Don’t You Love It When A Newspaper Starts The Day With A Nice Bit Of Race-Baiting?
"You guys don't like brown people, right?"
In news to raise your hopes for the world even higher than they’ve been recently, some genius subeditor at smh.com.au was obviously having a pretty quiet day this morning, so they decided to jazz things up with this little number:
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“Hey! Those brown people you don’t like are starting to act like those other brown people you don’t like! You should be scared! Click here! Click here! Booga booga booga!”
The article itself, by SMH crime reporter Rachel Olding, is far less inflammatory; it details how under-resourced Islamic chaplaincy services in NSW prisons means that prisoners who convert while inside often misinterpret the religion they’re trying to learn about.
It includes interviews with Sheikh Omar Hammouche, “who has worked with inmates and prison chaplains”, and secretary of the Australian national Imams Council Sheikh Shady Alsuleiman, both of whom are probably going to get a rude shock when it comes to their attention that they’re being quoted in an article with a headline more at home in a Rise Up Australia Party booklet.
Australia, Australia. This is you. pic.twitter.com/UC3ebnDJ1c
— Brendan Maclean (@macleanbrendan) July 23, 2014
No words… pic.twitter.com/P9UPgtNY44
— Bernard Keane (@BernardKeane) July 23, 2014
“Are Aboriginal inma….” *Ketan instantaneously leaves Australia forever*
— Ketan Joshi (@KetanJ0) July 23, 2014
It’s not the first time in recent weeks that Fairfax has been caught out leading with a blatantly race-baity headline to harvest clicks. It’s often followed up by a more reasoned response to reap all the clicks from people who were outraged at the first piece.
It’s a trick used so often Junkee writer Justin Pen even came up with a name for it — the “outrage/sorry! industrial complex” — and warned that “news outlets shouldn’t distribute ignorance for the sake of a few rage-fuelled clicks”. Seems not everyone got the message.
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Feature image via Wikipedia.