Over the weekend Brisbane’s Sunday Mail dispatched its snapper to Toombul shopping centre north of the city to pap its front-page target. But this wasn’t a celebrity. It wasn’t a crook on the run. This was a mother and her two daughters — “suspected immigration detainees” as the paper captioned them.
We don’t know their names, but thanks to the paper’s sleuths we do know what they purchased while “enjoying” their tour through Coles — “home brand Hawaiian pizza, Smith’s potato crisps and cartons of Coca-Cola.”
The Sunday Mail splashed the supermarket scoop across their front page — headlined “THEY’RE HERE” (surely not a nod to Poltergeist?) — in a story that ran prominently in all of Rupert’s rags yesterday.
And if you somehow missed the implication, Piers Akerman filled in the blanks in the Daily Telegraph this morning: this “happy Afghan women” (Piers has the inside word on her mental state and nationality) and her fellow “fast-tracked” asylum seekers with their “overflowing shopping trolleys, courtesy of the Australian taxpayer” send a “strong message” that Australia’s doors are open.
How can we hope to have a reasoned debate about asylum seekers, and the oft mentioned push and pull factors, with press coverage like this?
They’re here, all right. No, not “these people” (as Piers likes to refer to them.) We mean tabloid fear-mongers like the newly-installed Sunday Mail editor Scott Thompson — setting any kind of reasoned debate about asylum seekers wildly off course for another ugly political debate in an election year.
the work of these hacks is permeating the education system too with my 9 year old daughter asking me recently why these boat people are getting in to australia. after i spent a few minutes re-setting the landscape about asylum seekers and the reasons why they see asylum in australia and that fact that australia is a signatory to the UN on this matter she then asked, why are we being so horrible to these people? it is quite frightening that this debate is being so heavily skewed at some many levels
keep up the good work crikey!
Perhaps we can open a detention centre for dodgy conservative right wing journo’s. We could lock up Piers, Bolt’s and of course, the queen of the right wing diatribe Randa Devine. I think it would be a great way to spend tax payers money.
The stench of xenophobia and whinging; how distinctly Australian.
Are these stories supposed to be telling us that asylum seekers are being accommodated in the community (particularly minors and families)? Didn’t we already know this? So now the media are reporting on their shopping(!).
Come on journos, lets push the bar of journalistic integrity even lower by going through their rubbish bins.
I’m with Fitter, but hey, let’s go all the way and next time Rupe waltzes into the country (to swing his d!ck around) let’s claim that he’s a terrorist (well he is…against the truth!), revoke his visa, detain him in Villawood, and then deport the grub back to that broken down country he claims to be a citizen of.
If indeed this poor woman was Afghani, she would be muslim. She would know better than to buy a pizza containing pork products. What kind of trash journalism is this?