It was a terrible day. A day when we “lost our innocence” (according to one talkback host), a day when the sovereign status of our friend was invaded, a day of terror, etc, etc. The date on this momentous day – April 16th 2013 – the day the bombs went off at the finish line at the Boston marathon. It led me to ring and email the radio host to say to them “yes, I agree that it was an appalling day and yes it was horrible. But it was horrible because at the same time as the three Bostonians lost their lives, 56 Iraqis died and 200 were injured by bombs in the Iraqi capital. And 23 Afghans had also died that night, killed by bombs.”

Our local newspaper devoted around 8 pages to the terror associated with the Boston bombing and nothing to the Iraqi and Afghan situations. This raised the question in my mind as to the true worth of a human life. Were the three Boston deaths more significant than the 56 Iraqis? Why?

One journalist that I raised the issue with said that the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq were different as those bombings occurred in a war zone whilst Boston was not in a war zone. I pointed out to him that a large number of the Iraqis were killed by a bomb blast at the market when they went to buy their perishable goods. That was clearly not a war zone.

In looking at the issues that were involved herein I went back to the 2004 tsunami that devastated parts of Asia. The “honour” table of casualties in some of the countries in the region reads as follows:

Country & Number of casualties

Indian – 10749

Indonesia – 220000

Malaysia – 74

Maldives – 108

Somalia – 312

Sri Lanka – 35322

 Thailand – 16669

Australia – 26

Yet anyone reading the papers or watching coverage in Australia at the time would have sworn that we were the only nation that experienced a loss of life. The coverage in respect of the loss experienced by other nations was minimal at most.

When we think in terms of the reporting around the Bali bombing, most of us are aware that 88 Australians died there in 2002. Little is said of the 114 others who also died there.

Let me emphasise that I am not diminishing the deaths that have occurred in Boston or Bali or anywhere else. My heart goes out to all of the families and friends of those people. However, the reporting and the outpouring of grief has been very narrowly directed. It appears that unless the deaths are of people who are like ourselves it is of little or no interest to us. What does this say about our humanity? Is our humanity dependent on what the human looks like?

In a previous article in The Stringer, I asked the question as to whether Australia was a racist country. In recent months there has been much to keep leading me back to the conclusion that there are elements in Australia that are racist. And based on the approach taken by the media in this country it would seem that this element is often fuelled by the way things are reported.

As indicated above there is much that has occurred recently that does cause me concern. We have seen incidents on public transport systems in WA, NSW and Victoria. We have seen the abuse of a prominent ABC personality in public. And we have seen the comments of the deplorable Alan Jones of Sydney Radio infamy when asked about the Boston marathon bombings had this to say “I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a conspiracy amongst students, left-wing radical students in Boston, and I think we have to think also very seriously here about our own student numbers”. Ah, Mr Jones, when did the reds come out from under the beds? What is frightening is that unthinking people such as Jones are the higher rating radio hosts in their markets.

So how do we influence the media to change their reporting of these incidents? The obvious way would be to not buy the particular media offering provided. In some markets such as the newspaper market in WA this is problematic given that we have the dominance by one newspaper of the market. The online access to newspapers worldwide has been a huge blessing. It has removed the need for us to be dependent on the parochial news and current affairs coverage that we have in Australia.

Another way which may be effective is to undertake a letter writing campaign. I am a firm believer in the power of the written word. Writing letters to the editors of newspapers is very effective. Often letters that I write to the editor of the local newspaper elicit the most vehement outpouring of invective against me. The interesting thing to discern from the letters is that they are written by the same people from issue to issue. Further they also respond to my letters without having read or understood the meaning of my arguments. They trot out the stock standard phrases and arguments and rarely if ever address the substantive issues.

The important thing to remember is that we are the consumer. If there is something about the media that we don’t like then we should have the capacity to change it either with the power of purchase or veto. But it is not something we need to put up with. We can make a difference and it is incumbent on us to do so.