Luke McIlveen - Making it up as you go?

There are a number of ways you can engage in sensationalist tabloid journalism. For instance, you can add your own prejudicial context to words otherwise quoted out of context. Then you can just make it up as you go.

What methodology does Daily Telegraph journalist Luke MvIlveen use? Who knows.

In today’s DT, McIlveen manages to find a non-Lebanese Australian mum with 2 seriously disabled children who has been waiting two years for “priority” public housing. The point being?

McIlveen contrasts the situation of this unfortunate woman to what he describes as

Lebanese Australians evacuated from the Middle East came home
to a welfare smorgasbord.

McIlveen repeats his claims in today’s story.

The Daily Telegraph yesterday exclusively revealed details
of a taxpayer-funded seminar at Rockdale, where senior bureaucrats told Lebanese
Australians how to maximise their welfare payments.

In fact, according to a senior member of the Australian Lebanese community who I spoke with, the seminar was NOT for Lebanese Australians in general. Rather, it was a networking program for government departments and welfare workers funded under government grants. It was not an open invitation for Lebanese community members in general.

Further, the three women photographed and described in yesterday’s article as ordinary members of the Lebanese community were in fact THREE WELFARE WORKERS. One was from the Melkite Church welfare agency, the remaining two from Shia Muslim organisations. All are employed pursuant to heavily regulated government grants.

But will McIlveen and his paper tell the truth about what the event was really about? I won’t be holding my breath.

And it isn’t just one rogue reporter in on the game. Today’s DT Editorial continues with the apparent lie. It claims that this networking seminar among workers was in fact something different.

Earlier this week, a NSW Government-sponsored "forum'' spelled out to a
group of around 60 Australians rescued from Lebanon the welfare benefits -
public housing, Centrelink, welfare support services and so on - to which
they might be entitled.

Even intelligent and respectable broadsheets can get things wrong. The DT owes it to its readers to clarify and tell the truth.

© Irfan Yusuf 2006

RACISM: McIlveen strikes at Lebanese Aussies again

Daily Telegraph reporter Luke McIlveen continues with his monocultural agenda, this time complaining about an alleged scheme to enable Lebanese Australians rescued from war-torn Lebanon to ...

... get priority access to our welfare scheme.

The wording in the first paragraph is quite clear. The forum was designed to cater for Lebanese Australians to gain access to “our welfare scheme”.

Our scheme. Not their scheme. They are Lebanese Australians. We are real Australians. The message and implication is quite clear. The Telegraph is busy continuing with an agenda of demonising Lebanese Australians evacuated from what was the warzone.

The forum included advice on how to get ...

... to the top of the public housing queue.

Wow. How terrible. The sort of advice you could get by visiting your State MP’s office.

And what was the biggest deal about all this? The 3rd paragraph of the article states:

The extent of the support disproves claims from community leaders including Keysar Trad that Australia's response to the Middle East crisis was "racist".

Of course, had Keysar made the same allegations against McIlveen and the editors at the Telegraph, his allegations would have had some substance.

What the Telegraph doesn’t say is that the forum didn’t tell Lebanese Australians how to rort the system, though this is no doubt the impression McIlveen wishes to leave readers.

And they certainly did get that impression of the published feedback is anything to go by.

Once again, McIlveen has managed to engage in thinly disguised racism toward non-Anglo Australians. This time, his hysteria has also resulted in highly defamatory imputations against the Premier and staff of State and Federal Government Departments and Agencies.

The story includes a photo of 3 women at a table of brochures and pamphlets. As expected, 2 of them are wearing hijabs. The photo caption reads:

Generous support ... members of the Lebanese community check their entitlements last night.

Can someone please tell someone at the DT that most Lebanese Aussies are in fact Christians?

I often wonder whether the Telegraph get legal advice before they published their articles. One day they might find themselves in a spot of bother.

It would be interesting to know what Lebanese Aussie reporters employed by the DT think of this hysteria-mongering. The last time Piers Akerman wrote his nonsensical attack on Lebanese-Australian dual citizens and their pleas for evacuation, Lillian Saleh responded with a thinly-veiled critique of Akerman’s position.

(I say it was thinly veiled because she didn’t mention Akerman by name.)

It will be interesting to see if Saleh or one of her colleagues responds to what appears to be McIlveen’s latest racially-motivated monstrosity.

Words © 2006 Irfan Yusuf


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