THE PERILS OF BLACK & WHITE JOURNALISM
I'm not a fan of Andrew Bolt. His willingness to take a stand based on nothing but his own prejudices, and his propensity to denigrate anyone who disagrees with him make his articles depressing reading. Most of the time, even just the title of his articles are enough for me to say, "no thank you, not this time". You know exactly what he's going to say, and it won't be put in terms that encourage discussion, but in terms that say, "if you disagree with me, you're a fool", (or worse). But he attracts his own coterie of bigoted rednecks, and presumably the Murdoch press is sufficiently misguided to believe that that sort of garbage sells papers.
The problem is that once in a (very long) while, he says something that has a grain of commonsense in it. On 23 March, he wrote an article in the Melbourne Herald Sun with the title, "Police Blame Game in Wake of Crash a Cop-Out", in which he poured a savage vitriol on the mother of the girlfriend of the driver killed in the crash following a high-speed police chase, and who was herself seriously injured. She is reported to have said, "I blame the police totally ... I want the police to pay for what happened". Now this is hardly unexpected, even if it is misguided, but Bolt's rancid sarcasm achieves nothing and makes you wonder what he hopes to achieve, apart from revving up the Boltophiles (apparently, this article generated 624 responses, most of them supportive). So, for example:
It is this need to blame, to find fault, and then set himself up as a paragon of all the virtues, this smug hypocrisy that sticks in my craw. And it's a pity, because this arrogance obscures the central theme of individual responsibility, which is the flip side of the licence that he abhors so loudly and so publicly. Yes, Williams clearly had a wholly deprived childhood, and had never had the opportunity to learn some of the hard lessons of being a socially accountable individual. And much of the responsibility for that rests with his parents. That message needs to be brought home clearly and without providing avenues for excuses. But the arrogant, toxic and vitriolic rantings of Andrew Bolt (and his ilk) won't achieve that. They're much more likely to achieve the opposite result, and further alienate those who are already alienated.
So, once again, my decision to not take any notice of Bolt has been vindicated; on this occasion, I can say, however, unfortunately so.
I'm not a fan of Andrew Bolt. His willingness to take a stand based on nothing but his own prejudices, and his propensity to denigrate anyone who disagrees with him make his articles depressing reading. Most of the time, even just the title of his articles are enough for me to say, "no thank you, not this time". You know exactly what he's going to say, and it won't be put in terms that encourage discussion, but in terms that say, "if you disagree with me, you're a fool", (or worse). But he attracts his own coterie of bigoted rednecks, and presumably the Murdoch press is sufficiently misguided to believe that that sort of garbage sells papers.
The problem is that once in a (very long) while, he says something that has a grain of commonsense in it. On 23 March, he wrote an article in the Melbourne Herald Sun with the title, "Police Blame Game in Wake of Crash a Cop-Out", in which he poured a savage vitriol on the mother of the girlfriend of the driver killed in the crash following a high-speed police chase, and who was herself seriously injured. She is reported to have said, "I blame the police totally ... I want the police to pay for what happened". Now this is hardly unexpected, even if it is misguided, but Bolt's rancid sarcasm achieves nothing and makes you wonder what he hopes to achieve, apart from revving up the Boltophiles (apparently, this article generated 624 responses, most of them supportive). So, for example:
Oh, you poor dear Mrs Webbe (the mother of the injured girl). So let's not ask this tattooed lady in her moment of grief why she let her daughter go out with a twice jailed 23 year old father of three who'd been stealing cars since he was eight.If you're not going to ask, Andrew, don't ask! The whole article is replete with concepts of blame - let's find someone to blame and then ladle it on so thickly that it is impossible to see the underlying message. And there is an important message buried somewhere inside all this hate, that is that everyone, yes, everyone is responsible for their own behaviour. No exceptions - Williams was responsible for driving in such a way that he not only killed himself but two innocent bystanders, well driver and passenger of another car. And, yes, they were innocent, notwithstanding that Bolt makes much of the fact that:
Let's not ask this poor sniffing mum how she raised a daughter who'd admired a man with 37 convictions - a man Webbe in one interview said she knew had tried to outrun the police just last year, and who nearly killed himself in a car crash then, too.
Let's not ask what values she passes on to her children when even now she claims Williams (the deceased driver) was "not a bad kid", "OK" and guilty only of a "petty little crime" after getting "a bit mixed up in the criminal world".
one final detail of Saturday's smash sealed the grim deal for me. Guess who Williams killed on Saturday, scything through their car at 200 km/h?So what, Andrew? They're both just as dead as if they had been wholly without the slightest stain on their characters.
Friends of his, actually, both with criminal records themselves for offences involving drugs, and with eight children from previous relationships.
It is this need to blame, to find fault, and then set himself up as a paragon of all the virtues, this smug hypocrisy that sticks in my craw. And it's a pity, because this arrogance obscures the central theme of individual responsibility, which is the flip side of the licence that he abhors so loudly and so publicly. Yes, Williams clearly had a wholly deprived childhood, and had never had the opportunity to learn some of the hard lessons of being a socially accountable individual. And much of the responsibility for that rests with his parents. That message needs to be brought home clearly and without providing avenues for excuses. But the arrogant, toxic and vitriolic rantings of Andrew Bolt (and his ilk) won't achieve that. They're much more likely to achieve the opposite result, and further alienate those who are already alienated.
So, once again, my decision to not take any notice of Bolt has been vindicated; on this occasion, I can say, however, unfortunately so.
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