As the breathless amplification of Dutton’s unsubstantiated claims in Alice Springs last week showed, Australian news media still has a long way to go in breaking its reliance on “if it bleeds it leads” news.
It just can’t resist a good moral panic about the public danger of surging crime. Nor can it resist the bullying demand from political leaders to put them on air with extravagant claims, regardless of whether what they say is true or not.
Confronting its first big Trump-style challenge — an evidence-free claim tossed out with a chin-jutting dare to ignore it — Australia’s media defaulted to a clickbait test of “news-worthiness” with only the lightest fact-checking.
The ABC seems to have the most to learn, trapped as it is by its eagerness to “both sides” any issue whenever it fears party politics are involved. Insiders yesterday showed how easy it can be to wave through the repetition — and expansion — of “people say” claims while nitpicking and gotcha-ing over the details of what sort of “Voice” conservatives would — maybe, perhaps — agree to.
Yet, the information they — we — needed was sitting in front of them, with guest panellist and Age columnist Jack Latimore. While News Corp media have been urging on the panic, the Nine mastheads have been cautiously avoiding the trap. Latimore had written a major takedown of Dutton’s Alice Springs stance just the day before.
Around the world, ginning up panic about attacks on children and women is the go-to misinformation play of the populist right, having weaponised its power to target outsider groups — from QAnon’s pizzagate conspiracy to India’s “love jihad” claims. There’s recent history in Australia, too, of the right using crime to whip up hostility against groups such as supposed African gangs in Melbourne, or asylum seekers on Nauru purportedly “trying it on” — as Dutton declared in 2019 — with claims of rape to seek abortions in Australia.
In Alice Springs, the panic has morphed through popular right-wing talking points, starting with the violence of an alcohol-fuelled youth crime wave before moving on to a child abuse conspiracy of institutional inaction — with the media continually ramping up such allegations.
Situating the panic in Alice Springs suits the conservative narrative, too. A Town Like Alice has always had a special place in Australia’s settler imagination in a “last frontier” sort of way (although Bruce Chatwin’s opening description in The Songlines is more damning: “a grid of scorching streets where men in long white socks were forever getting in and out of Land Cruisers”).
This saga comes as journalists are — or should be — asking why the media covers crime (and the type of crimes) the way they do. Why is there so much focus on individual personal tragedy, and so little on trends, explainers and accountability?
When pressed, most journalists mumble their way to some comfortable landing spot about “public safety”. The more we know about the risk of crime or accidents, journalists tell one another, the safer we’ll be.
But most crime and accident reporting either lacks any real context (like the annual story on Easter traffic accidents) or is wedged into a panic narrative (such as this Darwin police wrap-up by the ABC on the weekend).
Reporting is determined not by supply but by media demand. Although personal crime has long been declining and annual traffic deaths have been largely flat for a decade, media latch on to whatever they can to fill a politics-free gap in Australian media.
There are a few things this past week that should warn Australia’s media. When it comes to a frenzy over crime, bad-faith actors are going to act in bad faith. More, you can’t fact-check your way out of the moral panic that’s blown up thanks to the oxygen of amplification you gave it in the first place.
Well said. The ABC is being truly disgraceful, as usual, transmitting propaganda unchallenged in great volume and so giving it credibility and authority it should never have, telling itself this is balance.
If the ABC was being objective and reporting facts it would not be relaying Dutton’s and Price’s claims at face value. It would instead be reporting that Dutton and Price have provided no evidence for highly inflammatory claims, refuted by those who have the facts, designed to cause trouble that Dutton and Price seek to exploit for partisan advantage. The ABC might add that both Dutton and Price have plenty of previous for this behaviour and their credibility on anything they say must now be highly dubious.
The problem is there are so many lies and misrepresentations so how to deal with them all in a timely manner?
It seems that every claim has to be given equal weight to achieve ABC ‘balance’, and as you say, there can be any number of lies while there is usually only one set of verifiable facts, so this style of reporting consists mostly of transmitting lies. (It is relevant that the lies tend to be more spectacular and entertaining, which is another reason the commercial media generally gives them more prominence, and anti-social media algorithms select for them.) It also explains the effectiveness of the tactic Steve Bannon described as ‘flooding the zone with siht’. It renders the media very nearly helpless to get the truth out even if they want to, and so far as any truth does get through it has little effect even then as it drowned out in the chaos and cacophony.
Absolutely agree, SSR. The ABC’s non-challenging acceptance of Price’s unsubstantiated examples was appalling journalism, and she should hav been shut down unless she could quote names, places and times. Even then if she had a case to discuss, objective journalists might ask how many “white people” are involved in similar crimes?
Besides which, in the NT, any adult claiming to have knowledge of child abuse MUST disclose to the police. Of course, the media swept past that as being of no consequence. The bigger the lie, the more eager they are to run it.
