THIN BLUE LIE - PART 1
Most
of my blog posts are fairly long. I’m not a fan of the limited (too often idiot) thinking required for ‘tweets’. I find them offensive, not because so
many are evidence of a self-absorbed, narcissistic individual and culture, but because
that has become normalised, an acceptable form of communication and behaviour.
I’m all for tweets that alert people to Amber Alerts and planned events like
protests, but as a method to convey important ideas and issues that need
serious thought, they undermine what is really needed.
So
my blogs are designed with high impact in mind. I want my readers to think
about the content from not just a brief blurt of self-centred me-me-me noise
the likes of which can be observed in any cock (the bird, but, yeah, sure,
either way works) flaunting his plumage in an effort to gain attention to
gratify primitive urges, but from a broader perspective. I want my readers to
see the world from another point-of-view. I want them to take the journey of
highs and lows. A cynical chuckle here, a heart-wrenching emotional moment
there, shock, outrage, frustration, and shared empathy that leads to a desire
for action to accomplish dignity and justice, not just for themselves, but for those
who deserve it but are denied.
A
year or so ago, I created a joke. My aim was to demonstrate how we sometimes
fail to realise that people interpret reality in different ways depending upon
who they are, where and how they were raised, that we all have needs and dreams
but most of us are excluded from any means to accomplish them, and that there
is beauty and dignity in even the most unlikeliest of places. That sometimes we
have to look beyond what our society and culture tells us is real, to see the
world as it really is when we travel down the rabbit hole.
You
probably also noticed, from my other posts, that I’m no fan of media that
focuses on idiot news for the purpose of profiteering rather than using
opportunity to report on important issues and ‘stories’. Perhaps the most
offensive media activity in recent weeks is what Ten, Nine and Seven have been
doing. While the ABC provided a focus on the Red Shield Appeal with reports on
homelessness, revealing as many as three-million Australians are living below
the poverty line, Ten, Nine and Seven stalked Schapelle Corby.
Corby
has served her sentence. Whether she committed the crime, was the unsuspecting
victim, or was set up, she has served the sentence imposed by that legal
system. Now she gets to come home. But the media is out to profit from her,
reducing her life and privacy to a commodity for their own benefit with no
regard for her rights. So the Corby family had to hire private security and
create an elaborate means of getting her to and from the airport. They asked
the media to respect her privacy and the media ignored the request.
The
media have been camped out around her home, and that of her family, in two
different countries. Shoving cameras over fences. Standing in front of cars.
Pushing cameras in faces. Violating the privacy of not just Corby, but anybody
within her vicinity. As the release date moved closer, the bad behaviour of
news media escalated. They even reported ‘news’ that seemed to have no basis in
reality, apparently making it up as they went along. Then the day arrived and
the morbid interest, fascination, and fixation of enough idiots spurred the
news media to even greater acts of moral and ethical bankruptcy.
A
fool in a car, stuck in traffic headed for the airport, making a live cross for
several minutes, discussing Corby and her journey out of the country in the
absence of even the slightest glimpse of his quarry. When she arrived in
Australia, a bizarre convoy of black SUVs with tinted windows led the swarming
media on a wild goose chase, splitting up and separating the pack in what
appeared to be frighteningly similar to the paparazzi car chase that cruelly,
tragically (in every sense of the word) ended the life of Princess Diana, and
robbed two small boys of their much loved mother.
But
it didn’t end there. The media camped out around suspected Corby drop-off
points until the evidence proved conclusively she wasn’t there. And it got
worse. The media accosted anybody that approached the Corby home, or wherever
else she might be. People on planes were interrogated as to whether they had
seen her, people with no idea about anything asked for comment on Corby. Some
poor delivery dude found himself staring down the lenses of multiple cameras,
panning down to zoom in on the bag he carried, the Cheesecake logo, focussing
in, attempting to see inside, what the bag contained.
If
it was anybody else behaving like that, they’d be reported and probably charged
with harassment, maybe even stalking, and could even be issued with a
restraining order. But not the media. How often have we seen the media dedicate
this kind of attention to child abusers when they are released from prison? Or
report on child abusers while they are in prison? Dig into their background? Or
even reports on child abusers when the victims are denied the basic right to
lodge a formal complaint over what was done to them? Or expose the true scale
of systemic failure, the victims who are still forced to remain silent?
Imagine
what good the media could do, helping the disadvantaged expose sick and twisted
crimes inflicted upon them if they dedicated as much effort to that as stalking
Corby. Instead, they’ve demonstrated a blatant disregard for her right to
privacy, as well as that of everybody else in her proximity. Schapelle Corby
has now begun a life sentence back in Australia. Right now, until the media
loses interest (although they may decide to focus on her again at any time if
there’s a slow news day), she must isolate herself from the world for fear of
being harassed by immoral and unethically stalkers (are there any other kind?).
