Further Preparations For A Life Of Crime: Annotated Bibliography Assignment - JOUR1111

ABC News. (2009, November 18). Xenophon attacks Church of Scientology. ABC News. Retrieved from: http://abc.net.au/news/2009-11-17/xenophon-attacks-church-of-scientology/1146154

This article, found online at abc.net.au had no author listed, however the veracity of the source should not be questioned as ABC News have a well established reputation for journalistic integrity, certainly as compared to some of the other sources listed below.

The article regards a statement made by independent South Australian senator, Nick Xenophon, decrying the tax-exempt status of the Church of Scientology in Australia in light of alleged revelations of abusive practices and criminal activities. In the statement, Mr Xenophon created some controversy by referring to the already much-maligned Church of Scientology as a “criminal organisation”.

The article is noteworthy as not focusing on that particular phrase and instead focusing more broadly on Mr Xenophon’s calls for a parliamentary enquiry into the Church’s tax-exempt status as a registered religious group. The author takes a decidedly unsensational approach, instead reporting on the parliamentary proceedings rather than the potential for controversy.

Cole, P. and Harcup, T. (2010). Newspaper Journalism. (pp.114 – 116). London: Sage

This source is an academic text written by highly regarded members of the University of Sheffield Department of Journalism Studies. Peter Cole is the Director of Journalism for the University of Sheffield and Tony Harcup has been a senior lecturer at the university since 2005. Both are members of various journalism and press associations and have extensive experience in the field of news values and education.

The text discusses the relationship between politics, politicians and the press, citing the example of British minister Tony Blair, in the lead up to his leaving the office of Prime Minister, speaking about the changing face of journalism as business and the effect on sensationalist “impact-driven” (p.114) political journalism. The author states that there is now “as much interpretation of what a politician was saying as coverage of them actually saying it” (p.114), the implication being that interpretation and, potentially, misinterpretation are significant factors in modern news media, and may in fact cloud the perception of the actual message. Mr Blair is quoted as describing the political press as “like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits” (p.114). The text also offers excerpts of responses from a number of major British news outlets, including a quote from The Express responding to Mr Blair’s comments, saying: “in the animal kingdom, the opposite of feral is tame” (p.115).

Nadin, M. (2012, May 3). Senator caught in Muslim slur row. The Australian, p. 5

This article, published in The Australian this year, follows the story from a slightly different angle, with some new developments which serve as an example of the effects of compromising journalistic integrity for the sake of sensation.

The article reports on a Malaysian news outlet, New Straits Times – reportedly Malaysia’s oldest English-language newspaper – , falsely reporting Nick Xenophon’s statements about the alleged criminality of the Church of Scientology as being directed at the religion of Islam, which is extremely prominent in Malaysia. The article published in the New Straits Times quotes Mr Xenophon’s statements from 2009 but simply replaces the word “Scientology” with the word “Islam”.

The sensationalism of this story works on a number of levels; not simply the Malaysian newspaper’s deliberate misquoting to create controversy, but the way in which this article has been constructed to give the minimum of background information, neglecting to make any mention of Mr Xenophon’s call for a parliamentary enquiry into the Church of Scientology, the original intended purpose of the statements to parliament.

There has also been some small effort to create sensation in the initial promotion of this article. The front-page headline leading to this article reads,

“Muslim Slur: Malaysian newspaper verbals Xenophon”.

This is interesting wording for the article as the word “verbal” used as a verb in that context is widely understood in this country to be a prefix for phrases like “verbal abuse” or “verbal attack”, which gives the article a home-spun vernacular to describe an aggressive action, adding to the subtle sensationalism.

All of this fails to successfully report on the facts of the original story, instead focusing on impact-based reporting providing maximum controversy with minimum fuss and only the barest need to provide background information to put the story in its proper context.

Wright, A. (2009, Novermber 18). Senator Nick Xenophon brands Scientology a ‘criminal organisation’. Herald Sun. Retrieved from: http://heraldsun.com.au/news/senator-nick-xenophon-brands-scientology-a-criminal-organisationl/story-e6frf7jo-1225799028615

This article, published the same day as the ABC News article above, covers the same story about Nick Xenophon’s statements in parliament regarding the Church of Scientology, although in a slightly different and possibly more inflammatory manner.

The author, Anne Wright, is a member of the Australian Associated Press and still writes for the Herald Sun newspaper with an apparent focus on Australian politics.

The story leads in with mention of Mr Xenophon’s statement about the Church of Scientology being a “criminal organisation” and focuses on Mr Xenophon’s statements about the inherent criminality of the church, with only passing mentions of his concerns regarding their tax-exempt status, which was the purpose of his statements to parliament. The matter of tax-status is almost completely ignored when the author selects quotes from a statement released by the Church of Scientology in response to Mr Xenophon’s speech, stoking the fire of controversy by including a quote describing Mr Xenophon’s statements as “fascistic”.

It seems that the original purpose of Mr Xenophon’s statement to parliament has been lost amongst the discussion about the language used, and the idea espoused in Newspaper Journalism (Cole, P & Harcup, T., 2010) that the drive to create sensation can compromise the faculty to report the news accurately as selective editorialising makes it more valuable to talk, in this instance, about the potentially inflammatory language of the statements rather than the central news story, which would ultimately impact more people but doesn’t feature as many controversy-keywords for pre-distilled conflict.

Karl Anderson (s4288383)