A few days ago Theresa and I were scanning the newspapers, it was the day after a horrific crash between a semi trailer and a train took place somewhere in Ararat, to the west of Melbourne in country Victoria. Two persons died and almost 40 were seriously injured.
Yet, the newspaper we were reading had, as its front page headline, the story about the soldier who died in Iraq. Private Kovco was shot under mysterious circumstances and died in his own room. Then the return of his cortege to Melbourne was bungled – he got stuck in Kuwait while some other person’s body was shipped to Melbourne. On Saturday his body finally made it to Melbourne and that was the front page headline story. Not that of the horrific crash.
Neither of us are journalists so we cant fairly comment but we both felt it was strange the story about the crash was not thought of as a better story than that of the late Private Kovco. No disrespect to that soldier, but the story of his death was already several days old. The only reason it had continued media interest was the bungling of the return of his body, and of course, how he actually died.
I don’t know if this cast any light on the Australian psyche, and as we were not media persons, we didn’t bother what the other papers carried as front page stories that morning. We had The Age and the Herald Sun is, I think, a more popular and better read paper.
Ante 