Doug PollardPigs worth more than Queers
August 4th 2008 03:22
Neil Mitchell's priority
And took no calls on the issue, preferring nice safe chats with piglovers and pigfarmers about animal welfare and cruelty.
Mitchell interviewed ALSO Chief Executive Lyn Morgain about the ad the gay community placed in the Age at the weekend.
His questioning was fairly hostile.
He tried to imply that despite the mass of organizations that had put their names to the ad, they only represented a small number of people. He wanted to know how many individuals those groups represented.
He also questioned the right of arts groups like the Queer Film Festival and Midsumma to buy into the ad.
He tried to mount an attack on the basis that these groups could be using public money to pay for the ad. He appeared not to understand that grant funding is usually quarantined for specific purposes and so could not be used for political purposes.
Then he insisted that Jeff hadn’t been given enough chance to respond. When did you call Jeff? Friday afternoon? Far too late – the ad would have been booked then.
He brushed aside the information that Richard Watts of MCV (and numerous others, including myself, James Campbell [the Sunday Herald Sun journalist who broke the story] and Neil Mitchell himself) had been unable to get a response, because “they’re journalists, that’s different.”
Lyn fought back, pointing out that Jeff was not a victim, and the community concern was for the young people at risk.
Mitchell wrapped up the interview saying it would have been better to have contacted Jeff first, what Jeff said was “silly and badly worded – not taken out of context, badly worded” – but it would have been fairer to handle it differently and give Jeff a chance to respond.
Well, Jeff had many many chances to withdraw his remarks and apologise in the course of the week, and refused to do so. He’s been asked numerous times to permit the release of the verbatim transcript of the interview to prove he was taken out of context, and he hasn’t, probably because he knows that would show that he has been accurately reported. That leaves James Campbell looking like he really did distort what Kennett said – and I have now spoken to two people to whom Campbell has read what he says is the full transcript, and based on that I would have to say Kennett was fairly and accurately reported.
And finally, Neil Mitchell – making the excuse that he didn’t have the original text in front of him (such sloppy preparation, Neil?) – made no mention of the key fact: that Kennett clearly stated that the risk of having a bisexual in the change rooms was the same as the risk of having a paedophile in the sacristy.
Mitchell merely mumbled something about Kennett having been interpreted as saying that any gay man was predatory and going to force himself on people. That would have been bad enough, but that’s not what Jeff said. Jeff said it was as if you had a paedophile at the club.
Either Mitchell was woefully unprepared, or willfully distorting the facts and thereby belittling the cause of the community anger.
It is also telling that he took no calls on the issue, but went back to taking calls about cruelty (or not) of docking piglets tails and teeth in pigfarming. I guess pigs are worth more than poufs in Mitchelland.
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