MELBOURNE MUSHROOMS

Well media censorship is alive and well, or alive and unwell, in this town. Jeff Kennett and the courts have gone into overdrive. In a coincidental combination of suppression orders and beyondblue bully boy tactics you are being treated like mushrooms. You wouldn’t know, you weren’t meant to know, that there was another teenage suicide in Geelong recently. A 14-year-old student at Geelong College killed herself.

There was a death notice in the Geelong Advertiser but the newspaper didn’t touch the story even though it was the fifth teenage suicide in the area in the past few months. And despite its coverage of earlier tragedies.

Perhaps it was because of the injunction against 60 Minutes for that story which will never go to air. Perhaps it was because of criticism on Media Watch. Perhaps beyondblue Chairman Kennett, who boasted he had stopped editors from running about a dozen stories on suicides, had just claimed his 13th scalp.

(Even while he proclaims on programs like this one that he is not opposed to public discussion on an issue that I believe is as important as any on binge drinking, the road toll or breast cancer.)

As one  emailer said overnight ‘I see Kennett's hands all over this censorship.... my relative attends this school, and the administration has quietly dealt with the death, while death notices were posted in the Geelong Advertiser classifieds last week. But no news stories, none at all. Kennett's activities are something I am vehemently opposed to.’

The Editor of the Advertiser, Peter Judd, says he was not pressured by Kennett. He said he didn’t run a news story because he didn’t have the parents’ permission and ‘given it’s a sensitive issue for families….’  And that’s obviously true.

There are other examples of widespread censorship in Melbourne which has replaced Adelaide as the suppression capital of Australia. News editors are bombarded daily with streams of suppression orders from Magistrate’s Courts, County Courts, the Supreme Court. They usually say something like:

PURSUANT TO SECTION SUCH AND SUCH IT IS HEREBY ORDERED THAT NO PERSON SHALL PUBLISH OR CAUSE TO BE PUBLISHED IN ANY NEWSPAPER OR JOURNAL OR BROADCAST BY MEANS OF RADIO OR TELEVISION OR OTHER MEANS ANY MATTER WHICH MIGHT DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY REFER TO OR ENABLE IDENTIFICATION OF ANY PERSON CONCERNED IN THESE PROCEEDINGS NOR SHALL ANY PERSON PUBLISH OR CAUSE TO BE PUBLISHED ANY PHOTOGRAPH OR PICTURE AS BEING A REPRESENTATION OF ANY PERSON CONCERNED IN THESE PROCEEDINGS UNTIL FURTHER ORDER.

Some even threaten you if you mention that the order even exists. And that’s why trials go merrily along in secret, like in some Police state, and you are not even allowed to know the name of an accused murderer or drug dealer. I thought justice not only had to be done but had to be ‘seen to be done’?

It even taints royal commissions –like the current one into Black Saturday. Did you know, at the Commission’s request TV stations have agreed not to film people going into or leaving the hearings nor ask them any questions?

Enjoy your day, mushrooms.

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009