Thursday, 02 June 2005
Corby Case: Getting Out of Hand
It's been very interesting for me to watch the Australian media's downhill slide over the past three years. When I first visited three years ago, I remember watching the news in Melbourne with a kind of envy. It was during the run-up to the Iraq War and I wished American news could be as objective as the reports I saw in Oz.
I returned a few months ago and found that in a very short time there had been drastic changes. Gone was the BBC-esque programming I remembered. In it's place was a Fox-esque replica that constantly drilled home the horrors of the pedophile in YOUR neighborhood and the dangers of letting strangers photograph your children on the beach.
Now the Schapelle Corby case seems to have completed the Australian media's downhill slide into American news. It seems as though the media in Australia have managed to whip people into such a frenzy about the whole thing that now we're seeing reports like this:
A full scale emergency was triggered Wednesday morning when an embassy official discovered a white powder after opening an envelope addressed to Indonesia's Ambassador in Australia, Imron Cotan.
The Indonesian embassy in Canberra remains closed and staff have been sent home after undergoing a decontamination process following the attack.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he had been briefed on the contents of a note included with the biological agent but would not comment on its contents at this stage, citing the police investigation.
The threat on the embassy comes amid a torrent of ill-feeling towards Indonesia in Australia and follows death threats made to the Indonesian embassy in Canberra last month and the sending of bullets to the Indonesian consulate in Perth in April.
When I first started following this case, it was out of a perverse interest in how things could go horribly wrong while travelling. Now it's snowballed into a Scott Petersen/OJ Simpson/Terry Schiavo free-for-all, with Corby's verdict being broadcast live to the nation and redneck bogans mailing "anthrax" to the Indonesian embassy.
Posted by flow Frazao on June 2, 2005 at 03:18 AM in Australia | Permalink
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