Are seldom seen to be responsible — the in literal sense. Whenever a news editor quietly refuses to run a story, or cut some bits from it, or downplay it because it is violent, obscene, racist, likely to stir up violence, induce people to commit suicide or whatever, the public does not see this act of “”responsible behaviour”. It only sees the “”irresponsible”. The media are always being portrayed as “”irresponsible” for running this or that story.
But there is a danger here. At least when the “”irresponsible” story is run, people get a chance to make judgments about it. If the media were to become “”more responsible” as it is forever urged to be, the result could be quite dangerous. People in readerland would never know what the media are being “”responsible” about.
Take suicides for example. Most media rarely cover suicides because journalists know of the copycat syndrome. So for years we have “”responsibly” put suicide on the spike. The result has been a major social ill has not been given the attention in should get. There are dangers with a “”responsible” media.
“”Responsibility” can mean censorship.
After the NCA bombing, for example, the Western Australian Premier, Charles Court, called for the reintroduction of hanging. He did not put it precisely like that, but that is what he meant. Another Western Australian Minister said he would pull the lever.
The electronics ran it, but a lot of the press buried the story and referred to it briefly if at all in editorials. It was “”responsible” not to pander to the blood lust of the masses at a time of high emotion. The capital punishment debate faded.
I am intractably opposed to capital punishment in any circumstances whatever; but I am in favour of a continuing debate about it, especially when a Premier of an Australian state comes out in its favour in highly charged circumstances. And it is irresponsible for the media not to reopen the debate.
The “”responsible” argument runs thus: Members of Parliaments of both sides in Australia are more enlightened than the masses and to their great credit have not pandered to mass opinion. The media, too, is more enlightened and, with a few ratings-hungry exceptions, have not pandered to the masses demands for hangings. That being the case we should keep the issue under wraps because you never know when some politician might break ranks and seize the opportunity for a bit of populist vote-catching (like Jeff Kennett with the Greeks) and before we know where we are there will be a hanging in the west. So the “”responsible” media relegate the issue.
If we keep doing this, of course, the disparity between and majority of MPs’ enlightened attitudes and a majority of voters’ simplistic hang-em-high attitudes will remain. There can be no education without debate and discussion. The capital-punishment proponent will remain secure in the certainty he is right unless the bright light of debate is shone to test his arguments.
The result of the “”responsible” attitude of not exciting the masses with a debate about capital punishment is precisely the reverse of what the “”responsible” attitude seeks to achieve: a more enlightened view by the general population.
It may well be, of course, that news editors around the country thought it was not much of a story. We do not have capital punishment in Australia so it is a non-issue, unlike in the United States. Perhaps Australian society (with its convict origins) is generally more opposed to capital punishment than US society (which was partly founded on religious refugees from Europe).
The other issue about the NCA bombing that has hardly been mentioned is the role of drug-law enforcement. Prohibition has resulted in a black market with very large sums of money. The money drives those who want to protect their markets to engage in violence.
Prohibition is not working. Drug use is more rife now than when opiates were legal before World War II, because people are more actively encouraged to become addicts by those who profit from the black market. Take away the black market and the associated crime falls away.
Charles Court’s return to the good old days of hanging can be argued both ways. In the good old days of legal opiates the black market in drugs was not so profitable to make the ruthless murder of drug-law-enforcement officers who stand in the marketeers’ way part of the Australian crime scene.