Bloody Media!!!!!

[old man emu]

The sad news today was that an 18 year-old young woman who had been missing in bushland southwest of Sydney was found today, deceased. 

 

Police participated in a meeting with members of the Press. It appears that all the Press could focus on, and seek to blame Police for, was a report that a message had been passed to her parents that she had been found alive. However, within eight minutes that error had been corrected and the parents given the sad news. 

 

The members of the Press, who struck me as being young, posed questions that seemed to be aimed at making the police look incompetent. The senior officer who was speaking to them obviously did not have every minute fact, since the deceased had been found in wild country. I know that country as it was part of my patrol when I was a policeman. It is what some call 'tiger country'. Dense bush, steep cliffs. If any of you has flown west of Camden, or come in on the Bindook locator, you will know how bad the country is.

 

Searchers, who were SES, Police, Army and volunteers were using handheld radios for communication. Ther would have been no 'line of sight' from down in that steep country to the Command centre above. Mobile phones would have been useless. Nevertheless, these budding journalists, none of whom were likely to have any knowledge of the terrrain searchers were working in, kept plugging away with a line of quesioning that seemed to have only one object - to make out that police incompetence had cause undue distress to the parents.

 

This would have been held in the afternoon since the deceased was located about 11.30am. The Police officer tried to give as much information as was available, but I doubt if by that time he had to details that the Press might have been seeking. The deceased is in such an inaccessible location that recovering her might recuire her to be carried out as an air lift does not seem safe.

I noticed that the evening news broadcasts concentrated on that incorrect information.

 

Here is the report of the meeting.