Working at The XYZ, I have learned the hard way how the wrong word in a headline, or the wrong featured image, can lead to people getting the wrong impression about what an article is about, and misdirecting the conversation away from the point you are trying to make. I have seen it first hand.
Likewise, I have become very aware how a headline and image, properly chosen, can ram home your point in no uncertain terms, no matter how many caveats you wish to account for in the article.
I am interested to know what message this picture, from the front page of today’s Age, says to you, both about the nature of the High Court’ decision, and the potential contents of today’s editorial.
Just as Senator Two-Dads misreprented the facts in parliament the other day in her question to George Brandis, by complaining that nearly 100 children were in detention centre custody, when due to policies which her and her Party, the Greens, supported, there were previously 2000, the Age misrepresents the facts regarding the number of migrants who came to Australia illegally by boat:
“Hundreds of asylum seekers, who came here seeking refuge from persecution, are still being held on Nauru and Manus Island years after their boats were intercepted. They have no prospect of real freedom, no certainty about their lives, no political enfranchisement, no voice and little hope of anything changing.”
The fact is that 50 000 people came here illegally by boat during Labor’s two terms, and it must be stressed that the Greens, through their support, share in this failure. That we have merely “hundreds” left in detention speaks of the government’s success in getting people out of detention.
If the current border protection policy is reversed, we will once again have thousands of people in detention. The editors of the Age should be ashamed.
