The Boghole of Australian Journalism

by Alex Rieneck

The Daily Telegraph has a solid web presence. If there is one thing that the "Telegraph" has done right, it is to harness the internet. Their site works well and their mobile site works far better than the mobile site of their opposition "The Sydney Morning Herald". Compare the two sites. The News Limited people have developed a far better method of integrating their news team with their readership. Practically every story can be commented on by the readership and in some cases, like Piers Ackerman's blog for instance, the Internet works at its finest, whether or not you agree with the content.

The same cannot be said for the quality of the journalism.

If you examine the screengrab to the right, you'll see that someone at the "Telegraph" cannot spell "puppy" or that nobody at the "Telegraph" cares enough to fix the typo. That story stayed up for 8 hours with that heading. I have given up complaining. I have decided that they either simply do not care, or don't know any better. I can cope with the stupidity of ignorant people, after all, if you use the Internet you have to. I can cope with a newspaper which employs people who would be better suited making comments on an IMDB message board. In fact, it makes me laugh in a sardonic kind of way.

But I can't let pure media malice pass unrecorded though.

As I said before, the "Daily Telegraph" site is completely integrated with the net. What this means in practice is that each story may be commented on by the readership unless the story concerns a case presently in front of the courts where the comments might be expected to prejudice a jury. The comment stream is (after serious complaints by the ABC watchdog "MediaWatch") moderated so that racist, offensive, sexist and libelous statements are removed. The comment streams are, to the credit of "The Telegraph" occasionally studded with criticism of the newspaper with statements like "this isn't news" and the like appearing on a quite regular basis.

Then there is this story.

At first reading you wonder why a story this utterly banal would make it into the pages of a major newspaper. A (female) politician makes an early appointment with a hairdresser. The hairdresser is running late. The politician is in a hurry, rude, and leaves. The hairdresser is "reduced to tears". Anyone even half awake would describe it, at best, as pointless. I have run late, and had people be rude to me. Fair enough. Just to even up the score, I have been kept waiting and been rude right back. Again, fair enough. I'd hazard a guess that anyone over the age of about thirteen would be honour bound to plead guilty to both crimes, but yet here it is, reported in slavish juicy detail. You have to wonder why.

Let me enlighten you. Lindsay Simmons (the politician in question) is the member for Morialta in the South Australian state parliament. The newspaper helpfully includes a link to the her page at the South Australian Parliament. Lindsay Simmons is a member of the Labor Party. In case you'd hadn't noticed, "The Daily Telegraph" has a very distinct bias against the Labor Party, in fact, the newspaper in question has become something of a standing joke, never missing a chance to spin any story into some kind of hatchet job on the Labor Party, in some cases, the comment streams within "Telegraph" stories actually reflect this, but this story was extremely shallow and paltry by even the standards of the "Telegraph".

Fair enough, rude politicians sold a great many newspapers when the "Telegraph" was waging righteous war on the behalf of the staff at Iguana's Nightclub against Belinda Neal and her husband John Della Bosca. Both Labor members. At the time, the fight over the control of the Senate was in full swing and the "Telegraph" knew full well that if it could force Ms Neal out of office the power balance would be swung against the Labor Party. In due course the "Telegraph" devoted the whole front page to the story. Just about every day. For weeks. In the event, nothing happened. Nobody resigned and the story died.

Now there is this story. There is no power struggle in the Senate. As far as I can see nothing is going on in South Australia. The story is thin to the point of non-existence. Ms Simmons is obviously a busy woman and was obviously in a hurry. Though the hairdresser was "moved to tears" it is obvious that Ms Simmon's rudeness was very minor by the standards of anyone who say, lives in Sydney, yet the story was reported, and aside from large amounts of publicity for the hairdressers, "Bobby Pins Haircutters" at Rostrevor, and a particularly limp swipe at a sitting Labor member it is difficult to see the story accomplished anything. I was rather disgusted by the whole operation and scrolled to the bottom of the page to see if there were comments of the like of "this is not a story" that I might find as personally validating. If not, I was planning on leaving one.

There were no comments at all on that story. By that I mean that there was no comments box at all. The story was being treated as if it concerned a case before the courts... even though it was blatantly pure gossip. (The word of the hairdresser against the politicians, without witnesses.) The fact that the story lacked a comments box meant one of two things. Either there had never been a comments stream attached to the story, which if you know the "Telegraph" is extremely unlikely, or that the comments had been heavily critical of the story and of the newspaper and the comments box had been removed while the story remained.

In either case someone at "The Daily Telegraph" determined that the story was going to stand without comments, and by this I can only conclude either that the paper knew that the comments would be heavily critical of the paper and simply left the stream out, or the early comments were overwhelmingly critical and the comment stream was removed.

Either way the story (or lack thereof) and its treatment appears to me to be as pure a case of malice as you will ever see, especially when you consider that the way search engines work this "news" result is liable to rank higher than ones produced by more reputable sites for years to come.

And one final comment. I know that without doubt, had there been a comment stream at the end of the story, I would simply have left a comment and surfed off, never checking back to see whether the comment had passed "moderation". As it stands this story will exist outside the "News Limited" stream for years far more easily searchable by Internet engines than any comment made to a stream within the "Telegraph" site whether or not that comment ever passed "moderation".

Now, with a bit of luck you know or will at least suspect, why the "Daily Telegraph" has such a well integrated comment stream within the site. It is rather sweet. By appearing to be transparent and accountable, the exact opposite effect is achieved. Except in this case.

But then again, for standards to work, you have to adhere to them. That is the point.

Alex Rieneck