Herald Sun gives shooters the bird
The Herald Sun has provided its final response to the CFCV after it raised concerns with the paper after it published several articles which avoided giving the shooting community a voice.
The response was nothing short of treating you, your club and shooting mates with utter contempt.
We want to stop them from doing this and need your help – so we’ve come up with a strategy to deal with it.
The 12 articles
Between March and August this year, the Herald Sun ran 12 articles covering inaccurate claims of firearm thefts and supporting a campaign to have the Adler shotgun banned.
Two of the Adler articles focused on the victims of the Port Arthur tragedy, so we can understand why comments from shooting interests were not needed. However they were placed right next to other articles pushing for the ban, so they were clearly written and placed to support the paper’s position on the Adler.
The articles provided dozens of quotes from the anti-gun lobby, but only one comment from shooting interests.
In May, we wrote to the Herald Sun seeking ‘fairness’ in its coverage of shooting related matters under it’s Code of Conduct. We raised concerns that it had not complied with the following provisions of its Code:
1.2 Publications should take reasonable steps to ensure reports are accurate, fair and balanced.
1.4 Try always to tell all sides of the story in any kind of dispute. Every effort must be made to contact all relevant parties.
1.5 Do not knowingly withhold or suppress essential facts
We were firm, but polite, leaving the door open for them if they needed any help with future stories relating to firearms. All they had to do was call.
The Herald Sun failed to keep its promise
The Herald Sun offered us the opportunity to put our view to its readers through a “prominent” letter to the editor of an agreed length.
It was a lame offering, but one we took up anyway.
Suffice to say, the paper failed to keep it’s promise: It cut our letter to around half the agreed word count and buried among all the other letters. Sure, it got published, but their definition of an agreement must be different to ours.
The Managing Director’s role
Along the way we discovered the paper’s Managing Director, Peter Blunden, is also on the board of the Alannah and Madeline Foundation (AMF) which ran the petition the paper was supporting.
This helped explain why there were so many articles pushing just the one view. Yet none of them disclosed Mr Blunden’s connection with it. We would have thought that was a significant issue of integrity and openness.
One last attempt
The 12th article, which appeared in late August, was a renewed call by the AMF to ban the Adler. This time the paper did call us for comment, so we spoke with them for a good 15 minutes.
Yet the article they published, like the others, only contained comment from the AMF – so once again, we wrote to the Herald Sun about its reporting.
The response we got was:
“I simply don’t agree with your analysis or conclusions. We will continue to report in a fair and accurate manner…”
They ignored everything we said – and gave us the middle finger.
So to summarise:
- The Herald Sun ran a string of articles where it failed to report “all sides of the story”;
- They denied they did this, but kept on doing it;
- They never intended to declare their link to the AMF; and
- The paper has no intention of honouring its agreements or acting in good faith.
So where to from here?
We’re not done with the Herald Sun yet.
They will continue on this path until the NFA review has been completed. They will continue to push the view of the AMF, while avoiding debate with, or input from, the Victorian shooting community.
Last month we approved a long term strategy to deal with the Herald Sun’s behaviour. Around the time this blog is posted, we’ll be sending out a media release, parliamentary briefing note and shortly after, a video. We’ll repeat the cycle every time the paper decides to repeat it’s behaviour.
Will it work? Maybe, maybe not. However we’ll give it a red-hot go and hope you’ll get behind us on this.
What you can do
Whenever you see an article any NewsCorp publication which fails to report views from our side of the debate, put a letter to the editor in.
Keep it short and get straight to the point. The shorter and punchier, the better. Or send them a letter now by clicking here.
If you subscribe to the Herald Sun, ask yourself if you need to keep it. If you cut your subscription, make sure you tell them why.
It’s important they understand that they won’t gain any subscribers for being anti-gun, but stand to lose many who are pro-gun. This is where we can use our numbers.
We’ll let you know what responses we get, when we get them. Click here to make sure you get our updates on this, and other news affecting your sport!
We’re running a poll!
We’ve set up a poll asking shooters if they have cancelled their subscription. If you have or have had a Herald Sun subscription, check out poll out by clicking here.