"Completely Disgusting & Disrespectful Of The Murdered": Leftist Reverse Racism Down Under

Well, here I am, safely back in Australia, but so much the worse for jet lag and not yet being settled with personal internet access that I can do little more than note the fury that greeted the remarks of an ABC presenter called Virginia Trioli regarding the recent atrocities in Boston, prompting numerous complaints from outraged viewers.

Trioli, whose employer, the ABC, is Australia's answer to the BBC and just as leftist in mentality, has since cast herself as a victim, blogging:

'On the morning of the Boston bombings, after almost four hours of rolling coverage on ABC News Breakfast, many viewers were becoming increasingly agitated that a series of bombings overnight in Iraq, in which 50 died and more than 200 were injured, had not received anywhere near the attention of the American attack. It was a perfectly valid point – an obvious one, even. It’s a dilemma we always confront when attacks in the West inevitably get more coverage than those elsewhere.

After reading all the critical emails, I could see their point and I said,“That’s the contrast that we always have on a day like today when it seems to many we’re overly focusing on what happens to rich, white people in the West versus what happens on a daily basis in those countries”. [Emphasis added]

As a result of quoting our audience disquiet, the online world exploded in rage. I’ve been accused of racism; racial profiling; absolving the bomber/s; failing to care about dead children; and being a danger to the country. I am apparently a “fascist, socialist pig” (both!).

I’ve also been abused in the most disgusting and personal terms, but that just goes with the territory these days.

Those shouting me down failed to see that Australia now consists of many who come originally from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and elsewhere and they will be as desperately interested in news from there as some of us might be for news from England. The country has changed – our reporting needs to reflect that....'

Perhaps it does, but that is no justification for the reverse racism involved in her characterisation of the Boston victims.

Nor her assumption that because they are "white" they are "rich".

(How, indeed, could Ms Trioli presume know the ethnicity of every one of the dead and injured apart from her own stereotypes of what a Bostonian looks like?)

A friend of mine who saw Ms Trioli's broadcast registered (in an email aptly headed "Utter Leftwing Rubbish") his disapproval of the totally unnecessary, outrageously partisan, classist, white self-flagellating  manner in which the presenter framed her on-air remarks:

'Female co-host just said about the Boston bombing that they don't want to focus too much on it because it only affects "rich white people," as opposed to bombs in Iraq.

If she said that about a bomb attack in an African-American area and said "rich black people" she would be sacked.

This also ignores the fact the Boston Marathon is an international event in a multi-racial city and that Iraqis are also Caucasians. It also ignores, in typically culturally-relativist, manner Australia's greater links to the USA.

Completely disgusting and disrespectful of the murdered.'

Yesterday he sent me the reply he'd just received from the ABC, signed by a functionary called Adam Doyle:

'Your concerns have been noted and Virginia Trioli addressed the points you raised during News Breakfast on the morning of  April 17, explaining her view on the media coverage of events in first world countries and how that compares to the media's coverage of events in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq.  Ms Trioli addressed concerns that she had been insensitive - saying that was not her intention,  and she didn't want to offend anyone.

The matter was also referred to ABC News Management. We are satisfied that there was no malice in the comment.'

 To which my friend emailed this response:

"I don't accept her apology. I think she meant it and I think you have double standards and if she said it about an African country she'd be reprimanded."

Yep, too right, mate.