By Peter Boyle
The August 19 "siege" of Parliament House prompted a torrent of hypocrisy from the establishment media.
Television and radio "news" reports and page one stories in the dailies all seemed to be based on the same cliché-ridden, fact-spare script, the essence of which was distilled by Murdoch's August 20 Daily Telegraph into an editorial entitled "Democracy defiled by cowards".
According to this script, some "extremely violent and unquestionably stupid protesters", skilled in "thuggery" and composed of "trade unionists and minority activists", engaged in "un-Australian and undemocratic behaviour".
These "vandals" and "brainless goons" "disgracefully trampled on accepted freedoms of protest and defiled our most important national building" in a "police-bashing, property marauding" rampage.
However, gloated the Telegraph, the "grubby gang of several hundred" only succeeded in giving Prime Minister John Howard "a pre-Budget gift from his most vicious opponents".
The Telegraph editors got so excited that they put a non-existent date, "Wednesday August 19", on their editorial.
The Australian's editorial of August 20 regurgitated the Telegraph's front-page headline in labelling the "Canberra riot" a "disgrace".
But because they carried some photographs of the very large crowd besieging Parliament House, they had to adjust some of the facts a little way towards the truth. (Television news readers don't seem to worry too much about such contradictions.)
"Of an estimated 20,000, 2000 broke away and smashed through the building's doors. About 200 managed to get inside where they ran riot."
The standard script then resumed: "shameful demonstration of violence, looting and vandalism" ... "a thoroughly counter-productive demonstration" ... "morally unacceptable" ... "un-Australian" ... "violence against the principal democratic institution in this country", ad nauseam.
The Australian proclaimed that the demonstration "shows a frightening disrespect for the national symbol of democracy and a disregard for the result of free and fair elections". It's even more frightening when you realise that millions of others share this bad attitude.
As Stuart Littlemore commented in the August 26 episode of ABC TV's Media Watch, the mass media became obsessed with some overblown images: "blood spilled on the marble floor" and a "trashed" souvenir shop which was transformed by the private TV channels into a "privately owned small business run by a poor and shaken Mr Podmore.
Never mind the fact that Podmore is a public servant. Never mind that TV footage of Howard inspecting the "looted" souvenir shop shows that much of its tacky merchandise was left untouched on the display racks.
The mass media were so busy twisting a few small facts that they couldn't find room for the big facts. Here they are:
Total damage at Parliament House: $75,000.
Total injuries: 60 police with bruises, one with fractured ribs. Injuries to protesters, unknown.
Total cuts to social spending by the Howard budget: $7.8 billion over two years, 30,000 public sector jobs.
Total injuries to people caused by Howard budget: Unknown, but millions will be hit, thousands will die earlier through poorer public health, rising unemployment and crime.