OFFENSIVE OPINIONS

I know this will sound like media infighting –an unnecessary distraction --when there are far more important and painful and sometimes unpalatable issues out there as Australia tries to claw its way out of the Black Saturday tragedy. But there are a couple of things that cannot go unchallenged and they are totally linked to the bushfires, your reactions to the tragedy, and the media’s continued coverage of it.

The first was a cartoon in The Age this a morning – another jaundiced Leunig contribution showing a radio presenter in his studio and his producers and his comment: ‘Listeners are warned that smoke from the bushfires may cause breathing difficulties, and bushfire related information being relentlessly by this station may cause a strange sense of mental suffocation’.

It is an insult to the staff of places like 3AW and the ABC and the TV networks where staff have worked 24/7, hours and hours of  uncomplaining unpaid overtime, often in the field in risky situations trying to bring as much info as possible to people since the enormity of Saturday February started to sink in on a disbelieving and shocked populace.

And it virtually ignores the plight of those poor bastards, some who didn’t make it, who relied on weak signals from their transistor radios, for information, any information, about what the hell was happening out there.

But the issue of what Leunig calls ‘mental suffocation’ is a fair one to raise. People are suffering from bushfire overload, grief overload, sadness overload. People are starting to turn off the news, put down the paper, because their hearts and brains can’t process any more sadness and destruction.

And they feel guilty for turning off. The way many people at 3AW felt sort of guilty last weekend because they finally got a couple of days off to do normal pleasurable things with their families. While so many country people couldn’t.

I have a friend, an habitual watcher of Four Corners who didn’t watch it on Monday night because of that overload. And felt guilty.

And then there is the despicable article in today’s Sydney Morning Herald by Ross Gittens. His arguments are so offensive you almost feel like not responding. But I’d feel guilty if I didn’t.

Gittens writes: ‘The unspeakable truth is that most people enjoy a good natural disaster. We're fascinated by the misfortune of others. It's a form of entertainment, just as people find weepies and horror movies entertaining. As part of this, audiences want as much personal, intimate detail about the victims' trauma as possible, and the media deliver.’

That is obscene. To call all that human suffering ‘a form of entertainment’ makes us sound like Romans at the Coliseum.

He even mocks people for donating to the bushfire appeal.

And then he has a theory on why the media gives so much coverage to natural disasters. According to the warped world of Gittens:

‘The media devote such huge resources of space and airtime to covering natural disasters for an obvious reason: they believe it will increase their circulations and ratings.

But don't blame it all on the media. They do what they do because they know it's what their audience wants.’

I can only imagine the weird bitter and twisted world that Ross Gittens inhabits. I’m glad I’m not part of it.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009