The Right is thrilled that a person who appeared on Q&A and made an entirely valid point about tax rate changes turns out now to have some pretty serious sounding criminal convictions, too.
I would have thought sensible people would at least have misgivings about national media giving front page treatment to this guy's past - is embarrassing a Liberal politician on the ABC enough grounds for the Murdoch press to do that? But, there is the aspect that an Q&A producer had (unwisely) referred to him as a "national hero" in a tweet, and the fact that lots of people promised money to him when they didn't know the full story. So I find it hard to say that his background is completely un-newsworthy; but surely it is still being handled disproportionately and with no regard to how it may affect Storrar and his family.
Of course, Storrar himself could help by, say, getting someone to agree to be trustee of the money on a trust set up for his daughter's education and benefit. That is, if any of the money promised now materialises.
And my complaint about Sinclair Davidson (who thinks the ABC should be running around investigating the private live of everyone who has ever appeared on Q&A) remains: he was calling this guy a "parasite" before any of this came out, and simply because he doesn't pay net tax.
Update: it's been decades since I have seen it, but the movie Absence of Malice just came to mind. I remember few details, except I'm sure it dealt with the journalistic ethics of printing stories that were technically newsworthy, but which carried a strong chance of "collateral damage" to people who were part of the story. (I only remember one scene, which must mean it was really effective - the poor woman who, I think, had had an abortion after an affair with a politician? running around the neighbourhood in the early morning, trying to pick up newspapers delivered on the front step before they could read them. I wonder if I have that right?) Pretty much the same goes here.
Update 2: I just checked the plot of the movie on Wikipedia - I was pretty close.
1 comment:
A good movie as well.
As now plenty of allegations but little evidence.
Of course the OZ has never been interested in the facts.
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