place without us even noticing. That’s how smart he thinks he is.

One can only imagine the amount of profligate and shocking sitting down together by Ms Crabb and Mr Darcy. So the slow and expensive seduction took place, leaving Mr Darcy, also known as Mark Scott, managing director of the ABC, to rejoice in extracting Crabb from her Fairfax family. Victory came at a price: about $250,000 a year, all underwritten by the Australian taxpayer.

Sounds like Sheehan is just pissed off that he wasn’t wooed by the ABC. And how’s this for offensive:

Now we know why he wanted her so badly. He needed her to opine, report, interview, quip, tweet, blog and otherwise flog the new 24-hour ABC news channel he announced last week. He already had an appealing woman of consequence to help launch this new network, Leigh Sales, but he knew that two cerebral bombshells is so much more than one.

He then goes on to get an erection over Fox News in the US, sticks the boot into all left-wing media, and says the ABC will become a ratings failure. Or something.