News THe Age's Greg Baum defaming Daisy Thomas?

[Boris the Contradiction]

Weird article.

I can see what he is trying to say but he completely misses the mark. He has opened his article with the Thomas/Wilkinson situation to raise the profile of the article and it completely skews his point. The Thomas/Wilkinson situation is barely even relevant to what he is trying to say.

He is not defamatory in any way but I disagree with a few above that it is a "well written article". Using articulate language does not make an article "well written". The article also requires direction and a clear contention which this does not have. He has raised a few recent media stories, all of varying relevance, and he has attempted to piece them together to make points (weakly) about play-acting amongst sportspeople, gamesmanship, social media, players contributing to misconceptions and the capacity of social media to both exaggerate the relevance of a series of events and to add weight to seemingly unimportant issues. He signs off with; "and innocence is not so important as the ability to act it on cue" and I like that quote. The problem is that his article doesn't even deal with the point of that quote until its last line.

The article is wishy washy and poorly written in my opinion but I don't think it is even close to being controversial.

 

[76woodenspooners]

... I don't think it is even close to being controversial.

Oh, it's definitely controversial.

In a week when Daisy was lauded for being an ambassador for the anti-racial abuse league, some see that Baum is suggesting that Daisy deliberately set his man up for it.

Maybe Daisy was setting his man up for something, but It doesn't mean that he intended it to be racial abuse.

 

[ipswichpies]

After reading his article for a "2nd" time I still don,t understand the purpose or premise of his article
it reads like a piece of superfluous fluff.I still think he is having subtle dig at Thomas and For what reason I don,t know because he does nothing to explain it,I am a Pies fan and I am happy to have both good and bad written about us when it is deserved.That piece of rubbish did not deserved to be published and the writer is either a person with a private grudge or has PMT and I don,t know which because that piece explains nothing.

One of the purposes of journalism is to create a debate but surely we need something worthy of debating and that article is not it.

 

[jathanas]

It's a nicely worded article consisting of self indulgent ramblings sorely lacking clarity and direction. Baum has done better work in the past.

 

[Boris the Contradiction]

In a week when Daisy was lauded for being an ambassador for the anti-racial abuse league, some see that Baum is suggesting that Daisy deliberately set his man up for it.

Some might see that, but he hasn't said that.

Maybe Daisy was setting his man up for something, but It doesn't mean that he intended it to be racial abuse.

Daisy did set him up for something, clearly. He didn't set him up for racial abuse of course.

The article doesn't only deal with racial abuse though. In fact, the only thing that is clear about this article is that it doesn't deal with any one thing in particular.

 

[Markfs]

I'll play Devils Advocate here a little bit, and just say I know where the writer is going with the comment in question.

Did Thomas drag Wilkinson back to the cheer squad because he knew it would rattle the kid? Probably. But there's no way Daisy could have expected one member to racially abuse the kid, so that's where I do disagree with the comment, but I do get why he has raised it as part of a review of the incident.

That's how I see it... and then Baum went on to say that sportspeople like Daisy may have pretended shock and horror when the incident eventuated....so he may have "stage-managed" the incident but was smart enough to be politically correct when it eventuated.

On the rest of the article, Baum might be right. I think a large percentage of people in public life have learnt to say and do the right things for their career. If there is legislation that stops people from saying certain things, it can't stop these people for thinking them. However, there was nothing to indicate that Thomas wanted the crowd to racially abuse his opponent, or even that he "thought" that might happen. This kind of second-guessing of people's intentions by people like Baum does nothing to support people like Thomas when they do the right thing.