Media Watch just released a segment which proves that Australian media, including Media Watch, have no idea how to report on extremist views
who is media watching the Media Watch? I guess i am but im literally just a tiny boy
Media Watch is an ABC show that is a self-appointed monitor of the goofs and blunders of Australian media. Therefore a huge job considering the endless clown car nature of our industry, with an endless amount of clown material. I was once on it for a captioning goof! (Ps, the funniest mistake I ever made when i was a captioner for the ABC was sending out a story on News 24 and accidentally writing “Penny Wong’s lesbian panther” instead of “Penny Wong’s lesbian PARTNER”).
In last night’s segment, they’ve once again waded into the anti-trans panic dominating Australia’s media, this time focusing on columnist Julie Szego, who got fired from The Age after slagging off the editor. This came after the editor, Patrick Elligett, decided not to publish a 5000 word feature full of trans “concerns”, which she then took to her Substack.
Jackie Turner, head of the Trans Justice Project was asked for comment by Media Watch, and described Szego’s article as “full of discredited science, fringe conspiracy theories, and omits relevant context that would provide more fairness and balance.”
Szego is now claiming that she’s been fired for writing about the “trans debate” - rather than what she was actually fired for - criticising her employer and slagging off her colleagues.
Media Watch have decided to uncritically boost this untruth, giving her a huge platform to speak directly to camera. You can watch the whole thing here.
“In a debate where both sides accuse the other of extremism, it’s the media’s duty to be an honest broker, treat both sides with respect, and not be scared into silence,” says Media Watch host Paul Barry as an end to the segment.
All this does is legitimise her misinformation about why she was fired on a mainstream platform, and also giving weight to the anti-trans narrative of her being “silenced”. For fringe extremist groups like terfs, getting their nonsense views and misinformation taken seriously by media IS the goal. It endorses them as something to be taken seriously, despite representing a very small amount of people. We saw it during marriage equality, with the likes of Lyle Shelton or Binary Australia boosted into talking heads (and it’s easy to see the grift now that they’ve both rebranded to anti-trans talking heads).
I am begging this country’s media to learn how to report on extremism. In this particular case, I’m also begging for Media Watch to understand how being employed works. Is it the media's job to treat anti-vaxxers with respect? Qanon believers? Chemtrail advocates? Because terf rhetoric has roughly the same amount of critical thought and proven research behind it as any of these conspiracy theories.
It’s clear media didn’t learn a single lesson about the danger of platforming extremist and fringe voices from the Trump era. I went back and looked at this great piece by Rashna Farrukh that I commissioned for Junkee, and it summarises why this “false balance” idea that Barry is espousing is so dangerous.
Writer Natalie Feliks was also approached for comment for this segment on Media Watch (although neither trans voices were given a video response like Szego). She says that the biggest issue is the lack of consultation with the trans community.
“Something I'd really like to stress is that at no point did Paul Barry actually address the central point I was trying to make in my responses to Media Watch's questions,” Natalie told me.
“I have constantly stated that the problem with pieces like Szego's is that they are written from a misinformed perspective. Paul Barry clearly seems to think that he can be the arbiter of what he considers to be ‘balanced and concerned reporting’, but he can't. He is not the person through which the piece is affecting. Trans people are, in particular young trans people who are at risk of losing access to their healthcare. They are the people who deserve the final call on whether a piece is concerned or balanced or not, and we are also the experts on finding dogwhistles and misinformation induced by propaganda in cisgender reporting.”
Natalie also told Scoopid that she believed one of her quotes was deliberated misrepresented by Media Watch. “I knew when I was responding that Media Watch was likely to take my quotes out of context, but I never thought that they would stoop to putting words directly in my mouth.”
“I was very careful to ensure that at no point did my responses make any judgement about Szego's specific ideology. Nonetheless, Media Watch spun a quote that I used to respond to a general question about trans reporting as a whole to indicate that Terfism was on the rise. I never said that Szego herself was a TERF, regardless of my personal beliefs on the matter, I was very careful not to say something like that.”
I also touched on the issue’s discussed in my recent article for The Shot.
Ok but now I want a story about Penny Wong’s lesbian panther