Senator Andrew Bartlett
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
 
The Sunday Telegraph notices Nauru suffering and this blog (sort of)

In an example of why the mainstream media can really get under my skin, last weekend the Sunday Telegraph managed to be offensive and misleading in about five different ways in a few short paragraphs.

In a piece about this blog, they picked out one paragraph from these two "lengthy" pieces I did on my visit to Nauru to highlight. Amongst matters such as imprisoned children, impoverished schools, traumatised adults and taxpayer waste, they chose to quote the following as a "heartbreaking story":
"One of the huge benefits of travelling as a politician on parliamentary business is that you often get met at the airport by government officials who help sort out all the fiddly bits that go with arriving at airports in foreign countries."
I know it is labelled as a gossip page and I know I am rather close to the issue, having spent many hours with the people on Nauru, but I still find the blasé dismissal of genuine suffering just to take a few cheap (and highly misleading) shots hard to swallow. However, I guess it provides a useful example of how the media can twist a story in any direction if they so desire.

I've avoided specifically seeking out media publicity with this web diary as that is not the reason I started doing it, but it is probably instructive that this article is the most attention the mainstream media has paid to anything I've said on this blog in the 9 months since I started it. It's probably a worthwhile case study for people studying blogging, such as those at last weekend's BlogTalk conference in Sydney.

I'm currently in Canberra at Senate Estimates hearings, with the Immigration Department due up in the next couple of days, so that will be taking up a lot of my attention, but I hope to post some thoughts and ideas out of the conference in the next few days, as well as any useful matters arising out of the Senate hearings.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Tuesday, May 24, 2005 Permalink
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