Look who’s teaching journalism

Across the media today, reports of Ayaan Hirsi-Ali’s sudden, last-minute cancellation of her Australian tour all mentioned an online petition which, as dark green millionaire and publishing dilettante Graeme Wood’s vanity press (otherwise known as The Guardian Australia) put it, expressed “utmost disappointment” that she had been “brought” to Australia, which “deserves better than this.”

What Australia “deserves”, one gathers, is that the professionally and perpetually offended get to exercise their right to free speech, but anyone and everyone else can take a running jump. To this end, the tour organiser’s insurer was harassed with what certainly sounds like intimidating phone calls, venues were promised massive demonstrations out front and, as is always the case with these campaigns, the spineless targets of organised enmity folded without so much as a whimper.

Tour cancelled, just like that — and much to the satisfaction of those inclined to yell ‘Alahu akbar’ as well as the unbearded who see Islam as a handy ally in bringing down capitalism, or the patriarchy, or coal miners, or whatever other hip bugbear happens to be flavour of the day in the left’s jerking circle of fashionable discontent.

The petition is an interesting document for a couple of reasons. First, if you open the signatures page, it becomes evident that many signatories detest the idea that a speaker with views a tiny minority find unacceptable should be silenced by threat and clamourous agitation. Their comments make that disgust abundantly clear, not least one signed by a certain Adolf Hitler, who writes,

“I like totalitarian people who won’t let others express their views.”

Further down the list, among those endorsing the idea that Hirsi-Ali need not and should not be heard, there appears the name of Jessica Swann, who lists herself simply as “Swinburne University”. Ms Swann (below), who came to journalism by way of air-hostessing, teaches at that august institution.

Now here’s is one for the books. A journalism academic (and ABCer, it almost goes without saying) who supports a petition that opposes free speech!

If you have ever wondered who is inculcating youngsters with the values and attitudes that a few, a very few, will be lucky enough to take to the few, the very few, newsroom jobs available in a dying industry, just follow the link below.

Shorthand and typing are all very well and good, but serving as an airborne blonde waitress “on private jets for the King of Bahrain — a prominent Saudi Sheikh and a Saudi Ambassador” also seems to offer its career angles.

— roger franklin

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