Deveny: Should She Have Been Sacked?

Unless you have been living underground, you would have heard that Catherine Deveny, a comedian and columnist for The Age newspaper in Melbourne, has been sacked. Her offence was to tweet a few controversial comments about fellow attendees of The Logies, namely Bindi Irwin.

Plenty of people have weighed in on the debate as to whether or not she should or should not have been sacked. Some of the better ones are Jonathan Green on ABC’s The Drum, Ben Pobjie from New Matilda on his personal blog, and it is also worth checking out how much The Age itself is covering the story.

Should she have been sacked? My gut instinct on hearing her tweets was admittedly shock. Rove McManus and Bindi Irwin occupy special territory regarding grief and sympathy in Australia’s social fabric. I doubt anyone, including Deveny seriously wish ill on either of these media personalities, er, I mean people.

No, actually, I do mean media personalities. Both Rove and Bindi make their living in the media, as is obvious by their very presence at The Logies in the first place, and thus expose themselves to public scrutiny and commentary. And Deveny’s role at The Age was, wait for it, commentary. Whether or not you agree or disagree with her is quite separate from the point, but as far as I can see, Deveny was fulfilling the role she had been employed to do. Moreover, she wasn’t tweeting in her official capacity with The Age. The tweets came from her personal Twitter account.

So I mulled it over a bit more, and was reminded of Julian Morrow’s excellent Andrew Olle address in November last year. As a member of The Chaser, Morrow is no stranger to controversy. After being embroiled in their very own comedy disaster, The Chaser was forced to make a public apology, among other penalties. Here’s some of what Morrow had to say about it:

“…pissing people off is part of the job – and that’s something that applies to both comedy and journalism. Therefore choosing who, when, how and why you anger or offend is something you have to take responsibility for, and I gladly do. That’s very different, however, from letting the possibility that some will take offence, or even feel hurt, be the determining factor of what you do…”

He continues:

“Outrages over taste and decency are nothing new of course. I’d say that a significant theme of the movement towards liberal democratic society has been the increasing priority given to freedom of expression over taste and decency concerns… But while they’re nothing new, debates about taste and decency seem different now. And that’s because they are both amplified and distorted with startling efficiency thanks to the interaction of new and old media. Culturally, it’s a nuclear reaction.”

This time the ‘nuclear reaction’ between Twitter and old media has resulted in a loss for our liberal democracy. Deveny’s sacking is disappointing and ultimately infuriating. I want to live in a society that welcomes controversy and explores the bounds of what is acceptable. As adults and media consumers, we can make the personal decision to sign up, tune in, log out, unsubscribe, or change the channel if we don’t like what we see. I know I’m not about to grace the likes of Kyle Sandilands or Andrew Bolt with my limited time and attention, but should they be sacked for their controversial comments? No. Sure, they piss me off from time to time, but as Julian Morrow reminds us, that’s exactly the point.

Image