What the ‘ph’ is sponsoring the ABC?!

I turned on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation News at seven last night to see some highly unbalanced editing of content. Obviously, some big ‘Ph’ had accused the ABC of being unbalanced, threatened to pull out their cash flow and the ABC dealt with the crisis by doing something meant to be ‘subliminal’. It wasn’t. The editing of the sequences and choice of sequences was obviously doctored to suit the ‘ph.’

                It was easy for me and a friend to see how slanted the sequence of stories were. They were so obviously covering up their ‘mistake’ for chastising the ‘psych’ and the ‘pharm’ that near lethally drugged an Australian Aboriginal man, they thought looked like their escaped patient. Now the responsible ‘hospital’, Graylands Hospital has a large on site, forensic psychiatric unit. This wasn’t mentioned. Forensic means, the people there have committed a crime that has been brought to a court of law where the accused was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial. So, potentially, the Aboriginal man was being accused of being their escaped prisoner. I really wish the media would clarify when talking about these ‘hospitals’, compared to non-forensic psychiatric hospitals. where people get forcefully drugged for admitting they hear voices, or saying something that doesn't constitute consensual reality to most people.

                Anyway, back to the ABC news… Nothing was said about the horrific incident reported the previous night. That of a man being dragged into Graylands Hospital and forcefully injected with antipsychotics that caused the man to become so near death he was taken to the emergency unit, where it was discovered he wasn't the psychiatric patient they thought he was. He was an Aboriginal man who wasn't diagnosed 'mentally ill', nor had any forensic charges against him. No, there was no mention of that. Instead, first there was a plea for more money to be given to ‘mental health.’ Then, there was a report of a dead man found at Thomas Embley Psychiatric ‘hospital’ and two stabbings there as well. No mention here that Thomas Embley is a forensic hospital. The people there have committed criminal offenses. The guards at Thomas Embley also once shot and killed the neighbouring NMIT peacock mascot while I was studying there. That wasn’t mentioned in the news in 2010, although some on campus students witnessed it and had to receive counselling. I’ve seen other reports of stabbings happening at Thomas Embley Forensic facility and they also omit that it is a prison. Yet I don’t see many reports about stabbings in non-psychiatric prisons. Unbalanced.

                The next section of the ABC news was a reporting of another murder and how the man who did this was undergoing assessment for mental illness.

                Then the next section was about a murder in Darwin and an Aboriginal man witness talked of how it happened.

                Finally there was talk of an Aboriginal health group with young Aboriginal men all punching bags and lifting weights in a gym and there was talk of 'their problems’ being ‘overcome’ through this group.

                What the ‘ph’ am I to make of this editing other than ABC has a fat Pharm sponsor. I have known they have for a while… Since watching Andrew Denton’s ‘Angels and Demons’ in 2008. While I enjoyed aspects of that documentary, I was appalled by the tacked on pharmaceutical ad for mentally ill youth, that it concluded with. A group of ‘yes youth’ agreeing with dulled eyes that the new atypical drugs worked wonders and everything now was peachy in mental health compared to the way the main feature (artist Heidi Everett) described it used to be.

                The same peachy ad was tacked into the film ‘A beautiful mind’. The ad for atypical drugs, drugs that Russel Crowe while acting commended in the film when accepting the Nobel Prize. Nash refused to take the atypical drugs just as he refused other damaging treatments once they were no longer forced on him. How John Nash got better on his own is revealed in a post ‘A beautiful mind’ documentary on the mathematician called, ‘A beautiful lie.’

                So, what the ‘ph’ ABC? I thought your sponsorship wasn’t meant to affect your coverage! Ethics and boundaries ABC! Ethics and boundaries and non-biased reporting down the gurgler! You were not subtly covering up your ‘mistake’ at all because you didn’t make a mistake reporting how psychiatrists had done a huge evil to an Aboriginal man, who wasn’t even someone psychiatrists were allowed by law to lay their dirty mitts on and give a chemical lobotomy to!