MEDIA SHAME FILE
Outlet: News.com.au
Headline: Pauline Hanson calls for ban on Welcome to Country ceremonies
Summary: Journalists put their ignorance, incompetence and left-wing bias on display daily, but it isn’t often that you get a genuine insight into how their minds work.
Luckily for us, news.com.au (Australia’s most-read news site, owned by Rupert Murdoch but notoriously woke) reporter James Dampney has given us a glimpse into the psyche of the modern day hack.
James tells us in his bio that he has 20 years of media experience as a writer and editor and that he really likes sportsball. But given the rather straightforward task of writing a news article about Pauline Hanson calling for a ban on welcome to country ceremonies, he just couldn’t do it.
He couldn’t simply present the facts, and give both sides of the debate so the reader could decide, he had to throw in this paragraph, which does not belong in a straight news story:
“For the record, this writer has heard countless Welcome to Country ceremonies before sporting events and the vast majority are observed respectfully and applauded once they are completed.”
Why? Because he just couldn’t bear the thought of anyone thinking that because he wrote the article he might agree with the Pauline Hanson.
The thought of being associated with a “racist” is so horrifying to James that he had to break convention in order to virtue signal to the readers and his fellow journalists.
And it’s probably why the paragraph was not edited out, although it might just have gone unnoticed – no editor wants to be seen as anything but left-wing either. Treat Hanson fairly? Unimaginable.
This is important because that’s how 99.9% of them think and behave, and shows why the media is so biased – most journalists are just not capable of writing a balanced article on a right-wing figure.
But it goes even further than that.
Many readers may have read that paragraph without a second thought, but subtle message it sends is that because the journalist, who by default is seen as trusted and in a position of authority, doesn’t agree with Hanson, then neither should you.
Added to other small biases – such as the refusal to fact check the 250,000 years claim and the quotes in support of welcome to countries outnumbering those in opposition – the overall impression is that Hanson is bad and welcome to country is good.
Key Quote: “For the record, this writer has heard countless Welcome to Country ceremonies before sporting events and the vast majority are observed respectfully and applauded once they are completed.”
Subtext: “I don’t agree with Pauline Hanson, and neither should you”
