Picture this, Reader. It's 1972. People are trudging around in flares and platform boots, and listening to the fabulousness that is glam rock. In Washington, two young journalists in the employ of The Washington Post are having secretive meetings in underground car parks with a whistle-blower, and as a result of their labour and research, what becomes known as The Watergate Scandal is unleashed, leading to the resignation of then-US President Richard Nixon.
Those young journalists, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, set the bar for the type of investigative journalism that reveals to the public the rancid and foetid behind-the-scenes corruption practised by those in power.
Picture this, Reader, and shed a tear of despair as you do so. It's 2018. People are getting around in all sorts of things, but listening to the predictable bitter I-Hate-You melodious misery that is Taylor Swift. In Australia, A Current Affair sends a crew to harass a bloke on holiday in PNG. Woodward and Bernstein set the bar; Channel 9 and A Current Affair crawled on their miserable bellies underneath it, and in doing so they bumped the supporting poles thus causing the bar to wobble and come crashing to the ground, whereupon they set fire to it. There is now no bar to which journalists and reporters can aspire, and nowadays any rank, malodorous pile of garbage is passed off as an important story.
I don't watch A Current Affair. I would sooner watch the feral bogans who used to live behind me (the she-bogan was a scrawny, foul-mouthed shrew, and the he-bogan a home-inked, beer-butted freak with a skinny plait that went all the way to the arse crack exposed by his low-riding shorts) HAVING SEX than watch A Current Affair. But the other night I was holidaying with a relative, and it happened to be on the television. Their all-important, earth-shattering, bowel-loosening scoop focused on Nick Cummins (aka the Honey Badger), the contestant on The Bachelor who didn't choose either of the two finalists, staying in a hotel in PNG.
'We've tracked him down!' was the gleeful voiceover. Um, pardon my French, but why the fuck would you guys do this? They were going to grill him on the 'mess he left behind'. Again I will offer a perfunctory apology, but who the fuck cares if he didn't like either of the girls enough to commit? 'What have you got to say to the girls?' was the reporter's demand. Seriously, mate, fuck off already!
To use a hackneyed phrase: this really is a new low. I should not need to spell this out to you clowns at Channel 9, but it looks like I have to. Firstly, Nick Cummins has broken no laws. Secondly, people who invest too much of their emotional energy into a 'reality' television show with a shallow premise should have a word with themselves. Thirdly, most people don't really give too much of a fart in a wind tunnel about neither woman being chosen. Fourthly, reality television sucks. Fifthly, ambushing someone relaxing in their own time for no good reason, armed with television cameras and asinine questions, just totally sucks the dried dags away from a smelly old sheep's arse.
Your story was offensive. It was objectionable. It was coarse and truly pointless. Just a heads up to the crew and reporter Reid Butler: this is not the stuff of Walkley awards.
Haranguing some bloke who's done no wrong, going about his lawful business - surely this is not what aspiring reporters dream of doing? Why not report on the reason Cummins travelled to PNG: a charity walk along the Kokoda Track? Oh no, let's not report someone's altruistic work; it would be more our style to manufacture outrage over some perceived scandal in a dipshit reality show screened on another network.
SEGUE ALERT: the atrocious and noisome behaviour of tabloid journalists forms a subplot in my first ever novel, Calumny While Reading Irvine Welsh. There's a link to the first chapter of the novel in the bio section of my blog page. Check it out, and 'check it out' in the trolley icon! Heh-heh.
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