Ok, some of you may have missed it, but Schapelle Corby was released from jail and has returned to Australia. Now, I would have flown to Bali to cover the story but I actually have a part-time job at the moment and, while that makes it easier to afford the plane trip, it makes it harder to get time off.
But never fear, I’ve decided to cover it anyway. Here’s some Indonesian police:
Of course, there were a lot more protecting Schapelle from the media throng like me. So it looked more like this:
Ok, they weren’t actually Indonesian police, but they had the same types of jackets and if you don’t notice the lack of an “i” at the end of “Polis”, then you could pretend that they’re the ones keeping me and the rest of the media away from Corby while she’s whisked into a waiting car. For those of you who wondered what this looks like, here’s a car:
If you squint, you can even pretend that it’s the lady herself inside the car. In fact, for all I know, it could be. I mean, none of us have seen Schapelle for a while and it’s really, really important that we have lots and lots of Australian journalists to get footage of the actual police and the actual car and… Well, ok, they didn’t do much better than me at filming the actual Schapelle, but, hey, at least they didn’t boycott Qantas and helped boost the economy both here and in Bali…
Though one has to wonder why we need to actually spend so much time on a convicted drug smuggler… Yeah, I know, she was pretty and female, so she probably didn’t do it and someone probably framed her. Probably one of those decadent marriage equality supporting baggage handlers at Qantas.
Notwithstanding that, I still wonder why we needed to actual footage of her leaving the jail, arriving in Australia, picking her nose, giving the finger to a journalist or whatever it was that they hoped to film. After all, haven’t we got more important footage to view. Like the Manchester terrorist attack.
I mean, the Murdoch paper devoted nine pages to it, the day after. And another seven the next day. We need to have as much footage and print space as possible to things like that, because, well, if there’s one thing ISIS doesn’t want, it’s media coverage. I presume that’s true. Otherwise giving it so much media coverage would be doing exactly what the terrorists want, and surely we wouldn’t be doing that.
Take the way that Christian guy who killed two people in the US the other day was reported. No, I’m not saying that he was a Christian, his religion has nothing to do with this – that was his name, Jeremy Christian. He was shouting abuse at a Muslim woman and when some other people tried to calm him, he stabbed them. Nothing to do with religion – either his or theirs. Anyway, he was clearly trying to drum up support for his cause, so we’ve hardly heard anything about it.
And surely that’s how we’d report terrorist attacks, if the terrorists were attempting to draw attention to themselves and to use the killing of innocent people as a way to recruit new members. We report it in the same way we report most things: If there’s an Australian connection, it’s important. Otherwise it goes on page four.
As for the miracle cure, apparently if you stop reading the Murdoch papers, your depression lessens and your intelligence improves quite significantly.
