Next month everyone over 35 will remember where we were 30 years ago when we watched the first man on the moon. Younger people have similar reference points long ago in their lives.
Try thinking 25 years ago. A career, a marriage, an education, a score of holidays here and overseas, a couple of homes, a half dozen cars, bad things done, good things done, regrets, lost hopes, found opportunities, a great chunk of a lifetime.
More than half his lifetime ago John Lewthwaite committed a ghastly crime. He murdered a five-year-old girl. He ruined lives. He acknowledges that. He has been in jail for that 25 years.
He was released from Long Bay Jail on Monday.
Much of the media does not have an attention span of 25 days, let alone 25 years. They treated it as if he had committed his crime yesterday. Worse, some reporters stirred up the event, stirred up news that was not there. First neighbours in the north coast town of Laurieton demanded he not be sent there, despite family connections. So he was then sent to the Sydney suburb of Waterloo where his sponsor lived.
No-one would have known if the media had not stirred it up, telling neighbours where Lewthwaite lived. The Daily Telegraph even published an aerial photograph pointing the house out. The level of neighbourhood concern was artificially generated. Even the head teacher of the school did not protest.
But there was a public-interest issue which was a legitimate media target. The sponsor happened to live near a school. Should the Corrective Services department have allowed Lewthwaite to stay there? Lewthwaite is still on life parole and so is presumably still some security risk.
But the media response was over the line. Statements from the school and from Corrective Services would have in order, but you have to wonder how much spontaneity there was in the residents’ protest.
Page 1 of the Daily Telegraph on Wednesday carried next to a headline “”Hate Mail” a photograph of two residents set to place a garden hose through the front-door letter-box of the house in which Lewthwaite was believed to be staying. Did the camera follow the residents or did the residents follow the camera?
Residents were not told by Corrective Services of Lewthwaite’s whereabouts. The media found out and they must have told residents. “”Did you know a convicted killer lives in your street?”
Incidentally, the NSW Budget was relegated to Page 4 and 5.
The next day, the Telegraph widened the readership appeal of the story under a headline “”Where Now. Lewthwaite quits Waterloo for a suburb near you.”
Did he quit or was he driven out by fear of vigilantes. Who is under threat of violence, here? The children from Lewthwaite, or Lewthwaite from vigilantes stirred up by media?
Worse, the campaign of exposure and fear under the guise of the public’s right to know has had exactly the opposite effect. The Corrective Services Department now fears it cannot tell anyone the whereabouts of Lewthwaite’s new dwelling lest it leak to the media and cause another stirring up of hatred and potential violence. Earlier, when he was in Waterloo before the Telegraph had its frenzy at least a few critical people had that knowledge.
The incitement was compounded by publication of a story from Britain where vigilantes hounded a 72-year-old paroled man so much that he requested police to be taken back into protective custody. The message for Telegraph readers was that they, too, could rid themselves of a parolee if they treatened violence enough.
A man who has spent 25 years in captivity should not be judged like the disturbed 18 year old who committed the murder.
If we cannot leave Lewthwaite in privacy to try to integrate into society under parole supervision we may as well abandon some of the key elements of our criminal justice system. Our system deals with criminals with a combination of punishment, retribution, community safety and rehabilitation. With the shock-horror approach of the past week, we may as well jail all criminals for life or execute them all. Lewthwaite’s crime was ghastly, but we should not give up the hope of redemption and reform.
Indeed, I do not give up hope for the redemption and reform of the Daily Telegraph. I would dread to see a retributive government have powers over it.
The question of media behaviour is difficult. The perils of censorship are probably greater than the perils of media going over the top in a way that encourages vigilante behaviour. In this example, the Government responsible for the silly decision to put Lewthwaite in a house near a school would be the Government responsible for applying the law that, say, prohibited publication of details about parolees’ residents. It might censor on the stated ground that a parolee’s privacy and safety has been jeopardised, but it would also censor more widely on the unstated ground that government silliness and insensitivity should not be exposed.
That leaves it to the media to criticised itself, or at least some sections of it to criticise others in the hope that we approve. On that score, the Daily Telegraph and some of the electronics in Sydney overstepped the boundary of reporting and commenting on the news to artificially creating it.