“You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” That instruction to a war correspondent in Cuba attributed to William Randolph Hearst might have been apocryphal but he certainly knew how to make xenophobia sell newspapers. If Hearst did not actually start the Spanish American War over Cuba in 1898, he helped it along a bit with plenty of pictures of Spanish atrocities.
The great tradition of stirring up a dislike of foreigners to sell an extra paper or two lives on with the papers world-wide of Rupert Murdoch at the forefront. Who could forget that wonderful Gotcha headline from the London Sun as the Argentinian Belgrano was sent to the bottom of the Atlantic when nowhere near the Falklands war zone?
This month it is the turn of the Sydney Daily Telegraph to prove that yellow journalism (named after a comic strip in Heart’s original New York Morning Journal ) is alive and well with the Japanese cast as the cruel and heartless foreigners with barbaric habits. The Japanese crime is to have whale eaters among their population whose ugly appetites result in whaling boats sailing into Antarctic waters to harpoon these giants of the sea.
The Tele has taken up the anti-whaling cause with a passion. “Stop the Humpback Hunt” it has screamed for days now while bringing its readers such insights as:
- Sea cops’ fight to the death: The battle to save humpback whales from Japanese hunters is intensifying on the high seas, with “sea cops” vowing to find whaling ships and “destroy them”.
- Anti-whaling star faces arrest: Isabel Lucas is a wanted woman after Japanese police issued an arrest warrant for the role the former Home and Away star played in an anti-whaling protest.
- Defiant after sea of blood swim: Former soapie starlet Isabel Lucas has joined The Daily Telegraph’s campaign to save the whales, urging the Japanese to drop their primitive policy.
My personal favourite from the anti-Japanese campaign is this picture provided by Greenpeace which is the Tele’s partner in whipping up the hysterical support for the whales:
You will note, I hope, that it is not just any whale being carved up to provide red meat sushi. Japan, we are told, kills “pregnant” whales.
So if you were wondering why it was that the Labor Government of Kevin Rudd has turned so militantly pro-whale and anti-Japan, now you know. How could Peter Garrett not come out defiant against those who butcher mothers and unborn babies?
The tabloid press can be as persuasive in the Australia of 2007 as it was in the United States more than a hundred years ago. But this time, thankfully, the Government is not sending real gun boats to deal with the dreaded and murderous foreign fiends. Australians are doing in to battle aboard a P&O vessel with customs men armed with nothing more lethal than video cameras.
Thanks, Richard. I should be interested if anyone can enlighten me as to why it is barbaric to eat large, dopey-but-really-appealing-looking marine mammals, but perfectly alright to eat the same on 4 hoofs. As for pregnant- check the definition of veal.
I don’t care about the tactics on the save the whale side some long as it can make a contribution to saving whales from exploding head harpoons, factory ships, sonar, satellite tracking and money hungry Japanese businessmen. Let them eat cake I say. They got by quite nicely for years on non whale sushi. There must be some small section of nature that is protected fro the ravages of the human predator .
Let the tabloids do the stuff that they do so well, in this case it really is a noble cause.
Regards
Rob Gibson
What a silly, muddleheaded piece of scribbling! Is Farmer really suggesting that opposition to Japan’s arrogant nationalism is “hysterical support for the whales” and thus without merit? What is he on about? Too much Xmas cheer perhaps?
The Daily Telegraph has always been a contemptible disgrace. Its persecution of minorities of all kinds (eg Muslims, gays, the list goes on and on) is incredibly ugly and mean-spirited. The latest manifestation of the mindset they encourage is the appalling racist campaign against the proposed Muslim high school in the Camden district near Sydney. The Tele works hand in glove with the likes of Alan Jones to push along the dark underside of Sydney that expresses itself in hatred, discrimination and violence.
It is a paper litle interested in the fair and rational resolution of the conficts that inevitably beset a big city. It is only interested in victims, villains, victimisation, martyrs and heroes. It has the mentality of an immature ten year old.
Richard Farmer obviously sees nothing wrong with Japan conducting an illegal act but in fact shoots the messenger. So what if its hysterical. It gets the point across as to what they’re up to.