Snappy Headline

“Chair-sniffer becomes state treasurer” bellows the headline in News Ltd’s online service News.com.au. Now, there’s nothing factually wrong with that statement, it just seems that to distill Troy Buswell’s entire life and/or political experience into a stupid scandal panders to the lowest and most trivial readers. Let’s face it, it really was pretty dumb to go and sniff a chair. That said, imagine having to stand in front of news cameras and apologise to the whole nation (there was no way that little gem was going to be contained to the Western Australian audience), with your wife by your side for behaviour like that. There would certainly have been a temptation to run out of the press conference with a jumper over your head and spend the rest of your living days working as an insurance salesman in Uzbekistan.

I think Troy Buswell got the raw end of the deal though when it comes to perpetual character tarnish for scandalous or just plain dumb behaviour. I seem to recall a day in November last year when every paper in the country ran banner headlines the proclaimed “Ear-wax eater wins election!” No? Let’s check what News Ltd said, “Kevin Rudd to be Australia's next PM”. OK, how about Fairfax? They’re usually good for a nasty little barb. “Rudd romps to historic win”. Nope. Not there either.

The journalistic profession in this country is sliding. The ABC fought a vicious rear-guard action during the Howard years to maintain their ideological bias, and now that they are free from the evil hand of their former conservative masters, they can indulge in their indoctrination of Australian audiences. The commercial media are little better. At the time of posting, the headline on News.com.au was a story about the weight problems of American actresses. Fairfax are much the same, only they are openly transparent when it comes to their political allegiances.

The chair-sniffer headline is symptomatic of the decline of Australian journalism to the standards better known in the Fleet St gutter press.

It is really little wonder that more people are turning to the internet and blogs for their news.