SMH has its video bullying cake. Then takes a huge slice, forces it into its gob and eats it
Sometimes a story in the edition of the Sydney Morning Herald can benefit from a little more analysis.
Take this one, from today’s print edition, a paragraph at a time:
“The virus-like spread of a video showing a bullying attack and retaliation in a western Sydney middle school may be glorifying and even encouraging violence in the schoolyard, a leading bullying expert has warned.”
(The video has also so far spent about 24 hours on the home page of the SMH.)
“The video, watched by thousands of people on Facebook and YouTube, shows a slightly built 12-year-old student antagonising a larger 16-year-old, punching him in the face as a friend records it on his mobile phone and at least four other students watch.”
(And thousands more have watched it on smh.com.au.)
“The video became an almost instant hit on Facebook and YouTube before eventually being taken down.”
(But the SMH hasn’t taken it down.)
“It is still accessible on nearly a dozen other sites.”
Including, needless to say, the SMH.
”In so far as people are gloating over what has happened it is having a bad effect,” Professor Rigby said. ”There’s a strong case that it should be taken down. I’m also worried about the possible effect of this in terms of thinking that the only way to deal with bullying is to come down very heavily on everybody involved.”
The video, albeit with faces blurred, appears above his comments in the online version of the story. Which the professor, a bullying expert, must be delighted about.
Hear, hear. The ‘old’ media can no longer point and snigger at ‘social media’ from their ivory towers when in fact they are now actively PART of it. Hypocrites.com
User ID not verified.
Looks like the kid got what he deserved.
User ID not verified.
SMH has been bullying all the other media with tabloid opportunistic taunts… Looks like when they have the opportunity they are only too happy to roll around on the ground with the worst of them…
User ID not verified.
The whole concept is ridiculous. We should be more concerned for the old people who are getting all the silly phone calls about it!
User ID not verified.
Great work bringing this to the fore. I am sure many people reading this also agree and don’t know what we can do about it. ITs as if they are worse than all the people that they criticise and they are not ashamed about it. Drives me crazy! But the problem is, I still read those websites! Argh! What to do?
User ID not verified.
What I want to know is SMH seems to rip every video from Youtube which goes viral and then puts it up on their own website and promote it via the home pages then internally link to it, same structure is done with Ninemsn really who is the copyright owners of all this content get a slice of the CPM rates and advertising..No…
User ID not verified.