Often, it's because a journalist has been killed while carrying out their work and sometimes because of wayward comments by radio announcers as we've recently seen in the United States with Rush Limbaugh and in Australia with Alan Jones.
The past week saw Australian radio station 2DAY FM make unintended headlines worldwide (even in the US) when an unwitting participant in a so-called 'prank call”, a staple piece of radio entertainment, was found dead.
A nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, allegedly committed suicide in the aftermath of her small role in the 2DAY FM media stunt. The reasons for her death remain unknown but her brother claimed she'd “died of shame”. In the complicated world of depression and suicide, let's hope not.
The media also takes a central role in the trial of Bradley Manning, the American soldier charged with what has been described as the most serious security breach in U.S. history. What Manning is alleged to have been involved with was definitely not a radio station prank.
Arrested in 2010, Manning allegedly provided thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables, military logs on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and videos of helicopter attacks to the website Wikileaks. The subsequent publication of the videos and cables provided significant headaches for the U.S. government and questioned the conduct of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Manning recently faced court and made his first comments since incarceration over two years ago, an experience that provided its own challenges, especially for Manning's mental health. Significantly, his lawyer, David Coombs, is a former active duty soldier, now a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve, who has said he has more faith in a the fairness of a court martial than a civilian court. Take that, U.S. justice system.
Manning's disclosures rightly received huge coverage at the time. Wikileaks collaborated with media organisations across the world to publish the material, including The Guardian in the UK., and The New York Times in the US.
Yet, somewhat oddly, The New York Times has pretty much ignored Manning's plight in the wake of his arrest and trial. A so-called 'paper of record', The Times financially benefitted from Manning's disclosure but its subsequent lack of interest in Manning turned a few heads.
Yet one of the great quirks about the Times is its Public Editor, a role that sees the media organisation publicly question its own way of doing things. So it was that Public Editor Margaret Sullivan asked her own employer to explain its lack of interest in what should be one of the biggest stories of the year.
“It was part of a fascinating few days in the history of the Manning story — resonating with implications for free speech, national security and the American military at war — but you wouldn't have known much about it if your only source of information was The New York Times,” she wrote, describing the lack of coverage as “weird”.
A Times editor responded saying the organisation had “already” covered Manning citing two stories. From 19 months ago.
With that kind of answer one thing is certain in this particular media story – there has been no rush to judge.
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