Media mangled messages

How much confidence should you give to what you read in a newspaper? I have had reason to ponder upon this quite recently.

I felt motivated to write a letter to the editor of a newspaper this past week. That’s not something I do very often.

In my article last month on “Hopes for a Brighter Future” I quoted an item by TR Bavin arguing in support of the Australian Constitution. I noticed that May 24 this year was exactly 125 years since that item had been published in the Sydney Morning Herald. I thought Bavin’s words had relevance to this year’s constitutional debate.

So I sent off a letter to the SMH which included an edited extract of my last month’s article. I mentioned the 125th anniversary – given that, if published, my letter would also appear on May 24. I added an explanation that the words were written by “a young TR Bavin who 3 decades later became a conservative premier of this state”; I said that Bavin’s words referred to the vote on the 1898 vote on the Australian Constitution.

A letter did get published over my name but I found it difficult to recognise what was published as the one I had sent.

I was quite content that the editor had changed a comma to a semicolon. I regularly defy the rules of punctuation. And of grammar! But the words the editor changed stripped my letter of its original meaning and intent.

The significance of the anniversary was eliminated entirely. The young TR Bavin became “politician Thomas Bavin”. And the 1898 vote on the constitution became degraded to “a constitutional referendum”! "a?" Eh? This was the NSW vote on the constitution for this country.

The editor was an expert on punctuation but not so hot on history it appears.

TR (Thomas) Bavin may have been an aspiring politician in 1898 when he wrote that item in the SMH – but he was not yet a politician. He was 23 – almost 24. The previous year he had won the university medal in law and been admitted to the bar. He became friends with Edmund Barton during his campaigning for the constitution. PM Barton appointed him as his private secretary in 1901. Bavin was elected to the NSW Parliament in 1917 becoming premier 10 years later. He led a very productive life.

I think I have learned my lesson and will now refrain from sending letters to editors for a few more decades!