- May 1, 2016
- 28,831
- 56,198
- AFL Club
- Carlton
- Moderator
- #7,676
I have a great deal of respect for Caroline Wilson, for all she has achieved. I have next to negligible respect for the industry she inhabits, and the subject matter she chooses.
Journalism is such a negative business these days; car accident in Mildura, house fire next to a double shooting in Cragieburn, next to politicians behaving badly in Melbourne or Canberra. When you think about it, sport's meant to distract you, to take your mind off the problems you face in your own life. I used to love reading Peter Roebuck's articles in the Age about cricket; it captured my awe of the events on the pitch, and expressed the match and its ebbs with a connoisseur's touch.
When Caroline Wilson writes, I get no sense of love for the game, or enjoyment of the subject matter, because she doesn't talk about the game so much as she picks at something on the periphery; gambling, lack of female representation at a club, corrupt practices, drugs in sport (both the performance enhancing and the mind blowing). She performs a function that, when there's genuinely something to pick at - Whitfield hiding from drug testers, Essendon's drugs fiasco - is tremendously valuable; she doesn't hold back, she doesn't give a s**t who she offends, and she will go as far as she can to hold those she considers guilty to account.
However.
She never talks about the things she sees that are done well, or are progressive, or that are good as they are. She's obsessed, as are the rest of the media, with bad news stories. She can't scare you with a car accident on King's Way or a double shooting in Prahan; she's a footy journalist, so she picks at an easy rumour to make, that of a backroom deal between MLG and Lethlan, to undermine Trigg. It's designed to sell bad news, which people of course respond to. Carlton supporters respond to criticism like crazy, and Collingwood, Richmond and Essendon supporters love to read it; it confirms that we're still the club they hated, just bereft of success. It makes it so that it doesn't really matter how much we change, the perception/stereotype will hold true; we'll always be that corrupt club beholden to private wealthy members.
Until she - and her industry - are willing to give credit where it's due, until they're honest about the society that we live in, I will always be ready to criticise journalists for their faults. She's pretty good usually with fact checking, but this particular article lives not on the facts it's based upon but the tone she brushes them with.
