WE don’t set out to make waves at
The Addy, just to report the news. One of the great privileges associated with being editor of a daily newspaper is knowing the role
The Advertiser plays in our community.
It’s an opinion shaper, provider of daily news and the medium locals turn to when they want to know what is going on in the world.
On weekends I often drop in to supermarkets, service stations or newsagents just to see how the The Addy stack is going. Funny thing is, when I recently confessed to colleagues in the newsroom about my Saturday habits, they were not surprised - they do the same thing.
It’s a great example of the passion and love that journalists have for their craft, and for the responsibility we know we bear each day.
That’s why when some people start making accusations and comments that we have been irresponsible or out of line in our reporting, we take it very seriously.
Just this week, there were rumblings from a small section of the community about our reporting of the fire season, which has so quickly descended on us.
In the interests of giving people a say, we published some feedback from a couple of readers who reckoned we had been scaremongering and perhaps unnecessarily instilling fear in readers’ minds.
We take our responsibility to report the news very seriously, so we went so far as to seek out senior CFA management here in Bendigo for some “straight up and down” feedback on how they viewed what we had been reporting.
It was encouraging and heartening to have our concerns put to rest by the CFA, an organisation this newspaper holds up as one of the greatest community service organisations in society.
It’s also the one most undervalued by the most people, and the one most likely to be called on in times of emergency.
The Advertiser makes no apology for its reporting of the preparation or the planning for the fire season, and we urge readers to take the threat of fire this summer very, very seriously. We encourage everyone, once again, to bookmark the website www.cfa.vic.gov.au and to visit this important site often in the coming months. This is not the first fire season that has loomed with such worrying potential, and it won’t be the last.
A quick look back just a couple of years shows plenty of stories written about fire in 2007 and especially 2008-09, but it was the election campaign of 2007 that dominated the pages this time two years ago - something I remember only too well.
I also remember only too well the incredible power and destructive force of the Black Saturday fires from the perspective of a journalist who was in the midst of the single biggest emergency our city has ever faced.
Besides witnessing the incredible work done by our CFA and DSE firefighters under what must have been the toughest conditions they have ever faced, the bravery and courage of so many ordinary people that day will stay with me forever.
The way news media report fires changed forever after Black Saturday, because we all saw what Mother Nature is capable of, and we share the responsibility to ensure the community is alert and aware of the very real threat we face this summer, and what we must all do to make sure we are ready.
Just ask the woman from Raywood who was mowing the grass on her property earlier this week.
She watched in horror as a fire started from a spark, burnt through a paddock, and eventually claimed eight hectares before seven CFA crews and two DSE crews brought it under control.
It’s a scene being played out all too often across the region and a symptom of how real the threat of fire is.
And Victoria Police Commissioner Simon Overland said on ABC radio on Thursday morning that he believed the fire message was not getting through. If the state’s top cop is worried about it, maybe we all should be.
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