After the #SydneySiege Tragedy – Was this Islamophobia, Islamic Extremism or Sensationalist Misrepresentation of a Lone Wolf?

 

Courtesy © Kylie Williams 2014

First of all, deep condolences to the families, friends and spouse/partner of the two hostages who died while held in the Lindt (Chocolates) Café complex at Martin Place for nearly seventeen hours with fifteen others, Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson. What transpired in the central district of Sydney conveys a deep feeling of loss, fear and dismay at how a lone gunman got into an inner city café in broad daylight, without being apprehended by patrolling police officers. Was the overall execution or visual description of what really occurred on that fateful day at Martin Place the true account of one lone wolf’s goal to glorify Islamic extremism on Australian soil?

Since the rampant rise of radical, fundamental Muslim terrorist organisation, Islamic State some months ago, journalists everywhere have scrambled for a fear-mongering, gun-ho headline succinct for a shakeup of an otherwise safeguard of a global threat not invading our backyard. Nothing Fairfax, News Corp Australia, The Guardian, SBS, ABC or the countless international media scrum reported about Martin Place, the hostages or with the gunman himself was proper, professional journalism. Straight on cue, news reporters had no factual information to go on. Channel 7’s The Morning Show screened the first real pictures of the unfolding horror, with cameras panning into the building next door to them where Lindt Café was located. 

Waking at 10:00 in the morning, Adelaide time this was not how morning television usually appeared. Channel 7, 9, 10 (Studio 10 was still running past its scheduled end), ABC and Sky News Australia descended onto the siege, after entering its first sixty minutes. Speculation went haywire. Journalists and public social media nerds theorised their own explanation about Lindt Café being held up. Automatically Islamic terrorism/extremism filtered into the mouths of the sharp-tongued newsreaders and morning show anchors who were working overtime to insinuate their diversifying, confusing accounts. Unable to continue watching as I was due to be practicing for a studio/presentation skills assessment at Radio Adelaide, ABC Local Radio doused the nagging concern that I wouldn’t get to see or hear if a resolution could be negotiated freeing those imprisoned inside the café. 

A few hours later when I was going back home, 702 ABC Sydney was rejoicing that five hostages broke free from their captor. I pleaded to myself, that NSW Police, Australian Federal Police and counter-terrorism squadrons will terminate this horrific situation affecting Sydney’s central financial district. I did tweet and also post a few statuses detailing my collective emotions and fears; one included not associating any family members as a hostage. I was relieved, thankful even that none of them were not physically inside that café. Until 1:00 am, I faultlessly watched and kept briefed to a predicted peaceful release of those remain imprisoned and surrender of the alleged Islamic terrorist. Slept in accidently and found that at 2:14 am the siege concluded in a “blaze of bullets.”

The disdaining factor of this tragedy recounts fallacies to sensitivity, accuracy and avoidance using political, social and religious contradictions. Islamophobia constructs a new discriminatory formulation, defining it as inciting prejudice, bigotry or hatred against members of the Muslim faith. In addition, class welfare, intolerance towards multicultural communities or political violence totally dominant non-authenticity in reporting what promptly materialises from a camera lens. Social media embedded hostile, unconvincing and intellectually defective commentaries, which had occasional ray of sun-shining compositions that did not afford Islamophobic or racially offensive dialect. David Marr interjected the pontification of poor journalistic ethics unapologetically in The Guardian, stating “Australia was not changed in the early hours of this morning. But it may be changed if these terrible events in Sydney are used to drive another agenda altogether: the criminalisation of the press and the needless extension of surveillance into the lives of all of us all in the name of fighting terrorism.”

Facebook and Twitter glibly hitches the deliberate notion where any person with a keyboard, smartphone or tablet goes and performs the act in self-commentating symptoms and conclusions of political or religious related violence. Is a fallacy when blame, guilt gets caught under a well-thought out tweet or status. The #illridewithyou movement was about one woman’s heart felt act of samaritanism to protect Muslim women and children from Islamophobic-related violence or racial vilification. One Facebook user found it “well-meaning and inspiring”, and then he denounced it as “pomposity and self-congratulation” insurgence of implying that you act racially sensitive. I find this movement inspiringly universal at first (still do in some regards as I hate racial abuse), but then cynical conflictions leaves me wondering if asylum seekers or Indigenous communities who face higher levels of social and societal exclusion would’ve been afforded the same observational look in from journalists ‘speculating’ at foreign participators executing a terrorist attack in Sydney. I wasn’t at Martin Place where this siege took place.

As a non-participant in the hypothetical, analytic perspectives of global terrorism or simply Islamic extremism, I found most television news media offended those who presumed litany at the inconsiderate underrepresentation with other domestic political issues where immigration legislation, incarceration, brutal punishment of refugees in detention centres (i.e. Nauru, Christmas Island) or citizenship specification criteria weren’t seen as usable in engaging a versatile dialect to why the assumption that IS had hijacked a inner city café, somewhere in the central business district in Australia’s biggest capital city stuck in the subconscious of the general public and local and international news reporters.

 

Courtesy © John Donegan 2014 

BBC, Al Jazeera, Buzzfeed, Junkie and multiple news networks across the world had reported this event in a dignified, informative style but questions are irresistible to sweep under a cloak of satisfaction of our television news media servicing us the viewers. Had the captor held an unfair room of insightful, paraded exposure? And what about the two fatalities that lost their lives from this unforsaken earth shattering event? For the two slain victims of this siege, Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson, I seriously found imbalance in how one of those brave hostages has been precede in mainstream media publications over the last two days since. Tori died a hero. Yet his personal narrative has unintentionally nestled a barrage of complains that his sexual orientation has been pinkwashed or removed from statements given by the Johnson family.

He was in a fourteen year intimate relationship with another man, not with a woman. Not prejudging homophobia in this instance, yet even ABC News and SBS World News have gone in-depth about Katrina’s personal narrative (husband, children, work/family history) but Tori gets a few paragraphs detailing his experiences in hospitality, his stint as manager with Lindt and of his parents grief not of his partner, Thomas Zinn.

So where can this reflective, interpersonal perspective end? Journalism told in the Australian native tongue contrasts familiarity, as what international media reveal in accurately or inaccurately informing and debating political or religious related violence. In the future when curious for information about this high-ranking headline: wait, search, critique, write, proofread then post out your tweets and statuses while referencing factual details.

UPDATE: On Channel 9's Today breakfast program, Thomas Zinn finally broke his silence in an interview with Lisa Wilkinson. Zinn described Johnson as a "humble, very generous person who loved his family, friends."