VIOLENCE and MEDIA’S TREATMENT BIAS

WHO WILL MARCH FOR SARGUN RAGI … a sad but true story

Audio of Who Will March For Sargun Ragi as recorded live during a radio interview.

Recently a friend of mine in Canada (who is of Indigenous Canadian ancestry) made mention of how the media in Canada treats differently missing or murdered women. Missing or murdered women of colour (Indigenous, Hispanic, African etc) are treated entirely different than a missing our murdered Caucasian woman. While a missing Caucasian woman will get extensive media coverage, pleas for help, prayers and candlelight vigils, numerous police releases and press conferences, a missing woman of colour  maybe gets a spot on the front page or quick “she’s missing” blurb in the news. That quickly turns to maybe a “still missing” on Page 3 and then ho hum another missing woman of colour and it becomes just another statistic.

I said it is the same here in Australia and in fact as far as I can tell pretty much everywhere and it can pretty much apply to men as well. The case of the Australian and American male surfers murdered in Mexico a perfect recent example of bias news coverage between Caucasian and persons of colour.

I also mentioned that I have a song about this very subject which related to an incident which occurred in Melbourne in 2012. A Caucasian woman was abducted, walking on her way home from a venue after and evening with friends, and murdered. The media coverage was front page daily for weeks, marches where organized, candlelight vigils, TV coverage interviewing friends, family and co-workers, daily police updates. The perpetrator was caught in not too long of a time and the media coverage continued ad nauseum. At the same time a young woman from India who was in an arranged marriage to a taxi driver from India was murdered by the estrange husband. This young woman was being abused by the husband and sought help, she had an Intervention Order placed on the husband and was re-located to a “secret safe house”. Neither secret or safe she was found by the husband and was beaten and stabbed to death, the husband then killed himself and burnt the “safe house” down. The Melbourne media afforded this young lady one day of front page story and photo and that was it. There was no follow up, no marches, no candlelight vigils, no police reports, no interviews with family or friends, no investigation of how this young lady with and Intervention Order and in a safe house was found and murdered by an angry man.

These cases were both tragic for all concerned, in fact all cases of violence, abuse, murder, abduction etc whether it be women, children, men, old, young, black, white, brown or beige are tragic and should be treated with abhorrence, not only by all of us but by THE MEDIA as well.

The song is titled WHO WILL MARCH FOR SARGUN RAGI, it was recorded during a radio interview so the recording is not great,  there is an introduction prior to the song telling the story of why and about what. In the introduction I start out by saying it is a “terrible song” I was referring to the subject matter not the song itself. As a songwriter I must write about what I see in front of my face … I don’t make ‘em up and sometimes it’s not nice, pretty or pleasant but they need to be written.