{"id":3624,"date":"2007-09-22T22:17:06","date_gmt":"2007-09-22T22:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2007\/09\/are-you-sick-of-emotional-wallpaper-complain\/"},"modified":"2011-02-05T07:47:04","modified_gmt":"2011-02-05T07:47:04","slug":"are-you-sick-of-emotional-wallpaper-complain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2007\/09\/are-you-sick-of-emotional-wallpaper-complain\/","title":{"rendered":"Are you sick of emotional wallpaper? Complain!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>All honour to <b>Frances Killaly<\/b> who <a href=\"http:\/\/www.presscouncil.org.au\/pcsite\/adj\/1369.html\">made a complaint<\/a> to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.presscouncil.org.au\/\">Australian Press Council<\/a> about the use of pictures of random Aboriginal children in the <em>Canberra Times<\/em> and the <em>Sydney Morning Herald<\/em> to illustrate stories about abuse of children in Indigenous Australian communities. (The story was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theaustralian.news.com.au\/story\/0,25197,22461028-5013172,00.html\">reported<\/a> in the rival <em>The Australian<\/em>).<br \/>\nDishonour to all the newspapers, (including <em>The Australian<\/em>) which continue to illustrate stories (mostly negative) with pictures of random  Aboriginal kids as &#8217;emotional wallpaper&#8217; (evoking the <a href=\"http:\/\/homepage.mac.com\/will_owen\/iblog\/2007\/8\/30\/index.html\">&#8216;gag-me-with-a-spoon&#8217; <\/a> reaction that Will Owen had to the <em>Australian<\/em>&#8216;s  doggerel ad).<br \/>\nAnd absolutely totally completely all dishonour to their self-regulatory body, the  Australian Press Council which found there was no case.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Adjudication No. 1369 (adjudicated September 2007)<br \/>\n&#8220;In dismissing complaints over the use of pictures of Aboriginal children in reports on the Prime Minister&#8217;s plan to address matters of child abuse in Northern territory communities, the Australian Press Council reaffirms that newspapers and magazines have a duty to inform the public of important issues and have the right to illustrate these issues with photographs. However, they need to take special care when those images deal with children in circumstances where a false inference can be drawn&#8230;..While acknowledging Ms Killaly&#8217;s genuine concerns the Council does not believe the publication of the pictures indicated the children had been abused.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So what if the photographs aren&#8217;t of children who have anything to do with the problem? In a story about sex abuse??????<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nHey! How about illustrating a story on the hidden sexual abuse\/obesity epidemic\/drug-taking in wealthy suburbs of Sydney with cute pictures of white kids playing on green lawns, say&#8230; identifiable pix of Rupert Murdoch&#8217;s kids, or of kids linked to editors of <em>The Australian<\/em>, or to Jack Herman of the Australian Press Council?<br \/>\nThe newspapers claim the parents gave consent for the pictures. I wonder if they can document this? I wonder if  the parents really knew the implications of giving consent &#8211; was it informed consent? No way would Rupert or Jack Herman, or the journos give consent for pictures of their kids to be used in such stories.  They know too much about what pictures and text side-by-side can do.<br \/>\nWanna complain?   &#8230;    complaints@presscouncil.org.au<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All honour to Frances Killaly who made a complaint to the Australian Press Council about the use of pictures of random Aboriginal children in the Canberra Times and the Sydney Morning Herald to illustrate stories about abuse of children in Indigenous Australian communities. (The story was reported in the rival The Australian). Dishonour to all &#8230; <a title=\"Are you sick of emotional wallpaper? Complain!\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2007\/09\/are-you-sick-of-emotional-wallpaper-complain\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Are you sick of emotional wallpaper? Complain!\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-indigenous-australia-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3624"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4320,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624\/revisions\/4320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}