Corby
appears to have decided to make the most of the media attention to focus it on
other ‘stories’ that the media should be covering, a clever tactic designed to
shame the predatory behaviour of those reporters and agencies while reminding
the public of issues we should be attending and forcing our authorities to
address. God knows, without our outrage and demands, our authorities will
continue to behave badly because there is no disincentive to do otherwise:
unless an offender is forcibly stopped, they will continue to inflict their
worst excesses on their victims, and too often escalate.
The
bag Corby carried bore the image of William Tyrrell, a little boy allegedly
abducted by a predator
and never seen again. Unlike Daniel Morcombe, William has not been found, those
who took him haven’t been exposed and brought to what passes for justice. The
media did not focus as much attention on him as they did on Daniel and his
family. But the attention given to William is a great deal more than most
victims get, if any at all. The media has absolutely no interest in telling the
‘stories’ of victims the authorities not only refuse to help, but intimidate
into silence. There is no profit to be made from those ‘stories’.
What was particularly strange,
however, was the response from those claiming to champion the efforts to find
and return William Tyrrell. They expressed unhappiness, anger even, that Corby
had brought attention to their cause. One would think that people desperate to
bring William home would be grateful for this kind of effort, where a woman
forced into the spotlight by news media is using the opportunity to do what the
media should be doing – reminding the public of children like William. But no,
they were not. That seems a little odd.
Whatever her motive, Corby has
demonstrated more moral and ethical fibre than the media hounding her for
whatever financial gain their vile behaviour can accomplish, and, sadly, that
of the people claiming they are doing everything they can to find William. The
classy thing to do would have been to thank a person for redirecting attention
to William, to acknowledge that the news media should be doing something useful
instead of wasting air-time on the likes of Corby, and then remove references
to Corby from the situation as they continue to push their cause.
But
it’s not just William the news media is failing here. It’s every other kid
that’s gone missing. It’s every other kid who has and is being abused and
forced to remain silent, not just by their abusers, but by the very agencies
that are supposed to help them. It’s every kid that survived to reach adulthood
and still faces the same injustice as they struggle with PTSD, anxiety,
depression and worse. It’s the agencies like the police and public services,
politicians, the Luke Batty Foundation, Beyond Blue, Lifeline, and Bravehearts which claim to be part of the solution but refuse to accept and address the entrenched
culture of corruption within that makes them part of the problem.
It’s
the Legal System that uses laws, policies and procedures to circumvent justice,
reducing legal outcomes to commodities the most disadvantaged cannot even
access let alone afford. It’s this rotten, festering canker that insists
victims get help to learn how to remain silent and get on with their life under
some twisted and destructive notion that they can “get over it”, and “move
forward”, by finding some form of “closure” that does not involve any form of
justice whatsoever, and certainly not dignity.
Victims
don’t need to be indoctrinated into that entrenched culture of corruption. They
already live under it. They already know how to remain silent. They are forced
to do so. They suffer the cruel, mindless, sick brutality of too many police
and public servants who refuse to help them, who inflict indifference, apathy,
incompetence, idleness, ineptitude, insensitivity, insults, mockery, unfounded
and defamatory allegations, and intimidation. Useless pricks who make every
effort to find excuses not to help rather than ways they can. Scumbags who are
no better than the predators that inflicted the original abuse.
While
too many in the news media focus their perverted attentions on the likes of
Corby, they miss vital opportunities to share reports of real importance. They
miss the opportunity to help those the authorities have failed. They miss the
opportunity to not only restore a little dignity to individuals who need real
help, but to shape a better society, to force accountability on rotten
politicians, police, public servants and those predators that brutalise
children. To do their damn jobs.
The
news media has no qualms about violating the privacy rights of people like
Corby, but are more than willing to accommodate legal obstacles that prevent
them reporting on predators and speaking with former police and public servants
who have resigned, stressed and broken by a system that forces them to follow
vile laws, policies and procedures that make them complicit in the abuse of
children, rather than prosecuting predators, and giving the victims
opportunities to live normal, happier lives.
It
is the media that is supposed to champion their cause. To provide comfort and
hope that someone heard and speaks for them. That can affect positive change.
That will be the catalyst that delivers a small measure of justice and dignity.
That will help provide a means for them to keep moving forward, to help carry
their burden, one day at a time, until that victim cannot. But the media is
fickle and too often predatory. Instead, victims find themselves following
false prophets like Hetty Johnston from Brave Hearts, Rosie Batty from the
Luke Batty Foundation, and Ros Bates, who was the State member for Mudgeeraba.
The
apparent absence of men fighting the good fight is disturbing, but the big
names that take a stand have been lauded as heroes by those who want to end the
abuse, and targeted for retribution by too many gutless cowards that inflict
themselves on women and children, who call good men “traitors”. And yet,
despite this, the words of men like Ken Lay ring hollow because they are little
more than opportunistic rhetoric that fails to deliver any real change, and for
all the promises of transparency, continue to conceal the horrific reality that
is decades of systemic failure and the entrenched culture of corruption that
continues unabated.
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