In early 2007, I found myself on the Atherton Tablelands, researching a story about politics in far north Queensland for the late, lamented Bulletin magazine. This was the year of John Howard’s demise and Kevin Rudd’s ascension, and I wanted to see how the men and women of the frontier saw the up-and-comer from their corner of the world.
The piece was called “The Seventh State of Mind”, an acknowledgment that, yes, Queensland is different, and north Queensland even more so. It also stemmed from a long conversation I had with Bob Katter, who neatly showed me how he would partition the state from Rockhampton up, with the aid of a folded serviette (which looks a bit like Queensland) and a knife.
Katter practically left me with my ears bleeding that day, but naturally I couldn’t resist leading my story with this prominent and long-serving politician’s call for secession. I reported plenty of other interesting views in my travels, including those of a Yungaburra lady who was convinced tampons were laced with asbestos and who sold “rainbow rags” (colourful sanitary pads) in her shop as an alternative.
But there was one person whose opinions I chose not to report. I encountered him in the township of Mt Molloy, and he regaled me with some startlingly racist views, including a claim that Aboriginal people had smaller brains. You don’t have look hard to find such views in the far north, but I decided that airing them would colour the entire piece. And anyway, why give oxygen to an oxygen thief?
I’m still not sure that was the entirely right thing to do, especially considering I also approached Pauline Hanson for a quote (as if her opinions were somehow less flammable). True, she didn’t say Aboriginal people had smaller brains, but the mere presence of the most polarising political figure of her generation had a way of enlivening any story back then. These days Hanson seems rather quaint.
I’m reflecting on all of this because I’m thinking about the ABC’s decision to invite Andrew Bolt onto The 7.30 Report last night, to talk about all the ways Adam Goodes is supposedly dividing the country. And the mother of the 13-year-old girl who called Goodes an ape, who thinks he is the one who should “man up” and apologise. At least she is part of the story, but did we really need her to kick the can of hate further down the road?
I’m also thinking about Kim Vuga, the “star” of SBS’s Go Back To Where You Came From. Vuga was recently invited to share her views on The Project, which were in turn widely reported upon. Vuga wouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near a microphone not so long ago, her opinions so divorced from any quantifiable reality and so incoherently expressed that they amount to little more than spasms of rage.
Now, rage being the currency of our times, those opinions amount to ratings and clicks. Reporting someone’s views doesn’t have to mean endorsing them, of course. But the decisions made by producers, editors and journalists to allow one person’s views invariably means someone else’s silence. What public interest is being served by elevating Vuga, however temporarily, to national prominence?
Even if it was paranoid about being seen to be balanced, surely the ABC had other options available to it than Bolt, a man with more than enough platforms of his own from which to spruik. Lord knows we heard from enough white men yesterday about what racism really was, what it meant and what it felt like. If someone hadn’t bothered to ask Stan Grant, we might never have known.
We don’t ask Holocaust deniers their views about what really happened in World War II. We don’t ask anti-vaccination campaigners about autism. For the same reason, many media outlets are increasingly refusing to give climate change deniers inappropriate levels of airtime, for to do so would be to be guilty of “false balance”, a recognition that someone’s media profile should not be out of proportion to their credibility.
And if you’re a contrarian or a conspiracy theorist, be you on my left or right flank, have at me. Because of course in the hyper-democracy that is the web the truth is out there – on the hundreds of fringe news sites, and thousands of Facebook pages, and the millions of comments attached to articles.
That’s where the views of Vuga and my old mate from Mt Molloy belong. And where they should remain.