June 2007

The Herald sun is one of Australia’s worst newspapers.

They are just another right wing conservative newspaper of the establishment. It’s targeted at the masses, so it’s often sensational.

I was in a fish and chip shop browsing it’s trash, when I came across something rather peculiar. There was an article about whether the Sikh article of faith the Kirpan should be banned in schools. The Kirpan resembles a blunt dagger. A parliamentary inquiry has suggested that it (along with other religious articles, such as crosses, the hijab, etcetera) should be allowed in high schools like they already are. There is a blown up picture of a Kirpan (the blade is normally only 3 inches, in the pic it’s ~5 inches). Above the blade is the title “Is it OK to take this to school?”.

The tone of the article basically uses the dagger as a way to subtly attack the right of cultural freedom for non anglo students. The Herald Sun excels in this kind of subtle racism. Picking out targets which can be distorted and sensationalised, while disguising it as a mere informative article.

Anyway.. Right next to this article, as a way to distort the message even further they put the following mini article:

Lobby calls for guns in schools

Sunday Herald Sun, June 10, 2007. Page 14.

Gun lessons will be introduced into primary schools if the Victorian firearms lobby has it’s way.
The state’s biggest pro-gun group wants children as young as 10 to be given firearms safety lessons and a chance to shoot.
Combined Firearms Council of Victoria president Bill Paterson said controlled use of real guns would counter damage done to children who use firearms for virtual killing in video games [emphasis added].
A $200,000 government pledge for gun safety education in this years state Budget should be used to fund the program, Mr Paterson said.
But parent groups have criticised the scheme, saying it would not be appropriate for primary schools and city-based secondary students [well duh... but why 'city'? is it okay for country kids?].
Under the scheme, children would undertake supervised shootings at shooting ranges.

I don’t have link to this article, as I couldn’t find it on their website, but it’s word for word from the printed paper as referenced, minus the parts in square brackets.

These gun lobby people are clearly insane.

Some things to note; in Australia there are very strong gun restrictions and gun culture here is very limited. Very very few children will ever grow up to even see a gun (other then those of the police), let alone hold one. The suggestion of the gun lobby is obviously ridiculous, and the Herald Sun think so too. It’s something so stupid it’s not even print worthy, except for the contrast it provide to the main story. They include this solely to place allowing the religious symbol in schools in the same context as allowing guns in schools.

It’s much more subtle than it sounds once already de-constructed. This sort of manipulation is why I only read newspapers in fish and chip shops. The internet is where the real news is.

The thing that struck me most about it was the way they use the line about video games, considering the rhetoric on video game violence flying about these days. “Video games harm our children!” has entered the common vernacular, it’s an assumption. With no evidence ever shown on this, it holds a place in everyone’s mind that there has to be some truth to it.

This line works in two ways, those who believe it are swayed to believe children must be protected, no one is expected to believe guns are a good idea, this line just enforces the protection against ‘weapons’ even more, and thus powers the negativity of the main article.

The other way it works, threw me for a bit. I like video games and obviously think this anti video games hysteria is absurd, this promotes even more negativity to the gun lobby’s idea. This unknowingly gave me an instant negative reaction to the main article in that context, before I knew what a Kirpan was.

It’s interesting that the gun lobby was actually taken advantage of in this. They look pretty ridiculous with their suggestion. They’ve already got a reputation in Australia for being lunatics no one listens to, they’re not powerful at all (as opposed to their comrades in US).

I think the Herald Sun is promoting this for the sake of sensationalism as well as pushing their other agendas. If the Kirpan was to get banned, they would change their tune, they would say that it’s not fair that this is banned while Muslims can wear Hijab’s.

They’ve been promoting public bigotry and racism towards non white-anglos since they first printed. Every mainstream media in the country jumped on the bandwagon when France banned head scarves in schools. Saying it represented a positive move for a secular state, when really it represents intolerance.

They’ve attacked this issue over and over again, trying to make it an issue. This is partly because their form of sensationalism unfortunately sells papers, and partly because they operate to fit an ideology. They’re owned by News Corp, which is Murdock whose empire is remarkably consistent in it’s reporting (see fox news).

If it wasn’t for the gun lobby snippet, I’d be inclined to believe that the journalist was simply towing the mainstream line without noticing. With it, it’s too intentional.

There’s nothing quite like a throwaway line about video games to get me motivated about something.