Faces in the crowd: Melbourne #MarchinMarch
The Marches in Marchcontinue to glow with controversy. Never did so few gather so many,
without engaging the usual suspects of the old media, the political
parties, NGOs, the unions and the activist groups. There had to be a
dark side to these events. The people can’t have minds of their own! Or
if they do they must be warped!
Tim Dunlop has joined the fray with a post at The Drum: Rage against the mainstream
The fact is, the media’s lame response to an estimated 100,000 citizens
showing up on the streets around the country is indicative of a deeper
malaise: the rules of news have changed, and increasingly legacy media
companies have neither the capacity nor the wit to operate in the new
environment.
His target was the Sydney Morning Herald’s Jacqueline Maley.
Tim’s piece follows Lyndon Morley spirited offence at Independent Australia in support of his sign RESIGN DICKHEAD!
He was replying to Andrew Bolt’s slanted reporting at the Herald Sun.
Bolt was comparing the remarks about Abbott with those of Alan Jones
about Julia Gillard. As usual he saw red: “But who will apologise for
the parade of hatred in today’s March in March?” He found what he was
looking for, of course.
I’ll leave jousting with the black knight of bigotry to Lyndon.
Matthew Donovan tackled The Daily Telegraph’s Tim Blair over what he
called “delusions and blind or wilful ignorance” on AIMN on Wednesday.
His message: “I will not let you smear the good people who marched”.
I’ll just stick to what I saw and heard in my hometown. To flip the record, I’ve compiled some offcuts that didn’t make my original video piece on the Melbourne #MarchinMarch, not for the signs of the times but for the faces of the people:
One of the more appealing aspects of the Melbourne march was the
signs. By and large, they were not offensive. Some seemed to have gone
to extremes to be polite:
Kindness matters!
Not Happy Tony.
We Can Do Better!
Cowdy Songs Not Cowboy Govt.
Careful Now!
Wake Up Australia!
In fact most were homemade and some appeared to be the handy work of
people more accustomed to writing letters-to-the-editor, pamphleteers
rather than sloganeers:
Human Dignity Is Independent of National Borders. We must Always Defend the Interests of the Poor and the Persecuted.
Arbitrary Governments Use Arbitrary Detention.
The longest read:
MR ABBOTT AHD HIS GOVERNMENT HAVE SAID
NO TO CLIMATE CHANGE AND SCIENCE
NO TO MORE WOMEN IN CABINET
NO TO THEIR OWN EDUCATION PROMISES
NO TO THEIR OWN NBN PROMISES
NO TO THEIR OWN HEALTHCARE PROMISES
NO TO REFUGEES
NOW WE SAY NO TO YOU MR. ABBOTT!!!
Many were decidedly to the point:
Tony Abbott Worst PM in Australia’s History.
Wanted for Crimes Against Humanity and Our Planet.
No More Racism, No More Bull, Australia’s Nowhere Near Full!b>Welcome Asylum Seekers and Refugees.
No Justice, No Peace.
Some were a tad obscure:
Viva la Evolucion!
This one had two sides:
Dirty Coal. Clean Wind
Very few signs that I saw were truly offensive or in bad taste. This
exception was timeless and certainly open to the charge of not being
focussed:
Fuck the Police
It probably wouldn’t resonate with Bolt quite like ‘Fuck Tony Abbott’ T-shirts did.
Monday’s Media Watch
looked at a coverage paradox, namely how the old media both ignored and
condemned the marches. Paul Barry picked up the threads:
A
bevy of right-wing columnists have accused the ABC and Fairfax of
failing to condemn some vicious anti-Abbott placards, carried by a
handful of marchers.
But it was not just the Right that was unhappy with the way the March in March was covered.
Many protesters felt that 31 marches and tens of thousands of people deserved far more attention.
No comments:
Post a Comment