Victorian bushfires media redux

Almost four weeks after the devastating bushfires that destroyed the town (picture credit: The Age), many Marysville residents are angry they have still not been allowed home. Victorian Police commissioner Christine Nixon has appealed for patience as detectives continue the painstaking task of interviewing all 600 residents of Marysville in the belief that the fire that destroyed the town and killed 39 people was deliberately lit. The state coroner has demanded each of the 78 towns affected by the fires be investigated for arson links however there have been very few charges laid to date.

The most publicised of those charged is Brendan Sokaluk who is accused of starting the fires in the Gippsland town of Churchill. His arrest on 14 February unleashed a tidal wave of anger. A few days earlier, I wrote, “pity some poor bastard who might be accused of arson. He or she will be pilloried as the enemy of the nation and will be lucky to survive to face trial.” And so it is proving for Sokaluk, for whom the presumption of innocence is a sick joke. Within hours of being charged, he was viciously attacked in the media and in social network sites to the point where some have questioned whether he is capable of getting a fair trial.

It may be impossible to find jurors who have not been exposed to his trial by media. Seven News were among the worst offenders, blatantly exploiting community fury on the day after Sokaluk was charged with arson (but before the suppression order on his naming was lifted). Firstly their reporter Chris Reason mentioned some of the gruesome quotes that appeared on Facebook hate pages and claimed many residents of Churchill agreed with their sentiments. He then did a vox pop in the town asking the leading question “What do you reckon the town would do if they got their hands on him?” One resident inevitably responded, “Oh, they'd tear him apart.”

Print media were also keen to get on the bandwagon. Sydney’s Daily Telegraph did a prurient search of Sokaluk’s Myspace profile and deduced he had recently been rejected by a girlfriend, implying here was a complete loser who deserved the public anger the media was projecting on to him. They also immediately followed this information with an appeal for readers to spread more dirt about him “Do you know Brendan Sokaluk?” shrieked the Tele. “ Call us in confidence on...”

Internet news sites weren’t much better. The Inquisitr published a nasty little article in which it described the Myspace page as “spooky”. It said the page was “scattered with appalling spelling”, which suggested Sokaluk “may have been illiterate, or had suffered a learning disability.” The article also hinted that Sokaluk may have an affiliation to a US religious group which holds extreme views against women clergy and gay people. Though no evidence has emerged to support these wild accusations, they all serve to undermine Sokaluk’s presumption of innocence.

Lawyer Greg Barns says Victoria Police also acted in collusion with the media to paint him in the worst possible light. Barns said the source of most of the material about the suspect came from police tips and briefings to friendly journalists. It is in the interests of police to leak information to create “a climate of guilt” around the accused and also makes the force look good. In the Sokaluk case, police tarnished his reputation by linking the arson charge with a totally unrelated charge of child pornography possession. Sokaluk was morphing into the personification of evil.

As former Age editor Michael Gawenda wrote last month, for journalists the bushfires were all about beating the competition to get the story. Under pressure from editors and executive producers, journalists seek out the human interest stories without regard for the feelings of the subjects of those stories. They add to the trauma and pay no respect to privacy, turning their subjects into exploited victims in name of profit. “[The media] all know that a disaster like this is not just a shocking and grief-producing event, but an opportunity,” wrote Gawenda. “They know that their ratings will climb through the roof and newspaper circulations will spike.”

Victorian bushfire tragedy: the media reacts

(Photo from Flickr).
The Victorian Government has tonight announced a Royal Commission into the bushfires that have ravaged the state in the last 48 hours with a death toll of 200 and still climbing. Australia’s worst ever natural disaster has left the nation shell-shocked and searching for answers. However, one worrying aspect of that search is likely to be a witch hunt on “arsonists”, a category of criminal that is likely to temporarily replace “child molester” in the national opprobrium. I hope the Royal Commission does not get bogged down in individual guilt because such a reaction is likely to rule out the true cause of the tragedy.

That may be an over optimistic hope on my part. Despite the fact that bushfires are an inevitable occurrence in Australia and have been so for millions of years, Piers Akerman found it fit today to attribute the fires to “home-grown terrorists”. TV was no better. Tonight’s Channel Ten news was typical as it gave the story a human cause over a background splash of “Mass Murder”. A clearly emotional Prime Minister was responsible for that headline as he lashed out at anyone who may have been responsible for lighting the fires saying "There's no words to describe it other than it's mass murder." Sensational copy for sure, but there are other words to describe it. With strong winds, a long drought and almost fifty degree Celsius temperatures, it is likely that Nature not nurture was the cause of most of the devastation. But pity some poor bastard who might be accused of arson. He or she will be pilloried as the enemy of the nation and will be lucky to survive to face trial.

