Some weird moral conundrums in the MP-photos affair, in which Labor backbencher James Bidgood flogged the photos he took of a man threatening to set himself alight on the lawns of Parliament House.
Michelle Grattan opined on the Radio National’s Breakfast show this morning that common human decency should have told Bidgood that what he did was no good.
But what about the newspapers that bought or tried to buy the photos – and for that matter the readers of those newspapers who are presumed to have an appetite for such things? Are the standards of human decency not applicable here? Or is Michelle just being precious?
Is it okay for newspapers to try and cater for voyeurs, but not okay for citizens – or MPs at any rate – to cater to them?
I am not sure of any easy answers here. The man’s threats are certainly news. So too the reasons for his serial protests – his quest for a visa for his aged parents. I don’t know the background, but why is it that the immigration problems of a nice German doctor in Victoria make news, and yet this is the first I have heard of this man and his problems?
the man, Marat Aminov, has protested before by jumping on to the floor of parliament, among other things. HIs parents have staged a hunger strike on the lawns of Parliament House. I still don’t know the rights and wrongs of their stance, and I would like to. I would like to think the media might pay attention without the need for dramatic photos.
Amid all this, it’s interesting to see the different ways Fairfax – which tried and failed to buy the pictures – and News Limited, which got them, dealt with their reporting duties.
The Herald Sun print edition used the photo big on page 19, with a story that stated Bidgood had supplied the photos in return for a donation to charity, and that a Sydney Morning Herald photographer had offered more “but Mr Bidgood insisted his pictures were only published in the Daily Telegraph.” (and, apparently, the Herald Sun, and online, and and…), as though this was a matter of journalistic pride.
Is it really something to boast of, that an MP in disgrace for his callous behaviour chose you, and only you?
And now online, the photo is still being used, but Daily Telegraph editor Garry Linnell is quoted as saying that there was no question of sale for Bidgood’s profit. It was always going to be charity “I said instantly, ‘Yes, let’s do it’.”
Interestingly News Limited stable mate the Australian print edition story this morning contradicts Linnell. The Oz chose not to use the pics, and ran a story leading on the trouble Bidgood was in, and quoting his exchange with photographers, which states Bidgood sought cash, but the photographers refused to pay until Bidgood made clear that the money was going to charity.
“He agreed to provide the photographs to News Ltd but is understood to have refused to provide them to Fairfax,” says the Oz
And Fairfax? The Age reports the story on the front page, leading on the fact that Rudd has “blasted” Bidgood over the affair, and claiming that when The Age approached him to buy the photos, he “said he had already done a deal with News”.
So apparently the charity deal included exclusive rights.
The photos are certainly dramatic, the story is news, and its naive to expect the tabloids not to go after the pics.
But the media outlets that sought the pics are certainly not now in a position to go tut-tutting about Bidgood’s behaviour.
And what about some reporting of the cause of the protest?
3 Comments
Initially I thought Bidgood was just another tin-eared apparatchik but since the footage of him talking about, and apparently endorsing, “end-times” and related claptrap, I wonder about the shallowness of the ALP (surely not solely?) gene pool. And they talk of higher pay for quality parliamentarians….
This is a different thread and maybe it will lead us somewhere else but I’m fascinated by the responses and occasional lack of response, from politicians to question we, as Crikey writers, put to them…I’ve worked in government – until I saw sense – and know why people don’t provide meaningful answers to the questions we put to them…and right now I have a stack of questions on file that I’ve put to one Minister relevant to a current policy issue and story in today’s email edition that remain unanswered.
Got any thoughts…could we start a ’stupidest reply from a pollies minder’ post…and I’ve got a beauty to start it off – this from the NT Education Minister’s Chief Advisor:
“Mr Gallacher has advised that we will not be providing a response he said,
‘We do not answer questions from bloggers on random electronic gossip sites –
The Minister’s office deals with reputable media outlets.’”
I posted on this pretty quick time as a blogger micro news practitioner along the lines that ‘Bidgood did good’ or similar on my SAM thing, that is to both take the photos and have the Aminov cause (long running in Sydney) get to the front pages by any means.
My broad media monitoring rather than narrow one story focus told me loudly that PM’s office was both deperate not to give oxygen to any fraught/immigration issue (given other attacks by the Opposition on boat people arising – Sharman Stone MP etc) and secondly to stay onside with the Big Media (Rudd is infamous for cosying up to Fairfax whether their picture archive story lately, or official opening of Pyrmont digs).
After all Bidgood, when you look past the real politik incompetence, was doing community media like the rest of us online actually. The ‘end times’ video leaked against him though clearly goosey was pure malice and a real jab in the solar plexis to shut up and do what he’s told or get worse from ‘the machine’. The irony is that goosey Old Testament literalism will play will to the Nat/One Nation cohort the ALP do fish for in North Qld. So it’s actually a vote winner amongst the Sarah Pallin types.
The ‘wise’ chorus of hecklers completely bought the Fairfax front page gambit seeking to humiliate a pollie who dared to go with a rival media outlet AND compete on a spot commercial basis. Bidgood was doing community media in the precincts of the revolving door closed shop of Big Party/Big Media, through innocence and naivety. I for one was pretty glad he did.
True he ought not moonlight. True he ought to have circulated the photo equally to all outlets. But the idea he was ‘exploiting suffering’ was pure ALP stock standard emotional violence. I confronted and comprehensively beat the ALP at this kind of personal beat up game as a successful local councillor for 4 years at Waverley Council/Bondi prefacing 3 new elected reps for the Green Party in 1999. I know the milieu and the currency of that political paradigm. I’m not in any political party 7 years now but the lessons are all valid.
The capacity of the Big Media and the Big ALP to mind f*ck good moral and policy analysis is a real big worry, including arguably esteemed commenting folks on this string (God bless ya-all). Especially Alan Kessing. Yes Bidgood was tin eared about where his boss was coming from. But he is also a social sciences graduate apparently. No wonder he was intrinsically interested in recording a serious and important political action with the police doing all the security. My God how did the Fairfax and SBS/ABC get away with spinning their revenge on News Ltd and anyone daring to take that path in their parly domain. Tsk tsk.
They can be as corporate as the corporates in their own self interested way.