Because Wednesday is a long day

While mgk defends the Telegraph’s decision to publish new allegations of sexual misconduct, I’d have to disagree. I’ve read the articles (both online and offline) and they smack of sensationalism. It’s one thing for the media to publish events, all…

I’d say the tele went too far here. From what I’ve heard, the allegations of sexual misconduct are denied by all involved parties who’ve commented. To front-page it like that is making an unjustified assumption and it caused serious damage to a person. Yes, he’s an MP, he may even be a bastard – but he still deserves the respect all people deserve and that means cooling off when people are starting to hurt. Hurting is different to a bit of shame or embarrassment.

In the tele’s defence though, no way they could’ve known the effect it had.

mjec, there’s one full corroboration in the public domain that I know of in Angela Cumin’s (Sun-Herald) statement. Justine Ferrari doesn’t appear to have published her direct experience anywhere that I can find. On the 29 August release of information about the events after the AHA winter drinks event at the Marble Bar, at least two women came forward indicating that Brogden had propositioned them at a Christmas party in 2003. Brogden himself corroborated the Cuming & Ferrari statements. That’s plenty to indicate that the allegations are true, wouldn’t you say?

The problem with character issues like these is that you could not expect Brogden to take appropriate stands in womens issues nor in legislative efforts regarding workplace harassment. Hypocrisy does not go down well with the public.

Indeed, how could the editor of the Tele have known that Brogden would get shitfaced and cut himself up? To his credit, the editor of the tele simply was not aware that Brogden had been taken to hospital when he committed his ‘sordid past’ front page for today’s 1st edition. The 2nd edition pulled the ‘sordid past’ lead story.

A free press exists to keep government accountable to the people. Character and ethics issues are relevant for reportage regarding politicians. If Brogden had resigned as an MP as well as from the party leadership, I’d have said that the Tele was over the top and was badgering. However, Brogden remains the Member for Pittwater and is thus fair game.

I only very rarely go to bat for anything Murdoch, but the Tele editor got this one right on all counts.

John Brogden

I believe the trouble isn’t so much getting the judgement wrong on whether something should be reported – there will never be a cut and dried answer about where the line is – it’s that people seem incapable of keeping things in pers…

Media Watch ran this story questioning the accuracy of the Telegraph’s story. So while I do agree that the media should publish what they consider to be accurate and relevant stories, they also have a responsibility to get the story straight before coming up with an eye-catching headline.

Kat, I saw MW on Monday as well. I agree with you that the Tele is owed a serve for their inaccuracy. If they had only stuck to what was corroboratable, they still would have had a story and a headline. As it is, the Tele earns its old nickname here on MGK as the ‘Daily Telegooph.’

[…] Tara’s Mum writes from her perspective as someone who knows Brogden through her previous work on the Manly Daily, a local paper which covers his electorate. Andrew Landeryou has some interesting reflections, while Dani is fairly forgiving, and MachineGunKeyboard is rather less so. Larvatus Prodeo has a very short posting, but a long and intermittently interesting comment thread. Many other commentaries make their varying feelings clear enough with short statements, such as WSA Caucus, The Naked Flame, Crystal Storm, The Pen, Is the media to blame?, The CEBK, Just a Few Things, Plu Runs. […]