On this occasion it was a post by ABC columnist Marieke Hardy who wrote a vicious (to say the least) piece about how much she (or to use her own language "Australians") hate Liberal MP Christopher Pyne.
The day started off this way:
I read political reporter for The Australian, Samantha Maiden's tweet around midday:
"I like @mariekehardy and theres some decent stuff on The Drum but I didn't think much of this http://bit.ly/9RvVZp"I then tweeted myself:
"Tasteless journalism: http://bit.ly/bTJKuU If @mariekehardy writes like that would you trust her to write a serious political piece?"
When I returned from lunch I was welcomed with this story on our homepage in tops (tops is to online news what front page is to broadsheet) about how The Drum's editor Jonathan Green offered a personal apology to Pyne, admitted he was wrong for approving Hardy's article and pulled down the opinion piece.
My subsequent tweet read:
"Thanks @SamanthaMaiden for bringing @MariekeHardy's horrid column about Pyne to the 'editor's' attn. Forced @abcthedrum 2 wake up to itself."From there, I went on my merry way home to work on the tower of university assignments due next week.
About half an hour ago I received this tweet from Green himself:
"@mmaryannwright sam maiden brought the column to my attention? dear me."Not wanting to get on Green's 'bad side' but fearing I already was, I ventured to reply:
"@GreenJ If she didn't the timing of the apology and Sam's blog was uncanny to say the least. How did it slip through in the first place?"Here's what ensued.
Green to me:
"@mmaryannwright read what i wrote."Me to Green:
"@GreenJ Of course I've read it. On Monday you approved it, on Friday you brought it down. On Friday Sam wrote about it, people tweeted, etc."Green to me:
"@mmaryannwright sounds pretty circumstantial to me. I'm guessing you're just guessing."Me to Green:
"@GreenJ you're guessing right. Right or not, the incident brings up interesting questions about opinion pieces, pc-ness and the media's role"Green to me:
"@mmaryannwright for sure."I left it there, I thought things had come to their natural conclusion.
Earlier in the day, around the time Green's apology went up, Maiden tweeted:
"@cosmicjester I don't think it had anything to do with me. Suspect I wasn't only person who thought it wasn't a great look."She wasn't. Tweeters threw around comments like this one from @AnimeMonko
"@samanthamaiden Agree. I'm not very happy with the ABC/The Drum being used for overt character assassination"and this one from @ghostof3LO
"@samanthamaiden imagine the uproar if a conservative wrote a column like @mariekehardy 's about Julia Gillard or Bob Brown"Whether Maiden's column did or didn't inspire Green to take down Hardy's column is an interesting point of its own right but I think the bigger discussion is whether a) Hardy's column should have been published in the first place and b) whether it was the right decision to take it down and therefore what that means for both Hardy as a journalist and The Drum as a source of "analysis and views on the issues of the day" (as its slogan suggests).
Bigger yet, the incident calls into question age-old journalistic values of objective and tasteful news reporting. Yes, opinion columns can show more flair and criticism than a hard news story but does that mean unbridled bias is acceptable too?
Green said himself in between tweeting to me:
"i'm beginning to think i have rather quaint ideas about news value."To my question above- not Green's statement- I argue no. As I was discussing with David Campbell (the singer, not the ex-politician) earlier in the night before my twitter conversation with Green, stories are "censored" in the newsroom everyday in the interest of political correctness and avoiding defamation. This censor is called the editor. As media theory says, they are the 'gatekeeper/s' to what the public do and don't hear, see and read- through the mainstream media, at least. Now that we have blogs and other glorious forms of social media the power of this role has somewhat diminished (although let's not get too ahead of ourselves).
What do you think about todays turn of events? Would you have acted differently if you were in Green's shoes? Do you think Hardy's column was acceptable? How would you feel if you were in Pyne's shoes?