Legal Eagle posited a common opinion when she said “the worst thing about it all is the possibility that at least some of these fires were deliberately lit by arsonists.” Its a possibility for sure, and arson is a terrible crime, but not "the worst thing". At most arson was probably a bit player in the extraordinary events of the last few days. By treating every fire as a crime scene Victoria Police is failing to take into account large causes that cannot be cordoned off behind police tape. This is not really a police problem. What is truly the worst thing is that over the coming years this event is likely to become more ordinary.

Clive Hamilton was one of several to suggest that human causes other than arson were at work in Victoria. He says human-induced climate change is the real culprit. Writing in Crikey he said climate scientists have long been predicting that as conditions in bushfire-prone areas become hotter, drier and windier, the result will be more frequent and severe bushfires. He quoted a report that predicted a two to four-fold increase in the number of extreme fire danger days by 2050 with interior of NSW and Northern Victoria a particular danger. He says we are seeing the future now. Hamilton asks will we face up to it or pretend they are one-off events?

The Rooted blog also blamed the carnage on climate change. It quoted a 2008 report by the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre which says the number of days marked by ‘extreme’ fire danger will grow. As a result, the implications of climate change for bushfires are likely to create substantial economic, social and environmental costs. However the report warned of the difficulty of selling the message. “From a scientific viewpoint climate change needs to be understood at a both a global and regional level.” It said. “This is clearly a complex task, and many questions remain.”

Climate change sceptics will closely monitor this task. Andrew Bolt was quick to accuse Greens Bob Brown leader of “preaching politics” when he (Brown) made the climate change connection. He called Brown’s comments “grossly inappropriate”. Tim Blair also warned that “warmenists” are preparing to use the fires as fodder for climate change action “[j]ust as they used Hurricane Katrina.”

Others found causes out of the dangerous realm of climate change politics. Ben Eltham in New Matilda considers the lack of firestick farming as he examines the claims of those who predicted the carnage. He quotes former weather bureau and CSIRO scientist David Packham who told the ABC Thursday that the weekend would see “the worst bushfire conditions in 50 years”. Eltham said Packham blamed fuel loads that have built up in the past 30 to 40 years. "There has been a total lack of willingness to instigate a proper fuel reduction management program based on the skills and understanding of indigenous people who, after all, for tens of thousands of years were the stewards of our environment,” said Packham.

Over at Larvatus Prodeo Robert Merkel linked to an LA Times article which outlined the difference between Australian and Californian bushfire-fighting tactics. “Americans expect firefighters to protect their lives and property,” said the Times. “Australians in rural communities view that as their own responsibility.” Merkel also offers a note of caution to those that believe that this is a terrible portent of things to come when he said “lives lost in bushfires since Ash Wednesday have been far fewer in number, despite some truly gargantuan fires in the intervening period.”

Nevertheless there is justifiable considerable shock in the wider community at the weekend events, which was reflected in wide-ranging manner it was covered. Gary Hughes’s breathless present tense account in The Australian of how he and his family escaped the St Andrews fire is compelling reading. Down in Melbourne, Guy Beres contemplated on the disaster that was unfolding barely “thirty minutes away”. In a curious action that united the left and right, both Jeremy Sear and Iain Hall felt an unnecessary but understandable need to apologise for light-hearted comments about the weather the previous day before either were aware of the extent of the devastation. Meanwhile, The Inquisitr examined the role of social media in reporting the crisis while Dave Bath at Balneus looked at practical measures for punishing arsonists (beyond lynching) by seizing assets rather than imprisoning them. At Core Economics, Joshua Gans gave an economist’s view as he examined what technologies could be realistically be used to save lives in future bushfires.

But of all the reactions it was surely our Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy who had his finger closest to the pulse today. While a nation was in shock over the death toll, Senator Stephen Conroy blithely announced that tomorrow Australia would be “celebrating” something called “Safer Internet Day”. While Victoria burned, the Minister had something more important to tell us. “Young people around Australia,” Senator Conroy informed us breathlessly, “will participate in activities promoting responsible internet use during Safer Internet Day tomorrow.” Neither a sense of timing nor a grasp on reality appear to be Senator Conroy’s strong points.