Employers expect a lot from young journalists. Strong writing, speaking, multitasking, networking, and technical skills. A good grasp of general knowledge, and the voracious consumption of news and current affairs. The ability to work to tight deadlines. One thing which they don’t expect, but which seems to be very much in vogue among journalists, is a short memory.
When every media outlet in Australia was reporting the uproar over Pauline Hanson’s comments to Sunrise that she would not sell her house to a Muslim buyer, not one thought to mention that only two weeks prior to inviting the Sunrise crew to her home Hanson had told the Daily Telegraph that she was having difficulty finding potential buyers. From a journalists’ perspective, that would seem to be a pretty damn important part of the story. Yet all of the media outlets reporting on the controversy over her comments fell hook, line and sinker for what I think was a very blatant attempt to garner publicity and assist in the sale of the house.
The moral panic over the call to ban the burqa by an MP from the (mis-named) Liberal Party illustrates the same short-term memory loss among journalists – newspapers screamed of outrage and controversy over the ban, as if it was this novel idea, and unrelated to any recent fearmongering attempts by the party responsible. It was front-page news in the Herald Sun, and followed Tony Abbott’s warning just days earlier that millions (yes, millions) of asylum seekers would try to reach Australian shores. Hmmm. Children overboard much? Dear reader, you will of course be aware that this is an election year. So the Liberal party are blowing the dog whistle, and blowing it hard, instead of – oh, I don’t know, actually putting forward policies, or making political mileage out of the most recent debacles of the Labor Party. And the media? They’re too busy suffering from collective amnesia.
