Thursday, September 10, 2009

Journos - Can't Live With Em, Can't Live Without Em

I was walking past the TV earlier this evening and heard a journalist reporting a story about a refugee from Sierra Leone, he was all of 18 years old and his parents had been murdered. It was a sad story but the part that struck me was the journalist's reportage of the boy's life in Sierra Leone. I found it a little insensitive. Admittedly she was trying to do a piece on refugees in Australia and how much better their lives are now but she seemed to tear apart every single detail of that boy's pre-refugee existence. Even the stuff that might have actually been okay. She almost mocked the school he went to, calling it tiny and alluding to its resemblance to a stack of fibro boxes. I am sure that his life here in Australia is more comfortable but that boys friends studied with him in those fibro boxes and I bet he has some happy memories from his past there too. I didn't stick around for the rest of the documentary but I hope that journalist redeemed herself before the end of it.

No comments: