The Unprofessionalism of Australia's "Broadsheet" Media

As an initial point, I am using "broadsheet" in the sense of media that aim to report news objectively and accurately, as opposed to "tabloid", which is cheap, sensationalist rubbish that no-one particularly expects to fair or reasonable.

Throughout the recent nightmare - and no matter that it led to success, the experience of it was a nightmare - that was Australia's postal survey on whether same sex attracted people would be validated by being allowed Equal (access to the social and legal institutions of) Marriage (generally dumbed down by the media to "same sex marriage") or whether LGBT people would continue to be perceived as valid targets for abuse (and that IS what it was about, when one lives with the consequences), Australia's mainstream media - broadsheet and tabloid - reduced the issue down to this:

• in one corner, people trying to protect religious freedom; 
• in the other corner, people wanting "radical" change.

This made the situation seem like a straightforward (pun intended), black-and-white contest between two opposed "principles" - something that was dramatic, and thus would get lots of clicks - aka "sell papers", to use the old terminology.

It was also fundamentally and utterly wrong.

Quite a few years ago now, I helped organise an LGBTIQ Spirituality conference in Victoria, which followed an earlier National conference in Adelaide. There are LGBTIQ people with strong religious - and, more broadly, spiritual - views and opinions.

This means there are LGBTIQ people in the group that is supposedly - according to media portrayals - all anti-Equal Marriage.

Furthermore, and even more fundamental to this issue, THERE ARE RELIGIONS THAT EITHER ACTIVELY SUPPORT OR ARE NOT ANTI- EQUAL MARRIAGE.

This means that the fundamental presentation of the situation as religion vs. LGBTIQ people is WRONG.

The TRUTH is that the noisy corner portraying itself as acting on the cause of religious freedom is a small, noisy group that is actively hindering the freedom of those religions which are supportive of Equal Marriage - i.e., the situation is not as black and white as portrayed by the media.

The implications of this are major. People who rely on the media for information were, in effect, misled - and the argument that the media was simply reporting is nonsensical, as the media also boats of doing investigations, getting to the truth, challenging those who misrepresent the truth or obfuscate, etc on other issues (especially other political issues), so why haven't they done that here? In my view, the "no" campaign clawed back about 10% of the vote -with the active collusion of the media, tabloid and broadsheet. Are the media as bigotted as this suggests?

Some of the media's behaviour has been extremely concerning. I lodged a complaint with one media outlet about this issue, received an acknowledgement, and have heard nothing since. An Anglican priest rang in to talkback radio to present this, and was shut down - treated with disdain.

Australia's so-called "responsible" media outlets have a lot to answer for over the last few months. In my opinion, they have shown a professional ineptness that,as with taxi-drivers' poor service contributing to Uber, and checkout workers rudeness contributing to automation, harms their chances of countering new forms of "reporting".