As far as insults go, ‘dumb’ is on the mild side. And in many contexts the word ‘dog’ is pretty harmless too. But if it’s an Indigenous woman who combines the two in a social media post about a recently deceased English monarch...
Last week, on the day news broke of the Queen’s death, Newcastle rugby league star Caitlin Moran posted her insult on Instagram, and the backlash was immediate. 'Perhaps the most reprehensible thing I've ever seen connected to rugby league,' said radio host Ray Hadley, thereby sparking a backlash of his own suggesting that Moran’s post was surely not as bad as the assaults and family violence reported all too often about male rugby league players.
Some news outlets decided Moran’s post, which she deleted after about eight hours, was too offensive to publish. Nine’s Mark Levy called the post ‘disgusting’ and ‘too offensive to repeat’. And on Saturday, the Daily Mail wrote that, ‘The post included a photo of the Queen along with a message that Daily Mail Australia has chosen to not publish due to the insensitive nature of it.’
Not that the post was hard to find – naturally, Moran became a highly searched topic on Google. And on Tuesday, Moran was issued a one-game ban by the NRLW because her ‘public comments have caused damage to the game’. By this stage, the words ‘dumb dog’ were often being included in reports about the incident, including by the Daily Mail. Others, however, avoided the epithet, including the ABC.
In reporting the post, should journalists include the offending words, or withhold them? Here codes of conduct don’t provide any clear guidance. The MEAA Journalist Code of Ethics prescribes, ‘Do not suppress relevant available facts.’ It also tells its members to, ‘Respect private grief and personal privacy.’ Crucially, however, the succinct MEAA code is silent on whether to publish an epithet that some consider offensive. And, of course, it has no guidance whatsoever about reporting on royals. The Australian Press Council General Principles and the Commercial TV Industry Code of Practice are clearer, and turn on the ‘public interest’. The APC prescribes: ‘Avoid causing or contributing materially to substantial offence, distress or prejudice … unless doing so is sufficiently in the public interest.’
Meanwhile, Indigenous sports stars are often themselves the target of slurs and abusive posts, as Adam Goodes and Latrell Mitchell can attest.
It's a tricky issue. On the one hand, the public deserves the facts. On the other hand, re-publishing an insult has the potential to cause more harm. In this case, there’s also history. As Moran’s coach said, ‘The relationship between Indigenous people and the monarchy is a complicated one.’ When it comes to deciding which insults to publish, newsrooms will need to have some robust conversations if they want to work towards developing good, consistent ethical practice.
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Sacha Molitorisz, Senior Lecturer, UTS Law