They all channel Howard who with his rat cunning always had plausible deniability. All the others have implausible deniability
I don’t recall Dutton’s panicked concern about Indigenous children (yes I understand that there are serious issues that need to be dealt with) the entire time his party was in government. He is an disingenuous race-baiting opportunist hellbent on dividing the country.
Indigenous children’s problems are rooted in poverty, a state enforced upon them by The Intervention when CDEP jobs were terminated so their spending could be controlled
A noted researcher related two stories that are relevant to Peter Dutton’s ‘informed’ knowledge of rampant crime and sexual abuse in Alice Springs. The first story is very brief and it pertains to one of the researcher’s students making the following comment: ‘I don’t like Norwegians, I once met one’. A second and far more famous example occurred during a US presidential campaign. One research firm in a bid to get a firm idea of who would win the upcoming poll decided to phone survey ten (10) million ‘representative’ voters to gain their voting intention. The result of the poll led the research firm to predict a crushing Republican Party win. In actual fact the Democratic incumbent Franklin D Roosevelt won in a landslide against his Republican foe Alf Landon. How was this possible? The time was 1936, a telephone survey was the choice of research method and at that time it was mainly the middle class – traditional Republican voters who owned phones. Hence the survey was heavily skewed in favour of traditional Republican voters Yet here are to believe that Dutton after ‘talking’ to the locals – people on the ground has it right about crime and child sexual abuse in Alice Springs. Where is the rigorous research Dutton? Is the press actually so stupid or ill-informed to accept such trash without question? If Dutton knows of such sexual abuse of children where is the police report he is required to file? Dutton like his predecessor is morally bankrupt and will do and use anybody or any situation to his political advantage, A perfect example of the ends justify the means – and this includes using people in particular whenever it serves his purpose to advance his position of power. His professed concern for indigenous disadvantage is but a mask to try and present a more caring disposition. Ask asylum seekers what a caring individual Dutton is. Such is Dutton’s desperation at the moment given his flat lining polling and the Aston disaster nothing is too low for him to stoop to – indeed Dutton most likely feels right at home in the gutter. The only skills Dutton possesses is an excellent dog whistle, a master of creating division rather than co-operation and no hesitation to use the ‘race’ card if it suits his pursuit of power.
True, except for Dutton being skilled with the dog whistle. He’s not that subtle. A skillful dog whistle is only heard by those tuned in to the hidden message. Dutton is plain whistling for everyone to hear.
That’s an excellent post Lionheart, & I go along with Ratty’s observation too.
Have Liberal voters not yet realised that Dutton is from the same mould as Morrison?
I think it quite likely that some of the things Dutton and Price allege are true. It happens everywhere including my small LNP voting home town. One reason is the lack of good foster care. What I am highly suspicious of is that the Alice is much different. Dutton’s idol Howard spruiked long and loud about all of this along with the rest of the racists in his government. How many convictions did theri blitz on the NT yield? Maybe 2 or 3 from memory.
Renect pronouncements make it plain that the Liberals were never going to support a voice for Blackfellas. It would not matter what the wording is. Will the voice make a rapid change? No, because you probably can’t anyway. Will it prevent progress at the grass level which seems to be the heart of Duttons’ lies? No, but it miught mae it more successful in the long run. I am sick for Price and Mundine. I have yet to meet a Blackfella among the twenty or so I know well who thinks Mundine represents anything to do with them. The name of a large tropical nut is often used in that regard. Price is just an attention seeking big noter in my view.
Old greybearded one…you’ve spelt Blackfellow wrong.
No. It’s Blackfella. That’s the accepted term for the Territory if you’re of mainly Aboriginal descent, and Whitefella if you’re mainly non-Aboriginal. I spent five years there as a kid. There’s a Warumpi Band song that will set this straight.
“Blackfella” may have been acceptable when you were a kid.
I suggest it might not be accepted now.
If you say so then it must be true – as with all of your pronouncements, on subjects divers & wonderful.
This is Dutton’s ‘children overboard’ moment
No, that was his African Gangs lie.
ANOTHER Dutton ‘Children Overboard moment’
‘As many have pointed out, there are obvious echoes of “children overboard” in Peter Dutton’s reaction to Baby Asha.
On Monday, Dutton told Parliament that the Government would not be “blackmailed” or “held to ransom”.
I think that this is the ‘progressive’ media’s “children overboard moment”.
If my memory is correct just a day or so before the 2001 federal election Peter Reith was told that a video existed which showed that children were not being thrown overboard from vessels at sea by asylum seekers. Apparently, upon hearing of the existence of this video, his response was along the lines of “Oh, well we had better not see it then”. This seems to be exactly the response of the ‘wokey’, pseudo ‘lefty’ ‘progressives’ when confronted with videos that clearly demonstrate the dysfunction and decadence of a completely dystopian society.
Australia has a ‘progressive media’? Who knew…
Stupid progressive media! Don’t they know anything??
Hey, don’t knock it. It won Howard an election, why wouldn’t dud Dutton try it. I can only hope there’s enough of the ‘fair go’ sentiment left in the Aussie psyche to get a yes vote up.