CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
As the Australian news cycle enters the pre-Christmas purgatory of paid tourism advertorials and test cricket updates, journalists around the country are rushing to find clickable stories that fill the void left by the 2021 lockdowns.
Just days after Queensland’s borders open up, the footage of families reuniting in airports around the state has been the number one news item across the country this week.
Today, Tasmania is hosting similar scenes, with the Love Actually style reunions dominated news updates and social media all morning.
However, as is commonly accepted within the Costello/Murdoch Australian media duopoly, positive news stories don’t generate as much engagement as apocalyptical heartbreak and misery.
The spike of fully-jabbed Australians testing positive to mild symptoms in Melbourne and Newcastle has given news networks no option but to generate fear with sensationalist news stories about Christmas being ruined.
With over 90% of all residents in the Eastern states having done their part to protect themselves from this virus, journalists are doing all they can to remind Australians that this nightmare isn’t over just yet – and to prepare for the worst at all times – with just over week until Christmas.
The fear-mongering appears to have already resulted in knee-jerk decisions by the Queensland government, with hundreds of plane passengers told to isolate for 14 days through Christmas, after being listed as a close contact to a positive case that flew from Newcastle to Brisbane earlier this week.
Of course these same news networks are also making a point of not blaming their beloved Federal Government for this never-ending agony of separated families and cancelled family celebrations.
Instead the responsibility is being put back to the individual citizens, who apparently could have prevented these new case numbers by rushing to get their third booster shots that still aren’t available to the vast majority of Australians.
After a year of unmitigated disappointment, it seems that Australians are today telling the news outlets to pull their fucking heads in and focus on the warm and fuzzy news stories, rather than catastrophizing about what life would be like in their ideal world of non-stop bushfires and state lockdowns.
“Just stick to the crying grannies meeting their grandchildren for the first time” says Australia.
“Or the separated lovers pashing at Brisbane airport”
“Fuck off with your new variants and potential super spreader events”
