Drunken Fight Makes International Headlines

I find it interesting that Reuters runs the below article and it makes the front page of Yahoo, but I have seen nothing about this same incident in the Australian media:

About 200 people armed with spears, knives and sticks, rioted in an Australian outback aboriginal town after an argument in a tavern, police said on Tuesday.

The argument, possibly between feuding families, started in the tavern at Aurukun, an isolated aboriginal community in northern Queensland state, on Monday.

"The argument started in the tavern and moved onto the street where about 200 people, some armed with spears, sticks and knives, started fighting," a police spokesman told Reuters.

"One man suffered serious head injuries when he was attacked by three people," he said.

A police tactical response squad was flown to Aurukun overnight to help stop the fighting.

"We do not yet know what started it. It could be something to do with feuding families," said the police spokesman. [Reuters]

Sounds like a slow news day at Reuters to make an international headline out of a drunken fight on a remote aboriginal settlement.  I have to speculate the Australian media is not making a big deal out of this because drunken fights on Aboriginal settlements happen all the time.  I think the reason this article was published at all was because the drunken fight is being used as an excuse to bash Australia with this:

Australia‘s 460,000 Aborigines make up 2 percent of the 20 million population and have a life expectancy 17 years less than white Australians. They have far higher rates of unemployment, imprisonment, alcohol and drug abuse and domestic violence.

A report this year found a "river of grog" or alcohol was destroying black communities in the Northern Territory and fuelling violence against women and children.

I saw a drunken fight that spilled out on to the street with about ten Aboriginals in the city of Katherine.  Good thing Reuters didn’t hear about that because they could have wrote an article about it and end it with the same two paragraphs listed above. 

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x