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| The Farrago's Editorial team and room. (University of Melbourne) |
A couple of days ago
there was quite a bit of drama
on Twitter after a certain "anonymous" young “upstart” from the
University of Melbourne's Farrago newspaper dared to call News Ltd's Herald Sun a “hetero-normative” publication. Apparently the young journalism student (a.k.a. "Intern") in question had taken
offence from the fact that newsrooms can occasionally be the breeding
ground of dark humour and other forms of bleak comedy, predominantly
due to the high levels of stress, tension and tragedy that pass
through a newsroom's hallowed walls on a daily basis.
While that doesn't
excuse homophobia, transphobia, sexism and other forms of directed
personal abuse within the workplace as
veterans like Mark Colvin have stated, the presence of such
comedy is the sign of a relatively healthy newsroom once you realise
that it means that journalists and other media professionals are
talking through the emotional traumas that most have to witness or
experience on a daily basis. We all know that there's a lot of
really gruesome and disturbing content that Journalists have to
pursue and then edit out, before a broadcast ever goes to air or a
newspaper goes to print. While the public may get a sanitised
version of events as they are occurring, more often than not
Journalists don't, which can lead to some pretty serious mental
health issues down the road if they
don't have a coping mechanism (such as dark humour) in place.
If the Intern had been
dropped into either an emergency services or military environment,
she undoubtedly would have encountered similar attitudes from
doctors, police, soldiers, paramedics, nurses and firefighters alike. That's
because when people face a similar type of tragedy or stress together
on a daily basis, a tribalistic culture starts to form both within
their select group and their industry as a whole. When that happens,
all sorts of crude, innovative and outright dirty jokes come flying
out of the woodwork, as a way of people getting things off their
chests. Without that level of release, bad things nearly always
happen.
Journalists are no
exception to that rule, as evidenced by an explosive piece that was
penned by NewsWeek's Michael Ware only a couple of months ago.
(More after the Jump!!)
