Sensationalist media coverage?

hey all --

i'm writing a piece on harm minimsation for the Sydney Morning Herald and am looking for examples of Australian media reports that have sensationalised drug use/fatalities, or demonised users. i basically need the examples to show how out-of-touch the media is... how, if they just read Bluelight once in a while, they'd realise that a well-informed community = a safe community.

so anyway, please post headlines/links/articles... i've had a bit of a trawl through the old news posts on this forum, but anything specific (up to 6 months old) would rock.

i'll definitely post the article here when it's published.

Two words for you:
Red Mitsubishi!

If you're fortunate enough to have access, review all (half hourly) Sky News broadcasts on the morning of 05-11-2004. The topic concerned plans by Enlighten and Dr Caldicott's Team to obtain approval to conduct legal pill testing at a Victorian dance event.

What's most absurd is how the focus of the story changed from one news hour to the next. The original wording is completely paraphrased and added to. In short it was disgusting. You need to see the first broadcast to get the less biased (edited) version.

i remember in all the red mitsi comotion some media source dropped the line "the pills contained a deadly combination of caffine and mdma". that article was way off.

You could also cover the de-humanisation of marjiuana users. the fact were all technically criminals (except a.c.t) for something many ppl use to self-medicate in a sense. The demons of legal alcohol and some of the contradictions its makes towards illegal drugs.

yeah, i really should watch that Four Corners doco tonight because i'm sure it'll be a very "oh look, marijuana is evil" type affair. pity i don't have a TV. me = most disorganised journo ever.

anyone else with specific examples/links/ideas?

http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=187859&r=5

have a look at that thread, it was posted just today. and it is the biggest load of crap.

this might be a little bit off what you're after, but look into recent major drug busts and the way in which papers/police report the 'street value' of what is found.
for example:
The Age 26th Feb

explain to me how 150,000 tablets are worth $12million on the street?! if you check other papers you'll also notice how their estimates of how many pills were found varies by up to 30,000. That seems like a pretty significant difference, but in the pursuit of getting the story out quickly they think any statistic is a good one

akkeri said:

me = most disorganised journo ever.

Click to expand...

well in that case I'm not sure if you have access to MediaScan, but if you do then chuck in 'ecstasy' and pretty much any drug buzz word you can imagine and you'll have so much misinformed crap it's not funny.

you can generally get access to the system in most major university libraries