At the height of the silly season, it wasn't just Kyza, the abused
pooch, who got tossed out the window. So too was Article 19 of the United
Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
As the mainstream media fretted over every moment of Kyza's struggle
to survive, they spent very little time monitoring a far more grievous assault
- the outrageous attack upon our "right to know" by the Immigration
Department.
Seasoned political observers have come to anticipate bureaucratic
trickery in sneaking dubious measures through under the cloak of the summer
recess, but the announcement that the ironically-named Australian
Communications and Media Authority wish to censor the reporting of new boat
arrivals by obscuring refugees’ faces - laughably in order to "protect
their privacy" - takes the festive biscuit for sheer brazenness.
By the same twisted logic, there should be no further media coverage
of Tahrir Square, the upheavals in Syria, civil unrest in Iraq, Iran or Turkey.
No more pictures or footage of starvation in North Korea, abuses in Belarus,
bombings in Helmand or deaths in Pakistan. In fact, in the interest of
protecting individuals' privacy, why have any coverage of anything
controversial or politically unpalatable at all?
May we respectfully remind both the Gillard government and ACMA that
asylum seekers are either genuine refugees, who deserve and often plead for
media attention in order to highlight the horrors they have escaped, or they
are not; in which case they are economic refugees who have attempted to avoid
scrutiny and identification by entering Australia illegally and therefore in
the interests of national security warrant full exposure.
Kyza the staffie is making a merciful recovery at the Baulkam Hills
animal hospital. Meanwhile, in Australia at least, the right "to seek,
receive and impart information through any media" is on life support.
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